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 Disobedient 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 ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

LEONE ANDRACCHI lounged back in his comfortable leather chair and surveyed the woman whom he would use as a weapon in his quest for revenge.

Across the busy room, Misty Carlton was keeping her catering staff hard at work dispensing refreshments. She wore her copper hair in a no-nonsense style. Her grey suit and sensible shoes were neither feminine nor flattering and her pale face was unadorned by make-up. Her whole appearance suggested a businesslike and serious young woman keen not to draw attention to her sex, and her cover seemed to work for Leone had yet to see a single one of his executives attempt to flirt with her.

Was every man in the room with the exception of himself blind? Did only he see the promise of those silver-grey eyes and the voluptuous fullness of that lush pink mouth? Dressed in appropriate clothing, she would be stunning, far more arresting than any conventional beauty for her colouring gave her a fey, sensual quality that was unusual. He was already picturing her slender curves embellished by silk lingerie and her long, slim, coltish legs sheathed in cobweb-fine stockings and complemented by very high heels. She was tall but he was taller still and she would not need to wear flat shoes around him. A self-mocking smile lurked in the depths of Leone’s dark-as-night eyes as he conceded that he had yet to mentally clothe her beyond the level of her undergarments. But then he was a Sicilian to the backbone and all Sicilian men knew how to truly appreciate an attractive woman.

Within a couple of weeks at most, Misty Carlton would be one of the most talked-about women in London. As his mistress, she’d find her name would hit the gossip columns and the paparazzi would go digging into her background and if their quest was inefficient, he would ensure that a tip was dropped in the right quarter. Having established her identity to his own satisfaction, he had left the revealing links in place. Indeed, everything that would happen in the near future had been decided almost six months earlier when he had first found her and worked out how best to lure her into the position of a sitting duck waiting for him to take aim and fire. Which was right where she was at this particular moment, Leone savoured.

Misty Carlton was the illegitimate daughter of the man against whom Leone had sworn vengeance in his sister’s name: Oliver Sargent. The smooth-talking politician, who had founded his reputation as a respectable family man by preaching moral standards and who lived an exceedingly nice life on his inherited wealth. Oliver Sargent, who was a hypocrite, a seducer of teenagers and ultimately little better than a murderer. Oliver Sargent, who had left Battista to die alone in the shattered remnants of her car sooner than call the emergency services and risk a scandal.

Leone’s dark, chiselled face was sombre. Though it was almost a year since his sister’s funeral, Leone’s gut still twisted with pain whenever he allowed himself to remember how Battista’s life had been wilfully, cruelly and mercilessly sacrificed. The doctors had told him that had she been discovered sooner she might have survived the crash. That summer, she had only been nineteen years old, a politics student doing research work on Sargent’s staff.

A beautiful, idealistic girl with bright brown eyes, long black curly hair and a very trusting nature. Within weeks of her beginning her volunteer placement, Leone had been heartily sick of the sound of Sargent’s name but it had not occurred to him that a bad case of hero worship might put Battista at risk. After all, Oliver Sargent was a married man and a quarter of a century older than his kid sister. He had overlooked the fact that Sargent was a handsome charmer, who could easily pass for being a great deal younger than he actually was.

‘Mr Andracchi…?’

Unaware of quite how intimidating his grim expression was, Leone focused in some surprise on the pastries being offered to him, for the almond biscuits and custard tarts were traditional Sicilian treats. The slender hand holding the plate was shaking almost imperceptibly but his gaze was keen. He glanced up into Misty Carlton’s drawn face, recognising the marks of strain there in the bluish shadows beneath her eyes and the tense set of her delicate jawbone. She had brown lashes as long as a child’s and she was trembling. But then she was desperate. He knew that for he had planned it that way. She was on the very brink of losing the business that she had worked so hard to build up. He held her in the palm of his hand.

‘Thank you,’ Leone murmured, dark deep drawl rather mocking for if she fondly imagined that he was likely to be impressed by so unsubtle an attempt at downright flattery, she was very much mistaken. Contracts were awarded on the basis of price, efficiency and reliability and, whether she liked it or not and through no fault of his, she had broken more than one of the basic rules of setting up a new business. ‘Nucatoli and pasta ciotti. What a pleasant surprise. You are spoiling me.’

A tiny betraying pulse was flickering like mad just below her fragile collar-bone, drawing his attention to the fine, delicate skin of her throat. ‘I like to experiment…that’s all,’ Misty said breathlessly.

She was all of a quiver and her body language screamed at him: the dilated dark pupils, the flush on her cheeks, the moist pink of her parted lips. He turned her on and, had he not known what he did know about her, he might have believed that she was too innocent to hide those sexual signals of availability. But he knew better, felt free to assume that, had the room been empty, he might have pulled her down onto his lap and explored that quivering, slender body so hot and eager for his with her willing encouragement. His own sex threatened to betray him with primitive male urgency but he thought about revenge instead and his blood cooled fast. He had no intention of bedding Oliver Sargent’s daughter. She would be his mistress in name only.

‘Don’t we all?’ Leone quipped with husky suggestiveness and bit into a tiny custard tart that melted in his mouth, while she hovered like a submissive handmaiden to one side of him. A faint sardonic smile curved his masculine lips. He liked her stance. He was an old-fashioned guy and the pastry was delicious. Maybe in her spare time she would be able to occupy herself in his kitchen. Eager to please, she certainly was. Though someone ought to have warned her that even a hint of nervous desperation was likely to alert clients to an unsound business.

‘It’s good,’ Leone told her softly.

The big silver-grey eyes lit up with a surge of relief and pride. He had an erotic image of her spread across his bed in the drowsing heat of a Sicilian afternoon, glorious red hair cascading in a tangle, lush pink mouth begging for his while she writhed and moaned with pleasure beneath his expert hands. Sadly, it was not to be, he reminded himself, exasperated by the predictable effects of his own powerful libido.

She poured his coffee with her own hands. He wondered if her rock-star lover had appreciated those little touches of essential femininity calculated to make even the wimpiest male feel as though he could go out and club a lion to death before dragging it back to the connubial cave to impress her in turn. She was no fragile little flower, though. The file on her had turned up quite a few surprises for she might be only twenty-two, but she had led a chequered life and one that might have inspired his compassion had she not, it seemed, been guilty of fleecing a little old lady out of her savings. Behind those mist-coloured eyes lurked a greedy little schemer with a heart of stone.

Blood will out, Leone thought fatalistically as he accepted the coffee already sugared to his preference. She might not have the foggiest idea of who her father was and she might never have met him but he already saw a similarity between Oliver Sargent and his natural daughter in the way that she seemed to use people and reinvent herself to turn situations to her own advantage.

Melissa Carlton had grown up in a series of foster homes and trouble seemed to follow her around. She had once been engaged to a prosperous landowner and her former fiancé’s mother was still congratulating herself on her success in seeing off a young woman whom she had deemed to be both mercenary and calculating. The rock-star lover had followed: an unwashed-looking yob with spiky bleach-blond hair given to screaming indecipherable lyrics into microphones while Misty had danced wildly on one side of the stage. That had not lasted long either.

‘May I have a word with you, Mr Andracchi?’ Misty asked tautly.

‘Not just at present,’ Leone said, watching her flinch and pale without an ounce of remorse.

