THE MEDIEVAL CHURCH was bathed in the warm sunshine filling the piazza in the ancient hilltop town in central Italy. Sunshine that did not warm Ariana. Instead, only cold filled her. Cold that almost had her shivering. Or something did.

Fear.

Fear of what she was about to do—what she had to nerve herself to do...steel herself to do.

Face set, hidden from view by the little veil that dipped from the deliberately stylish and very expensive hat, which went with the equally stylish and expensive tightly cinched suit curving over her shapely figure, she walked up to the arched entrance of the church, invitation at the ready.

The service had already started, and the choir were singing an anthem as she slipped unobtrusively into a seat at the back. She sat down, feeling sick with nerves, wishing with all her being that she could just bolt and run. But shehadto do this.

She bowed her head, as if in prayer, but actually to avoid looking at the well-dressed congregation...or the figures by the altar rail. Another rush of fearfulness assailed her at the enormity of what she was about to do.

But there’s no other way—none!

The anthem finished, there was a rustling among the congregation, and then the priest—a high-ranking cleric, as befitted so grand a society wedding—began to intone the words of the ceremony.

A dizziness filled Ariana’s head, and her heart was hammering. She had to time this right—totally and absolutely right—to the very moment.

The dreaded moment.

The dreadful moment...

And then it came. The words that had never received a response at any wedding she’d been to. But today, right now, they would. They must...

There’s no other way—however much I long with all my being not to do this!

She heard the priest say the words—her cue, her signal. Heard the dutiful pause that followed. Heard herself stand, step into the wide aisle. She started to walk forward; every step compelled from her by a strength of will overcome her repugnance at what she was doing. What she was about to do.

She started to speak, forcing the words out through her constricted throat. The words shehadto say, falling like a sacrilege across the sacrament of holy matrimony. Words to halt it in its tracks.

‘Yes! I have an objection! And I will not hold my peace! This marriage cannot take place!’

She saw heads turn, heard the collective gasp of shock from the congregation as they stared at her, striding down the aisle on high heels that struck like nails on the flagstones, towards the two figures by the altar rail.

The bride, a slender column in white, her face invisible beneath a long lace veil, did not move. But the groom did. Ariana’s fixed gaze saw him turn. Slowly, like a jaguar that had just heard something behind him move. Something that might be prey—or a fellow predator.

The cold inside her froze instantly to solid ice as his gaze came to rest on her. It was as if liquid nitrogen had just been poured down her throat. She felt her senses sway, and with every instinct in her body she wanted to halt and turn...and flee...

But she would not. Could not. She had to do this. Had to play it to the very end.

His eyes, like a basilisk, watched her approach. They were all that she could see.

Not the man who had given away the bride, now starting forward with an oath, nor the bride herself, still not turning, motionless like a statue. Let alone the best man, the half-dozen bridesmaids, flower girls and page boys all staring open-mouthed at her approach.

Not even the priest stepping forward now, his expression half concerned, because her interruption must, in light of his professional duty, be attended to, and half holding the collective outrage she could feel coming at her in waves from the congregation at her stupendous, scandalous social faux pasin doing what she was so appallingly doing.

The priest opened his mouth to speak, to demand the reason for her outburst, but she pre-empted him. She stopped dead, some way still from the altar rail and the front row of pews and threw back her short veil.

And then she saw the basilisk eyes change.

Saw recognition.

For a second, a micron of time so short it almost ceased to exist, she saw something flare in the obsidian eyes. A black flame...

Then it was gone. Now in his eyes there was only a blade so sharp she could feel it cutting the flesh from her bones.

He started forward, but she was already speaking. Her voice a clarion, heard by all present. Heard by the motionless bride, her back still turned to her. Heard by the groom, with tension in every line of his tall, lean body, every plane of his hard, stark face. In the sculpted mouth now whipped to a narrow line.She pointed her hand as she spoke, praying that it was not trembling. An accusing hand. Directed at the groom. The man whose wedding she had to stop. Right now.

‘He cannot marry her!’ she cried out. ‘I am pregnant with his child!’

Three months earlier...

ARIANAGLANCEDA Ther reflection in the mirror in the ladies’ room of the uptown, upmarket Manhattan hotel, her peat-colored eyes, a legacy of her father, deepened by eyeshadow and mascara, her generous mouth lustrous with lipstick.

Her grandfather would say she looked like a harlot, but she didn’t care—he always thought badly of her. Nothing she could do pleased him. Even when she tried to dress demurely, he still disparaged her. She was too tall, too full-figured, too curvaceous, too everything. And, worst of all, far, far too outspoken. Always drawing attention to herself in entirely the wrong way.

Unlike her cousin Mia.

It was Mia who was the granddaughter he approved of. Mia, so petite, so slender, with her long fair hair and angelic features. Mia, so gentle and sweet-natured. Quietly spoken, diffident—meek, docile and shy. Just as a woman should be.

That was their grandfather’s opinion, and he did not balk at holding forth about it.

Ariana had heard it all her life, even as a child, and certainly once she became a teenager. She should be inured to it, but it could still sting—even now.

