is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and

bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant

success with readers worldwide. Since her first

book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a

chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare

treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may

have missed. In every case, seduction and passion

with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon® reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

The Italian Boss’s Mistress
Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

A TEAM had flown over to Naples to bring Andreo up to speed on his latest acquisition, Venstar.

Tensions were running high for there was not a single Venstar executive present who did not feel that his job might be on the line. The ruthlessness that distinguished Andreo D’Alessio’s brilliance in the business world was a living legend.

‘This should help you to fit faces to the senior staff when you come over to visit us,’ one of the directors said with a rather nervous laugh as he passed over a company newsletter adorned with a photograph of key personnel.

Andreo D’Alessio studied the front page with keen dark eyes. Only one woman featured in the line-up and he only noticed her in the first instance because she messed up the picture. She was very tall and her stooped and self-effacing stance shrieked all the awkwardness of a very skinny baby giraffe striving in vain to hide its overly long limbs. Heavy framed spectacles dwarfed her thin, earnest face. But what had caught Andreo’s attention was her pronounced untidiness. Stray riotous curls stuck out from her head hinting that her hair was in dire need of a good brushing. His frown deepening, he went on to note that her ill-fitting suit jacket was missing a button and the hem on one leg of her shapeless trousers was sagging. He almost shuddered. The epitome of cool elegance himself, he was less than tolerant of those who offended his high standards.

‘Who is the woman?’ he enquired.

‘Woman?’ Andreo was asked blankly and he had to point her out in the photograph before his companions made the necessary leap in understanding.

‘Oh, you mean…Pippa!’ a Venstar executive finally exclaimed as though challenged to recognise the reality that the senior staff actually harboured a female in their ranks. ‘Pippa’s our assistant finance manager—’

‘You don’t tend to think of her as being a woman…has a brain like a calculator. An academic high-flyer who thinks of nothing but work,’ a director proclaimed with appreciation. ‘She’s absolutely dedicated. She hasn’t taken a single holiday in three years—’

‘That’s unhealthy,’ Andreo cut in with disapproval. ‘Stressed and exhausted employees operate below par and make mistakes. The lady needs a vacation and HR should have a word with her about smartening up her slovenly appearance.’

Jaws dropped. Paunches were sucked in and jackets smoothed down for none of the men was quite sure which imperfections might put one at risk of attracting the clearly very dangerous label of being ‘slovenly’. An uncomfortable silence fell. Slovenly? Was Pippa slovenly? Nobody had ever really looked at Pippa long enough to have noticed one way or the other. That she was an economics prodigy and very efficient was all anybody had ever cared about.

Still scanning the picture to note the level of personal care as displayed by the male contingent of the line-up, Andreo found yet more scope for censure. ‘I don’t believe in the concept of dressing down because it doesn’t impress clients. I don’t want to see jeans in the office. A smart appearance implies discipline and it does impress. This man here could do with a haircut and a new shirt.’

He pointed out the offender in an impatient tone. ‘Attention to self-presentation is never wasted.’

Almost every man in the room decided to go on a diet, get a haircut and buy a new suit. Andreo, all six feet five inches of him, after all, could be seen to practise what he preached. Lean, mean and undeniably magnificent in a to-die-for Armani designer suit, Andreo was an impressive enough sight to inspire the younger men with an eager desire to emulate him. Ricky Brownlow, however, who was far too vain of his blond good looks to believe himself in need of either a diet or a haircut, concealed a self-satisfied smile. He had just worked out how he could promote his current lover over Pippa’s head without attracting undue criticism.

‘The HR department also needs to set new targets. I want to see a very rapid improvement in Venstar’s abysmal record of promoting women to executive level,’ Andreo concluded.

When her immediate superior, Ricky Brownlow, invited her into his office and broke the bad news, Pippa was betrayed into a startled exclamation. ‘Cheryl…is going to be the new finance manager?’

Ricky nodded in casual confirmation as if there were nothing strange about that development.

Cheryl Long? The giggly brunette who currently acted as her junior was now to become her boss? That bombshell sent Pippa into severe shock. After all, she herself had been Acting Finance Manager for almost three months and she had had high hopes of the position being made permanent. Until that moment she had had no idea that Cheryl had even applied for the job.

‘I thought that I should let you know before HR informed you through official channels,’ Ricky added in the tone of a man who had gone out of his way to do her a favour.

‘But Cheryl has hardly any qualifications and only a couple of months of experience in the section…’ Pippa was quite unable to conceal her astonishment.

‘New blood keeps the company fresh and sharp.’ Ricky Brownlow frowned at her in reproof and a painful flush lit her fair skin.

A slender young woman with shaken blue eyes and vibrant auburn curls scraped back from her brow and held tight by a clip, Pippa walked back to her desk. She could have taken losing out to a superior candidate, she told herself urgently. But was she just being a bad loser? Shame at the fear that she might be that petty consumed Pippa, who suffered from a conscience more over-developed than most. Self-evidently, she decided, Cheryl Long had talents that she herself had failed to recognise.

The animated buzz of dialogue around Pippa reminded her of the party being held that evening to welcome Andreo D’Alessio and she suppressed an exasperated sigh. She had never liked parties and she liked work social occasions even less. However, now that she had been turned down for the job that she had naively assumed was in the bag, she had better make an appearance at the celebrations lest other people start thinking that she begrudged Cheryl her good fortune.

Cheryl was about to become her boss. Pippa swallowed the thickness building in her tight throat. For goodness’ sake, had she screwed up somewhere so badly that she had blown her own promotion prospects right out of the water? If that was the case, why hadn’t she been told and at least warned of her mistake? Cheryl was going to be her boss. Cheryl, whom Pippa had had to be rather stiff with on several recent occasions for her incredibly long lunch breaks and shoddy work? Cheryl, who seemed to spend half the day chatting and the rest of it flirting with the nearest available male? Cheryl, who was mercifully on leave that day…

Pippa sank deeper and deeper into shock. Hothoused as she had been from preschool level right through to university, and always expected to deliver exceptional results, failure of any kind threw her into an agony of self-blame and self-examination. Somehow, somewhere, she was convinced, she had fallen seriously short of what was expected of her…

‘I wish he was more into publicity and we had a better photograph of him,’ one of the project assistants, Jonelle, sighed in a die away voice that set Pippa’s teeth on edge. ‘But we’ll see if he lives up to his extraordinary reputation when we see him in the flesh tonight—’

Her companion giggled. ‘He’s supposed to have bought his last girlfriend a set of diamond-studded handcuffs…’

Pippa had no need to ask who was under discussion for Andreo D’Alessio’s exploits as an international playboy, business whizkid and womaniser were very well documented for a male who went to great lengths not to be photographed. Her soft full mouth curled in helpless disgust. The man that offered her diamond-studded handcuffs as a gift would find himself skydiving without a parachute. But then no man was ever likely to offer her diamond-studded sex toys of any description, and very grateful she was too not to be the type to attract that kind of perverted treatment! Just listening to another female agonise in fascination over a male set on reducing her sex to the level of toys for fun moments made her feel ill.

‘I bet he’s an absolute babe.’ Jonelle had a dreamy look on her pretty face. ‘Hot stuff—’

‘I bet he’s small and rather round in profile just like his late father,’ Pippa inserted with deliberate irony. ‘And the reason that Andreo D’Alessio doesn’t like publicity is that he loves the rumour that he’s much bigger and better looking than he really is.’