She could stew a little longer. And why not? Ultimately, she was going to get the deal of the century and profit very nicely indeed from their arrangement. Saving her skin stuck in his throat but what else could he do? She was Oliver Sargent’s Achilles heel and he needed her co-operation to bring the bastard down. Not that she would know how she was helping him until it was too late. But then even the best deals came at a price and she was not a sensitive woman. Sensitive women did not rip off old ladies and leave them struggling to make ends meet while continuing to pose as a caring pseudo-daughter.

When the press identified Misty Carlton as Sargent’s illegitimate child, her father’s political career would go down the tubes for no man had been more sanctimonious about his moral principles than Oliver Sargent. His good-living childless wife might well pull the plug on him too but Leone had no interest in that possibility. He already knew what Sargent valued most: his power, his ambitious hopes of higher office in government, his adoring coterie of female supporters. And when the scandal broke, Oliver Sargent was going to be stripped bare of his pride and his power and his influence. It would be a brutal punishment for a man who revelled in his own importance and lived for admiration. Once Sargent’s cover was blown all the other dirt would eventually surface too: his financial double-dealing and questionable friendships with dishonest businessmen. He would be ruined beyond all hope of political recovery.

It wasn’t enough, though, it wasn’t nearly enough to compensate for Battista’s sweet life cut off in its prime, but when the axe fell Leone would be sure to let his victim know why he had destroyed him. Sargent was already nervous around him although the older man did not yet suspect that Leone knew that he had been in that car the night his kid sister had died. But then Battista’s sleazy seducer had covered his tracks too well and, no matter how hard Leone had tried, proof of that fact had been impossible to obtain.

He watched Misty Carlton, who was the very picture of her late mother, marshal her staff. Unless he was very much mistaken, Oliver Sargent would begin sweating and fearing exposure the very instant he saw her and heard her name…

Misty wondered if she had ever hated anyone as much as she hated Leone Andracchi.

He had dismissed her as though she were a servant speaking up out of turn but this was the last day but one of her temporary contract and she had yet to be told whether or not it was going to be renewed for the next year. If it wasn’t, she would be bankrupted. Perspiration beading her short upper lip, Misty got on with her work but, no matter where she was in the gracious room with its oppressive clubby male atmosphere, she was conscious of Leone Andracchi’s brooding presence.

A real Sicilian tycoon, fabulously wealthy and famously devious and unpredictable to deal with. He dominated the room like a big black storm cloud within which lurked the threat of a lightning strike. His own executives were nervous as cats around him, eager to defer to him, keen to impress, paling if he even began to frown. Yet he was only thirty years old, young indeed to wield such enormous power. But then he was supposed to be absolutely brilliant in business.

Shame about the personality, Misty thought bitterly. It was just her luck that she should be forced to kowtow to a sexist dinosaur, who had taken her attentions quite as his due. My goodness, he had loved it when she’d brought him those special pastries and had practically purred like a jungle cat while she’d sugared his blasted coffee for him. Her strong pride had stung with every obsequious move, for boot-licking did not come naturally to her. Perhaps the Sicilian baking had been overkill but, really, what did she have left to lose? Beggars couldn’t be choosers. She had crawled for Birdie’s sake, Birdie who was going to lose her home if Misty didn’t manage to pull her own irons out of the fire and get that contract confirmed. And when it came to Birdie, there was no limit to the efforts Misty was willing to make.

‘That Andracchi guy is so gorgeous,’ her friend and employee, Clarice, groaned in a die-away voice as she stacked cups into containers by Misty’s side. ‘Every time I look at him I feel like I’ve just died and gone to heaven.’

‘Shh.’ Misty reddened with annoyance, for a waitress casting languishing lustful glances at the big chief would hardly qualify as professional behaviour.

‘You’re always looking at him out of the corner of your eye,’ the chirpy and curvaceous brunette whispered back cheekily before she walked away.

All right, so she looked, but not because she was a mug for those serious dark good looks of his! No, she looked the way one looked to check a lion was still in a cage with the door safely locked. Leone Andracchi unnerved her. It had to be her imagination that she felt that he was always watching her for she had yet to catch those brooding dark golden eyes doing so, but in his radius she felt hideously self-conscious.

And yet in any normal business empire the size of Andracchi Industries, she would never even have got to meet a male as hugely important as Leone Andracchi. After all, she was only a caterer on a short trial contract to just one of his companies and surely far beneath his lofty notice. Furthermore, Brewsters was not in London but based on the outskirts of a country town in Norfolk. Yet, on a visit to Brewsters, Leone Andracchi had taken the trouble to interview her personally. He had also sent her jumping through a line of mental hoops like a circus animal he was training for his own nasty amusement.

As her wan face stiffened at the recollection, she scolded herself for the resentment that lingered. In accepting her bid for the contract and very much surprising her in so doing, Leone Andracchi had given her what had seemed to be the opportunity of a lifetime. It was hardly his fault that that opportunity had turned sour or that she had bitten off more than she could chew.

‘Andracchi is what I call a real man,’ Clarice stressed in a feeling sigh of infuriating appreciation as she shoved past again. ‘All muscles and rampant energy. He just reeks of sex in the raw. You know he’d be a wicked fantasy in bed—’

‘He has love rat written all over him and a lousy reputation with women!’ Misty gritted in a driven undertone. ‘Will you please drop the subject?’

‘I was only trying to give you a laugh.’ Her friend pulled a surprised grimace. ‘Lighten up, Misty.’

Feeling guilty, Misty reddened, aware her nerves were jumping like electrified beans. But even her friend had no idea just how precarious her business, Carlton Catering, had become. It was ready to crash and go to the wall. If she did not get that all important contract from Andracchi Industries, the bank would refuse to extend her loan and she would not even have sufficient funds left to pay her employees at the end of the month, never mind her suppliers. Shame drenched her in a tidal wave. How had she got into such a mess?

A blond male in a smart suit approached her. ‘Mr Andracchi will see you now in his office.’

She could see the man’s barely concealed surprise that Leone Andracchi should be involving himself yet again in such a minor matter. But then as the great man himself had drawled in explanation almost four months earlier, ‘Lunch is an art to a Sicilian and I want the executives here to benefit from a new experience. I’m tired of watching people scoff sandwiches at their desks. I believe that a proper meal will increase productivity throughout the afternoon.’

So every day she had provided a light lunch in the executive dining room that had been set up and on afternoons like this, when a major business powwow concluded, she had been asked to stay on to serve refreshments as well. Visiting the cloakroom first, she washed her hands and checked that she was still tidy. She wasn’t looking her best and she knew it, which didn’t help. Sleepless nights and constant worry had left their mark.

Her own fault, she told herself bitterly. She had taken a risk on Leone Andracchi’s whim and on what might yet prove to be an experiment he had no intention of even continuing. Furthermore, even if he had decided to retain the lunches, there was no guarantee whatsoever that her business would win the contract. He was going to kiss her off. She knew it, could feel it in her bones. Her punishment for borrowing from the bank to expand was coming. What was it to him if her piffling little firm went into receivership? He would probably like to see her beg. Could she do it for Birdie? Beg that big, muscle-bound, arrogant jerk for mercy? She shuddered at the prospect but her only alternative was even less appetizing: Flash would haul her out of trouble without hesitation. Only it would be for a price this time and the price would be her body and she hoped to heaven that she would never, ever sink that low…

A secretary who looked suitably cowed by the effect of a week-long visit from the tycoon boss of Andracchi Industries opened the door of a big office for her. Straightening her slight shoulders, Misty breathed in deep and walked in, striving for a look of calm confidence, which was in no way echoed by her churning tummy and her damp palms. Please, please don’t let him try to shake hands, she prayed inwardly.

‘Sit down, Miss Carlton.’

