About the Authors

CATHY WILLIAMS can remember reading Mills & Boon books as a teenager and, now that she is writing them, she remains an avid fan. For her, there is nothing like creating romantic stories and engaging plots and each and every book is a new adventure. Cathy lives in London and her three daughters, Charlotte, Olivia and Emma have always been, and continue to be, the greatest inspiration in her life.

ANNE MATHER and her husband live in the north of England in a village bordering the county of Yorkshire. It’s a beautiful area, and she can’t imagine living anywhere else. She’s been making up stories since she was in primary school and would say that writing is a huge part of her life. When people ask if writing is a lonely occupation, she usually says that she’s so busy sorting out her characters’ lives, she doesn’t have time to feel lonely. Anne’s written over one-hundred-andsixty novels, and her books have appeared on both the New York Times and USA TODAY bestseller lists. She loves reading and walking and browsing in bookshops – now that her son and daughter are grown, she takes great delight in her grandchildren. You can email her at mystic-am@msn.com

Irish author ABBY GREEN threw in a very glamorous career in film and TV—which really consisted of a lot of standing in the rain outside actors’ trailers—to pursue her love of romance. After she’d bombarded Mills & Boon with manuscripts they kindly accepted one, and an author was born. She lives in Dublin, Ireland, and loves any excuse for distraction. Visit www.abby-green.com or e-mail abbygreenauthor@gmail.com

Secret Heirs: Their Baby Bargain

Bound by the Billionaire’s Baby

Cathy Williams

An Heir Made in the Marriage Bed

Anne Mather

An Heir to Make a Marriage

Abby Green

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-09616-4

SECRET HEIRS: THEIR BABY BARGAIN

Bound by the Billionaire’s Baby © 2015 Cathy Williams An Heir Made in the Marriage Bed © 2017 Anne Mather An Heir to Make Their Marriage © 2016 Abby Green

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

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Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Title Page

Copyright

Bound by the Billionaire’s Baby

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

An Heir Made in the Marriage Bed

Back Cover Text

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

An Heir to Make a Marriage

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

About the Publisher

Bound by the Billionaire’s Baby

Cathy Williams

To my three wonderful and inspiring daughters.

CHAPTER ONE

FROM THE VERY second Susie walked into the restaurant she knew she had made a big mistake. It joined the other three big mistakes she had made in the past fortnight. Making mistakes was beginning to feel like a full-time occupation.

What had possessed her to wear high heels? Why was she clutching a silly little bag with sequins, borrowed from one of her friends? And how on earth had she found herself in a ridiculous small red dress which had screamed sexy and glamorous when she had tried it on earlier in the week but now shrieked...sad and desperate?

Utterly grateful that she had wisely shunned the flamboyant checked coat which she had been tempted to buy with the dress, and had instead chosen something slightly more sober, she wrapped her black cape tightly round her, making sure to conceal every single square inch of the stupid red dress.

So what the heck should she do now? she wondered.

Date number four was there and seated at the bar. In a couple of seconds he would look round and he would spot her. She had told him that she would be wearing red. The red might be concealed under the cape but how many other lonesome single girls were there here? None.

His picture on the online dating agency she used had seemed so promising, but one glance at him showed her that it had been a cruel lie.

He wasn’t tall. Even though he was sitting she could see that. His feet dangled. Nor was he surfer blond...more wet sand than surf, to be perfectly honest...and he looked at least twenty years older than in his photograph. Furthermore he was wearing a bright yellow jumper and trousers that were vaguely mustard in colour.

She should have actually chatted with him on the phone instead of rushing headlong into a date. She should have relied on more than a couple of flirty messages and one email. She would have known then that he might be the sort of guy who wore yellow jumpers and mustard-coloured trousers. But instead she had jumped right in at the deep end and now here she was...

She felt faint.

This was an expensive bar/restaurant. It was the latest in hip and cool. People had to wait for months to get a booking. The only reason she had been able to get one was because her parents had had to cancel at the last minute and had told her that she could go along in their place. They had asked her to report back on the food—they wanted details.

‘Take a friend,’ her mother had said, with just the amount of weary resignation that seemed to hallmark everything she said to her. ‘You surely must know someone who isn’t absolutely broke...’

By which she had meant, You must know a man who isn’t scraping by without a decent job...someone who doesn’t play in a band in bars...or doesn’t slouch around in between acting jobs that never come up...or isn’t currently saving to go on a world trip, taking in the Dalai Lama on the way...

The mere fact that online date number four had heard of this place had been a point in his favour.

Silly assumption on her part.

Her fundamental sense of decency warred with a pressing urge to turn tail and scarper before she was spotted—but how could she scarper when she knew her parents would want to know all about the experience? It wasn’t as though she could wing it...make it up as she went along. She was rubbish at lying and her mother was gifted at spotting lies.

Yet she knew what the outcome of this would be before it even started. She knew they would make stilted conversation but would both be keen to end it. She knew that the conversation would run out sometime after the starter but they would both feel obliged to stay until the main course and she knew they would definitely leave without dessert or coffee. She felt he might make her pick up the tab. He would definitely insist on going Dutch. He would probably work out exactly who had eaten what and calculate the bill accordingly.

Already in the grip of uncertainty and a mild depression that she had found herself in this situation yet again, Susie glanced around the crowded restaurant.

It was buzzing with cool people. The bar area was busy and the restaurant, which was off to one side, a marvel of glass, chrome and plants, was likewise packed.

Couples and groups were everywhere...except at the back... Sitting at the best table in the place was...a guy...

For a few seconds her heart actually flipped over, because she had never seen anyone quite so stunningly good-looking in her life before. Raven-black hair, bronzed skin that spoke of some sort of exotically foreign gene pool, perfectly chiselled features... When the Big Guy above had been dishing out looks he had been first in the queue.

He was sitting in front of his laptop, oblivious to everyone around him. The sheer cheek of having a laptop on the table in one of the most sought-after restaurants in the city was impressive. As was the fact that he wasn’t dressed for show. He was in a pair of dark jeans and a long-sleeved faded black jumper that fitted him in a way that revealed a lean, muscular body. Everything about him suggested that he didn’t care where he was or who was looking at him, and there was an invisible exclusion zone around him that implied that no one should dare get too close.

He was just the sort of guy she should have found, scrolling through all those possibilities on the dating website—although, that said, he was probably just the sort of guy who had probably never heard of a dating website. Why would he?

And he was on his own.

The table wasn’t set for two. There was a drink in front of him but he had shoved his plate and all the cutlery to one side. She was sure that there was some kind of unwritten rule about doing something like that in a place like this but he was pulling it off.

Taking a deep breath, she turned to the maître d’, who had swooped down to ask her whether she had reservation and said airily, ‘I’m with...’

She pointed to the stranger at the back of the room and tried to smile knowingly. She had never done anything like this in her life before. But faced with the horror of date number four, the certainty of being spotted, the necessity to stay put until it was safe to slink to the table she had reserved and sample the food...desperation had made her act out of character.

‘Señor Burzi...?’

‘Absolutely!’ If only she could scuttle back to the apartment in her glad rags to sit in front of the telly with a chocolate bar and a glass of wine. Right now that would have been heaven.

But she couldn’t—and right now she didn’t want to think anyway. She just didn’t want to spend another evening on her own, dealing with what her parents and her sister had been telling her for the past three years...that she had to ‘get some direction’ in her life...that she should start thinking about a career instead of painting pictures and drawing cartoon characters...that she was ‘so lucky’ to have been given the education that she had and that she owed it to herself to make the best of it... Perhaps they weren’t quite so brutally honest, but she could read between the lines.

‘Is Señor Burzi expecting you, Miss...?’

‘Of course he is! I wouldn’t be asking to join him if he wasn’t, would I?’

She began walking purposefully over to the dark, sexy stranger, hoping and praying that her date wouldn’t spot her, and hoping and praying even more that the maître d’ wouldn’t create an embarrassing fuss and chuck her out.

Head down, she practically collided with the table, and was aware of two piercing dark eyes shifting from the computer to her flushed face as she plopped down in one of the empty chairs.

‘What the hell...? Who the hell are you?’

‘Señor Burzi...this lady said that she was expecting to join you...’

‘I’m really sorry. I know I’m probably interrupting you. But, please...could you just bear with me for a few minutes? I...I’m in a bit of a sticky situation...’

‘Show her out, Giorgio, and next time please don’t make the mistake of bringing anyone to my table unless I tell you to.’

His voice was deep and dark and velvety and perfectly matched the way he looked. His attention had returned to whatever was on his computer. She was dismissed. She would be chucked out of the restaurant.

Panic filled her. Panic and just...just a feeling of hopelessness. She should never have been persuaded by her two best friends into this crazy online dating situation. The thought of being escorted out of the restaurant like a common criminal, while everyone including her yellow-jumpered date turned and stared and sniggered, was just too much.

‘Just a few minutes. I just need somewhere to...er...sit for a few minutes...’

This time the man did look up, and she had to force herself not to stare because up close he was even better looking than he had appeared from a distance. His eyes were navy blue and he had eyelashes to die for—long, thick and dark, and right now fringing eyes that were the temperature of ice.

‘Not my problem. And how the hell did you find out that I was going to be here?’ he asked coldly. He spared a glance for the maître d’, who was hovering and wringing his hands. ‘Leave us, Giorgio. I’ll get rid of her myself.’

‘Sorry?’ Susie looked at him blankly.

‘I haven’t got time for this. I have no idea how you found out where I was, but now that you’re here let me make myself perfectly clear. Whatever begging mission you’re on, you can forget it. Charitable donations are handled by my company. Donations of any other nature are not on the table. And a word to the wise...? Next time you get it into your head to start digging for gold, try being a little more subtle. Now, I’m giving you the option of making a dignified exit or being thrown out. Which one would you rather go for?’

Angry colour had seeped into her cheeks as the meaning of what he was saying gradually became clear.

She had no idea who the man was, but he actually thought that she had targeted him! Thought that she was making a play for him because she wanted to ask him for money!

‘Are you accusing me of coming here to ask you for money?’

The man gave a bark of humourless laughter and raked his eyes over her. ‘Clever deduction. Now, what’s your choice of exit going to be?’

‘I didn’t come here to ask for money. I don’t even know who you are...’

‘Now, I wonder why I find that hard to believe?’

‘Please—just hear me out. I honestly don’t make it a habit to approach strange men in...er...bars...or even expensive restaurants...but I won’t be long...’

She had as much right to be here as he did. Admittedly not actually at his table, but in the restaurant...generally speaking.

She actually had her own table booked, and would be forking out for some very expensive food just as soon as her blind date left and she could relax—and that was more than could be said for him, judging from the way his plate had been shoved to one side. One drink wasn’t going to make the restaurant owner a rich guy, was it? In fact he was just the sort of customer a restaurant owner would hate! The sort of customer who booked a table, had a drink, made it last for four hours and refused to budge for the remainder of the evening.

‘I haven’t come here because I’m targeting you for money,’ she repeated urgently, leaning forward, elbows resting on the table. ‘And, by the way, I feel very sorry for you if you can’t talk to a stranger for three minutes without thinking that they’re going to ask you to put your hand in your pocket and write them out a cheque! You’re the only person in this place on your own and I...I...just need to kill a little time before I’m shown to my table. I do have, actually, a valid reservation. And I will be eating.’

She took a deep breath and powered on before he had a chance to throw her out on her ear—because, whether she had a valid reason to be there or not, she certainly didn’t have a valid reason to gatecrash his table.