‘Maybe the poor guy is just sick of being chased for his mega-millions,’ Jonelle opined in reproach.

‘And maybe he wouldn’t be chased at all if he didn’t have them,’ Pippa mocked.

Mid-morning she was called to an HR interview. Informed for the second time that her application to become Finance Manager had been unsuccessful, she felt grateful but still a little surprised that Ricky Brownlow had been kind enough to forewarn her of the disappointment coming her way. When she asked if there had been any complaints about her work performance, the older man was quick to reassure her.

‘And that’s very much to your credit when one considers events in recent months,’ the HR director continued in a sympathetic tone.

Picking up on that oblique reference to her father’s death in the spring, Pippa paled. ‘I’ve been lucky to have my work to keep me busy.’

‘Are you aware that you haven’t utilised your holiday entitlement in several years?’

Her fine brows pleated and she shrugged. ‘Yes…’

‘I’ve been asked to ensure that you take at least three weeks off effective from the end of this month—’

‘Three weeks…off?’ Pippa gasped in dismay.

‘I’ve also been authorised to offer you the opportunity of a sabbatical for six or twelve months.’

‘A…a sabbatical…are you serious?’ Pippa exclaimed in an even greater state of disconcertion.

Impervious to Pippa’s discouraging response, the older man went on to wax lyrical about the benefits of taking a work break. He pointed out that Pippa had not taken a gap year between school and university and had in fact commenced employment at Venstar within days of her graduation.

‘You spend very long hours in the office.’

‘But I like working long hours—’

‘Nevertheless I’m sure that you will enjoy de-stressing during your holiday in two weeks’ time and that you’ll consider the opportunity of extending your break with a sabbatical. Think of how refreshed you would be on your return to work.’

De-stressing? Ultra sensitive, Pippa picked up on that word and wondered if that was why she had been passed over in the promotion stakes. Did she come across as stressed to her colleagues? Irritable? Or was it that she seemed lacking in management skills? There had to be a reason why she had been unsuccessful—there had to be! Whatever, she was not being given a choice about whether or not she took a holiday and that bothered her. Why now and not before? Was there concern that she might not adapt well to the new command structure in the finance section?

Deeply troubled by her complete loss of faith in her own abilities, Pippa worked through her lunch hour and when, around three that afternoon, she glanced up and saw the empty desks around her, she frowned in surprise.

‘Where is everybody?’ she asked Ricky Brownlow when she saw him in his office doorway.

‘Left early to get ready for the party. You should be heading home too.’

Pippa hated to leave a task unfinished but then she recalled the events of the day and the holiday that had been pressed on her. That had been a hurtful lesson in the reality that she was not indispensable. Rising from her desk, she lifted her bag. She had reached the ground floor before she appreciated that the rain was bouncing off the pavements outside and, in her haste to depart, she had left her coat behind.

Too impatient to wait on the lift again, she took the stairs. The finance floor was silent and she was walking towards the closet where her coat hung when she heard Ricky Brownlow’s voice carrying out from his office.

‘When I was in Naples, Andreo D’Alessio made it very clear that he likes sexy, fanciable women around him,’ Ricky was saying in a pained, defensive tone. ‘He took one horrified look at the piccy of our Pippa Plain in the company newsletter and it was clear that she would never fit the executive bill in his eyes, so I backed Cheryl’s application instead. Cheryl’s less qualified, I grant you, but she’s also considerably more presentable—’

Pippa had frozen in her tracks. Pippa…Pippa Plain?

‘Pippa Stevenson is an excellent employee,’ a voice that she recognised as belonging to one of the older directors countered coldly.

‘She’s an asset as a backroom girl but her best friend couldn’t call her a looker or a mover or shaker. She has all the personality of a wet blanket,’ Ricky Brownlow pronounced with a viciousness that flayed Pippa to the bone. ‘To be frank, I didn’t think we’d be doing ourselves any favours if we ignored D’Alessio’s sexist preferences and served up Pippa Plain to him on his first day here!’

Shattered by what she had overheard but even more terrified of being found eavesdropping, Pippa crept back out to the corridor and fled without her coat. In that one devastating dialogue, she had learned why Cheryl instead of herself was to be Venstar’s next finance manager. Pippa Plain? Her tummy rolled with nausea but she refused to let herself cringe. Ricky Brownlow had laid it on the line: unlike Pippa, Cheryl was extremely attractive and popular with men. The curvaceous brunette’s looks rather than her ability had influenced her selection.

A cold, sick knot of humiliation in her stomach, Pippa swallowed hard and blinked back stinging tears. It was so unfair. That job had had her name on it and she had worked darned hard for promotion. Nobody had the right to judge another person on their appearance. It was utterly wrong and against all employment legislation and Venstar deserved to be sued for treating her so shabbily. She imagined standing up at a tribunal and being forced to relate Ricky’s demeaning comments and compressed her lips with a shudder of recoil. No, there was no way that she would take the company to a tribunal and make herself an object of sniggering pity.

Her best friend couldn’t call her a looker…Pippa Plain? Was that a fact? Doubtless Ricky would never credit that when she was fifteen years old a modelling agency had offered her a lucrative contract. Of course, her father had been outraged by the mere suggestion that his daughter would engage in what he deemed to be a lowbrow career. But for the eight years that had followed Pippa had secretly cherished the memory of her one stolen day of rebellion against Martin Stevenson’s strict dictates. She had gone to the agency in secret and let them make her up and do her hair. She had watched in fascination as cosmetic magic and clever clothing had transformed her from a pale, skinny beanpole into a glowing, leggy beauty. Then the old lech of a photographer had made a pass at her and sent her fleeing for home again, convinced that everything her father had said about the dangerous corruption of the modelling industry was true.

Why shouldn’t she try to effect even some small part of that transformation on her own behalf? She could attend the party looking her best just to confound Ricky Brownlow and that sexist louse, Andreo D’Alessio. How could a man be so stupid that he put beauty ahead of brains even in a business capacity?

Standing in the rain getting absolutely soaked through, Pippa dug out her mobile phone and rang her friend Hilary. Hilary Ross was a hairdresser and when asked if she could squeeze Pippa in for a last-minute hair-rescue mission, she was so taken aback by the request that she gasped, ‘Are you being frivolous at last? Is it Christmas or something?’

‘Or something,’ Pippa confirmed a little unevenly. ‘I’m going out tonight and it’s really important.’

Hilary had a heart the size of a world globe and told her to come straight over, while adding that Pippa should have known better than to think that she had to phone and ask one of her oldest friends for an appointment. ‘Especially when you only make the effort to get your hair done about once a year!’ she teased in conclusion.

Pippa caught an underground train that would take her to Hilary’s salon in the west London suburb of Hounslow. As she was jostled by other passengers while she stood in the aisle because there were no seats available Pippa’s teeming thoughts were troubled. Sad though it was to acknowledge, she was relieved that her father was not alive to be shamed and disappointed by her failure to win promotion. But then when had she ever managed to meet her parent’s expectations and make him proud of her? she asked herself with pained and guilty regret.

Her mind travelled back almost six years to the summer that her family life had been destroyed. She had been just seventeen when her parents and three other families had gone on their final holiday together to the Dordogne region of France. Her friendship with Hilary Ross stretched back as far as their childhoods. The Ross family had been part of the group that had gone to France and as the holiday had been an annual event there had been no reason to suspect that that year would be any different from any previous year. But that particular summer everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong. In fact it had been a disastrous vacation for all concerned but nobody had had the nerve to admit that and it had still lasted almost the full six weeks.