Leone Andracchi was on the phone, standing by the sunlit windows of the spacious office. She listened to him talking in soft, liquid Italian, the way a real smoothie talked to a lover. Phone sex, sleazebag, Misty thought loftily and her upper lip curled in disgust. But, unfortunately, Clarice was right on one score. He was drop-dead fantastic to look at. Luxuriant black hair that just begged to be disarranged by a woman’s fingers, stunning high cheekbones, stunning everything, really, she conceded grudgingly. Classic arrogant nose, well-defined ebony brows, really masculine strong jaw, beautifully shaped mouth. As for the eyes, those eyes of his were a revelation on their own. Black as pitch in certain moods, all lustrous, dazzling, sexy gold in another. And he knew how to use them all right to signify just about everything that other people used words to convey.

She had seen those eyes, in bully mode, freeze employees in their tracks. Send female office staff fluttering with the same sense of threat as hens scenting a fox. He got off on women fussing round him. He was the ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ type and he went for fluffy busty little blondes who giggled and gasped and clung. Pathetic, really. In her opinion, a real man would have wanted a real woman, one with a brain, one capable of fighting back and putting him in his place. And if ever a guy had needed putting in his place, it was Leone Andracchi. He was so full of himself he set her teeth on edge.

Finishing his call, Leone flicked a glance at his waiting victim, wondered why she had that curious little scornful smile hovering on her lips and that faraway, almost smug look in her eyes. He strolled with fluid grace over to the desk and realised that she was genuinely miles away, one of those individuals whose imagination was strong enough to blank out all sense of time and surroundings.

Misty was acquainted with that old chestnut about imagining intimidating people naked to bring them down to human size, only she wasn’t even a little tempted to picture Leone Andracchi shorn of his exquisitely tailored suit. But just as suddenly she was seeing Leone Andracchi in her mind’s eye and her mind had developed a dismaying life all of its own, imagination running riot on that tall, well-built physique of his. Her own embarrassing thoughts shocked her rigid, shocked her right back to awareness again, cheeks hot, skin tight over her bones.

‘Welcome back, Miss Carlton,’ Leone Andracchi murmured with sardonic bite.

‘Mr Andracchi…’ Heart beating so fast, she felt as if it were banging at the foot of her throat, Misty forced herself to raise her head high.

‘I’m sorry I kept you waiting,’ he added.

No, he wasn’t. She didn’t know how she knew that, for that lean dark angel face was uniquely uninformative, but she sensed it. He lounged back in galling relaxation against the desk, the indolent angle of his sleek, taut, muscular frame pronounced. He had to be about six feet four at least, she calculated, and not for the first time.

‘Naturally you want to know my thoughts on the contract due to be awarded. Although I’m really not obligated to give you that information,’ Leone Andracchi pointed out smoothly. ‘However, in the light of the excellent standard of service you have pioneered over the past eight weeks, I feel it’s only fair to tell you why your bid has been unsuccessful.’

Her tummy flipped at the confirmation of the refusal that she had most feared. The blood drained from her set features and her hands laced together on her lap. ‘I don’t need empty compliments,’ she said tightly. ‘If Carlton Catering hasn’t been awarded the contract, then you obviously weren’t satisfied with the service at all.’

‘It’s not that simple,’ Leone drawled. ‘You’re over-extended and it would be very unwise to take the risk that your business will stay afloat for the duration of a year long agreement.’

Her silvery grey eyes were now widened to their fullest extent. For the first time she ditched her caution and connected direct with his brilliant dark golden eyes. ‘May I ask you where you received that information?’

‘My sources are private.’

Meeting that steady, fathomless gaze, she could feel her head beginning to swim and the breath catching in her throat. ‘It’s quite untrue.’

‘Don’t lie to me. I have no time for lies,’ Leone told her smoothly. ‘My information is always accurate. I know that the only way your bank will extend your loan is if you bring them the contract for the next year’s catering here signed, sealed and delivered.’

‘If someone at the bank has been making allegations about the viability of my business, I will be sure to make an official complaint.’ Misty threw her head back, silver eyes blazing challenge. ‘I assure you that were you to give me that contract I would deliver the service required for the period specified and I would not have any problems in doing so.’

‘I’m impressed by your optimism,’ Leone countered levelly, ‘but let’s cut to the chase. You have talent and you’re great at organisation but you fell down when it came to the bid for the first contract. Your price was ludicrously low. Yet you’re in a labour-intensive industry, saddled with high staff turnover, crippling insurance costs and public health regulations that are very expensive for a small business to meet. As a result, you have barely recouped your costs.’

‘I wanted the job. I priced that bid to win in the obvious hope of recouping costs over the next year,’ Misty informed him. ‘You said you liked to support new local businesses—’

‘Not when the captain at the helm is a woman who refuses to acknowledge when she’s in over her head. How you can sit there and argue with me when I know for a fact that you’re behind with the rent on your business premises, behind with your bank loan and up to your pretty throat in debt—’

‘Leave my throat…pretty or otherwise…out of this, please.’ Misty rose to her feet, no longer able to tolerate being looked down on by him. How dared he speak to her in such a way? How dared he? It was bad enough learning that the contract on which she had placed all her hopes was to be awarded elsewhere, but that he should add insult to injury by enumerating what he deemed to be her mistakes was more than flesh and blood could bear.

‘And losing your temper with me will impress me even less,’ Leone informed her with a derisive look at her aggressive stance. She might be around five feet ten tall, but she was as slender as a willow wand. What on earth was the matter with her? She was useless at bluffing. Her eyes gave her away every time. Did she really expect him to waste time listening to her trying to convince him that she wasn’t on the edge of a financial abyss?

In the space of a second, rage almost ate Misty alive. The temper that she had long since mastered threatened to overflow like lava. She wanted to take a swing at him. She wanted to wipe that derisive slant off his lean, strong face with a well-placed fist and that simple awareness disconcerted her enough to put a brake on her anger.

‘You’ve brought me in here, given me the bad news, but you didn’t need to personalise the issue,’ Misty stated with curt dignity. ‘So why would you think I want to impress you now?’

An ebony brow elevated. ‘I could be thinking of throwing you a lifeline.’

A shaken and involuntary laugh escaped Misty. She was grateful that he had not given her an opening in which to beg. She was even grateful that he had made her furious. For if she were forced to stop and consider the appalling consequences of losing that contract, she might well come apart at the seams and embarrass herself. He liked playing games with people, she decided. Or maybe it was only women he liked toying with.

‘Is that really a possibility?’ The tip of her tongue came out to moisten her dry lower lip as she wondered if it was remotely likely that, in spite of what he had so far said about her business acumen, he might have some other job to offer her.

The silence hummed like a circular saw on her straining nerves. His attention had dropped to her lips, the too wide, too full mouth she hated. No doubt he was noticing that it was out of proportion to her face. Men were supposed to think about sex, what was it…at least once every five minutes? She reckoned he would be challenged to keep his mind clean for sixty seconds. He had an aura of potent virility that no woman could avoid noticing. She studied him, the lush black lashes screening his gleaming scrutiny, and her lips actually tingled with her awareness of him, her rebellious body stirring with the sensations she had grown to fiercely resent experiencing in his vicinity. The sudden tense, full sensation lifting her breasts inside her cotton bra cups, the utterly demeaning throb of her nipples tightening.