‘Do you see the guy sitting at the bar?’

Humiliation made her skin prickle. She had always been a people person. Finding herself stared at as though she was something that had crawled in off the streets—something that needed to be bagged and binned immediately—was a new experience for her and she didn’t like it.

His icy silence squashed her natural breeziness like a pin being stuck into a balloon.

* * *

Sergio Burzi was frankly incredulous. Had she just told him that she felt sorry for him or had he misheard? He felt as though he had been run over by a bus, and was momentarily too dazed to do anything but pick himself up and dust himself down.

‘There are a lot of guys at the bar,’ he said.

So she would eventually do one of two things. Ask outright for money for some hare-brained scheme or else try and cosy up to him. He was a target for gold-diggers, and gold-diggers came in all different shapes and sizes and plied their trade with the back-up of all sorts of sob stories and fairytales.

But he was between women...jaded with the opposite sex. He liked them clever, career-orientated...he liked women who had purposeful, goal-orientated lives, who weren’t clingy and emotional. He had had them by the bucketload, but recently...they did less and less for him. Not even the chase was as stimulating as it had used to be, and more often than not the ‘catch of the day’ became boring in a matter of weeks.

What was the harm in letting this woman sit with him for a couple of minutes before he got rid of her?

She was putting on a damn fine show and she was really rather attractive. Big brown eyes, blonde curly hair that looked as though it had only a passing acquaintance with a brush, full, sexy lips...

A sharp pang of pure lust hit him deep in the gut. He had a vivid image of how that cloud of strawberry blonde hair would look spread across his pillow, her pale skin against his much darker bronze.

It just showed how neglected his sex-life had been of late. He had dispatched his last girlfriend over two months ago and hadn’t had the energy or the desire to replace her.

And now this tawdry little gold-digger had stirred him up. He sat back, easing the discomfort of a sudden rock-hard erection, and gave her his undivided attention.

‘Which one are you talking about?’ he asked, angling his big body so that he could extend his long legs to one side. ‘And why should I be looking at him?’

Susie relaxed fractionally. He was prepared to listen to what she had to say. This would be the end of her learning curve. No more blind dates. Ever.

‘Yellow jumper. Mustard trousers. Thin sandy hair. Do you see him?’

Sergio glanced at the bar and then back to her flushed, earnest face. ‘I see him.’

He was beginning to enjoy himself. He could see Giorgio out of the corner of his eye, anxiously watching the table, ready to spring into action should he need to, and Sergio gave just the slightest shake of his head.

She was going round the houses to get to the point, but she had managed to pique his interest. That in itself was worth the storyline.

When she finally made a move on him he wondered whether he would take her up on the offer... She wasn’t his type, but wasn’t a change as good as a rest?

‘And you’ve pointed him out to me because...?’

‘He’s my blind date and I’m trying to avoid him.’

She groaned, looked at the man sitting opposite her, and her breathing picked up because those lazy, dark, fathomless eyes made her nervous and excited at the same time...gave her a weird, giddy feeling.

‘I met him on one of those dating websites,’ she confided glumly. ‘They cater for the under-thirties. You know the kind of thing...young people seeking serious relationships... It’s a lie. None of them are. I feel awful about standing up poor Phil, but I just can’t face another date frantically trying to make small talk while the minutes tick by at a snail’s pace...’

Sergio wondered what she would do if he called her bluff by going across to Mr Yellow Jumper and asking whether he was there to meet someone from a dating agency.

‘I guess he’s panicking because I’ve stood him up. I’d hate someone to stand me up. But, like I said, I just can’t face all that silly, pointless conversation...’

‘He doesn’t appear to be overly heartbroken. In fact he seems to be chatting up an older woman at the bar.’

‘What?’

‘Blonde hair...smartly dressed... Yes, they appear to be leaving...together...’ Maybe because she was his original date...

‘I don’t believe it! Didn’t I tell you?’ Susie said bitterly. ‘Serious relationships... Ha! One-night stand relationships, more like it.’

She might not have wanted to go through with the ordeal but she was insulted that she had been dumped without even being interviewed for the job.

‘Online dating isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. Forget about all those pictures of starry-eyed couples gazing lovingly at one another over a romantic meal, or dashing along a beach grinning like star-struck maniacs and holding hands. It’s all just advertising. Just look at my date. He couldn’t even hang around and wait a few minutes for me to show up.’

‘I thought you were trying to avoid him?’

‘That’s not the point. The point is that he could have hung around a bit longer before making off with the first available woman who gave him the time of day!’

Susie wouldn’t have dreamt of finding her perfect guy via a computer—except for the fact that The Big Wedding was getting closer, and she couldn’t face showing up without any boyfriend in tow or, worse, with one of her arty, creative crowd who would be politely dismissed as yet another loser because ‘poor little Susie’ just didn’t seem to have what it took to find herself a halfway decent boyfriend.

Poor little Susie can’t even get her love-life in order...

She knew she shouldn’t care, but the big Three-Oh was only five years away and she suddenly and inexplicably felt that her time was running out. Surely it wasn’t asking too much for one part of her life to be sorted out?

‘I’ll make sure to steer clear of dating sites on the internet. Why don’t you have a glass of wine and take your coat off, by the way?’

‘There’s no need to keep chatting to me, Mr... Sorry, I’ve completely forgotten your name...’

‘You can call me Sergio. And you are...?’

‘Susie.’

She politely held out her hand and the warmth of his long fingers as he clasped it sent a jolt of electricity racing through her body, as though she had suddenly been plugged into a light socket. She almost wanted to rub her hand on her dress when it was released.

‘And I’ll leave you to get on with...er...what you were doing...’

Sergio toyed with the idea of calling her bluff and then decided against it. He hadn’t been this engaged for a while. The work that was waiting to be done could take a back seat.

He waved at his computer without taking his eyes from her face. ‘What does it look like I was doing?’

‘I know. Pretty dull. Work. I don’t know how you can concentrate in a place like this. I’d be too busy looking around and people-watching.’ She made a sympathetic face and began to stand up.

‘Sit.’

Sergio had made his mind up. So what if she was a gold-digger? She would discover soon enough that she had chosen the wrong place to go prospecting, but he was enjoying her company. He was certainly enjoying what she was doing to his body.

Susie frowned and hesitated. ‘Do you usually order people around?’

‘It comes naturally,’ he said, with a sudden smile that shook her to the core. ‘Arrogance is apparently one of my many faults...’

‘And you have a lot, do you? Faults, I mean...?’

‘Too many to mention. Now, you came here to eat and drink. Sit. Please. Allow me to replace your erstwhile date for the evening...’

He almost burst out laughing at the irony of his pretending to believe the little white lies she had told him but, hell, she was the most creative and amusing woman he had met in a long time.

Susie was charmed. Not only was he drop-dead gorgeous, but how many men admitted to having failings? Most of them were far too busy Photoshopping their pictures, slashing twenty years off their real age and pretending that they weren’t five foot two.

And wasn’t he now inviting her to have dinner with him?

‘Why don’t you join me? My table is...’

She looked around for an empty table and sighed because it had probably been taken. Arriving late would not be an option for anyone who had booked a table in this place. There would be a long list of people waiting in the wings for tables booked by poor, hapless idiots who might have run into delays on the Underground or got snagged in traffic on the way.

‘Where...?’ Sergio made a show of trying to spot a vacant table.

‘Gone.’ She sighed again.

‘Oh, dear.’

‘I don’t normally do...this...’ she began, although a little thrill darted through her at the thought of having dinner with him.

He was so unlike any man she had ever met. Her last boyfriend, Aidan, had been a would-be writer who went on protest rallies, railed against ‘capitalist pigs’ and had now disappeared to the other side of the world, where he was bumming around in search of ideas for his next book, doing little jobs to keep himself going. They vaguely kept in touch.

‘Do what?’ Sergio inclined his head to one side.

‘Force myself on strangers and then accept meals from them. I’ll join you on one condition, and it’s that I pay for myself... I’d offer to pay for you as well, but I’m not in a great place financially at the moment...’

And she wouldn’t be there at all were it not for her parents’ generosity. She had always made it a point to go it on her own, but the temptation to have a free meal at the hottest ticket in town had been irresistible.

‘By which you mean...?’ Sergio signalled to a waiter for menus and then relaxed back, prepared to be amused.

‘I’m between jobs, in actual fact. Well, no, that’s not strictly true. I’m a freelance artist, but still quite new to the business. I haven’t had time to make many contacts so jobs are pretty thin on the ground at the moment. Things will pick up. I’m pretty sure of that. But it’s difficult breaking through... I make ends meet working at a pub near to where I live. I can only hope that I get some work soon—perhaps a long-term contract, which would be brilliant. Via word of mouth... Of course I’ve been in touch with every pu—’

‘Enough. Really not all that interested in the backstory. Correct me if I’m wrong, but the bottom line is that you’re broke because you can’t find regular work?’

‘It’s a competitive world out there when it comes to graphic art and illustrations...’

‘Indeed.’

‘I did a secretarial course when I left school...I had a few jobs doing secretarial work, but I didn’t enjoy it.’

‘Expensive choice of restaurant for someone who happens to be currently financially challenged.’

But then that wouldn’t be a consideration, bearing in mind she would have known, if she played her cards right that he would pick up the tab—and if not him, then any other lone punter. This wasn’t a place frequented by paupers. She was sex on legs and that worked nine times out of ten.

Susie opened her mouth to tell him that, actually, her parents would be the ones picking up the tab and promptly closed it—because how pathetic was that? She was twenty-five years old and still reliant on handouts from her parents for the occasional treat. Shame washed over her.

‘Sometimes...ah...you just have to splash out now and again...’ she countered feebly.

‘Maybe your online date would have done the gentlemanly thing and treated you to the meal,’ Sergio humoured her, ‘had he only stayed the course...’

‘I doubt that. Anyway, I wouldn’t have allowed him to do that. The last thing I would have wanted would have been to give him any ideas.’

‘Any ideas...?’

‘That if he paid for my meal he got me thrown in as an added extra...’

She reddened as Sergio looked at her with raised eyebrows.

‘And if I pay for your meal do you think that I might see you as dessert?’ he murmured.

All at once her head was full of images of him having her as his dessert...taking her to his bed, making love with her, touching and tasting her everywhere...

And the way he was looking at her...

It sent thrilling little shivers up and down her spine. His navy eyes were cool, speculative... She was a tasty little morsel and he was idly contemplating the pros and cons of sampling her...

That was what it felt like and, yes, it should have had her bristling with indignation but...it didn’t.

She licked her lips nervously—an unconsciously erotic little gesture that made Sergio shift in his chair, easing the pain of an erection that wasn’t going anywhere.

‘The coat,’ he reminded her softly. ‘Take it off.’

Susie obeyed. She got the feeling that people always obeyed what he said. Maybe that was why he was allowed to take up valuable space in a pricey restaurant without actually putting any money in the coffers by eating. She had thought he was being charming and self-deprecating when he had described himself as arrogant. Maybe he was just being truthful.

The coat came off.

Sergio’s breath caught in his throat. What had he been expecting? He didn’t know. He just knew that if she was out to see what she could get from him, then she had been inspired in her choice of dress, because it displayed every inch of her fabulous figure in loving detail. The tiny waist. The generous breasts. Shapely legs. But she wasn’t overly tall, and he liked tall. She wasn’t brunette, and he preferred brunettes. And she certainly wasn’t a career woman—unless you could call not having a steady job a career choice—and career women were the only women who interested him.