No sooner had they arrived in France than her then best friend, Tabby, had got involved in a passionate secret fling with a French guy staying nearby and had become so besotted that she had scarcely noticed that Pippa had been alive for the remainder of their stay. During that same period, however, Pippa had had her heart broken and her self-esteem smashed without anybody even noticing.

But the conclusive life-altering event of that fatal holiday had been the dreadful car accident that had left Pippa’s mother dead and put her father into a wheelchair. Tabby’s father, Gerry Burnside, had got drunk and crashed a car full of passengers, shattering the lives of all his friends. Pippa had been much closer to her mother than she had ever been to her harsh and demanding father and she had been devastated by her mother’s sudden death. Before the crash her father had been a science teacher and an active sportsman and he had never managed to come to terms with his disability.

Furthermore, as a young man Martin Stevenson had wanted to be a doctor but had narrowly missed out on the exam grades required. From the hour of Pippa’s birth, her father had been determined that his daughter should live out his dream of becoming a doctor for him and she had been pressed into doing her academic best from a very early age. But the consequences of that appalling car accident, which had also claimed the lives of Tabby’s father, Hilary’s parents and both Jen’s and Pippa’s mothers had traumatised Pippa and she had had to tell her father that she could not face a career in medicine.

The cruel intensity of her father’s disappointment had been almost more than Pippa’s conscience could bear and his bitterness had been terrible to live with. For nearly six years afterwards, Pippa had nonetheless been her parent’s main carer. But, no matter how hard she had worked to please him with high grades in the economics degree she’d pursued and with tender care of his needs at home, he had never forgiven her for turning her back on the chance to become a doctor. Pippa remained wretchedly aware of what she saw as her own shortcomings. She was totally convinced that the really gutsy woman whom she wanted to be would have been fired by an unquenchable desire to study medicine after that car accident rather than put off for life and convinced that she was too soft to last the course.

When she made herself remember just how much she had once adored France, she could hardly credit that she had not visited the country of her own mother’s birth since that tragic summer. She had even made excuses to avoid attending Tabby’s wedding. Thankfully, however, Tabby’s husband, Christien, brought his wife over to London on regular visits, so Pippa had been able to maintain contact with her friend. But wasn’t it really past time that she came to terms with her mother’s death and visited Tabby and Christien at Duvernay, the Laroche family’s beautiful château in Brittany? How often had her friend invited her? Her conscience twanged. Shouldn’t she spend at least part of the holiday she had to take with Tabby in France?

‘Oh, no, this is the day you close at lunchtime and I completely forgot!’ Pippa groaned in dismay when Hilary, having met her at the door of her tiny apartment took her across the passage into the hairdressing salon, which was strikingly silent and empty. ‘For goodness’ sake, why didn’t you remind me that it was your half-day?’

Hilary was small and slim with enormous grey eyes and spiky blonde hair that had the very slightest hint of blue to match her T-shirt. Only a year Pippa’s junior, she actually looked barely eighteen and she grinned. ‘Are you kidding? Do I look that patient? You’re finally going out on a date and I can’t wait to find out who the bloke is!’

Pippa stiffened. ‘There’s no bloke. It’s the big party for the new MD tonight—’

‘But you were all out of breath on the phone and I thought you were excited—’

‘Not excited…upset,’ Pippa conceded jerkily. ‘I bombed out at work, I fell flat on my face—’

‘What on earth—?’

‘I didn’t get the job,’ Pippa muttered in a wobbly undertone and then the whole unhappy story came tumbling out.

Hilary listened and tried not to wince while she dug into a cupboard in the tiny staff room and poured Pippa a stiff drink from the brandy someone had given her at Christmas.

‘I don’t touch it, you know I don’t…’ Pippa attempted to push the glass away.

‘You’re as white as a sheet. You need a boost.’ Hilary pressed her down into a seat by the washbasins and deemed a change of subject the best policy. ‘So you want to knock ’em dead in the aisles at Venstar tonight—’

‘Some chance!’ Wrinkling her nose at the taste, Pippa drank deep and the unfamiliar alcohol ran like fire down into her cold, empty tummy. Like the warmth of her friend’s sympathy, however, it was a soothing sensation and she was incredibly grateful that she had ignored her father’s withering sarcasm and had attended her first school reunion just a few months earlier. After Tabby had made a permanent move to France, Pippa had been delighted to meet up with Hilary again at the reunion and learn that the blonde also lived in London. After that tragic car accident, their paths had been forced apart and Tabby and Pippa had lost touch with Hilary and with the fourth member of that teenage friendship, Jen Tarbert.

‘Even blindfolded, you could knock ’em dead,’ Hilary repeated with determination, trying not to think unkind thoughts about Pippa’s deceased father. However, it was an unfortunate truth that even when Pippa had been a child her parent had been a domineering bully with a wounding tongue and he had done a real hatchet job on his daughter’s self-esteem.

While Hilary washed her hair, Pippa remembered to ask after her friend’s kid sister, Emma. ‘How’s she doing?’

Hilary chattered on happily about the teenage sister she adored before saying, ‘Will you let me do your make-up too?’

‘If you don’t mind…’

‘Why would I mind? I love doing faces!’

‘Well, you can only do your best—’

‘With a bone structure as good as yours, I would hope so.’ Hilary watched Pippa stiffen and sighed before she pressed another brimming glass of brandy into the redhead’s hand, told her that she was far too tense and hustled her upstairs to her cluttered apartment.

‘I’ll have to rush home to get changed,’ Pippa remarked.

‘You haven’t got the time. You’ll be late enough as it is.’ Hilary hurried into her sister’s bedroom and plundered the packed wardrobe there to emerge with a strappy dress in a glorious shade of turquoise.

‘I can’t borrow anything that belongs to your sister!’ Pippa protested.

‘Emma decided that this made her look too old and you know how picky teenagers are…there’s no way she’ll ever wear it now.’

‘I wouldn’t feel comfortable in a style like that,’ Pippa muttered.

‘Lighten up, Pippa,’ Hilary urged in a pained tone. ‘You’re young and you can wear just about anything with your figure. It’s not a revealing dress, so what are you worried about?’

In Pippa’s opinion any garment that bared her shoulders, her thin arms and the sheer pitiful tininess of her breasts was much too revealing. Yet, her friend was being so kind and supportive that she was reluctant to reject her generosity. Both women wore the same size in shoes but, yet again, there was a great gap between their personal preferences. Hilary adored shoes with high heels whereas Pippa rarely wore heels because she already stood five feet eleven inches in her bare feet. A pair of three-inch high gold beaded sandals were set beside the dress and then Hilary showed her guest into the bathroom to enable her to take a shower before her transformation commenced.

Almost two hours later, and only after Pippa had donned the contact lenses she carried in her bag but rarely utilised, Hilary whisked the towel off the mirror and marched Pippa in front of it. ‘You look totally, incredibly gorgeous and if you argue about that I swear I’m going to have a fight with you!’

In shocked silence, Pippa stared at her colourful reflection. ‘I don’t look like me—’

‘No offence intended, but that’s only because “me” neglects her hair, never wears make-up and can’t be bothered dressing up!’