Never had Misty been so grateful for the concealment of her jacket. Imagine him seeing that physical evidence, imagine him knowing that he could make her stupid body react like that with one charged glance! Ever since she had met him, she had recognised that cruel Old Mother nature was reminding her that she had hormones, but it meant nothing. She had been hurt too much to risk herself again with any man and she need hardly worry that this particular male was likely to make a pass, for Leone Andracchi was just doing what came naturally to a sexual animal of his appetites: considering every passing woman of a certain age on her merits. And she knew her merits to be few and far between.

‘Anything’s possible. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?’ Leone murmured, smooth as velvet.

Flash had told her that when he’d been trying to talk her into his bed. Try it, you might find you like it. Not the seduction line of the century, but another week or two of his determined siege and she might have succumbed out of gratitude and love, for she did love him, would always love him, only not the way he had wanted her to love him. But sometimes in low moments she would think that she should have snatched at his offer and made the best of it.

‘It’s my motto.’ Misty was careful to keep Leone Andracchi out of focus, determined to blank him out as a man, get her foolish physical self back under control and let those taunting sensations subside.

‘Sit down,’ Leone Andracchi told her.

Obviously something was in the offing. She dropped back down into the seat, thought that maybe, after all, it had been worth staying up half the night to produce those wretched Sicilian recipes for his benefit. Major egos liked being stroked. Honey went far further than vinegar, she reminded herself doggedly. What had happened to her belief that she could make herself beg? Why did the prospect of speaking even one humble word to Leone Andracchi clog up her throat like a threatened dose of poison?

‘I have a role that I would like you to fulfil for me over the next two months.’ Leone surveyed her steadily. ‘In return I would rescue your business, and at the end of our agreement I would ensure that you had sufficient work to survive. What do you think?’

‘The last time I looked there wasn’t two blue moons hanging out there in that sky,’ Misty quipped with helpless bluntness.

CHAPTER TWO

LEONE ANDRACCHI dealt Misty a look of hauteur, his wide mouth tightening with perceptible exasperation.

Having immediately recognised her mistake in making such a facetious response, Misty had turned hot pink with discomfiture. She could not work out where those inappropriate words of doubt had emerged from. It was the effect of him again, she decided. He spooked her, put her on edge, knocked her out of the cautious business mode which she had no problem maintaining around other clients.

‘I’m sorry,’ Misty said flatly, ‘but what you just said sounded too good to be true.’

‘So you’re now willing to concede that you’re facing bankruptcy?’ Leone probed.

A chill at the very sound of that terrifying word sank into Misty’s bones and she shifted uneasily in her chair. ‘Mr Andracchi—’

‘Until you admit that reality, I will go no further,’ he warned her.

Her earlier argument to the contrary had evidently offended. She would have loved to have known what he would have done in the same position. Announced to his one last hope that his back was up against the wall? No way, he was far too clever for that, so why was he judging her for her attempt to regain his confidence? Just because he refused to credit that she could have fulfilled that contract for a year! But she knew she could have, had done the figures over and over again, had been ready to go on living like a church mouse to have done so.

‘Or leave my office,’ Leone Andracchi added with lethal cool.

‘I’m…facing…bankruptcy,’ Misty framed like a clockwork toy with a battery about to run flat. The admission hurt, made real what she had until then refused to contemplate and she hated him all the more for forcing her to that brink.

‘Thank you. As I said I have a promising proposition to offer you. It’s nothing to do with catering, although if you find yourself overcome with the urge to cook Sicilian cuisine in your spare time, I will have no objection,’ Leone imparted with a sardonic smile.

The offer had nothing to do with catering? Nothing? She hoped that swallowing his sarcasm in silence would prove to be worth her while.

‘First, I want your assurance that nothing I now say will be repeated beyond this office.’

Since the first rule of any business was respecting client confidentiality, Misty bridled at that statement. ‘Of course. I’m no gossip and I’d be a fool if I was.’

‘I need a woman to pretend that she’s my mistress.’

She heard an imaginary crash as her jaw metaphorically hit the floor. She waited on the punchline, certain he was mocking her in some way and determined not to rise prematurely to the bait.

‘You will note that word, “pretend,”’ Leone Andracchi stressed with unblemished cool. ‘I’m not into sexual harassment of my employees and you would be, in effect, my employee for I would insist that you signed a legal agreement to maintain the fiction until I say that your role is at an end.’

Misty sucked in a ragged breath and continued to stare at him, utterly silenced by that second speech. He was actually serious, yet she could not credit that he was addressing her with such an offer. What reason could he have for asking any woman to pretend to be his mistress? He had to have a little black book the size of an entire library. For goodness’ sake, wasn’t he dating an actress from a television show at present? Jassy something or other? A pneumatic blonde with the kind of curves that even other women stole a shaken second glance at?

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ Misty framed very slowly and succinctly while she wondered if he were a brick short of the full load in the mental department or drunk as a skunk and just not showing physical signs of his condition.

‘You’re not required to understand. I have my own reasons and I don’t intend to share them. I know women don’t like mysteries but, in this case, discretion is necessary.’

‘If you do have some…er…need to hire a woman for such a novel role, I can’t think why you should approach me,’ Misty reasoned with enormous care.

‘Can’t you?’ A faint smile momentarily softened the tough line of his mouth.

She had no intention of lowering herself to the level of spelling out the obvious. But she wasn’t beautiful or glamorous, nor did she have the high public profile of the kind of women he was usually associated with.

‘Is this some kind of a joke?’

‘It’s on the level.’

‘But you must know hundreds of women,’ Misty protested, intimidated by his persistence. ‘Why me?’

‘I prefer to hire and fire rather than coax and trust,’ Leone countered without hesitation. ‘Why are you trying to dissuade me from rescuing you from your financial problems?’

Put like that, keeping quiet seemed more sensible, but she could not accept that he was serious without some idea of his motivation for such a weird offer. ‘This is very strange.’

Leone shrugged a broad shoulder in unconcerned acknowledgement.

‘I mean…seriously,’ Misty emphasised.

‘I am serious and the position wouldn’t be that easy to fill. You’d have to act the part, dress the part and convince people that we’re lovers.’

Warm colour inched up beneath her fine complexion and she glanced away from her studious scrutiny of his exquisitely tailored suit jacket. ‘I don’t think I’d be a great hit in that department.’

‘You just need the right props and the ability to do exactly as I tell you at all times. It would definitely be a case of when I say jump…you say how high?’

Misty could see herself being a major disappointment in that field too. But it was dawning on her that, peculiar as his proposition was, he was not pulling her leg. He wanted a fake mistress. What did being a fake mistress entail?

‘We are talking…. fake mistress here?’ Misty prompted in a strained undertone.

‘Do you really think that I need to pay for sex?’

Her even white teeth gritted. If she said jump to him and he said how high, she would direct him to the nearest lift shaft, but with that ego of his he would bounce back out of the fall. ‘There’s no need to get that personal, Mr Andracchi. Your private life is your business but my safety is mine.’

‘Are you trying to suggest that I might be some sort of pervert?’ Leone shot back at her in an incredulous growl.

‘How would I know? This is not a common or garden offer. Like, I don’t have rich Sicilian tycoons offering me the moon just to pretend to be their mistresses every day, do I?’ Misty snapped out in bewilderment and embarrassment.

‘And if you take that tone and attitude, you are unlikely to have even one Sicilian tycoon still interested.’

Legs cramped by the rigidity of her posture in the chair, Misty got up again and walked across the office before spinning round to face him, wide grey eyes frowning. ‘Just tell me why you’re asking me to do this…why me?’

‘You couldn’t afford to welch on any deal we would make or change the terms to suit yourself.’ He stood straight and tall, eyes hard gold and direct.