But she was doing terrific things to his libido.

He smiled a slow, curling smile as he inspected her lazily from head to toe and back again.

‘That’s rude!’ Hot and bothered, Susie hurriedly sat down and wiped clammy hands on the dress.

‘Come again?’

‘That’s rude...’

‘Don’t tell me you don’t like being looked at? If you didn’t you wouldn’t be wearing a red dress that leaves very little to the imagination.’

‘It was a mistake buy.’

She was mortified to feel dampness seeping through her underwear and the tingle of her nipples, which had reacted to that lingering, unhurried inspection as though they were being played with.

What was going on? she wondered in confusion. She never reacted to guys like this. She was comfortable around them. Always had been. Yes, she had had two boyfriends, but neither of them had had this sort of effect on her.

Mistake buy? Sergio nearly burst out laughing. ‘Mistake buys’ weren’t small, red and sexy. Small, red and sexy were designed to do one thing and one thing only, and that was to attract a man. To attract, in this case, him. It had worked. He was attracted.

And the way she could barely meet his eyes... She was the very picture of flustered, pink-cheeked innocence. It might be great acting, but the flustered pink-cheeked innocence was as sexy as the dress.

Hats off to her for a new and interesting route to getting through to him. Had she just turned up at the bar wearing the sexy red dress he might have looked but he wouldn’t have gone there. But her storyline... She had enticed him with more than the dress and the body...she had enticed him with her personality—and, frankly, he was in the mood to be enticed.

She was a refreshing change. He needed a break from intellectual women who had opinions and could become borderline tedious on the subject of their high-powered careers. What could be more of a break than a frisky little number who didn’t have a job?

‘I’d dispute that,’ he told her, with that same curling smile that made her short of breath. ‘In fact, from where I’m sitting, it looks like anything but a mistake buy.’

He was hardly aware of their glasses being refilled by a waiter, or of menus being placed in front of them. In fact he was hardly aware of ordering food.

‘So, does the bartending and the occasional picture-painting pay the rent? In London?’ he asked.

‘Just about. I can’t say I have much left over at the end of the month...’

Her parents would have loved nothing more than to install her in their grand apartment in Kensington, which was only used when they occasionally decided to descend on the city for the theatre or the opera, but she had always stuck to her guns and refused the offer.

Pride, however, did entail roughing it in a not particularly great part of London and having to put up with a good-natured but lazy landlord who didn’t see a problem with eccentric central heating and appliances that only worked when they felt like it.

‘And yet you’re here...?’

‘Sometimes you’ve just got to live a little.’ Susie blushed and looked away. ‘I should have done what I always wanted to do,’ she said, staring off into the distance. ‘I mean, have you ever found yourself sucked into following a career path that just wasn’t for you?’

She had been eighteen...with no interest in going to university...and the family consensus had been that a secretarial career would at least provide a steady income, with the possibility of branching out at a future date. The unspoken conclusion had been that she was just not academic enough for much else.

‘No.’

‘You mean you’ve always known what you wanted to do with your life? Where you wanted to go and how to get there?’

‘Circumstances have a cunning way of steering us down an inevitable road,’ Sergio murmured, a little surprised to be participating in this abstract conversation.

‘What does that mean?’

‘So you were “sucked into” becoming a secretary...?’

Susie duly noted his avoidance of her question—and yet he had sounded, just then, as though he had been speaking from experience...what experience?

‘It seemed to make sense at the time.’ And anything that made sense had seemed so important at the time—more important than standing her ground and pursuing a career in fine art.

‘But in retrospect it was the biggest mistake of your life, because things that are done because they make sense are not always the things one ends up enjoying...?’

‘That’s so true!’ Susie leaned forward. She laughed, delighted that he had caught on so quickly, had almost read her mind and expressed her thoughts in a handful of words. ‘You’re very insightful,’ she murmured shyly.

Sergio raised his eyebrows. Insightful? One adjective that had never before been applied to him.

‘I wouldn’t get carried away,’ he murmured drily. ‘If I were you I’d remember what I told you before. I’m arrogant...you’d be far better off bearing that in mind...’

CHAPTER TWO

NATURALLY SUSIE OFFERED to pay her half.

‘I insist,’ she told him firmly. ‘I dumped myself on you. The last thing I want is for you to find yourself having to buy dinner for me. And a very expensive dinner as well.’

‘I don’t do anything in life because I have to,’ Sergio informed her. ‘At any rate, I don’t pay when I come here.’

‘You don’t pay? What does that mean?’

‘I have an understanding here...’ So she knew he was rich? That wasn’t too difficult. He was well known—if not because he appeared so often in the financial pages, then because he appeared with equal regularity in the gossip columns of tabloids. Whether she knew what, precisely, he owned, he had no idea—and who cared?

He had already made his mind up.

Maybe he had made it up the second his libido had been galvanised into unexpected reaction.

She had come looking for fun and cash. She was heading in the right direction for fun...

And the cash? He was a generous lover, so who knew? If she was looking for something more significant...if she was in search of involvement on an emotional level...then of course she would be in for a rude awakening. But for the moment he liked the thought of taking her to his bed...removing that provocative little red number inch by gradual inch...and then exploring the body underneath also inch by gradual inch...

‘How can you have an “understanding” with a restaurant?’ Susie asked dubiously. ‘Unless... Are you related to the owner? Or does the owner owe you a favour...?’ She frowned and chewed her lip anxiously. ‘You’re not...not connected to the Mafia, are you?’

For a few seconds Sergio thought he had misheard her, but she was still staring at him, her almond-shaped brown eyes wary.

‘Have you actually just asked me whether I was connected to the Mafia...?’ Incredulity almost deprived him of the power of speech. No one, but no one, had ever dared go this far...

In fact no one, and certainly no woman, had ever dared challenge him in any way.

Maybe because they knew instinctively that he wasn’t into verbal challenges. Some women might think it a turn-on to needle him. The few who had thought so had learned pretty damn quickly that it wasn’t.

He was almost more incredulous that the woman appeared actually to be waiting for an answer!

‘Well?’ she asked, proving him right. ‘You haven’t answered.’

‘No! I am categorically not related to the Mafia!’

‘That’s good.’

‘Because...?’

‘No reason.’ Susie shrugged and realised with a little jolt of horror that she had actually begun to hope that she’d see him again. Begun to hope all sorts of things!

‘Come on...’

Sergio stood up and she instantly followed suit, glaringly conscious of what she was wearing now that she was no longer sitting down.

She slipped the black cape on and when she reached to tighten it around her he rested his hand briefly over hers.

That electric charge again—that hot, fierce current running through her that made her heart skip a beat and the breath catch painfully in her throat.

‘Come on...?’ she parroted weakly. ‘Come on...where?’

Sergio stood next to her, looking down at her upturned heart-shaped face. So many times she should have turned him off completely—starting with her crazy urge to confide and ending with her even crazier notion that he was some kind of gangster...

Yet was he turned off? No. He was a born predator, and he was a little relieved to find all those instincts alive and kicking, having been dormant for way too long for a man like him.

‘A number of choices here...’ Sergio murmured, enjoying the hectic colour in her cheeks and marvelling that she could marshal her expression into exactly the one she wanted to have on show.

‘Really?’ Susie squeaked, obediently falling in line with him as he headed out, oblivious to the covert stares following him and certainly oblivious to whoever was responsible for supplying him with free food—whoever he had his so-called ‘understanding’ with... Maybe the maître d’, who had not reappeared but who had been visible out of the corner of her eye, keeping a watchful nervous eye on their table.

Just in case, Susie thought, she outstayed her welcome and needed to be flung out urgently and without delay.

‘Option one...’ He pulled out his mobile, quickly texted, flipped it shut. On cue, a long, sleek black car appeared out of nowhere. He held open the passenger door for her and she hesitated—because he was, after all, a complete stranger.

Maybe not a member of the Mafia, but still a stranger! She wouldn’t have dreamt of getting in a car with anyone she’d met online dating, so why was she now contemplating it?

‘Option one is that we move on from here to somewhere else. I’m a member of an exclusive club in Knightsbridge. They do an excellent selection of after-dinner liqueurs.’

‘I can’t get into this car with you...’ She eyed the luxurious interior with unhealthy longing.

He had a chauffeur. There was someone at the wheel. It wouldn’t actually be just the two of them...

‘Option two is that we just head back to my place and cut through the middleman. A twenty-minute drive at this time of night. The views from my apartment would astound you.’

Susie gulped. ‘And—and option three...?’ she stammered, no closer to sliding into the back seat of the car and yet no nearer to fleeing the scene either.

‘The third option is that you scamper away and you never see me again.’

He leaned indolently against the open door, everything about his body language unhurried.

He wouldn’t try to stop her if she bolted for the nearest bus. In fact she could almost hear him chuckling under his breath if she chose option three—just as she could still hear him telling her that the things you did because they made sense weren’t always the things you ended up enjoying.

This dark, impossibly sexy, impossibly articulate, impossibly self-assured man was out of her league. She wasn’t the sort of sophisticated, self-confident academic like her sister, who could attract men like him. It just didn’t make any sense.

But neither had that fine art course she had wanted to do... The secretarial course had made sense, and a fat lot of good that had done her in the long run. She had still ended up digging her heels in and doing what she should have done in the first place—except she was now older as she started the climb up the career ladder.

She tightened her coat around her, her heart beating madly. It was cold out here—one of those freezing, sleety January evenings that put a depressing spin on everything. People swarmed around them, some turning to glance back over their shoulders.

‘We could talk...I guess...’

Sergio smiled. Had he doubted that she would take him up on his offer? Not really. He had sensed that charge between them, invisible but so tangible he could almost have reached out and clasped it in the palm of his hand.

‘We could—although I’ve often found that there are far more interesting things to do with a woman than talk. Now, are you going to get in?’

Susie hopped in, breathing in the smell of expensive leather and feeling the warmth of the car wrap around her. She shifted over to the window, still not entirely sure what had propelled her into doing something as extraordinary as climbing into a car with a guy she’d known for all of five minutes.

‘Club or my place?’

Sergio turned to her and all at once she felt the intimacy between them like a force.

His beautiful face was all shadows and dark, brooding angles. God, she could stare at this man and keep staring. The cute guys she had met in the past seemed like inept little boys in comparison. Actually, they probably were. This was a powerful alpha male, the leader of the pack, the king of the jungle, and a shiver of unbridled excitement rippled through her.

‘Well...’

She let that one syllable drag out and for Sergio that was answer in itself. He leaned forward and told his driver to head home, and then he relaxed back, sprawled against the car door and looked at her.

He liked this game she was playing. How many men had she approached in the past? he wondered. How many stories did she have up her sleeve? That hesitant, glorious air of innocence could go a long way...

‘So if you didn’t like secretarial work,’ he said obligingly, very happy to chat to her about the past she probably altered according to her audience, ‘why did you go in for it in the first place?’

‘What do you do?’ Susie asked curiously, as always reluctant to point out all her deficiencies—at least as compared to her gifted family members. Especially to this man who, for reasons unknown, she was driven to try and impress.

Sergio threw her an amused, vaguely disbelieving look and she stared back at him and laughed.

It was an infectious laugh. It was the laugh of someone who enjoyed laughing. His own lips twitched.

‘Share the joke?’ he drawled drily.

‘You think I know who you are, don’t you? I bet you still think I’m after whatever money you have —even though I’ve told you that I’m not.’

‘You surely must have heard of me?’ Sergio heard himself say.

Her laughter subsided into a grin. ‘Why?’