Pippa’s eyes stung a little but she could hardly blink for the amount of mascara on her lashes. She swallowed hard and said gruffly, ‘Thanks. I don’t look like a loser and you wouldn’t believe how much that means to me.’

Andreo D’Alessio was bored. He was also in a very bad mood.

He had not asked for a party. He had not wanted a party. He disliked surprises and he did not think that surprise parties had a role to play in the business world. He was not entertained by long speeches either. He had even less time for flattery and employees in a high state of excitement, particularly when it was obvious that a healthy proportion had overindulged in alcohol before attending the event. Having left the conference hall with the excuse of an important call, he was crossing the hotel foyer when he saw the ravishing redhead. Then he saw her, so stunning that she stopped him in his tracks.

Hair the rich colour of heavy cinnamon silk tumbled to her shoulders in a smooth, shining fall that reflected the light and framed an oval face of perfect symmetry. Her eyes were the clear, bright blue of the midsummer sky, her full mouth painted coral-pink to highlight the invitation of her soft lips. Her height alone would have attracted his attention for she was unusually tall for a woman. Nearly six feet in height, Andreo calculated with appreciation, and still confident enough to wear high heels. Of all things he abhorred the absurdity of trying to match his own very tall, well-built frame to that of some tiny, birdlike creature half his size. The redhead with her taut white shoulders, slender feminine curves and wondrously endless and shapely legs would fit him to perfection…

That fast, voracious male hormones kicking into lusty overdrive at the enervating prospect of the precise intimate fit of the gorgeous woman he was watching, Andreo decided that he was surveying his next lover.

Pippa gazed into the crowded conference hall, which was buzzing with Venstar employees, and wondered if anyone would even recognise her. With the curls she loathed straightened by Hilary’s expertise with a blow-dryer, her spectacles discarded and in borrowed finery, she looked different. The amount of male attention she had attracted since her arrival at the vast hotel had made her very aware of that fact.

Unfortunately, the girlie dress made her feel horribly exposed and self-conscious. She wasn’t used to men staring at her and all her life she had been shy. Got up in a no-nonsense trouser suit with work-related issues providing the framework for every dialogue with male colleagues, she had managed fine. But, shorn of that sensible façade, it was a challenge to appear impervious to the lustful appraisals she was receiving. Her chin tilting, she was on the brink of entering the hall when sudden silence fell within. Seeing the man moving towards the podium on the platform, she decided to stay where she was until he had finished making his speech.

As the speaker took up position Pippa stared and then laughed out loud. Oh, dear, Jonelle and every other woman fantasising about the physical attractions of the billionaire Andreo D’Alessio were suffering a very big let-down indeed to their wild fantasies.

‘Care to share the joke?’ a male voice urged lazily by her side.

Pippa stiffened in surprise for she had not noticed that there was a man standing that close and she felt far too awkward to turn her head to look at him direct. ‘I was just thinking that a lot of people must have been very disappointed with Andreo D’Alessio,’ she said a little breathlessly.

Disconcerted, Andreo frowned. ‘And why would you think that?’

Something in that accented drawl sent a tiny little shiver of warning down her spine and might have silenced her had not Pippa been in the mood to be sharp, rather than soothing. ‘I suppose that I should’ve said that the women will be disappointed. He’s not even a little bit fanciable,’ Pippa remarked with some satisfaction.

‘No?’ At that point, Andreo believed that she was only pretending not to know who he was. After all, the Venstar shindig had kicked off over an hour earlier and he had been the centre of attention from the outset. He assumed she was making a move on him and, having been subjected to some strange pick-up routines in his time, he was curious to see where she planned to travel after such an opening.

‘No, he’s downright short. In fact, he’s so small, he would look more at home sitting under a mushroom dressed all in green like a leprechaun,’ Pippa pronounced.

Belatedly, Andreo realised that she was studying Salvatore Rissone, whom he planned to put in charge of Venstar after the business had been restructured. ‘Height is not everything.’

‘He looks like he’s rather too fond of his food as well,’ Pippa added with a cruelty that was quite unlike her. ‘And he’s definitely going bald. No wonder he doesn’t like publicity photos. He’s not exactly Mr Universe, is he?’

‘Movie-star looks are not required in business.’ Andreo was angered by her unkind comments about Sal’s homely appearance. ‘He is a fine man—’

‘No, he’s not,’ Pippa cut in with growing heat. ‘Andreo D’Alessio is a very rich man and the only reason people talk him up is because they’re either hugely impressed by his money or…’ As she spun round, giving way to her hurt resentment of Andreo D’Alessio to address her companion direct, she looked at him for the first time and what she was about to say went clean out of her mind again.

It was rare for Pippa to be forced to look up at a man. But what sent her brain into free fall was the sheer dazzling effect of this particular male animal up close. From the bronzed skin enhancing the lean, hard, elegant planes of his proud cheekbones to the stubborn masculine angularity of his jawbone, he was strikingly handsome. His mouth was wide and firm, his brows level and dark to match the gleaming luxuriance of his cropped black hair. But it was the piercing quality of eyes dark as ebony and accentuated by a frame of lush inky lashes that entrapped her.

‘Or…?’ Andreo collided with her turquoise gaze and found his annoyance mysteriously evaporating beneath the onslaught of those spectacular eyes. She was staring up at him in the most uncool way, her response to his sexual magnetism patent in her dilated pupils, and amused satisfaction gripped him.

She really didn’t know who he was. She really had mistaken Sal Rissone for him. She was not teasing him or trying to capture his interest with a novel approach. Perhaps he was at risk of turning into one of those painful guys who took himself much too seriously, Andreo reflected abruptly. He decided that he ought to be challenged rather than antagonised by the unusual experience of hearing himself criticised. It certainly made a change from the fawning flattery that had been his lot throughout the evening.

‘Or…?’ Pippa was magnetised by his proximity and inexplicably feeling very short of breath.

‘You were saying that people talk up Andreo D’Alessio because he is wealthy and because…?’

‘His reputation scares them half to death,’ Pippa filled in jerkily.

‘What have you got against Andreo?’

‘You’re an Italian, aren’t you?’ Somewhat belatedly, Pippa connected his delicious growling accent to his likely nationality. Delicious? The dark timbre of his deep, low-pitched drawl was impossibly sexy. Thrown by the strange emergence of thoughts that seemed to have no direct input from her brain, she shifted off one foot onto the other. Without the smallest warning, she felt her nipples snap tight into stiff little buttons inside her bodice and her cheeks burned hot while she wondered what on earth was happening to her.

‘I am.’ Andreo continued to study her. No matter how hard or how long he studied her, her colouring was a source of continual fascination to him: that glowing cinnamon hair and those turquoise eyes enhanced by skin that had initially been pale as milk but that was now flaring a soft rose pink. It had been a long time since he had seen a woman blush and he was intrigued. ‘You work for Venstar?’

Pippa nodded but she was extremely tense. ‘You referred to Andreo D’Alessio as if you know him personally…’

He was Italian, Pippa was thinking in dismay. He had to work for D’Alessio and, if he was part of the initial wave of imported employees, he was unlikely to be a junior member of the team. Her tongue darted out in a nervous flicker over the soft underside of her lower lip.

Andreo found himself imagining that moist pink tip tracing an erotic path of exploration over his bared skin. The sudden throb of his aroused sex startled him for he was long past the teenage years when self-control in the radius of a beautiful woman had often been a challenge. ‘Perhaps I’m just curious to know what you have against a man you’ve never met,’ he breathed almost harshly.

