The Impatient Groom. SARA WOODЧитать онлайн книгу.
feeling hot and unbearably dizzy. ‘I—I can’t breathe...’
Strong arms enfolded her, one slipping around her back, one tucking beneath her knees. He’d done this before, she thought muzzily, and pouted, irrationally resenting all the women he’d carried to bed. Her head swam as she was raised in the air as if she weighed nothing.
Nauseous, with the room seeming to whirl about her, she allowed herself to be borne a short distance to an old sofa by the window, where Rozzano gently laid her.
Her eyes closed as she fought the swirling mist filling her head. She mustn’t pass out. She had to focus her mind, deal with this mad suggestion... And yet Frank had been so certain. It couldn’t be true...could it?
A moan whispered through her pale lips. The evidence was overwhelming. Why else had the prince come to England? The facts were staring her in the face. Frank was convinced. So was the prince. That meant... She groaned, then shuddered when Rozzano whispered something to her and his fingers lightly smoothed her furrowed brow.
‘Water, please!’ he called urgently.
Warm silk touched her chin. A jacket lining, she thought hazily, as its weight settled across her body. It smelled of him, a fragrance that was faint and elusive but wonderfully enticing, like the natural perfumes her mother had used. And she wanted to reach up her arms and pull him down to her till his cheek rested against hers and she could inhale those delicious scents.
Instead she kept her eyes tightly shut, giving herself thinking space. And time to settle her wild and shocking urges. Something awful had happened to her. The news had weakened her, torn her apart and left her defences open to the first devastatingly handsome man who crossed her path. And Rozzano was more devastating and handsome than most.
‘Goodness!’ exclaimed the temp, tapping in on her tottery heels.
Sophia blessed the woman for ripping into her panic-stricken thoughts. Nevertheless, she remained still, listening to Frank’s muttered dismissal. Cool water was being dabbed on her temples and wrists.
And then Rozzano’s moistened finger brushed a few times across her trembling mouth. It was terribly, wonderfully sexy and she didn’t know how she kept her eyes shut or stopped herself from catching his fingertip between her lips and tasting it, perhaps letting it wander into the moistness of her mouth...
At the contraction of her loins, Sophia moaned again, aware she needed to release her deep and terrifying feelings. She was in a state of turmoil, and no wonder. Desperately she gritted her teeth, appalled at the way her barriers were tumbling.
His hand stroked hers rhythmically—she knew it was his, recalled its strength, the sinews, the dryness of his palms and the suppleness of his long fingers. And she realised that she could also recall every line of his face, the angles of his eyebrows, the way he stood, walked...
‘Sophia, just relax,’ he murmured somewhere near her ear.
Relax! Suppressing a sharp gasp when his cool breath feathered over her face, she went through every muscle of her body, one by one, in an attempt to do as he said.
She opened her eyes and wished she hadn’t. He was leaning over her, kiss-close, an expression of concern softening his autocratic features.
‘Don’t be alarmed,’ he said. ‘Nothing bad will come of this, Sophia. You and your grandfather will be reunited. You won’t have to worry about money ever again—’
‘My grandfather!’ she breathed raggedly, feeling emotion sweep over her.
She was too choked to continue. All these years and the old man had aged and become ill, unaware that she existed. Without any warning, she began to cry as she lay there, the hot tears squeezing themselves pathetically from the corners of her eyes and running down her cheeks to the top of her jaw.
‘Why’s she upset?’ she heard Frank hiss. ‘I thought she’d be pleased! She deserves a break after all she’s been through,’ he said, warming to his theme while Sophia cringed with dismay at being openly discussed. ‘She gave up everything to look after her father. It can’t have been easy. No fun, no boyfriends, all those years of devoted attention—’
‘Frank,’ she mumbled hastily before the violins started playing, ‘you don’t understand! I’m crying because I have a grandfather who doesn’t even know I’m alive. He might have died and I would never have met him! How could my mother have done this to me?’ she cried passionately, so distressed that she forgot her reserve. ‘Why did she keep me from her family? She was married. She would have been beyond her father’s interference! Surely they could have made up their differences! It seems so cruel—’ She faltered, her eyes filling with tears again. ‘My mother’s become a mystery. I hate that,’ she finished miserably.
‘Then find out. Come to Venice and talk to your grandfather,’ suggested Rozzano gently. ‘Let him explain.’
‘Venice?’ she cried in blank amazement, sitting up.
‘Of course,’ the prince said patiently. ‘He can’t come to you. He isn’t strong. Any day now I fear the worst...’
She bit her lip, getting his drift. Her grandfather didn’t have long to live and time was running out. She hesitated. ‘I couldn’t afford the trip—’
‘You can. You’re rich,’ he reminded her.
‘I don’t have a passport,’ she said stubbornly, blanking her mind to all the things she didn’t want to deal with.
And she knew she was clutching at any straw to stop her from making the journey, even though she longed to meet her grandfather. Fear and love were vying with one another.
‘No passport?’ Rozzano exclaimed in amazement.
‘There’s never been any need,’ she said stiffly. ‘My birth certificate was lost and—’
‘Not lost. In my safekeeping.’ Frank held it out to her.
And there it was. Mother. La Contessa Violetta D‘Antiga. Sophia stared at it but her fingers were shaking so much that it fell from her fingers to the floor. Rozzano reached out to retrieve it and as he bent his cheek came so close that it almost brushed hers.
She felt her chest become banded with iron and her breath suck in sharply.
‘I know this must be difficult for you, but I’ll help you,’ he said, so softly that she strained closer to hear. ‘I’ll be with you every step of the way if you wish.’
There was a sudden violent movement in the open doorway to the waiting room. Almost simultaneously she was dazzled by a series of blinding flashes which made her scream in fear.
Rozzano shot to his feet, muttering ferociously in Italian under his breath, and in a matter of seconds he was roaring through the door in hot pursuit of the intruder.
Sophia saw Frank move to the window. She jumped up with a sudden surge of energy and joined him. Her heart leapt to her mouth. In the street below, Rozzano was shouting and clinging onto the door of a car, which was accelerating away.
‘He’ll be killed!’ she croaked in horror.
Without thinking, she dashed out of the office and down the stairs, running like the wind after the careering car. Rozzano fell, and rolled away from it.
And lay motionless.
He was deeply shaken, though not by his fall, or the brush with danger. He’d taken too many risks paragliding and skiing and had faced fear too often for it to affect him any more. It was his reaction that staggered him.
Astonishingly, he’d wanted to protect Sophia from press exposure—from the lies, and the stories they’d weave about them both. Her scream of terror had aroused in him a response so visceral and primitive that he might have been a caveman, defending his woman!
And so he’d done the unthinkable, broken his own rules, and acted like a fool. He