Misty flinched. Mr Mean and Tough, who, it seemed, knew exactly how she was placed and that was between a rock and a hard place. He had no shame about reminding her of that unpalatable fact. Perhaps it was a timely reminder too. Any alternative to bankruptcy and Birdie losing her home ought to be considered. But how could she possibly consider taking on a role in which she would be less than convincing? Didn’t he see that? People wouldn’t believe that she was his mistress for one minute! He specialised in beautiful women. Yes, he liked women, but why did she judge him for that?

‘I couldn’t do it…’ she muttered. ‘We mix like oil and water. I wouldn’t be at home in the sort of social life you must have. And I couldn’t possibly convince anyone that we were…lovers.’

‘Oh, I think you underestimate yourself on that score,’ Leone breathed in a different timbre, rich, dark drawl snaking round her like a husky, mesmeric spell.

Nibbling at the soft underside of her full lower lip, Misty was entrapped by the intensity of his narrowed golden stare. Gorgeous eyes, undeniably gorgeous eyes. Her mouth ran dry, her muscles tightening in response. Even his voice, liquid dark enticement of the most dangerous kind, yet another enhancement to his magnetic masculine presence. The gene pool had not been stingy when he’d been born.

Entirely against her own will, she wanted to smile, soften, be a woman in all the ways she had once allowed herself to be even if it put her at risk of getting hurt again. The atmosphere was buzzing with the sensual vibes he could put out. He could whip up the tension without effort. And no matter how hard she tried to remain impervious, excitement nibbled at her every nerve ending and she quivered as a taunting flame lit low in her pelvis and forced her to press her thighs together in shamed disconcertion.

‘Just say the word and sign on the dotted line and all your troubles are at an end.’

‘What would playing your pretend mistress involve?’ Misty heard herself ask and surprised herself.

‘Living in the apartment I would supply, wearing the clothes I buy, going where I ask when I ask without question.’

Mistress as in mindless slave, she translated with a secret little shard of amusment. He was a real domineering louse. But it was interesting to note that he wasn’t suggesting any type of shared accommodation. The masquerade would only be of the public variety and would require no greater intimacy. He wanted a dressed-up doll to play a stupid role for some reason he refused to reveal. Maybe it was another Andracchi whim like the executive lunches. Or maybe it had some business purpose…which would make it an unusual job but still a job like any other.

It wasn’t as though he would be expecting her to hop into bed with him. Of course, he wouldn’t. Her face burned that she had even suspected he might. After all, he had much more attractive possibilities than her available: women who had probably forgotten more than she had even learned about bedroom pursuits. She would be as safe as houses with him but she would be selling herself, handing over her pride and her independence in return for cold hard cash support. That was cheap and nasty and the thought of it left an unpleasant taste in her mouth, but she had Birdie and her employees to think about and pride didn’t pay the bills.

‘What would you do for me?’ she whispered chokily, the humiliating request for greater clarity on that point hurting her.

‘Settle your debts, put your business back on an even keel, cover the wages of your staff while you’re working for me. Anything else, name it. I’m prepared to negotiate.’ Leone Andracchi gazed back at her, cool as ice.

Her tummy churned. She loathed him for issuing that unvarnished bribe of greater remuneration. He had it all worked out. He believed that he could buy her and it shamed her to acknowledge that she had put herself in a position where he could think that and act on it.

‘I’ll think it over this evening.’ That admission cut through Misty’s pride like the first wounding slash of a knife.

‘What do you have to think over?’

‘I think you’re underestimating my side of what you call the deal.’

His strong jawline hardened. ‘I don’t see a problem or a conflict of interests. You get to wear fabulous clothes, live in a superb apartment and enjoy the high life for a couple of months.’

‘I can see that you believe that that should be a big draw, but it’s not.’ Lifting her head with determined composure, Misty walked to the door.

‘What more did you expect?’

‘Respect…for a start.’ Misty pushed out that admission between gritted teeth.

‘That has to be earned…and I doubt your ability to earn mine.’

Did having bad luck in business make her so much a lesser person? Did he only respect successful people with big bank balances and social pedigrees? He really was obnoxious. He had had no need to make that last comment. It suggested a prejudice against her that both shook and mortified her, for he might have enquired into the state of her catering business but surely he could know very little else about her?

‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry,’ Leone Andracchi drawled flatly.

‘Don’t let it worry you,’ Misty advised, registering that he was merely concerned that he might have overplayed his hand and not truly regretful. ‘You’re self-satisfied, arrogant, manipulative and ruthless. You could have given me that contract, for I believe you’re well aware that I would’ve worked my socks off to fulfil it. However, you prefer to use my problems as a weapon against me. You have very little conscience and even less compassion. Do you really think I’m surprised that you should also be very rude?’

And with that concluding accolade Misty skimmed him a flashing glance from her silver grey eyes. He was very still. Pretty much gobsmacked by that retaliation. Hard dark eyes assailed hers in a seering look that was pure naked intimidation.

‘I shouldn’t have said that. I’m so sorry,’ Misty told him with an insincerity that more than equalled his own a minute earlier, and with that she left his office at speed.

Hit and run? Was that all she was good for? She had been scared that he might have a temper the size of his powerful personality. But biting the hand that she might end up having to feed from was real insanity. Right this very minute, he would be comforting himself with that superior awareness and thinking how stupid she had been to risk alienating him to that extent. And it was surely paranoiac of her to believe that he might have deliberately withheld that contract to put her under more pressure to agree?

In fact it was most likely that he had turned to her because some other woman had refused. A fake mistress? Why? What was Leone Andracchi up to? Such an extraordinary proposition and an expensive one if he was planning to put her in some fancy apartment and furnish her with an appropriate wardrobe. So somehow it would have to profit him. But as she went down in the lift, still shell-shocked by their interview, she could not work out how setting up a pretend mistress could possibly benefit him.

She pictured that lean dark face, breathtakingly good-looking, devastatingly cool and unrevealing. Nobody would ever accuse of Leone Andracchi of wearing his thoughts on his sleeve. A shiver of foreboding ran down her spine. As she crossed the spacious foyer on the ground floor her steps slowed. What was she doing walking away from his rescue bid?

In return for her playing some ridiculous role as his mistress, he would save her business and enable her to continue paying the mortgage on Birdie’s home as well as ensure the ongoing employment of her staff. When the rewards were so great and so many other people would suffer if her business failed, what was a couple of months out of her life? What had been the point of walking out on Leone Andracchi when in reality she had no choice but to accept his terms? She had no other options, had she?

Misty had to make herself walk back into the lift; the prospect of eating humble pie had no appeal. In the short corridor which led to Leone’s office on the top floor, she was disconcerted to see him standing outside the door in conversation with two men. She came to an awkward halt a good ten feet away, two high spots of pink forming over her cheekbones. It took her just two seconds to decide that he was deliberately ignoring her, a lowering impression only increased by the sight of him looking so infuriatingly at ease. Arrogant dark head held at an angle, his jacket pushed back by the lean hand he had thrust in the pocket of his tailored trousers, he emanated relaxation. Angry resentment stiffened her to stone.

Finally, Leone turned his head and lifted an enquiring ebony brow, lean strong face urbane.

‘The answer’s…yes,’ Misty framed with flat emphasis.

His brilliant dark eyes gleamed and he stretched out a hand. In the very act of turning away to make good her escape while he was occupied, for she really had had enough of him for one afternoon, Misty stilled. With frozen reluctance, she moved forward, horribly conscious of his companions’ curiosity as they stepped back out of her path.