Pippa tossed her head, cinnamon tresses spilling back against her slim white shoulders. Cautious as she was trying to be, it was already too late because the alcohol in her bloodstream was firing her every response with an unfamiliar aggression. ‘How do you know I’ve never met him?’

Andreo elevated a fine black brow. ‘You…have?’

‘No, I haven’t, but I don’t need to meet him in the flesh to know that he’s a sexist dinosaur, who discriminates against women to make himself feel more powerful!’ Pippa slung bitterly.

CHAPTER TWO

D ISCONCERTED , Andreo frowned down at the woman maligning his reputation as a fair employer. His ebony eyes glinted with golden highlights. He stifled an instinctive urge to slap her down so hard verbally that she would never again dare to make such an unjust charge against him. ‘ Dio mio… That’s a loaded accusation to make against a man whom you can know virtually nothing about.’

Pale as death and almost as taken aback as she could see he was by her angry outburst, Pippa dropped her head and muttered, ‘Excuse me…’

As she began to move away Andreo swung round to effectively bar her passage. ‘Don’t rush away,’ he urged.

What the heck had come over her? Pippa was asking herself in consternation. Only a mad woman would hurl an accusation like that about the boss at a work function! That wretched brandy had gone to her foolish head and loosened her tongue. Naturally she was bitter about the reasons why she had been passed over for promotion but, if she had no intention of making a formal complaint, she needed to keep her lips sealed for her own protection. ‘Look, I—’

‘You haven’t even told me your name,’ Andreo incised, noting the slight tremor of the pale slender hand she had braced against the wall.

After that crazy bout of outspokenness, only a suicidal idiot would gave a truthful response to a name, rank and number request that would identify her, Pippa conceded in dismay. Her head was beginning to pound in response to the increasing level of her stress. What was she to tell him? Pippa Plain? Pride brought up her head again as she remembered what her late mother had often called her. ‘It’s Philly…’

‘Philly,’ Andreo sounded out, rolling the syllables huskily together. ‘I like it. Let me buy you a drink and convince you that Venstar’s new owner walks on water even in his spare time—’

‘Is he really that full of himself?’ Pippa interrupted with aghast turquoise eyes.

‘You have a problem with confident men?’ In the act of frowning, Andreo again found himself questioning his own self-image.

‘If by confident you mean arrogant, yes, I have a problem—’

‘Andreo isn’t arrogant. He is secure in himself and assertive,’ Andreo pronounced with approval, ushering her in the direction of the quiet bar by dint of a light hand that only momentarily brushed her spine. ‘But you must tell me why you referred to Andreo D’Alessio as sexist—’

Eager to avoid that controversial subject, Pippa murmured hurriedly, ‘You haven’t even told me your name yet…’

As if he already knew how much he off-balanced her, Andreo sent her a slanting grin.

Her heart hammered so hard and fast that she felt momentarily faint.

‘It’s Andreo, I’m afraid,’ he supplied.

‘Is that like…a common name in Italy?’

‘Very much…every other guy is called Andreo,’ Andreo groaned with silken mockery, surveying her from below the deceptively sleepy fringe of his black lashes, dark golden eyes vibrant with concealed amusement.

Pippa was fascinated, exhilarated and scared all at one and the same time. She had not even noticed him ordering a drink for her and when a waiter offered her a cocktail in a tall, thin glass she accepted it without comment and let the sparkling liquid moisten her throat.

‘Are you married?’ Pippa heard herself ask Andreo with all the effortless cool of a giant weight dropping from the sky. Having heard other women talk, she knew it was the one question that a sensible woman should always ask when she met a man for the first time.

He laughed out loud. ‘You’re so subtle…of course I’m not married. Tell me why you think Andreo D’Alessio is a dinosaur—’

‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

‘I do.’ Andreo stared down at her with the daunting force of will that came as naturally to his domineering nature as the need to breathe.

‘I don’t…’ The tingle in the atmosphere gave Pippa a wicked thrill. She couldn’t take her eyes off him and she felt as if she were locked into a live electric current.

Shimmering dark golden eyes rested on her. ‘I’ll get it out of you,’ Andreo intoned with innate conviction in his own powers of persuasion. ‘Do you always take shameless advantage of the fact that you’re beautiful?’

Pippa spluttered on her drink and glanced up at him, riveted to the spot, her lovely eyes unguarded. ‘Sorry…?’

He was chatting her up. She could hardly believe it. A guy who was a dead ringer for her ultimate fantasy male was flirting with her. And she didn’t know how to handle it, had not a clue how to respond, so she smiled up at him, smiled and smiled and smiled, suddenly terrified that he might lose interest and walk away again. Wasn’t it time she enjoyed what other women took for granted? Wasn’t it time she took account of the reality that she was young and single? The admiration in his appreciative gaze was like a shot of adrenalin in her veins and balm to her wounded ego. Pippa Plain? Who?

That knowing feminine smile that appeared to suggest that she was aware of exactly the effect she was having on his libido tensed every muscle in Andreo’s lean, powerful body. It had been a long time since sexual hunger had hit Andreo with that intensity and it had a mixed effect on him. Rigid with throbbing arousal, he wanted to behave like a caveman and thrust her back against the wall and crush those ripe coral lips under his again and again and again before he dragged her off somewhere much more private. But while his hot-blooded nature revelled in the rare heat of his desire for her, his intellect was in direct opposition. He liked to be in control, he always liked to be one hundred per cent in control.

‘Santo Cielo,’ he murmured thickly.

The ragged edge to his deep voice sent yet another responsive shiver travelling through Pippa. She meshed with scorching dark golden eyes and her mouth ran dry and her knees turned weak as water under her. For the first time in twenty three years she understood what it was like to be really wanted by a guy. And she didn’t know how she understood, how she could possibly recognise the rough edge of desire stamping his lean, hard features and the passionate intensity of his stunning eyes. But although she had only just met him, she was attuned to his hunger with every humming fibre of her physical being. What she was feeling terrified her and excited her in equal parts.

‘Let’s get out of here…’ Andreo breathed, deciding in the space of a moment that he could plead a prior engagement to escape the party.

He extended a hand to her. She could not think straight but still she closed her fingers into his, unable to resist her own need to touch him. She quivered, tormented by the nagging ache she barely comprehended at the very heart of her body, and stared down at their linked hands while she strove to get a grip on herself again.

‘This is crazy,’ she mumbled shakily.

Andreo’s mobile phone sounded up the tune his fourteen-year-old kid brother had fed into it to announce that he and only he was calling. Anybody else calling at that instant would have been ignored but Andreo was always ruefully aware that in the eyes of Marco, who was less than half his own age, he had more the standing of a father than a brother.

Even white teeth gritting, Andreo released Pippa’s hand with an apology for the interruption and dug out his phone to answer it. His sibling plunged straight into outlining the mathematics question he was struggling to answer. Suppressing a groan of disbelief, Andreo flipped over a flyer lying on the bar counter and jotted down the problem on the blank side of the sheet.

‘My little brother…he’s in boarding school and sometimes he needs a hand with his work,’ he explained taut-mouthed to Pippa.