Well, not tonight! Tonight, she was four thousand miles away from her grandfather’s grandpa lazzoin Umbria and she was going to enjoy herself. She’d just completed the refurbishment of her mother’s new house in Florida, bought with her latest husband—number five, as Ariana had totted it up—and she’d flown to New York to catch up with her other American clients, including her hostess tonight: wealthy socialite Marnie van Huren, a friend of Ariana’s mother, who was bubbly, sociable—and matchmaking.

‘Come to my party, honey, and get yourself a nice man! You career girls are always too busy for romance!’

Ariana had smiled but said nothing. She focused on her career for a reason—and it wasn’t to compensate for a lack of romance in her life. It was to escape her grandfather’s financial control.

It was a control that was not just financial, but emotional as well—a control he’d always sought to exert over his family. He’d done it with her uncle, Mia’s father, who to his dying day had never stepped out of line any more than his daughter—sweet, docile Mia—did now. That hideous day Ariana’s uncle and aunt had been killed in a car crash, when Mia was seven and she was nine. The tragedy had scarred them all, making her grandfather’s stifling tyranny even more suffocating. He’d become determined to make Ariana like gentle Mia, wanting to chain his granddaughters to his side, not wanting them to have a cent that had not been bestowed upon them by himself even once they’d grown up.

Ariana had vowed never to be dependent, never to let her grandfather curb and constrain her as he did her timid, gentle cousin Mia. Nor to react to that crushing control in the way her own mother had. She had eloped at nineteen with a good-looking penniless wastrel who had soon abandoned her, freshly married and pregnant, in exchange for being bought off by an irate father-in-law, never to be seen again. Least of all by his daughter Ariana.

A succession of marriages interspersed with affairs had followed for her mother, all disapproved of by Ariana’s grandfather, but fortunately always to wealthy men.

Ariana had no intention of copying her mother’s solution to her grandfather’s tyranny. She would never be dependent on a man’s largesse, whoever that man was. She would make her own money, using her own talents.

It hadn’t proved easy, and her precarious efforts to succeed in the overcrowded world of interior design were yet another source of contemptuous disapproval by her grandfather—yet another reason to condemn her. But she’d been dogged in her persistence and her determination, and now, at twenty-seven, she felt she could call herself a success.

It wasn’t, of course, a success that earned her grandfather’s approval—nothing could do that—but it earned her enough money to live a comfortably affluent life. The downside was that it was a life dedicated to her career. Though she dated from time to time, it was never a priority for her. Romance, for now, came a very poor second.

But when she finally had time for romance, she would make sure it was the real thing. Permanent. She would not be like her mother, flitting from man to man, husband to husband. No, for her it would be different. One man, one love, one life—together.

One day I’ll meet him! The man I’ll make my life with—who will mean everything to me. The one man in the world who’ll set me alight like a flame, to burn for him all my life!

It would happen one day—and in the meantime there was work and, like tonight, socializing.

She glanced at her reflection again. The figure-hugging cocktail dress showed her generous curves in a way that would have had her grandfather choking. Defiantly, she gave a toss of her head, sending rich brunette waves rippling over her shoulders as, with a final glance, she sashayed out on her five-inch heels and went to party.

Luca Farnese stood at the side of the crowded function room, which was noisy with chatter and the clink of glasses and be jeweled bracelets and surveyed the scene. He would not be staying long at this high-society Manhattan shindig, only long enough to have the conversation he wanted with his host, and then he’d escape.

Even though he knew, without vanity, that he was being eyed up, courtesy of his darkly good-looking Italian features, his six-foot height and lean, fit body, he had no desire for any dalliance tonight. Or ever. He had already found the woman of his dreams—and she was all he had ever sought in the woman he would make his life with.

A memory of her across the ocean, waiting for him to return and declare himself to her, played in his head, conjuring up her angelical beauty, her fair hair, luminous blue eyes, her tender mouth and her soft, melodious voice. She hadn’t said a great deal, had only hidden her doe-like gaze beneath demure lashes, but from the moment he’d met her—only a handful of weeks ago—he’d been captivated by her. The gentle sweetness of her nature had shone through, and the air of quietness about her had been serene and tranquil. What he had always dreamt of—longed for.

And he knew why.

Bitterly so.

Memory slid back down the years, the decades, and his expression tightened in painful recollection. Raised voices, doors slamming. His father’s voice, pleading and placatory, his mother’s angry and denouncing, vitriolic in its complaint and criticism, unstoppable in the full flow of her histrionics. Then a final slamming of a door and silence. Oppressive, echoing silence.

Himself as a young boy, clutching the landing banisters with clammy hands, his expression strained and anxious. Then going back to his bedroom with a heavy, forlorn tread, his insides knotted up, his heart thumping as he climbed back into bed. But not to sleep. To stare tensely up at the ceiling, hands clenched either side of his stiff body, trying to block out the echoes of the shouting and cursing.