‘Because my name crops up regularly. I’m either making money or giving it away.’

‘What does that mean?’

The undercurrent threading through their conversation felt dangerous, heady and compelling. The way those deep, penetrating eyes roved over her made her feel hot and breathless, and she had never enjoyed a sensation more in her life.

‘It means I make money—and lots of it.’

‘Doing what?’

‘All sorts of things,’ Sergio said with a shrug. ‘I buy things, take things over, invest in things, build things... I own the restaurant, as a matter of fact. It’s one of five scattered across the country that specialise in superb food and an edgy atmosphere.’

‘You own that restaurant?’

Her mouth fell open and Sergio couldn’t help himself. He laughed.

‘Are you telling me you weren’t aware of that?’

‘Why should I be?’ She looked at him, bemused. ‘I honestly had no idea,’ she told him. ‘And if you really and truly believe that I only went there to try and get your attention because you’re rich, then you can ask your driver to stop and I’ll get out and find my own way back home.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

She didn’t answer. Instead she rapped on the glass partition separating them from his driver. He caught her wrist and held on to it until she reluctantly met his eyes.

‘You headed straight over to my table,’ he said grimly. ‘You sat down uninvited until you managed to wangle dinner, and now here you are, in my car, heading back to my place... What’s a billionaire supposed to think?’

Susie yanked her hand away, stung, because what he said might make sense on the surface but was so far from the truth that it was laughable.

Sergio noted the glimmer of tears glazing her eyes and for a few seconds had some doubts about the conclusions he had drawn. She had squeezed herself tightly against the car door and he had the impression that if she could have made herself disappear in a puff of smoke she would have.

‘Well?’ he persisted roughly. ‘What am I supposed to think?’

‘You’re supposed to believe what I’ve told you.’

He laughed humourlessly. ‘Women have an unfortunate habit of acting out of character the second they’re exposed to a man with a lot of money.’

‘Do they? I wouldn’t know. I want to get out. I want to go home. I should never have agreed to get in this car with you in the first place. You think I’ve only done it because I’m after your money and you don’t want to believe me when I tell you that you’re wrong. Well, how do I know that you’re an honourable guy? How do I know that you’re not going to take me back to your place and...and...?’

‘Don’t even think of going there!’

Sergio was genuinely outraged that she could believe the worst of him but he grudgingly recognised the irony of the situation. He wasn’t prepared to believe a word of what she was saying so why should she believe a word of what he was telling her? He clearly had money, but that didn’t mean he was...an honourable guy...

He vaguely wondered what she’d meant by that anyway.

‘I don’t need to force myself on women,’ he said flatly.

Susie could believe that. He had a point. ‘So if I told you that I wanted to get out—right here, right now...?’

‘I wouldn’t try and stop you.’

He raked impatient fingers through his dark hair and shot her a fulminating look from under his lashes. Had he ever had so much conversation with any woman before getting into bed with her? Sure, he might discuss the state of the world, what was happening in the news, politics... The women he dated always enjoyed displaying the length, breadth and width of their intellect...

But feelings...?

He met her stubborn stare and sighed. ‘Why were you trying to find a man through the internet? Hasn’t anyone ever told you that it’s not safe?’

Susie relaxed. He had meant it when he had told her that he would drop her off if she asked. She had seen it in his eyes. And she believed him when he said that he had no need to force himself on a woman. She imagined his danger was in trying to escape women forcing themselves on him.

He might be suspicious and downright offensive, but he was up front. And so, so exciting.

‘Have you any idea how hard it is, finding a date in London? When you don’t do the clubbing scene and don’t have a fancy, high-powered job where there are loads of unattached eligible males?’

‘No.’

‘Hard. I mean, I know a lot of guys, but my friends tend to be...well...’ She frowned. ‘They’re creative types. A couple of graphic designers who freelance... One makes amazing designs for wallpapers...three work in publishing...’

‘And eligible men?’ Sergio asked, moving the conversation along, curious in spite of himself.

‘Lots of men—but none of them are what you might call “eligible”. To be honest, quite a few of the guys I know are gay...so when one of my friends suggested I see what was out there on the internet, I didn’t think it was such a bad idea. Besides...’

She talked a lot, but strangely he didn’t seem to mind. He wondered whether it was the lingering effect of the red dress. Or the novelty of someone who didn’t see it as her duty to show him how bright she was and how many degrees she had obtained to get where she had. Or the way her blonde hair spilled over her shoulders in unruly curls.

‘Besides...?’ he inserted encouragingly.

‘I have a wedding coming up.’

Sergio could smell a convoluted story in the making. For the moment, however, his initial suspicions about her were on the back burner. He hadn’t discarded them completely, but he wasn’t going to allow them to dictate the outcome of this very, very unusual encounter.

‘I’m boring you, aren’t I?’

‘On the contrary. You’re taking me down all sorts of roads I’ve never travelled before.’

‘Am I?’ Susie wasn’t sure whether she should be flattered by that or offended. She hesitated, distracted by what he had said. ‘What sort of roads do you normally go down with...er...women...?’

Sergio spread his hands wide and shot her a rueful, amused smile that did all those wonderful tingly things to her body. ‘The women I date are almost exclusively career women...’

‘Oh. Right. I see.’ Disappointment bit into her because it made sense. He was rich and he was smart. Of course he would be attracted to smart and probably rich women. Like always attracted like, didn’t it? ‘Career women...’

‘Big jobs...daily decision-making that in some cases can affect the lives of the people around them...packed agendas and hectic schedules...’

Saying it aloud made him wonder what he saw in those types, but that was just a fleeting thought because he knew exactly what he saw in them—just as he knew exactly the sort of women he had programmed himself to avoid like the plague.

Dominique Duval.

It was a name that didn’t often spring to mind. He had ruthlessly and successfully eliminated it from conscious thought. But vocalising the sort of women he dated had thrown up the comparison and his lips thinned with instant distaste. The past might be buried deep but it was never truly forgotten, was it?

‘What’s the matter?’ Susie leaned forward, startled by his darkening expression and immediately jumping to the conclusion that she was somehow responsible for it. And then almost as quickly she got annoyed, because she hadn’t said anything that could remotely be construed as offensive.

When it came to being offensive he was the one winning the race!

‘Just thinking back to a very significant person in my life.’ Sergio’s voice was cold and hard. ‘A delightful woman who has ensured that when it comes to any sort of involvement with the opposite sex I always make sure to steer clear of types like her. Learning curves...’ He was smiling again, the tightness around his mouth gone although his eyes were still cool. ‘I like to pay attention to them...’

‘Me too.’

Susie didn’t know what had just happened there. What she did know was that she wasn’t going to go down Confidence Lane and start telling him all about her family and her learning curves.

She was already reaching the conclusion that the only reason he had even glanced in her direction was because of her novelty value. If he only dated clever career women, someone plonking herself at his table with a long-winded tale of online dating mishaps would have been a shock to the system.

So who was this woman who had shaped his responses to the opposite sex and determined the sort of women he chose to date? She assumed some past love affair. Maybe he had fallen in love with the wrong girl? The fact that he had taken it so badly—badly enough to change the way he looked at his relationships—was telling. He had fallen in love and got burned.

Her thoughts rambled on until she surfaced to hear him asking her about the wedding she had mentioned.

‘Wedding?’ She gave an airy laugh and flapped her hand in a dismissive gesture. ‘What wedding?’

‘The one you have coming up... You were about to launch into a tale of young love and confetti...’

‘Wow. You live here? Isn’t this the most expensive place to live on the planet?’ She craned forward, squinting into the darkness and staring up and up and up at the spire of glass rising into the clouds.

As a diversion from a conversation she no longer wanted to have, it worked.

The apartment her parents owned was nice. No, it was better than nice. It was in a great location, and had been refurbished to a high standard, but this was the stuff of dreams—a place ordinary mortals never got to see.

She had genuinely forgotten the ‘wedding on the horizon’ conversation.

‘Impressed?’ Sergio was exiting the car and swinging round to open the passenger door for her, but she had already hopped out and was staring.

‘Very impressed,’ she confessed.

That came as no big surprise to Sergio. He imagined her place as somewhere small and damp and in poor condition, languishing in a fairly unsavoury location. Possibly directly under a flight path.

It had begun to rain—a fine, dreary drizzle. It was after ten on a dark, wintry night but there was the alluring promise of excitement within the walls of his massive apartment and he felt like a randy teenager at the conclusion of a first date with the hottest girl in school.

They were whooshed up to his apartment in a glass elevator and finally, as he pushed open the door to his apartment, she managed to find her voice, which had got lost somewhere between the vast foyer and the fifteenth floor.

‘This is...incredible—but I guess you know that already...’ She laughed nervously and stared around her at a marvel of modernism. Cool abstract paintings, most of which she recognised, were hung strategically on the walls and there was an awful lot of pale marble everywhere.

She was in his apartment...

There was nothing to be nervous about. She repeated that mantra to herself as he dutifully made noises about the layout of the apartment.

So many rooms... And whilst he was obviously accustomed to the artwork, to the vast scale of everything, the avant-garde kitchen where the marble gave way to wood, the sitting area which was dominated by creams and whites... Well, she was more and more impressed with every passing step.

She peppered him with questions. Asked him how long he had lived there, if he knew his neighbours—which for some reason he found very funny—wondered aloud what would happen if he spilled red wine over the white leather sofa...

She chattered ceaselessly—because whether or not she should be nervous, she was.

With all her online dates—three of them, because number four had bitten the dust before they could actually meet—she had ultimately been in control. Public places, superficial conversation, awkward goodbyes...

She had not, even in passing, been tempted to go anywhere with them except to the door, where they’d parted company in different directions.

And both her relationships had started life in the friendship arena and then progressed from friendship through to curiosity and into a relationship before morphing back into friendship.

This...was different.

‘Perhaps some coffee...?’ she said.

So she was looking for a relationship? Why hide from that? He wasn’t. And definitely not with someone like her. She wasn’t a career woman who could talk about business stuff. That were the sort of women he dated, went out with, would consider a candidate for a relationship. He had said so himself. She was a one-off.

And he was a one-off for her as well. He was...this was...lust. No more, no less. Heck, she was aware of him with every fibre of her being—could feel his presence like a forbidden thrill.

So they were even. Weren’t they?

Still...a cup of coffee might settle her nerves. She pictured them heading up to that split galleried landing straight to his bedroom...where he would turn to her, expecting her to launch herself into abandoned sex when in fact she might have had two boyfriends but she was woefully short on the sort of experience she figured he would be used to.

‘You want...coffee...? At this hour?’ Sergio leaned against the kitchen counter and looked at her evenly.

‘Maybe a nightcap...’ A strong dose of hard liquor would definitely steady her nerves. Or else knock her out completely. Both options were preferable to the frantic flutter in her stomach.

‘Sit down,’ Sergio told her gently.

He propelled her towards one of the black leather chairs at the kitchen table and then perched on the side of the table, which was a beaten metal affair the likes of which she had never seen in her life before. She stared at it fixedly and tried not to let her eyes wander to the strain of his trousers pulling taut across a muscular thigh.

‘So you want either a cup of coffee or a nightcap?’ he mused, tilting her face upwards so that she could look at him.

What was he to think? He didn’t know. They were in his apartment and she should be coming on to him. That was how the game was played. Was this some cunning ploy to hold his interest? He didn’t want to let go of his natural instinct to suspect the unexpected, but some other natural instinct inside him—one that had never surfaced before—was pushing him in a different direction.