Blinking, only slowly emerging from the daze induced by her own screaming hormones and her wild response to Andreo, Pippa hovered by his side. She was shattered by the acknowledgement that she had been on the very brink of going off with Andreo. A guy she had only just met, a guy she knew nothing about! She was incredulous at her own reckless behaviour and appalled. Anyone might have been forgiven for thinking that she had lost her wits the same moment she’d first laid eyes on Andreo!

‘Marco…’ Andreo could feel Pippa’s sudden withdrawal as much as if she had slammed a door shut in his face. He had to fight to keep the exasperated edge from his intonation as his impatient little brother asked him how long it would take for him to solve the problem for him.

In the act of emerging from shock to plunge into embarrassment instead as she wondered how the heck she was to retain Andreo’s interest while also telling him that she had changed her mind about going any place with him, Pippa noticed that Andreo was in the act of striving to differentiate trigonometric functions on the flyer.

‘That line’s in error,’ she muttered with a slight frown as she drew closer to him.

Andreo froze in astonishment. ‘Is that a fact?’ he challenged.

Pippa filched the pen from between his fingers and at lightning speed ran through the question to emerge with the answer while at the same time succinctly explaining where he had gone wrong in his calculations.

Andreo breathed in very deep and slow. He was better than ninety-nine out of a hundred people at maths and he had just met the hundredth in the unexpected guise of a very lovely and tactless redhead. Was he a chauvinist bastard?

‘Andreo…’ Marco breathed in wonderment, having overheard the entire dialogue and haltered by no such reservations. ‘Whoever she is she’s a real whiz at this stuff. Not one of your usual airheads, is she? Make sure you get her phone number for me!’

As Andreo finished the call it occurred to Pippa that she had not been very diplomatic. Tabby, who seemed to have been born knowing how the male mind worked, had once told her that men had very tender egos and that, if you really, really liked a guy, you should always leave him space to save face. Aware that she had steamrollered over him, she almost winced.

Over the top of her head, Andreo saw two members of his personal staff lurking by the door of the conference hall, visibly anxious to rope him back into the festivities but understandably reluctant to interrupt him and his companion. He pressed her round the corner of the bar where they were no longer within view.

‘We should separate and return to the hall for ten or fifteen minutes…practise discretion,’ Andreo ground out half under his breath, while gazing stormily down into her beautiful face, his reluctance to part from her palpable, ‘but I don’t want to let you out of my sight for a second in case I lose you, cara .’

Unaccustomed to being treated like a femme fatale whom no mere male could resist, Pippa just giggled, convinced that he was teasing her. Hands snapping to her elbows, Andreo backed her into the phone cubicle behind her and hauled her close.

‘What are you doing?’ she gasped in stark disconcertion.

‘What do you want me to do?’ Andreo enquired in a husky, ragged undertone, languorous golden eyes hot with invitation on hers.

Held in intimate contact with every lean, hard angle of his big, powerful frame, Pippa discovered in shock that she just wanted to be even closer to him, indeed so close that she might qualify as an extra layer of his skin. This time around she understood why her breasts felt heavy and almost swollen. She recognised her own desire for him and her face burned with mortification but nothing could kill the raw, wicked longing quivering through her in a thousand tiny stinging needles as her body came alive in ways entirely new to her.

‘Philly…?’

Tempted beyond all bearing by promptings that she had never been forced to deal with before, Pippa let her arms slide up to link round his strong brown neck and eased closer into the hard, unyielding strength of him. With a stifled Italian curse, Andreo succumbed to that frank invitation with all the volatile passion that lay at the heart of his nature.

Pippa might have been new to passion but no victim could have been more eager to seek her fate. He took her softly parted lips under his and thrust them apart with the forceful onslaught of his. The sweet, unbearably rousing invasion of his tongue into the moist interior of her mouth made her heart give a heavy thud and tightened her every muscle. All of a sudden her entire body was alive and throbbing with near-painful excitement and greedy for more of what she had never had.

With a reflexive shudder at the amount of strength it demanded from him and rigid with fierce desire, Andreo yanked himself back from her. Heavily lidded golden eyes swept her bemused face and lingered on the soft, swollen red of her ripe mouth. ‘Ten minutes…and you stay within view the whole time,’ he warned thickly. ‘Then we leave together.’

Blinking like a woman emerging from a dark spell of enchantment, Pippa let herself be walked back across the foyer and finally into the busy hall. The clumps of chattering people seemed to evaporate from their path at magical speed and Andreo only came to a halt when they reached a vacant corner table. There he snapped his fingers to hail a passing waiter and order her a drink. Momentarily, his imperious show of command took her aback.

‘Now don’t move from here until I come back, cara mia, ’ Andreo instructed in a low-pitched drawl. ‘It would be so easy for us to lose each other in this crush.’

‘Are you worth waiting for?’ Pippa heard herself enquire in a teasing undertone for she could only be amused at being spoken to as though she were a feckless child likely to wander off and get lost without his guidance.

‘Don’t laugh. This is not funny.’ Andreo was angry that she could seem unconcerned at the same risk and equally infuriated by his own lack of cool. He wanted her. But the level of that wanting was already more than he felt comfortable with. As his mobile phone broke into Marco’s colourful signature tune again, he worked out how best to pin her down in the short term.

‘Do you think you could help my little brother with his homework again?’ he asked. ‘He speaks excellent English.’

Touched by that request, Pippa grinned and extended her hand for his phone. Sipping at her drink, she talked Marco through what remained of his assignment while she watched Andreo on the other side of the room watch her in turn. Every time she saw that proud dark head angle in her direction, scorching dark golden eyes burning up the distance between them, her mouth ran dry and her heart raced. Venstar bigwigs surrounded him and the portly little man she had earlier identified as D’Alessio, but in that almost anonymous sea of people she was conscious of only one very individual male: Andreo.

Everything she was feeling was so outrageously new to her. Nothing had ever seemed so wonderful and miraculous as the simple fact that Andreo appeared to be as impressed by her as she was by him. No matter how hard she tried to reclaim her usual sterling common sense, it was overwhelmed by the outrageously girlish giddy excitement leaping and dancing through her bloodstream.

She had not known a guy could kiss like that. She had not known that a guy could actually make her feel like that. Oh, yes, she had heard women describe certain men as irresistible, but she had scorned the belief that any male could have such an extreme effect on her. But even while she had disbelieved those claims, she had always secretly longed to be proven wrong, she acknowledged dizzily. And when Andreo had kissed her every skin cell in her body had responded with breathtaking enthusiasm. All that had kept her upright was the reality that she had had her arms wrapped round him and he was strong enough to bear her weight.

While she studied Andreo from afar her blue eyes sparkled with wondering satisfaction when he immediately directed his gaze to her as though some sixth sense had warned him of her appraisal. His charismatic smile set fireworks off inside her tummy and made her heart thump as frantically fast as though she had run a marathon.

‘Will you give me your phone number?’ Marco prompted in a wheedling tone. ‘You’re much better at explaining this stuff than Andreo is.’

Lounging back against the edge of the table, her burnished fall of hair fiery as flames against her fair, delicate skin, the vibrant blue dress a simple understated frame for her superb long-legged figure, Pippa was attracting a great deal of both male and female attention. But not one of the star-struck men admiring her would have dared to approach her while Andreo D’Alessio watched her with such blatant possessiveness in his arrogant gaze and a flashing intimate smile on his firm, hard mouth.