His wide sensual mouth curved into a slow, charismatic smile that made her mouth run dry. He caught her fingers in his and closed an arm round her.

‘Excuse me…’ he murmured huskily to their audience, pressing open the door of his office to back her over the threshold.

‘What on—?’earth are you playing at, Misty began to say.

Warning dark golden eyes assailed hers and before she could utter one more syllable he had whirled her round and brought his mouth crashing down on hers with devouring sexual hunger. An inarticulate moan of shock was dragged from her but, in the split second in which she was incredulously aware that the wretched door wasn’t even closed to conceal them, his passionate intensity scorched her into sensual awakening. As he banded his hands round the curve of her hips and pressed her into intimate connection with every muscular line of his big, powerful body, raw excitement flamed through her quivering length like a forest fire licking out of control.

His tongue plundered the moist, tender interior of her mouth in a devastatingly erotic invasion, every explicit probe of that lancing exploration driving her sensation-starved body crazy. Her heart hammering, she was fighting for oxygen but clinging to him, conscious of the unmistakable thrust of his arousal, inflamed rather than repelled by that evidence of his masculine hunger.

A febrile line of colour accentuating his superb cheekbones, Leone released her and snatched in a ragged breath. ‘I think that was an impressive enough statement of our intentions.’

Less quick to recover, Misty pulled in a lungful of air like a drowning swimmer, her legs feeling barely strong enough to support her as she instinctively fell back against the wall for support. She couldn’t credit what had just happened between them. It wasn’t just that he had grabbed and kissed her; it was the infinitely more disturbing truth that she had revelled like a wanton in that passionate embrace. She was shattered by the betrayal of her own body, the response that he had demanded and extracted without her volition.

‘Our intentions?’ Misty framed unevenly, noting that the corridor was now empty, face burning at the appalling awareness that she, who prided herself on behaving in a professional manner in a business environment, had just committed the ultimate unforgivable sin.

‘Too good an opportunity to miss,’ Leone quipped, slumbrous dark eyes veiled by his lush black lashes.

She was so enraged by that explanation that she wanted to slap him into the middle of the next week. ‘You said that you weren’t into sexually harassing employees.’

‘If you think that we’re likely to convince anyone that we’re intimately involved without an occasional demonstration of lover-like enthusiasm, you must be very naive,’ Leone countered drily. ‘But it will only be for public consumption. In private the act dies.’

‘You don’t need to tell me that.’ Not trusting her temper in his vicinity and bitterly conscious that she had burnt her boats without taking the time to consider the potential costs of such a role, Misty compressed her lips hard. ‘May I leave now?’

Leone flicked her a considering glance. ‘Yes. I’ll see you at my hotel tonight at nine and we’ll get the remaining details ironed out. I’m staying at the Belstone House hotel—’

‘Tonight doesn’t suit me,’ Misty said facetiously, unable to resist the temptation.

‘Make it suit,’ he advised. ‘I’m returning to London tomorrow.’

With a rigid little nod of grudging agreement, Misty walked back out again, her slender spine ramrod straight. But she was even more angry with herself than she was with him. How could she have lost herself like that in his arms? But then she had never felt like that before with a man, no, not even with Philip in the first fine flush of love. She paled, suppressing that unfortunate thought. What she had felt at nineteen was hard to recall three years on. Leone Andracchi had caught her off guard. Self-evidently, he possessed great technique in the kissing department, but why hadn’t her loathing for the man triumphed?

Colouring and confused by what she could not explain to her own satisfaction, Misty climbed into the van in Brewsters’ car park and drove to the premises she rented on the outskirts of town. There she joined her three staff in the clean-up operation that concluded every working day. It was after five by the time she locked up and all she could think about was how her business had become so vulnerable that one lost contract could finish it off.

Carlton Catering was just over a year old. She had started out small, doing private dinner parties and the occasional wedding. Nothing too fancy, nothing too big and her overheads had been low. But when, five months ago, her supplier had mentioned that there was a tender coming out for providing lunches at Brewsters, the biggest, swankiest company on the industrial estate, she had been eager to put in a bid and expand. On the strength of that trial contract, she had borrowed to buy another van and upgrade her equipment.

However, disaster had struck soon afterwards. Her premises had been vandalised and the damage had been extensive but her insurance company had refused to pay out, arguing that her security precautions had been inadequate. That had been a bitter and unexpected blow, for the repairs had wiped out her cash reserve and from that point on she had been struggling to stay afloat.

‘Your need to reduce your personal expenditure to offset that loss,’ her bank manager had warned her only six weeks earlier. ‘In spite of your cash-flow problems, you’re continuing to pay the mortgage on a house that doesn’t belong to you. I respect your generosity towards Mrs Pearce, but you must be realistic about the extent of the drain on your own resources.’

But sometimes being realistic utterly failed to take account of circumstances and emotional ties like love and loyalty, Misty reflected painfully as she drove home. Birdie Pearce lived in a rambling old country house called Fossetts, which had belonged to her late husband Robin’s family for generations. Unable to have children of their own, Robin and Birdie had chosen to become foster parents instead. For over thirty years the kindly couple had opened their home and devoted their lives to helping countless difficult and disturbed children.

Misty had been one of those foster kids and she too had been unhappy, bitter and distrustful when she had first gone to Fossetts. She had been twelve years old, hiding behind a tough front of not caring where she lived or who looked after her, but Birdie and Robin had worked hard to gain her trust and affection. They had transformed her life by giving her security and having faith in her, and that was a debt she knew that she could never repay but, above all, it was a loving debt, not a burden.

For the past fourteen months, a fair proportion of Misty’s earnings had gone towards ensuring that Birdie could remain in her own home. Not that Birdie knew that even yet, for her husband had once managed their finances and Misty had taken over that task after the older man’s death. Misty had been shocked to discover that Fossetts was mortgaged to the hilt. When Robin’s investments had failed and money had become tight, he had borrowed on the house without mentioning the matter to anyone.

Now over seventy, Birdie had a bad heart and she was on the waiting list for the surgery that would hopefully ensure that she lived well into old age. But in the short term, without that surgery, Birdie was very vulnerable and her consultant had emphasised how important it was that Birdie should enjoy a stress-free existence. Birdie loved her home and it was also her last link with Robin, whom she had adored. From the outset, Misty’s objective had been to protect the older woman from the financial worry that might bring on another heart attack. But even Misty had not appreciated just how much it would cost to keep Fossetts running for Birdie’s sake.

It was a tall, rather Gothic house with a steep pitched roof and quaint attic windows. Built in the nineteen twenties, it sat in a grove of stately beech trees fronted by a rough meadow. Parking the van, Misty suppressed a troubled sigh. Fossetts was beginning to look neglected. The grounds no longer rejoiced in a gardener. The windows needed to be replaced and the walls were crying out for fresh paint. Although it was far from being a mansion, it was still too big a house to be maintained on a shoestring.

Yet the minute Misty stepped into the wood-panelled front hall, she felt for a moment as though all the troubles of the day had slipped from her shoulders. On a worn side table an arrangement of overblown roses filled the air with their sweet scent and dropped their petals. She walked down to the kitchen, which was original to the house and furnished with built-in pine dressers and a big white china sink.

Nancy was making salad sandwiches for tea. A plump woman in her late fifties, Nancy was a cousin of Robin’s, who had come to live at Fossetts and help out with the children almost twenty years earlier. These days, she looked after Birdie.