‘Either or...’ Susie blinked and licked her lips.

‘Do you usually have nightcaps?’

‘Not usually, no...’

‘Only when you go on dates?’

‘I...I don’t really do a lot of dating, as it happens.’

‘Just random ones with strange men you meet on the internet?’

‘I would never have dreamt of having any sort of nightcap with any of those guys I arranged to meet,’ she told him truthfully. ‘They were pretty awful. Well, not awful. Just...boring and average...’

‘Is there a hidden compliment in there somewhere for me?’

‘You really are arrogant!’ But a little smile hovered on her lips and she relaxed fractionally.

‘And you’re very sexy,’ Sergio told her bluntly. ‘So why the hell do you think that the only way to meet a man is on the internet?’

‘You think I’m sexy?’

‘I think you’re sexy. Beyond that, I don’t know what to think—and, take it from me, that’s a first.’ He stood up and sauntered over to a complicated coffee maker. ‘Now, I’m going to make you a cup of coffee and then I’m going to get my driver to take you back to your place.’

‘No!’

She would never see him again. Thrown into a state of confusion by the tumult of emotion that accompanied that thought, Susie stared at him, dry-mouthed.

Sergio ignored her outburst. He wasn’t up for this—however intriguing it might be and however much it rescued him from his emotional torpor. This was a complication, and he could do without complications.

When it came to women, he liked to know what he was dealing with. He had no idea what he was dealing with here. Gold-digger? A sexy little number who wanted to press all his buttons and was doing so via a roundabout route? Or an up front and honest young girl who genuinely had no idea of her own sex appeal? And how up front and honest could she really be if she was out there, trawling the internet, advertising herself on the open market?

‘Look...’ Coffee made, Sergio sat next to her at the kitchen table. ‘Somehow I found myself in your company tonight. Not what I had planned on. In fact I had planned on working, having something to eat and coming back here on my own.’

His keen eyes noted the slight tremble of her hands as she cradled the mug between them. If this was acting, then she should be up for an award.

‘That said, I was more than happy with the change of plan. I have no idea who you really are, or what you really want from me, but like I said...you’re sexy. And I’ve been celibate for two months, which is two months too long for me. But I’m not interested in going round the houses to get there. Now, drink up and I’ll see you to the front door.’

‘What do you mean that you have no idea who I am or what I want from you...?’

Sergio gave a sigh of pure frustration. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever talked so much with a woman before sex.’

Susie blushed and hurriedly sipped her coffee, then cleared her throat. ‘You mean you just beckon a woman across, lead her to the nearest bed and...and...?’

‘Oh, we talk...’ Sergio laughed softly, enjoying the arousal that was making itself felt all over again, despite the fact that the traffic lights had turned red and he knew it was time to stop. ‘High-powered career women generally have a great deal to say. It’s all very civilised. We discuss the state of the world, and once that foreplay’s done we head to bed.’

‘Oh.’

And tonight for a while he had been caught up in the novelty of someone who didn’t have a great deal to say on the state of the world, but he wasn’t so caught up that he was going to wade through her sudden attack of nerves and hold her hand because she was suddenly feeling panicky.

He was a sophisticated man who liked sophisticated ladies but he had been willing to step out of the box for a brief session with her.

‘I’d better be on my way, then.’ She stood up, not looking at him. ‘And I’m sorry. You know... I guess it’s not really on... Well, it’s really not on to lead a guy on. Which I wasn’t doing. Actually. Because when I agreed to come here with you I thought... Well, I guess it’s just not like me to have a one-night stand.’ She frowned. ‘In fact I’ve never had a one-night stand in my life before and I’ve never been tempted to. I don’t know what came over me. Maybe it was just...walking in there and seeing Colonel Mustard at the bar... I wouldn’t have approached you otherwise, you know...’

Sergio raised one hand to halt the stream of introspective conversation.

‘I’m getting the picture,’ he said wryly.

He ushered her out of the kitchen. He was doing the right thing. He would deal with his unwanted arousal later. In the shower. Turned to cold. That should do the trick.

‘Just out of interest,’ he drawled, once they were in the hall. ‘if you’re not the kind of girl who goes in for exciting, racy one-night stands, why the hell did you agree to this in the first place?’

He leaned against the wall and watched as she took her time fumbling with the black coat, belting it around her waist before raising her eyes to meet his.

‘I don’t know,’ Susie admitted. ‘I...I fancied you...’ She went bright red and her eyes skittered away.

And that, Sergio thought, was how a guy could get insanely turned on. She could barely meet his eyes. She sounded as though the admission had been dragged out of her.

What kind of a guy would he be if he let her go away with nothing?

He moved forward, cupped his big hand behind the nape of her neck and saw her eyes widen with a mixture of surprise and hot excitement.

In that split instant he knew that he could have her if he wanted. He had never wanted anything so much in his life before, but was he going to have her? No. He would stick to what he knew. Safer that way. A controlled life was a life with no nasty surprises.

His mouth hovered tantalisingly close to hers and she whimpered and linked her hands around his waist. She was so wet! She eased the ache by widening her stance a little, when all she wanted was for him to put his hand there and rub away the discomfort, give her some release.

Sergio breathed in her scent, light and floral and clean.

With a groan, he lowered his head and forgot...everything. Her lips parted readily...her tongue flicked to meet his. He was barely aware of propelling her backwards, so that she was pressed against the wall and he was pressed against her. He moved against her, wanting nothing more than to rip off the black cape and hoist up the flimsy nothing of a dress. He wanted to yank her panties down and just take her...right here in the hallway...up against the wall...with her legs wrapped around him...

It took a few dazed seconds for her eyes to flutter open as he tore himself away and stood back.

‘Why have you stopped?’ Her nerves had gone, banished under the impact of that kiss. She hated the cooling distance he was putting between them and the fact that the bedroom beyond that short flight of stairs was no longer too scarily close for comfort.

‘It’s no good.’ Hot blood was still pumping thick and hard in his veins. ‘You’re not my type.’

He should never have made a move on her—never invited her back here. But he was just so damned accustomed to having exactly what he wanted, to taking exactly what he wanted.

He clenched his jaw as he saw her hurt expression and told himself that this was just the sort of episode that would make her stronger. Get her off the internet for a start.

‘You’re either a gold-digger,’ he said coolly, ‘or a naive kid—and I’m not interested in either.’

‘I’m not experienced enough for you...or clever enough...’

‘Don’t put words into my mouth. I’m telling it like it is—and here’s something else... If I were you I’d think twice about trying to find your soul mate on the internet. It’s a dangerous place out there...’

But not as dangerous as the inside of an exclusive restaurant in the city...

Susie knew that she shouldn’t care. Okay, so she might go away with her pride slightly dented, but he had probably done the right thing.

She drew herself up and returned his cool look with an equally cool one of her own. ‘Thanks for the advice. And if you’re glad you didn’t end up in bed with me because I’m not your type, then I’m just as glad that I didn’t end up in bed with you because you’re not my type.’

She forced herself to smile...the casual, dismissive smile of one adult to another.

‘And I’m not as naive as you think I am,’ she lied, tossing her head. ‘In fact I’m more than capable of taking care of myself and of having a one-night stand, if I ever want one!’

‘I’m glad to hear it. Car’s outside, Susie...it’s been a...a highly unusual encounter...’

God, just his voice was enough to send shivers racing up and down her spine.

She held out her hand in response and pinned a smile on her face as he reached to pull open the front door. ‘Thanks for dinner. And I hope you find the businesswoman of your dreams. I’ll keep looking for the fun guy of my dreams...’

And she dashed out of the open door, back down in that glass lift and slap-bang outside into his chauffeur driven car. She dived in, slamming the door after her and making sure she didn’t glance back as she was driven away.

CHAPTER THREE

SERGIO HAD SEEN the curiosity in the florist’s eyes when he had placed his order. One hundred roses in five different colours. He could almost see the question taking shape at the back of her mind... Who’s the lucky girl?

Stanley, his driver, was a lot more forthcoming than the florist.

‘Who’s the lucky girl?’

Sergio caught his driver’s eye in the rear-view mirror and thought about ignoring the question.

The roses had been carefully placed in the boot, all neatly wrapped in cellophane with straw bows, their cut stems nestling in little bags of water.

‘The “lucky girl” is the one you dropped home the week before last—not that it’s any of your business, Stanley. In case you’ve forgotten the contents of your How to Be a Good Chauffeur manual, it’s not your place to ask questions about matters that don’t concern you.’

‘Ah. You must be keen. The flowers usually only get pulled out at the end of one of your little flings, sir, and even so...never roses...and never that many!’

‘Just drive, Stanley.’

‘Nice little thing, if you don’t mind me saying.’

‘I’m about to make an important call, and as a matter of fact I do mind.’

‘You’ll need to be careful with that one, sir.’

Sergio gave up. He had employed Stanley for over ten years—rescued him from an inner city project that aimed to rehabilitate petty criminals and chronically out of work men back into the community by training them up in stable jobs.

It was one of the many charities sponsored by Sergio’s vast conglomerate of companies.

Some of the lads went into manual labour. Working in garden centres, building sites, in restaurants... Stanley, aged twenty-eight now, once an expert car thief, had come to work for him, and their relationship had prospered against all odds.

Stanley was irreverent, outspoken, unimpressed by Sergio’s trappings of wealth, and eternally grateful to have been rescued from a life of bouncing in and out of prison. He was a good lad gone bad, thanks to circumstances, and had been waiting for someone just like Sergio to get him back on the right track.

Sergio secretly enjoyed his driver’s lack of due respect. He was loyal, would have lain down in front of a train for Sergio, and he knew cars like the back of his hand.

‘I expect you’re about to tell me why...?’

‘Only if you want me to, sir. Wouldn’t want to overstep my brief.’

‘Spit it out, Stanley, and then focus on the road. I don’t want to end up in a ditch because you’re busy imparting your pearls of wisdom and not paying attention to your driving. Don’t forget that your terms of employment are to drive me and not talk incessantly.’

It was not yet five in the evening, but already dark, with a fine persistent drizzle that made the pavements look slick and shiny, as though they had been covered with a fine layer of oil.

‘She’s not like the other women you go out with, if you don’t mind me saying, sir. This one’s...different... Don’t ask me why—just a feeling I got when I was dropping her back...’

Sergio wondered whether that feeling would be diluted if Stanley knew the circumstances surrounding their meeting—if he knew that the nice little thing had shown up at his restaurant dressed to kill in a tight red dress on a supposedly mystery date with a mystery guy which may or may not have been the real reason for being there in the first place.

‘But I’ll leave you to get on with that important phone call now, sir. Wouldn’t want you kicking me out because I’m not doing my job to Your Highness’s satisfaction.’

He began to hum under his breath, leaving Sergio to get on with his thoughts.

He was being driven to Susie’s house on a mission that included a hundred roses of varying colours and he didn’t really know why—except that he hadn’t been able to get her out of his head. He’d met the woman once, under dubious circumstances, was not convinced that she wasn’t a gold-digger, had not even slept with her, and yet...

Under normal circumstances women did not intrude into his working life. They didn’t show up at his office, they didn’t phone him on his office line, and they never interfered with his thought processes when they weren’t physically around. When he was with a woman he enjoyed her with every fibre of his being. When she wasn’t around she was forgotten. It was just the way he was.

Unfortunately he had spent so much time thinking about Susie that he hadn’t been able to focus. He had found himself drifting off twice during meetings, staring at his computer without really seeing the lines and columns in front of him, having to get his secretary to repeat herself on several occasions because his mind had wandered off.