Pippa had just finished talking to Marco when Andreo rejoined her. Drawing level with her, he barely broke his stride as he closed a lean brown hand over hers to urge her towards the exit. She heard the buzz of speculative voices break out as they passed by together. But then he was incredibly handsome and, as nobody had approached her while she’d been alone at the table, it seemed fair to assume that none of her colleagues had recognised her without her curls, her spectacles and her serviceable suits.

When the lift doors closed on them, she leant back against the cool metal wall because the fresh air-conditioned atmosphere was making her head swim to a dismaying degree.

‘You still haven’t told me why you suspect Andreo D’Alessio of being prejudiced against women in the workplace…’

In disconcertion, Pippa blinked. ‘I thought you’d have forgotten about that by now—’

‘I never forget anything,’ Andreo confided.

‘Well, do your best to forget that,’ Pippa mumbled ruefully. ‘I was indiscreet—’

‘You can trust me,’ Andreo purred.

‘A little bird told me your namesake—’

‘My namesake? The little guy who reminded you of a leprechaun?’

Reassured by that light-hearted sally, Pippa nodded and tried with some difficulty to concentrate. ‘The word is that the big boss only likes pretty women to make it up the promotion ladder—’

‘That’s a four-letter word, cara !’ Andreo incised in bold disagreement.

When it came to their mutual employer, he was evidently very strong on the loyalty front. As that was an old-fashioned quality that she admired, she could not think less of him for it. Lashes carefully lowered, for she wanted the topic closed, she murmured soothingly, ‘I’m sure you’re right.’

‘I know I’m right.’ Andreo continued with conviction.

Pippa almost smiled at his absolute certainty.

Andreo reached out and used her own hands to draw her close to him again. ‘I like the way you feel against me, carissima …’

Powerfully aware of his abrasive masculinity and the hard muscular strength of him, she rested against him, suddenly weak with wanting. ‘Me too…I mean, I like being close to you too.’

He laughed with husky appreciation, slid long fingers into the thick fall of her hair to tug her head back and look at her again. Beneath the harsh lights in the lift, the clarity of her blue eyes mesmerised him for he could read every passing thought: the shy uncertainty laced with the stubborn bravado of her pride and deeper still…the feverish hunger for him that she could not hide.

He devoured her mouth with an urgency that left her reeling. She could not spare the time or the energy to breathe and she lost herself in the earthy taste of him, revelling in the eagerness of her own desire. When he straightened to walk her out of the lift again, she let her head rest against his broad shoulder while she drank in air to aid her starved lungs.

Her mind was in turmoil. She could barely believe that what she was feeling was real but was at the same time impossibly greedy for that no-longer-connected-to-planet-earth sensation to continue. He employed a card to open a door that led into a very luxurious suite.

Not having until that moment taken the time to consider where he was taking her, Pippa was aghast to appreciate that he had accommodation in the hotel itself and that she had unthinkingly allowed him to bring her back up there with him.

‘Are you expecting me to stay the night with you?’ Pippa demanded in dismay.

CHAPTER THREE

ANDREO dealt Pippa a level challenging appraisal. ‘That’s entirely your decision.’

Colour swept Pippa’s face and she could have bitten her tongue out in embarrassment. Of course that was her decision! It was a good half-century since women had been raised to think that what a man expected a woman should invariably try to deliver. She walked over to the tall windows that overlooked the spectacular city skyline but she could only think of how foolish she must have sounded to him. Like a nervous virgin who had never been alone with a man in a hotel suite before? All the heat drained from below her fair skin to leave her pale.

Unfortunately, Hilary had only managed to make her over on the outside with a smooth sophisticated façade and inside she was still the same old Pippa Stevenson, she acknowledged. Pippa, who had attended an all girls’ school and whose evenings and weekends had been filled with extra classes and academic study, rather than social events and flirting. Boys had always seemed as remote and strange to her as alien entities and she had never learned what to say or how to behave around them. At the age of seventeen she had been humiliated by the young man she’d been infatuated with and, from that day on, hurt pride had become her strongest source of protection.

Time might have moved on but once bitten twice shy had proved to be her motto. Since then she might as well have been living on a single sex planet, she conceded ruefully, for she had never again risked pain or rejection. For almost six years she had been her father’s carer and while it was true that the older man had demanded that she devote all her free time to his needs and his interests, it was equally true that she had not offered much of a protest. It had been easier to be a dutiful daughter and accept without question that she was the ‘big strapping lass’ her parent had often called her and highly unlikely to appeal to any man. From the age of twelve, when she had first shot up in height to tower over all her classmates like a lanky beanpole, Pippa had loathed her extra inches and had pointlessly longed to be small and dainty like her pretty mother.

But now, for the first time, she shook free of that memory without regret and reminded herself that Andreo appeared to admire her just as she was. She stole a covert glance at him and collided with smouldering dark golden eyes and her mouth ran dry. He was breathtakingly handsome.

Andreo watched her, for she was so still that she might have been a living breathing statue. Her feathery lashes lowered above the pale perfect line of her cheekbones and she looked incredibly vulnerable. It was obvious that she was having second thoughts. Was there another guy in her life? Someone to whom she felt she owed loyalty? Whatever, he chose patience over the risk of losing her altogether. ‘Perhaps I should just take you home,’ he murmured evenly.

Pippa went rigid, for that unexpected offer only heightened her tension. Go home? It would be the sensible thing to do. Yet her whole being rebelled against the concept. Sensible Pippa. When had she ever been anything else? And where had it got her? She had become a workaholic with no social life and no man had looked twice at her either. When had she ever felt for any male what she was feeling now?

‘Is there anyone else?’ Andreo breathed, his tension palpable.

‘No…’ She drew in a slow steadying breath. ‘You?’

‘No.’ The blonde who had last shared Andreo’s bed was modelling in Mexico and he saw no reason to confess that the lady had become yesterday’s news at the exact same instant that he’d seen her successor before him.

The atmosphere buzzed.

‘I don’t believe that I’ve ever wanted any woman as much as I want you, bella mia,’ Andreo confided with raw honesty.

‘I want to stay…’ Pippa whispered in a rush and, shaken though she was by the force of her own craving for him, she was equally entrapped by the simple acknowledgement that she still had a whole new dimension of life to explore. Her body seemed to be developing responses all of its own. The fabric of her dress felt abrasive against the taut peaks of her breasts and there was a swollen heaviness low in her pelvis that made it a challenge for her to remain still.

‘You won’t regret it.’ His slashing smile of satisfaction was sufficient reward for her agreement. Her heart hammered so hard inside her ribcage that she felt dizzy. He was so beautiful and when he looked at her she felt beautiful too. She crossed the room on lower limbs that felt as unreliable in the support stakes as bendy twigs. She was trembling but she reached for his silk tie like a woman who meant business, a woman who knew exactly what she was doing.

Averse to her clumsy approach, his wretched tie refused to cooperate and went into a tight, immoveable knot. Just when she was on the brink of screaming for a pair of scissors, lean brown fingers intervened and jerked loose the knot with apparent ease. He cast the tie aside and drew her raised hands into his own to fold her back into his arms. She was as boneless as a rag doll until he crushed her into the hard, muscular wall of his chest, one masculine hand knotting into her bright hair to angle her head back. Then she shivered, stretched up to him, helpless in the thrall of her own wild anticipation.

His expert mouth swooped down to taste hers again and a soft moan of encouragement broke low in her throat. He traced her lips, penetrated them and a series of little gasps were torn from her as she clung to him to stay upright. He bent down and swept her up into his arms.