‘Birdie’s in the summer house,’ Nancy said cheerfully. ‘We’re going to have tea outside.’

Misty managed to smile. ‘Sounds lovely. Can I help?’

‘No. Go and keep Birdie company.’

It was a beautiful warm June evening but Birdie was wrapped in a blanket, for she felt the cold no matter how good the weather. She was a tiny woman, only four feet eleven inches tall and very slight in build. Her weathered face was embellished by a pair of still-lively blue eyes. ‘Isn’t the garden beautiful?’ she sighed appreciatively.

Misty surveyed the dappled shade cast by the trees, the lush green grass of early summer and the soft pink fading show of the rhododendron blooms. It was indeed a tranquil scene. ‘How have you been today?’

Birdie, who hated talking about her health, ignored the question. ‘I had visitors. The new vicar and his wife. They’ve hardly been living here five minutes and already they’ve heard those silly rumours about how I’ve been reduced to genteel poverty by some greedy former foster child.’ Birdie tilted her greying head to one side, bright eyes exasperated. ‘Such nonsense and so I pointed out. Where on earth are these stories coming from?’

‘That business with Dawn, I expect. Someone’s heard something about that and got the wrong end of the stick.’ Misty neglected to add that the more curious of the locals had evidently noted the visible decline in the Pearce fortunes and put the worst possible interpretation on it. But then over the years that the Pearces had fostered, more than one pessimistic neighbour had forecast that they would live to regret taking on such ‘bad’ children.

And sadly, the previous year, Dawn, who had once been fostered by the Pearces, had come to visit and had stolen all Birdie’s jewellery. Birdie had refused to prosecute because Dawn had been a drug addict in a pitiful state. Since then, yielding to Birdie’s persuasions and her own longing to reclaim her life, Dawn had completed a successful rehabilitation programme but none of the jewellery had been recovered.

‘Why do people always want to think the worst?’ Birdie looked genuinely pained for she herself always liked to think the very best of others.

‘No, they don’t,’ Misty soothed.

‘Well, what have you got to tell me today about that handsome Sicilian at Brewsters? I would love to get a peek at a genuine business tycoon. I’ve never seen one except on television,’ Birdie said naively, for all the world as though Leone Andracchi were on a level with a rare animal.

Misty smiled at the little woman, but a great surge of loving tenderness made her eyes prickle and she had to look away. She told herself that she ought to be copying Birdie’s sunny optimism, turning her problems round until a silver lining appeared in the clouds. And, lo and behold, Leone Andracchi began looking more like their saviour! So why the heck was she still festering with anguished loathing over one stupid kiss? Was she turning into an appalling prude?

‘Actually…Mr Andracchi’s offered me work in London.’ Misty’s gaze was veiled, for she could not have looked Birdie in the eye and told that partial truth. ‘How would you feel about me going away for a month or two?’

‘To work for a handsome millionaire? Ecstatic!’ Birdie teased after she had recovered from her surprise at that sudden announcement.

After tea, Misty went upstairs and opened the wardrobe which contained the clothing that Flash had insisted on buying her in an effort to lift her out of her depression after Philip had broken off their engagement. Fancy frivolous designer garments that had not seen the light of day in over two years. She selected a turquoise faux snakeskin skirt and top and a pair of spiky-heeled shoes. After a quick bath, she dug out her cosmetics, which dated from the same period and which had been similiarly shelved after she had said goodbye to her brief foray into Flash’s glitzy, unreal world.

Flash had transformed her into a rock-star chick and she had learned how to make the best of her looks. Not that it had been much comfort then to see a sexy, daring image in the mirror when the man that she had loved had rejected her. It had wrecked things between her and Flash too, she acknowledged with pained regret. The day Flash had made her fanciable on his own terms had seemed to be the beginning of the end of their friendship. He had stopped thinking of her as a sister, stopped seeing her as the skinny little kid who had shared the same foster home with him for almost five years and had decided that he wanted more.

Making use of the elderly car that only Nancy used now, Misty drove over to the country house hotel where Leone Andracchi was staying. The gracious foyer exuded expensive exclusivity, and when she enquired at the desk she was informed that Leone was in the dining room.

While she hovered, working out whether she ought to wait or seek him out in the midst of his meal, a fair-haired male emerged from the lounge bar and stopped dead at the sight of her, reacting in a similiar vein to the doorman, who had surged to open the door for her, and the male receptionist, who had tripped over a waste-paper basket in his haste to attend to her.

‘Misty…?’

For a split second, Misty thought she was dreaming for, even though it had been three years since she had heard it, she recognised that hesitant, well-bred voice immediately and she spun round in shock. ‘ Philip?’

‘It’s been so long since I’ve seen you.’ Philip Redding stared at her; indeed, his inability to stop staring was marked. ‘How a-are you?’ he stammered.

‘Fine…’ Her lips barely moved as her silver-grey eyes lingered on him for, although they still lived within miles of each other, she had been careful to avoid places where they had been likely to meet and, apart from seeing his car on the road occasionally, had been very successful in ensuring that they had not run into each other again.

‘You look…you look quite incredible.’ His colour heightened as he found himself forced to tilt his head back to meet her gaze. ‘I’ve often thought of calling in at Fossetts—’

‘With your wife and children?’ Misty enquired in brittle disbelief.

Philip paled and stiffened. ‘Just the one child…Helen and I are getting a divorce, actually…it didn’t work out.’

Twenty feet away, Leone Andracchi stilled, stunned by the vision of Misty Carlton shorn of her shapeless grey suit. With her wealth of copper hair tumbling loose, eyes that gleamed like polished silver were soft on the face of the man she was regarding, her wide peach tinted mouth parted to show pearly teeth. Leone could not quite work out what she was wearing. The top seemed to be held up by the narrow chains bisecting her slight shoulders. The rich fabric gleamed beneath the lights accentuating the thrust of her breasts, the slender indent of her waist, and screeched to a death-defying halt above long, long, endless legs capable of stopping traffic.

‘Misty…?’

Taken aback by Philip’s blunt admission that his marriage was heading for the divorce courts, Misty shifted her attention to the tall dark male poised several feet away. Leone Andracchi. She collided with sizzling golden eyes that seemed to burn up all the available oxygen in the atmosphere and instantly she tensed, butterflies fluttering in her tummy. But even as she reacted to his vibrant presence her mind was marching on to make uneasy comparisons between the two men. Leone was much taller, more powerfully built and strikingly dark next to Philip with his boyish fair good looks.

‘Sorry if I’ve kept you waiting, amore,’ Leone murmured smooth as silk, moving to her side to place an infuriatingly possessive hand on her spine.

‘Philip Redding…’ Philip shot out a hand with all the easy friendliness that was natural to him. ‘Misty and I are old friends.’

‘How fascinating,’ Leone drawled in a tone of crushing boredom that made the younger man flush. ‘Unfortunately, Misty and I are running late.’

‘Look, I’ll call you,’ Philip told Misty, giving Leone a bewildered look, quite out of his depth when faced with such a complete lack of answering courtesy.

‘Don’t waste your time,’ Leone advised before Misty could respond, shooting Philip a derisive glance of cold menace as he pressed her over to the lift and hit the call button with one stab of a punitive finger. ‘She won’t be available.’

Her face flaming but her lips sealed, for she could not intervene when she did not want Philip to phone Fossetts and upset Birdie, Misty stalked into the lift while listening to Philip mutter in disconcerted response, ‘Well, I must say…really, for goodness’ sake…’

‘Do you like behaving like the playground bully?’ Misty enquired dulcetly as the lift doors whirred shut.