He had no idea why this particular encounter had left him so distracted. It wasn’t as though she was the most beautiful woman he had ever laid eyes on, nor the smartest. Her intentions were open to debate, and she had, frankly, led him up the garden path by giving off all the right signals about wanting to climb into bed with him and then, when his libido was through the roof, backing away and shooting out of his apartment like a bat out of hell.

So here he was. He didn’t know what he intended to say when he showed up on her doorstep. He didn’t even know if he would find her at home. Maybe she had already dry-cleaned the little red dress and was wearing it at some other rich man’s hangout, on the hunt for another billionaire—someone a little less daunting.

He didn’t care for the thought, and rather than spend the trip brooding consoled himself with the very pleasing prospect that if she was at home he would have some fun plumbing the depths of that attraction she had talked about instead of being noble and resisting what was on offer.

He’d never done that before and he’d been a fool to do it with her.

That was probably why he had found himself at the local florist and now here, in the back seat of his car. He was allergic to self-denial.

‘We’re here, sir.’ Stanley killed the engine and met Sergio’s eyes.

‘She lives here?’

Sergio peered through the drizzle to a grim little selection of shops...a newsagent, a fish and chip takeaway, a few more that were already closed for the night and barricaded so securely that it made you wonder what sort of people lived in the neighbourhood.

‘Flat above the shops, sir.’

Even grimmer. ‘Should be fun, transporting the roses up to her flat,’ he mused aloud. ‘Who lives in a place like this, Stanley?’

‘Several of my relatives, sir—and those would be the lucky ones.’

Sergio grunted. ‘Do you know her flat number, or do we have to ring all the bells and hope for the best?’

‘Flat number nine, sir. Saw her up to her front door myself.’

* * *

Susie was barely aware of her doorbell ringing until she turned down the television. The doorbell, like everything else in the tiny flat, was eccentric—sometimes working, sometimes not, and very often ringing so quietly that she had to strain her ears to hear it.

It was Friday evening and she had declined all company. Definitely no more online dating. The daring red number had been cleaned and was hanging at the back of the wardrobe as a reminder of her mistake.

Sergio Burzi.

She had looked him up on the internet—not to read what was said about him, because she wasn’t that interested, but to gaze at the pictures of him...which didn’t do him justice at all.

It amazed her that one random meeting with a perfect stranger had managed to throw her whole life out of kilter.

She daydreamed. She changed reality so that she had ended up spending the night with him. She wondered what it might have been like. She projected herself into a future that they would never have and fantasised about having a relationship with him—a proper relationship.

Then she remembered what he had said about the women he dated, what he had told her about the sort of women he was drawn to. Women like her sister, Alex. Clever, high-powered women, who knew what they wanted out of life the very second they emerged from the womb.

Another feeble ring from the doorbell and she padded across to the front door. Ten seconds was all it took. Her flat was so small that she could practically flick on the television in the poky sitting room while frying an egg in the kitchen.

She thought of Sergio’s apartment. So vast...so modern...a stunning space where everything worked and did what it was supposed to do. The lights didn’t flicker ominously, the fridge didn’t stage protests against being too well stocked, the sofas didn’t sag in the middle...and the bed... She could only think that his bed would be ten times the size of hers and wouldn’t creak every time he moved.

Susie knew that she had to snap out of her torpor because it wouldn’t get her anywhere. Her mother had telephoned the very day after her dinner with Sergio and had peppered her with questions about the new restaurant. She had been irritated when Susie had responded in monosyllables and made a great effort to try and change the conversation, having put Louise Sadler straight and told her that there had been no nice man sharing the meal with her.

Then her mother had launched into a speech about Clarissa’s wedding—about how delighted everyone was that she was getting married, that it wouldn’t be long before a grandchild was on the way for her mother...Louise Sadler’s sister.

Susie’s mother had a long-running, just below the surface competitive edge with her aunt, Kate. Two years separated them, and rumour had it that the Thornton sisters had been competing from the second her mother—the younger of the two—had uttered her first words.

Louise had married first, but Kate had had a child first. Louise had had a job with more status, but Kate’s had earned her more money.

And now Kate’s daughter Clarissa was hopping up the aisle—the first in the family to do so.

Susie shuddered to think of her mother’s reaction if Clarissa got pregnant and had a baby nine months after the wedding ring had been put on her finger.

It was bad enough that Alex was so involved in her fabulously important job as a neurosurgeon that there was no sign of any boyfriend on the horizon. At least in the case of her sister Louise had the ‘fabulous job’ to fall back on—about which she never stopped boasting.

But Susie...

No fabulous job and no boyfriend either. In fact not even any friends who were boys who could give her mother anything to brag about.

Was it any wonder that she had toyed with the idea of finding Mr Perfect via the internet? Was it any wonder that she had fallen for all those cosy pictures of loving couples and actually believed that rubbish about perfect endings?

Fighting down another wave of self-pity, she pulled open the door—to a barrage of flowers. Bunches and bunches and bunches of roses—so many roses that it had taken two people to cart them up to her flat, although she couldn’t see who they were because they were shielded by the flowers.

‘Sorry, you’ve got the wrong place.’

She moved to shut the door. Somewhere in the building some lucky girl was being bombarded with flowers, and she didn’t want to be reminded of the fact that the lucky girl wasn’t her.

‘I would have gone more easy on the quantity if I had known that your flat was so small...’

Susie’s mouth fell open. Her heart started beating so hard that she felt giddy. The palms of her hands began to perspire. Her whole body began to perspire.

She watched as Sergio emerged from the garden centre on her doorstep.

He was as sexy as she remembered. As tall, as dark, as striking. Dark jeans clung to his lean hips and he was wearing a striped rugby jumper and loafers. It was cold outside, and she wondered how he could find a trench coat adequate cover. It was hooked over his shoulder with one finger.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘That will be all, Stanley.’ He addressed the man next to him without taking his eyes from Susie’s face.

‘Why are you here?’ she repeated in a dazed voice, barely aware of so many flowers being put inside her flat that she probably wouldn’t be able to turn a full circle when she shut the door.

But through the daze pleasure was zinging through her—because this was one of her fantasies...the one that involved him seeking her out.

Excitement gripped her, twisting her insides and turning her legs to jelly. He was giving orders to Stanley, the really great guy who had driven her back to her flat and seen her up to her front door the previous week, in true gentleman style.

And then there were just the two of them, staring at one another, until she was knocked for six by his slow, curling smile.

* * *

He’d done the right thing.

Sergio knew that the very second the door was pulled open and he saw her again. No red dress this time. No dress at all. Baggy jogging bottoms and a grey jumper and fluffy bright pink bedroom slippers.

The sex kitten was nowhere in evidence. In her place was a small, cute, freckle-faced, vanilla-haired girl who was gaping at him as though he had materialised out of nowhere.

And she was even sexier than he remembered.

‘Are you going to ask me in?’ He lounged against the door frame and continued to look at her.

‘How did you find me? No, I know. Stanley knows where I live. I’m surprised he remembered the route.’

‘He’s talented when it comes to remembering places.’

‘And maybe you’d like to tell me what the heck you’re doing here?’

For a few seconds Sergio was completely thrown by that question. Automatic entry had been his expectation. Explanations to follow—not that he had really anticipated many of those. He had shown up, hadn’t he? This was the first time he had ever done anything like this before, and it hadn’t crossed his mind that she wouldn’t be delighted with the gesture.

‘Come again?’

‘The last time I saw you, you told me that I was either a gold-digger or a simpleton and you weren’t interested in having anything to do with me.’

‘I don’t believe I used the word simpleton.’

‘As good as,’ Susie retorted, her body as stiff as a plank of wood. She might have daydreamed about this, but now that he was here she couldn’t just shove aside the fact that he had turned her away. ‘I’m not your type...remember...?’

‘I’ve come bearing flowers,’ Sergio said incredulously, raking his fingers through his hair and wondering how such a generous gesture could garner a cross-examination.

‘That still doesn’t excuse what you said to me.’

But she yearned to fling open the door and let him in. Her whole body throbbed, remembering the way his lips had felt against hers, wanting more...much more.

‘We can talk about this inside. Let me in. Please, Susie?’

Susie hesitated and then grudgingly stepped aside so that he could enter. As soon as he entered he seemed to fill the entire place. She busied herself gathering the flowers. She had two vases, into which she crammed as many as she could, and then she rested the remainder by the window to be sorted out later.

For the moment...

She retreated to the sofa and sat down, drawing her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them.

‘I admit I questioned your motives,’ Sergio said heavily. He perched uncomfortably on the far end of the sofa. ‘Can you blame me?’

‘And what’s made you change your mind.’

Sergio wasn’t sure he actually had changed his mind, but he figured that complete honesty in this instance would be a mistake. The main thing was that she had managed to get to him in a way other women hadn’t, for reasons he couldn’t define, and if indeed she did turn out to be a gold-digger then she wouldn’t get very far—especially as he knew what to look out for.

‘I turned you away because...’ He stood up and restlessly prowled through the room, subliminally clocking the fact that in between the dusty furnishings and tired decor there were one or two items of spectacular worth.

What did that say? What would she say if he pointed them out to her? How was it that she couldn’t afford somewhere better to live when hanging on the wall was a tiny but extremely valuable abstract painting by an up-and-coming artist? And nestled amongst the bric-a-brac on the mantelpiece was what appeared to be an original Tiffany lamp?

His jaw tightened. Even recognising those anomalies, he still found that he was driven to stay put.

‘Because...’ he resumed his seat on the sagging sofa ‘...if you’re a gold-digger then nothing’s going to come of your efforts, and if you’re just hopelessly naive then I was doing you a favour, because you’ll end up getting hurt by me.’

Susie frowned. ‘What makes you say that?’

‘I don’t do long-term relationships.’

‘And what makes you think that I do? No, I take that back... What makes you think that I would cast you in the role of someone I want to have a long-term relationship with?’

‘Women have a habit of becoming over-involved...’

‘You’re...an attractive man,’ she said carefully, ‘but there’s no chance that I would ever become “over-involved” with someone like you...’

‘Someone like me?’

‘I’m a creative person...’

She thought of her parents’ response to the creative types she had introduced to them in the past. Perhaps some of her friends had been a little too creative.

‘It’s not as though I would necessarily want to get involved with someone exactly like me...but I would want to get involved with someone funny, thoughtful, considerate, kind, sensitive... A guy like that would never accuse me of being a gold-digger, and he would never tell me that I’m so naive that I can’t take care of myself—and he would definitely never be so downright arrogant as to assume that I would fall head over heels in love with him, given half a chance! I mean...who do you think you are, anyway...?’

Sergio was frankly lost for words. He wondered whether he should mention that there wasn’t another woman on the planet who would react to his appearance at her front door, carrying half a shop’s worth of expensive roses, by digging her heels in and giving him a furious lecture on all his failings.

‘I came here because I felt there was unfinished business between us,’ was all he could find to say.

Susie raised her eyebrows.

‘Didn’t you?’ he asked softly. ‘Feel like there was unfinished business between us?’

She hesitated.

Was that what she had been feeling?

Torn between wanting to assert her independence and show him that he couldn’t just turn up at her door with a bunch of flowers and expect her to swoon and just give in to whatever it was that had taken her over like a virus, she was stuck for words.

‘Well?’ Sergio inserted smoothly, firing on all cylinders and interpreting her hesitation correctly for what it was. ‘I couldn’t stop thinking about you...’