‘Aren’t I too heavy?’ she mumbled through swollen, stinging lips and a sense of wonderment as dangerous as a hypnotic spell. He was, she was convinced, ‘the one’, the one special guy who she had always hoped and prayed might be waiting out there for her. The guy she was going to fall madly in love with. The guy who was hopefully going to fall madly in love with her. Well, maybe not madly, she adjusted hurriedly, fearful of hoping for too much and ending up with precisely nothing as a punishment for daring to be so ambitious. Even if he fell just a little bit in love with her, she would be content, she swore to herself.

‘Light as a doll, cara mia…I’m just an unrepentant show-off,’ Andreo teased as he strode into the elegant contemporary bedroom next door and set her down again onto her own feet.

One of her shoes had fallen off and she kicked off the other, but he had already stepped back from her to un-button his shirt. Eyes wide, she became his audience. Her toes curled in the luxury carpet while she watched as the shirt fell open to display a sleek bronze wedge of masculine torso, his powerful pectoral muscles delineated by a triangle of rough dark curls. Her tummy flipped and she felt alarmingly short of breath and very hot. Knees wobbling, she backed up until her legs hit the edge of the bed and she sank down on the luxurious mattress.

‘What…?’ A wicked smile slanted over his wide, sensual mouth and golden eyes gleamed from below dense black lashes. ‘Did you want to take off the shirt for me?’

‘No…er…I’m not into shirts,’ Pippa framed, dry-mouthed and serious, for she had decided there was nothing less cool than struggling with male apparel.

‘You can always practise on my tie, cara,’ Andreo teased with intense amusement for he had found her lack of dexterity and the inexperience implied by that trait endearing.

‘Is that a fact?’ Pippa strove to match his mood with a quip while acknowledging that his sheer masculine presence both thrilled and intimidated her.

‘Any time…’ Andreo husked, strolling forward with all the formidable and yet daunting grace of a prowling tiger to lean down and close his large hands over her smaller ones and raise her upright.

That close to him her nostrils flared on the clean, husky male scent of his lithe, lean physique. She quivered, a curl of heat igniting low in her stomach. Shorn of her shoes as she now was, he struck her as awesomely tall and broad.

‘Santo Cielo…you’ve shrunk a little,’ Andreo mocked. ‘But promise me that you will always wear those heels around me. Seeing you top all the guys around me gives me a high—’

‘It…does?’

‘Sì. You looked as disdainful as a queen too.’ He shed his shirt and reached behind her with complete calm to unzip her dress for her.

‘Couldn’t we put the lights out?’ Pippa mumbled in as humorous a tone as she could manage, the cooler air brushing her spine merely reminding her that when the dress went she had only one more layer left to hide behind.

Andreo actually laughed out loud. ‘You’ve got to be kidding, bella mia!’

Perspiration beaded her short upper lip. ‘I guess I was…’

He skimmed the straps down from her taut shoulders and let her slinky little blue dress fall to the carpet. He spread long fingers to frame her cheekbones. ‘You are stunning…’

But Pippa had already closed her eyes sooner than risk seeing his disappointment when he saw how thin and flatchested she was when stripped back to her bra and briefs. Nerves strung high, she shivered and he gathered her up into his arms and came down onto the bed with her cradled across his hard thighs. He tasted her mouth long and slow and the forbidden heat in her tummy flickered up again in spite of her tension.

‘Sexy…’ Andreo growled, appreciating the satin-smooth softness of her delicate white skin.

Nobody had ever called her that before and the temptation was too great: her lashes lifted on bemused eyes as blue as sapphires. ‘Sexy?’

‘Very…’ He found everything about her sexy: her hair, her eyes, her height, her incandescent smile, the air of fragility that she exuded that gave him a curious urge to open doors for her, the sort of courteous but unfashionable stuff he normally only did in the radius of his female relatives.

Mesmerised by the intensity of his dark golden appraisal, she missed out on the deft movement with which he unclipped her bra. ‘Honestly…?’

As her firm little breasts were bared his breathing fractured. Air chilled the tightly beaded tips and she looked down at her own bare flesh in dismay before bringing her hands up to cover herself from his intent appraisal. ‘Lights…’ she said in a wobbly voice.

‘I love your body…’ Andreo told her.

Feverish colour flooded her cheeks as she scrambled off him and dived with more haste than elegance below the fancy quilted spread and tugged it back up to her chin.

Andreo elevated a level dark brow and surveyed her with a frown. Her cinnamon hair was fanned out like polished silk round her face, which was hot pink to her hairline. Her eyes were evasive.

‘I think I need a drink,’ she gasped, amazed that after all the alcohol she had imbibed she still felt almost as sober as the proverbial judge.

Andreo sprang upright and strolled over to the mini bar to withdraw a chilled mineral water. Opening it, he emptied it into a crystal tumbler and wandered back to extend it to her.

Clutching the spread to her, Pippa accepted the glass. She did not have the nerve to tell him that she had expected to receive an alcoholic beverage. ‘You must be thinking I’m a little strange,’ she muttered in a rush.

‘Why would I think that?’ Drinking water from the bottle he had helped himself to, Andreo rested his lean hips on the edge of the cabinet opposite while he contemplated her tense and embarrassed face.

No way was she having another intoxicating drink. He liked his partners to know what day it was. But there was another guy in her life, he was sure of it. That was why she was so jumpy. His competitive spirit soared into the ascendant. He would talk his way into that bed with her tonight. He might only get this one chance to pull her and once the deed was done, it would squash the competition. And if she didn’t squash the competition after the event, he most assuredly would take care of that necessity for her. He didn’t share and she was his. Dio mio, never before had he kissed a woman in a public bar or been so challenged to restrain his overwhelming hunger to possess her. Together they were hotter than a volcano and if she didn’t yet appreciate that fact, he would soon teach her to do so.

The silence stretched and with the galling cool of an expert interrogator he made no attempt to break it.

Pippa sat up in a driven motion and hugged the spread beneath her arms. ‘There’s something I ought to mention…’

Andreo tensed. He really did not want to hear about the other man. Everything she told him would linger in his memory and annoy him. He didn’t know how he knew that. He didn’t even know why he was thinking that, for he had never been one of those weird possessive types. But he did know that he did not want to hear the low-down on her soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend. ‘I don’t believe in exchanging stories about other lovers.’

‘Neither do I…and I’m not even sure I should make such an issue of this…but—’ Pippa sucked in a jerky breath and shot him an anxious glance ‘—it seems only fair to warn you that I haven’t done this much.’

Andreo was touched. He didn’t want to hurt her pride so there was no easy way of telling her that she had made her relative lack of experience pretty obvious. He was fine with that. But then he was a very open-minded guy, he reflected.

‘In fact…’ Pippa hesitated, worrying at her full lower lip with her teeth, her quiet voice dropping lower and lower in level until he was leaning forward without realising it to catch her words. ‘…to be really, really frank, I haven’t done this at all…’

His winged black brows pleated. ‘Say that again…’

‘Ever,’ Pippa concluded.

‘You’re telling me that you’ve never spent the night with a guy you’ve just met before?’

‘Yes, but not just that,’ Pippa interposed a shade irritably for he was being exceedingly slow on the uptake when she wanted him to get the message faster than the speed of light. ‘Apart from the fact that I’m not promiscuous—’

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