He’d wished his mother wasn’t always quarrelling with his father, yelling at him, storming out, making scenes wherever she was, in front of everyone, even in front of complete strangers, not giving a damn that people were looking, not caring about her son’s mortification, her husband’s cringing embarrassment. However badly his mother behaved, his father seemed to be in thrall to her, letting her endlessly get away with her outbursts.

As a boy he’d been unable to understand why—but as he became a teenager, and then a man, he’d come to understand the power his mother had over his father. The power of her blatant sexuality that his hapless father had never been able to resist.

Rejection of his father’s endless surrender to his wife’s sensual allure had brought Luca to a steely resolve for himself. His own marriage would be nothing like his tormented parents’. Never would he be in sexual thrall to a woman as his father had been, and nor would his wife be like his demanding, self-absorbed mother, who’d cared nothing for her hapless husband and her neglected son.

No, the woman he would fall in love with—his ideal since his teenage years—would be the very opposite. Quiet and gentle, sweet-natured and loving, never raising her voice to anyone. And all he’d want would be her happiness, as he bestowed upon her his devotion and his wealth.

Wealth he had made for himself, in the cut-throat world of high finance. Wealth of which he was now in continued pursuit—and he needled his glance through the guests, looking for fellow financier Charles van Huren, whom he had arranged to meet here.

Charles’s business schedule was as non-stop as his own, and as Luca was flying back to Italy the next morning it meant that tonight, albeit at Charles’s wife’s birthday party, was the only opportunity they would have to discuss the joint business investment they were contemplating.

He levered himself away from the wall, intent on finding his host in the crowd. He gave a cursory glance into the room opening off to his left, from which throbbing dance music was emanating. As he did so, someone caught his eye.

A woman...dancing on her own.

Ariana could feel the slow, heavy beat of the music, the old, familiar number echoing in her pulse as she moved to it, murmuring the well-worn lyrics of the track with a nostalgic half-smile playing on her lips.

Without conscious volition she moved on to the floor, started to dance, not caring that she had no one to dance with, wanting only to feel the slug of the music, to give herself to it, her feet moving indolently, arms twining, serpentine, winding in and out of the intoxicating melody.

Feeling the luxuriant tresses of her hair loosened from their customary businesslike confines and moving across her shoulders like a silky cloud, she dipped her head, hair swaying, heartrate synching with the heavy music. Losing all sense of time, she was becoming one with the music, primitive, primeval, caught in its low, seductive beat.

Then the music ended, and lights flared in a blaze. She looked up, throwing her head back, catching her breath as her eyes focused.

Straight into the watching gaze of a man standing at the edge of the dance floor, looking straight at her.

Luca stood immobile; his gaze fixed. Why the hell had he stopped as he had?

It was a pointless question to ask himself. He knew exactly why.

The woman was tall, her height accentuated by heels that threw her lush body, tightly sheathed in a dark red dress, into lusher curves yet, lengthening her slender legs. Her long, loose hair cascaded down her back, framing a face as breathtaking as her body, with huge dark eyes and a curving, wanton mouth...

The woman who had just stopped dancing would have drawn the eye of a saint.

And he was no saint...

He felt his body quicken with incipient arousal. He crushed it down. He wasn’t in the market for an encounter of any kind. Not any longer. And certainly not with a woman like the one he was staring at.

Before, when he’d wanted...needed...a woman he’d picked carefully. Very carefully. Someone to dine with, talk with—politics, business, finance—and take to bed. High-flying women, nearly always working in the same field as himself, with whom it was therefore easy to converse. Sleek, svelte women who wore an evening dress as if it were a business suit, with short, smooth, styled hair and discreet, immaculate make-up. Beautiful women, obviously, but women who controlled their lives as rigorously as he did his own.

The woman he’d just been watching had not been controlling her life at all. She’d let the music control it. She had melded her body with it. Arms moving sinuously, body swaying, head bowed, lost to the world...

A world she had suddenly returned to as the music had stopped and her body had stilled.

For a second her eyes, dark and huge and smoky, lifted to his, looked right at him. Then, abruptly, she was turning away, raising her hands as she did so to lift the heavy tresses of lush dark hair as if to cool her neck. It was a very natural gesture, and a sensual one...

Luca’s gaze narrowed slightly. The woman’s movement had lifted her breasts, which now strained against the tight material of her dress, emphasizing her generous cleavage. Again, against his will, he felt his body react...

Anger stabbed. This was way out of order.

Forcing his muscles to obey him, he moved sharply away. Across the main function room he saw Charles van Huren, finally finished with his duties as host, and made eye contact. Receiving an acknowledging nod in return, he headed forward, and moments later both men had disappeared into a deserted room and settled down to their business discussion, in brisk, time-efficient tones.

All thoughts of the lushly curved brunette with her smoky eyes, sensuous dancing and mane of wild hair, were forcibly banished.

Ariana let her hair fall again, heavy on her shoulders, and as if she were following through with the gesture twisted her head towards the entrance to the dance floor. She exhaled, relief filling her. He was gone.

That moment, brief as a casual glance, had been anything but casual. Her gaze had collided with his like a physical clash, and she knew with a sudden pulse in her veins that had nothing to do with the throbbing music that it had been fastened on her. Watching her dance.