He didn’t make a move towards her, but he seemed able to sense every little thought running through her head with his finely tuned antennae. She had an expressive face. So much of him was tempted to give her the benefit of the doubt, to believe that she was as straightforward as she claimed to be, and yet...

Her appearance at the restaurant, the startling red dress, the ease with which she had accompanied him back to his place despite protesting that she wasn’t that sort of girl...those random hugely expensive trinkets dotted around her flat...

‘I’m not your type...’ She looked at him narrowly, licked her lips. He was...formidable—lounging back there on her sofa in all his dark, dangerous, sexy glory.

‘I’m willing to break the mould...’

But she didn’t go in for short-lived affairs—never had. She might have broken up with her last boyfriend but it had been a relationship born from optimism that it would stay the course. Quite different from indulging in something that didn’t stand a chance...

To even think about...anything at all with the man now looking at her with those midnight-blue eyes would be downright reckless.

‘You told me that I wasn’t your type either,’ he reminded her in the same soft, speculative voice that felt like a caress. ‘Maybe it’s just a case of opposites attracting...’

He’d never had to work so hard with any woman before, and he wondered whether it was the irresistible lure of a challenge.

‘You’re not my type.’

‘So why the hesitation? We can both go into this with our eyes wide open and enjoy one another or I can walk out through that door—and I promise you that there won’t be a next time as far as I am concerned. This is the most I’ve ever had to do when it comes to chasing a woman. I’ve exhausted my interest in active pursuit.’

‘You make it sound so...so cold...so businesslike...’

‘I could wrap it up in pretty paper if you’d prefer,’ Sergio said drily. ‘But would that change anything? We’re attracted to one another. I can feel it between us like something alive... And if you come a bit closer and touch me you’ll certainly feel just how attracted to you I am and just how much I want to make love to you right now...’

Her heart skipped a beat. She remained where she was. He was right. There was a spark of electricity between them that crackled and there was no point denying that. And so what if he was...practical about whatever this was...? So what if he was blunt when it came to doing something about it?

The romantic in her might want to hear all the flowery stuff that came at the start of a relationship—but that flowery stuff didn’t amount to very much most of the time, did it? He was giving her his own unvarnished view of what they had.

Mutual, physical attraction—take it or leave it.

‘Are you so...so cold and detached with other women?’ she asked. Or was he like this only with her because he’d known from the get-go that she wasn’t the sort of woman who would ever be able to hold his interest for very long?

‘You talk a lot...’

But he grinned and a little more of her melted. He had the most amazing grin. It altered the harsh contours of his beautiful face and made him seem suddenly, wildly accessible and even more mind-blowingly sexy. Did he have a turn-on switch for that smile? Was he even aware of how powerful it was?

She blushed, chin resting on her knees, her brown eyes unwavering.

‘Okay!’ Sergio flung his arms wide in a gesture that was a mixture of frustration and amused resignation. ‘So I’m realistic in my approach to relationships? I never make promises I’m in danger of not keeping. I don’t encourage slumber parties. At this stage in my life I’m not interested in playing for keeps...’

‘And you’re always on the lookout for anyone who wants to get too close just because you’re rich...?’

‘That’s right.’ His expression cooled.

‘Because you’ve had a bad experience?’ Susie mused.

‘You could say that,’ he drawled, relaxing. ‘And now is the question-and-answer session over?’

Susie didn’t answer. She was staring into space. He’d been hurt—badly hurt—by someone he’d trusted who had turned out to be after his money. She wondered what this mysterious woman looked like, had been like... It didn’t matter in the big picture, because she wasn’t going to get involved with him, but she was curious nevertheless.

Had he been madly in love with her?

Her stomach gave a little flip, because she couldn’t imagine him being madly in love with anyone. Even after only her brief contact with him he struck her as a man in total control of every aspect of his life.

What woman had had the power to bring this big, powerful man to his knees? She must have been quite something. Hence his learning curve...

‘Stop trying to work me out.’

‘Huh?’ Susie blinked and focused on him.

‘You’re trying to piece me together,’ Sergio said wryly. ‘Don’t. We can enjoy one another without too much in-depth analysis. Come and sit closer to me. It’s driving me crazy, seeing you and not being able to touch.’

Susie stood up, flexed her muscles, which had stiffened. and glanced at the roses taking up half her flat.

‘You’re going to have to take most of these back to your apartment,’ she said, buying time—because there was still a stubborn part of her that didn’t want to fall into his arms at the snap of his fingers. She felt like someone with one foot hanging off the edge of a cliff, even though she didn’t know why because, as he’d said, mutual lust didn’t involve the depth charge of a proper relationship...

This was going to be an adventure that would take her right out of her comfort zone.

She had tried the online dating in search of a soul mate and had found three losers and a would-be loser. She had been out with guys who had been the last word in fun, who had been laid-back and full of creative spark, and she had only been tempted to get close to one of them—and that one had ended up being just a little too much fun for her liking.

Sergio Burzi occupied a place of his own. He had laid his cards on the table. He wanted sex and nothing more. She wasn’t even really sure what he thought of her. Did he still think that she was after what he could give her?

It sounded so weirdly clinical—even though sex was the least clinical thing on the face of the earth.

She didn’t do clinical—not when it came to emotions—but...

What he aroused in her was so overwhelming. She just had to look at his cool, handsome face, just had to hear the deep timbre of his voice, and all her reservations flew out of her head.

She felt his eyes follow her as she strolled towards the window and then turned to look at him.

‘When you do, I’ll help you put them in vases. Or something...’

Sergio relaxed. He hadn’t even known how much he wanted this. ‘It’ll have to be the something...my apartment lacks vases. It’s the first time I will have had flowers returned to me...’

But there was a first time for everything.

Admittedly he had never factored that into his life before, but he was willing to go along for the ride...until, of course, the ride became boring and it was time to get off...

CHAPTER FOUR

BUT RIGHT NOW...

He shut out the nagging little things that didn’t add up. Who cared? She wasn’t being interviewed for the job of being his life partner. This was about lust. This was about sex. He knew from experience that the physical never lasted, however good it was. Sooner rather than later tedium began to set in, and no amount of intellectual sparring could stanch the tide once it had begun.

The advantage of going out with high-powered career women was that they had less potential to become clingy. They had jobs, careers...there wasn’t any danger of them becoming dependent, needy, demanding.

He frowned, distracted by his train of thought.

‘Penny for them?’ Susie said lightly.

‘Come again?’

‘You’re frowning.’ She was drawn to sit right next to him, nestle into him, and she fought off the weakness. He would be very used to getting what he wanted from a woman. So even if this was all about physical attraction surely they could spend a little time talking.

‘It happens occasionally.’ Sergio focused on her with lazy intensity.

‘Why are you frowning? You must have everything you could possibly want in life. Although...’ she chewed her lip thoughtfully ‘...it’s not all about money and possessions, is it? I mean, you have an apartment that most people would kill for, but there’s more to life than a fancy apartment and a fast car...’

‘Are you about to launch into homilies about money not being the be-all and end-all?’

‘You’re so cynical.’

‘I prefer to call it realistic.’ He patted the space next to him and she shuffled along the sofa so that she was sitting a bit closer, with her legs crossed.

Sergio suppressed a sigh of frustration. Why had he thought that this might be a straightforward affair? Two adults attracted to one another who could enjoy one other in a fleeting, no-strings-attached situation? Had he really been stupid enough to imagine that some flowers would seamlessly pave the way?

‘I’ve never been that convinced about the advantages of being realistic,’ Susie said pensively. ‘I mean, I think optimism is much more important.’

Sergio detected the sound of warning bells ringing. ‘Which is precisely why I’m not your type,’ he inserted smoothly.

‘I wish you would stop reminding me of that. It just makes it hard for me to think about doing something that’s not going to last. I’m not an idiot. I know relationships end all the time. But I never thought I’d be the kind of person who gets involved with someone when I know it’s not going anywhere. I never thought I’d waste my time like that.’

‘That’s because this is probably the first time in your life that you’ve fallen prey to that little thing called desire.’ He reached out and lazily stroked her wrist. ‘The red dress was more obvious, but this shapeless outfit of yours is doing all sorts of interesting things to my system... Are you wearing a bra? No, I don’t think you are... Shuffle a bit closer and I can find out one way or the other. Of course if you are wearing a bra then it’s going to have to come off, because I want to feel your breasts in my hands...’

Susie’s breathing quickened. How was she supposed to think when he was saying stuff like that? And was he right? Was she feeling like this, behaving like this, because he turned her on as no one ever had in her life before?

‘I...I...I’ve had a boyfriend,’ she said weakly, clinging to the conversation even though talking was getting difficult when he was looking at her like that, his eyes all brooding and sexy and intense. ‘I know what...physical attraction is all about...’

‘Do you?’ He held the bottom of her jumper between his fingers and gave a gentle tug, which was enough to make her eyelids flutter and her breathing hitch in her throat even more.

No! He was right—she didn’t know a thing about desire...at least not desire like this, which was eating her up, devouring her, making her want to pass out from its intensity...

‘I don’t believe you. I can feel you throbbing for me. You’re hot and you’re wet and you don’t know how much longer you can sit there with your legs crossed, pretending to hold a normal conversation.’

‘You don’t know everything.’

‘When it comes to sex you’d be shocked at how much I know.’

‘I’m not sure I want to hear that.’

‘You want me to touch you... I know you want to hear that. And you can’t begin to imagine how much I want to touch you. Why do you think I came here? This is one of those rare occasions when I’ve done something that makes very little sense...’

Susie liked the sound of that. She liked the thought that she might be driving him a little crazy. Because he was driving her more than a little crazy and she wanted him to touch her so badly that she could scarcely think straight.

‘I’m not wearing a bra,’ she muttered, excited and shocked by the brazenness of that admission.

‘Let me see.’

Her hands were trembling as she lifted the jumper. Was she really doing this? Her breasts felt heavy, sensitive, her nipples pulsing. She had squeezed her eyes tightly shut but now she half opened them to sneak a glance at his face and the heat in his eyes made her giddy.

‘You’re beautiful,’ Sergio muttered. He pressed his hand against his erection to try and control it.

Her breasts were big, her nipples huge pink discs. She projected the air of someone who was unfamiliar with stripping off...shy, hesitant.

Was that image correct? He didn’t give a damn. He just knew that he wanted her.

With a stifled groan he pulled her and she toppled onto him, her breasts squashing against his chest, her heart racing.

They blindly found each other’s lips and the probing of his tongue lit her up like a spark set to dry tinder. Her fingers curled into his hair and she squirmed against him, his clothes a horrible, unwanted barrier between them. When he drew back she hungrily reached forward, kissing the side of his mouth, his neck, breathing softly and erratically against his cheek.

‘I’m too big for this sofa,’ Sergio muttered unsteadily. ‘Tell me you have a real bed here and not some fold-out nonsense.’

‘I have a bed. It creaks.’

‘That’ll do.’

She didn’t know how they made their way to the bedroom. She just knew that they did. She just knew that she found herself lying on her double bed, which took up most of the room, and watching as he slowly...very slowly...began removing his clothes.

She couldn’t peel her eyes away. The constant pale light from the street lamps outside illuminated the room just sufficiently for her to appreciate the awesome, powerful masculinity of his body.

He was honed to physical perfection. Broad, bronzed shoulders and a broad chest with a dusky coating of hair tapered to a slim waist and lean hips. Sometime, while doing whatever he did to be able to afford his standard of living, he must surely get around to doing lots of gruelling exercise.