‘While you’re with me, you don’t talk to other men…you don’t even look at other men,’ Leone delivered with simmering emphasis.

Misty clashed head-on with brilliant golden eyes that went straight for the jugular and a bone-deep charge of grateful excitement surged through her long, slender length for the very last thing she wanted to think about just then was Philip, whose rejection had torn her apart with grief and despair for longer than she cared to recall. ‘Is that a fact?’

‘Particularly old flames…’ Leone decreed, impervious to sarcasm.

Misty tilted her copper head back and shrugged a slim shoulder, glorious silver eyes wide and mocking, the knot of sexual tension he had already awakened licking through her like a dangerous drug in her bloodstream. ‘Then you had better watch me well.’

‘No. I’m paying for total fidelity and the illusion that you have eyes for no other man,’ Leone imparted without hesitation. ‘Flirting with Redding was out of line.’

‘Flirting…?’ An involuntary laugh empty of humour was wrenched from Misty, the emotions roused by that unfortunate encounter with her ex-fiancé breaking loose of her control. ‘Philip’s the last man alive I’d flirt with!’

‘I saw the way you looked at him,’ Leone said with grim clarity.

‘And how was that?’ Misty queried unevenly, curious in spite of herself.

‘Do I need to draw pictures?’

Her silver-grey eyes darkened as a shard of bitter pain from the past assailed her but she veiled her gaze in self-protection. So for an instant she had recalled happier times when Philip had meant the world to her, but those days were very far behind her. And why was she so sure of that reality? Three years earlier, she had only been engaged to Philip for six weeks when a drunk driver had crashed into Philip’s car. Although Philip had sustained only a concussion, Misty had suffered internal injuries and had required surgery. Afterwards she had learned that she might never be able to conceive a child and Philip had found the threat of a childless future impossible to accept. But never let it be said that Philip was unfeeling: after all, he had had tears in his eyes when he’d ditched her, when he’d told her that he’d still loved her but that she wasn’t really a proper woman any more…

‘Redding was all over you like a rash—’

‘He didn’t even touch me!’

‘He didn’t get the chance.’

As Leone rested a lean hand on Misty’s spine to prompt her out of the lift again, she jerked away and flung her bright head high, sending him a warning look from bright silver eyes. ‘I don’t see an audience, so keep your hands to yourself!’

CHAPTER THREE

MISTY’S eyes leapt in skittish mode round the luxurious hotel suite while she struggled to disguise the fact that her whole body wanted to shake as if she were a leaf in a high wind.

She could not credit that that brief meeting with Philip should have brought so many wounding memories to the surface and destabilised her to such an extent. But then she had worked long and hard to bury all that pain, to rise above the cruel concept that fertility was the sole measure of femininity, and had learned to focus on another future other than that of a husband and a family.

‘Would you like a drink?’ Leone Andracchi enquired.

‘No, thanks.’

‘Possibly it might calm your nerves—’

Misty whirled round in a surge of fury that erupted so suddenly it made her feel dizzy with the strength of it. ‘There’s nothing wrong with my nerves! Stop trying to put me down—’

Brilliant dark golden eyes rested on her. ‘So the wimp upset you—’

‘Don’t talk about Philip like that…you don’t know him.’

‘I don’t need to,’ Leone purred, surveying her with sardonic amusement. ‘He showed himself up.’

Misty threw back her head, copper hair flying back from her flushed cheekbones. ‘No, I think you did. I don’t like aggressive men.’

A slow, winging smile slanted his wide, sensual mouth. She had the maddening suspicion that, far from her drawing blood with her retaliation, he was actually enjoying the exchange. ‘I’m not aggressive…I’m strong and you like that.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

A winged ebony brow quirked. ‘Don’t you?’

She could feel the tense silence buzzing around her. Her mouth had run dry and her heart was thumping like a trapped bird against her ribs. She looked at him: so very tall and lean with the sleek, honed, muscular build and grace of a natural athlete. His cropped, slightly curly black hair gleamed in the lamp light that picked out every fabulous angle of his bone structure, accentuating the carved cheekbones, the hollows beneath, the firm, sensual line of his mouth. Drop-dead gorgeous, as she had been refusing to acknowledge from the moment he’d appeared in the downstairs foyer and shadowed Philip like Everest looming over a bump in the lawn.

Entrapped by those smouldering dark golden eyes, she could look nowhere else and every breath that quivered through her felt like a huge effort. The taut peaks of her breasts ached and a sliding, curling sensation low in her pelvis made her tighten her thighs. Her knees had developed a slight tremor and all the time she was aware only of the almost terrifying rise of anticipation that took account of nothing but the fierce longing gripping her.

‘You want me…I want you, but it’s not going to happen,’ Leone breathed in a charged undertone that rasped down her sensitive spine like a roughened caress. ‘This is strictly business and we don’t need to make it complicated.’

Stark disconcertion rippled through Misty. She felt stripped naked, exposed. Urgent words of proud denial brimmed on her lips until she saw the way his burning gaze was homed in on her mouth and she trembled, the excitement climbing again, mindless and without conscience.

‘Business…’ Leone repeated thickly.

Someone rapped on the door and, although the knock was light, Misty flinched, dredged from her fever with a sense of guilty embarrassment. As the door opened and a young man appeared with a file in his hand she turned to stare out the window, breathing in slow and deep, fighting to still the nervous tremors currenting through her. Nobody had ever had so powerful an effect on her and it was starting to scare her: it was as if she had no control over herself around him, as if her brain went walkabout. But he was feeling that pull too. That shook her, surprised her, made her feel a little less mortified. Although she knew that the worst thing she could do would be to lower her guard around a male like Leone Andracchi, the knowledge that the attraction was mutual still made her feel better about herself, better than she had felt in a long time.

The door snapped shut and she turned back.

‘This is the agreement I mentioned.’ Leone extended a document. ‘Read it and then sign.’

Misty accepted the document. ‘And if I don’t sign?’

‘We don’t have a deal.’

She sat down and began to read. It was typical employment contract stuff, no mention of her pretending to be his mistress or of clothes or apartments either. However, there was a clause that said she would forfeit all benefits and payments if she tried to walk out before he considered the job complete. She didn’t like, that but her attention was caught by the sum of cash he was offering in return and that amount bereft her of breath. Enough money to keep the mortgage on Fossetts ticking over for the next year and more, as well as allowing sufficient funds to settle her outstanding bills and cover staff salaries during her absence.

Cheeks burning, Misty swallowed hard and looked up. ‘You’re being very generous…but what am I supposed to think about this bit that says I can’t walk out on this without your agreement?’

‘You may think what you like,’ Leone murmured levelly, ‘but I assure you that the position won’t entail anything either immoral, illegal or dangerous.’

None the wiser, but still troubled that he saw the necessity of making that stipulation, Misty lifted the pen from the table in front of her. He wasn’t going to explain himself and she couldn’t afford to throw away the only lifebelt on offer.

‘Wait…’ Striding back to the door, Leone called the young man back in to witness her signature and his own.

Such devotion to legal detail rather unnerved Misty. When the document was duly removed, she smoothed her damp palms down over her skirt. ‘Now what?’

‘Just a few details. I’ll send a car to pick you up at nine on Monday—’

‘This Monday coming?’ Misty questioned. ‘That’s only six days from now—’

‘I want this show up and running for the following weekend.’ Leone settled a notepad down on the coffee-table. ‘Make a note of your measurements. You need a new wardrobe.’

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