Her eyes dipped as he stepped out of his boxers, and widened at his impressive erection.

More than anything in the world she wanted to touch herself, to alleviate some of the desperate need coursing through her body.

She marvelled that he could see anything in her at all. Okay, so her intellect might leave him a bit cold, but surely someone that sinfully sexy couldn’t be attracted to her?

But he was.

It was there in his eyes and in a certain stillness about him—as if he was doing his utmost to control himself.

‘Like what you see?’

Some inarticulate choked sound managed to emerge and he grinned.

‘I’m taking that as a yes...’ He strolled towards the side of the bed, watching her watching him. ‘Touch me,’ he ordered huskily.

Susie propped herself up, touched him delicately, and drew courage from the way he reacted—his big erection stiffening even more and a half-heard hiss escaping his lips.

She circled his girth with her hand and then flicked her tongue along the throbbing shaft. His big hand tangled in her hair, controlling her exploring mouth and the flicks of her tongue as she tasted him.

He shuddered...breathed in...exhaled jerkily...finally tugged her away from him, easing the pressure of his fingers in her hair and only slowly regaining his breath.

He arched back, his eyes closed, nostrils flaring. His eyes flickered open and met hers.

Sergio could feel her gentle breath on his erection as she stared up at him. Her blonde hair tumbled over his hand and spilled in curly tangles over her slender shoulders. She still had the wretched jogging bottoms on, but her full breasts hung like ripe fruit, succulent and tantalising.

He had to keep very still, hold himself together, because control was slipping through his fingers faster than a knife through butter. He breathed deeply, drinking her in, then lowered himself onto the bed next to her.

She shuffled to allow him room and flipped over onto her side.

‘You have an amazing body,’ she breathed in frank honesty, and Sergio raised his eyebrows, amused, because women might come on to to him but rarely were they so openly admiring.

She traced her finger along his collarbone, shivering with excitement, and circled one brown nipple.

‘You must go to the gym a lot,’ she murmured.

‘When I find the time.’

He spread his hand over her stomach and eased it under the track pants and under her panties until he felt the downy softness of her pubic hair.

He parted the soft folds of her vagina and slipped his finger into the honeyed dampness between her legs, finding the little bud of her clitoris and rubbing it gently until she was moaning with pleasure.

‘You need to take these things off...’ he said roughly. ‘I’m doing my best to take things slowly, but I can’t guarantee that my efforts are going to last much longer...’

‘I can’t believe we’re doing this...’

‘Let’s save the incredulity for later. I’m going crazy.’

Too damned crazy to keep his hand down there. He tugged the joggers down and she wriggled out of them, taking her underwear at the same time and kicking both to the ground, and then she lay flat on the bed, twisting as he straddled her.

He didn’t give her time to touch his erect penis. He couldn’t. She had already done devastating things to his self-control when she had sucked him.

Now it was his turn. The only way he could try and get his self-control back where it belonged.

He rose up and gazed down at her as she lay there, spread naked beneath him. Her arms were stretched out and the bed was so stupidly small that the tips of her fingers practically touched either side of it. The mattress was lumpy and she was right. The bed creaked. It was anything but a four-poster creation, with satin sheets and gauze curtains, but he couldn’t have been more turned on.

He would take his time.

Difficult when the scent of her filling his nostrils was like a drug.

He lowered his head, took one succulent nipple into his mouth and suckled on it, pulling it in and drawing deep, holding her firm as she wriggled like a little eel, hardly able to contain her mounting excitement.

Her hands kneaded his shoulders and she arched back, breathing fast, her nipple thrust into his mouth, her legs spread wide under him. He nudged between them with his knee, felt her wetness, and had to stop immediately or risk tipping over the edge.

Which would be a first—and not a first he wanted.

He steadied himself, switched to her other nipple, teasing it with his teeth and his tongue while he played with the other one, rubbing it between his fingers, gentle strokes that had her panting.

Her breasts were generous—more than generous, given her stature—but her stomach was flat, her waist slender.

He trailed a path down her ribcage, tickling her with his tongue, pausing only to circle her belly button, and she gave an embarrassed little yelp as he settled between her legs.

This was not the woman in the red dress. The woman in the red dress would have been a hell of a lot more experienced. The woman in the red dress would have played games, would have done her utmost to hold his interest by being inventive and acrobatic. No, this was the girl in the baggy jogging bottoms and the baggy sweatshirt, with no make-up and freckles scattered across the bridge of her nose.

And who was she?

He swept past that question, which had popped into his head from nowhere, because this was definitely not the time to be reflecting on who she was or what her motives were.

She was slick against his tongue, which he flicked into her and along the sensitive crease that sheathed her clitoris. He felt that little stiff bud and tickled it so that she groaned and arched her hips up, allowing him to cup her bottom with his hands.

Dazed, Susie looked down at the dark head moving between her thighs. Nothing in her life had prepared her for this level of eroticism. Part of her really couldn’t believe she was allowing herself to drop all her inhibitions like this, and another part was relishing every single second of the experience.

She bucked against his mouth as she felt herself getting closer and closer to a climax and with a fierce groan he rose up and thrust into her—just one long, deep thrust, as though he couldn’t stop himself. Just as quickly he withdrew with a muttered oath.

‘What’s wrong...? You can’t stop now... Please...’

‘I need to get a condom. I can’t believe...’

He couldn’t believe that he had done the unthinkable—that he had been so turned on that he had entered her without protection, even for a split second.

He placed the condom on with fingers that weren’t quite steady, and this time...

One deep thrust.

He was huge, thick and hard inside her, and it felt so good that she wanted to scream out loud. He began moving, easing himself deeper inside her, moving faster.

Susie wrapped her arms around his neck, her breasts bouncing as their movements meshed until they were moving as one, totally in sync.

Her orgasm was overpowering—shooting her into orbit and subsiding so gradually that it seemed to last for ever—and then she knew that he had come as well, felt his whole body stiffen and heard him groan out loud.

He rolled off her and shielded his face with his arm.

This was normally the moment when his mind began slowly but inexorably turning to work. It was amazing how easily he found it to focus on problems and ongoing deals in the aftermath of lovemaking.

Most times he would allow his body a few minutes to subside, then he would be on his feet, heading for the shower, eyeing the laptop which was always within handy reach.

Tonight was different. She nestled against him, and his instinctive urge to ease her away from that sort of compromising position was absent.

Which was odd, considering he had so many reservations about her.

‘Was I okay?’ she asked shyly, splaying her fingers on his chest and ruffling the dark hair which was so masculine and sexy.

Sergio didn’t think anyone had ended a hot lovemaking session with him with that question on her lips, and he smiled and stroked the hair away from her flushed face.

‘Terrible,’ he said gravely, and then grinned when she tapped him lightly on the arm after a moment’s horrified hesitation. ‘Sorry—I meant brilliant,’ he murmured, meaning every word of it.

‘I didn’t expect you to come here, you know...’ Susie told him softly.

She lay back and stared up at the ceiling, which was in dire need of several coats of paint. She twisted so that she was looking at his profile.

Sergio sighed. Certain things had to be put straight, which was a nuisance—but, whatever and whoever she was, she needed to know that this was just something passing. A virus that would clear from his system in no time at all. He could feel her big brown eyes gazing at him, could feel the softness of her breasts against his arm, and he was startled when his body leapt into arousal once again.

‘Sometimes the unexpected happens...’ He addressed the ceiling, putting one hand on his erection and holding it firmly, because right now it wasn’t going anywhere—not until he had said what he had to say.

He turned to her and breathed in her clean floral scent.

In actual fact this was a speech he never actually had to give—not in so many words. It was always understood that, whilst he might thoroughly enjoy a woman’s company, it would be a mistake for her to start building castles in the sky. The women he dated generally got the unspoken message.

‘Which,’ he continued carefully, ‘isn’t to say that it necessarily means anything.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean...put it this way...you told me that you favoured optimism over realism...’

‘I said I favoured optimism over cynicism. What’s the point in being cynical? How can you ever look forward to what life has to bring if you’re busy seeing everything from a gloomy angle?’

Sergio was temporarily distracted. He thought, in passing, that she had amazing eyes—a curious shade of brown, milk chocolate in colour, and fringed with lush, dark lashes... And the tiny mole on her cheekbone was pretty cute as well.

‘It’s extraordinary that you can face each day brimming over with optimism when you live here...’

‘That an incredibly snobby thing to say.’

‘You’re probably right.’ He flushed darkly. Stanley had said more or less the same thing to him, earlier in the evening.

‘You can come from money and still empathise with people who haven’t got any...’

‘Of course I empathise with people who don’t have money... Not that it’s particularly relevant, but Stanley, my driver, doesn’t come from an exalted background!’ He raked his fingers through his hair and wondered how they had ended up down this blind alley.

‘That’s not empathising—that’s recognising...there’s a difference. Although...’ she relented and met his eyes squarely ‘...it’s pretty cool what you did for him.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘He told me. About you helping him get back on his feet after he’d spent time in prison. He said that he pretty much wouldn’t have known what to do if you hadn’t stepped in and rescued him from himself.’

‘Stanley told you that...? He never talks about his past. For God’s sake—he was supposed to deliver you back to your apartment, not launch into an explanation of his life experiences. I’ll have to have a word with him. Discretion is always—but always—the better part of valour when it comes to the business of being a chauffeur.’

‘Please don’t! People confide in me... I’ll be mortified if you go to him and tell him off for opening up...’

Sergio could scarcely believe that his driver had ‘opened up’. He wasn’t the opening up kind. ‘People confide in you...?’

‘It’s one of the things I do really well. I make people feel comfortable...’ She laughed self-consciously. ‘It’s one of my few talents.’

‘How did we get on to this?’

‘I don’t know. You were telling me... Well, actually, you were telling me that the fact you showed up here doesn’t mean anything.’

She couldn’t bear the thought of hearing him inform her in that dark, bone-melting voice of his that he’d had his fill and it was time to say goodbye. Maybe he would tell her that she was worth every rose he had sunk his money into.

Had he said anything when she had jokingly told him that she’d help stick them in vases at his apartment because he would have to take most of them away? She couldn’t remember. Her brain felt fuzzy, caught up with trying to predict what he was going to say.

‘I know it doesn’t,’ she said lightly, because it seemed a better idea to take the bull by the horns than to wait for it to destroy the shop.

‘It doesn’t. I’m not interested in forging a relationship with you, Susie.’

‘I know. I’m not your type,’ she interjected quickly, before he could really get going on something truly hurtful.

‘Even if you were...’

‘You mean, even if I was one of those high-powered, my-career-is-everything types?’

‘If you want to put it that way... Even if you were one of those, I still wouldn’t be interested in any kind of relationship.’

‘Why is that? Don’t you ever want to settle down?’

‘I expect I will one day,’ Sergio said with a shrug, ‘and when I do I’ll make sure I choose a woman with whom it seems a workable proposition. I’m not on the hunt for emotional ties.’

He had bitter first-hand knowledge of where emotional ties could lead. He had seen his father reduced by a girl who had played on his emotions and then used his weakness to take what she could. He had seen what happened when control was lost.

‘Oh. I see.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’

Suddenly lying naked next to him on the bed felt too intimate... She swung her legs over the side, avoiding hitting the wall with the soles of her feet from habit, and yanked at the blanket which she kept on her bed for those really cold nights when the tepid central heating just wasn’t quite enough to warm her up, even when she was under her duvet.

She wrapped it around her and banged on the overhead light in the process as she headed out of the door and to the little bathroom off to the side.

She needed to get her thoughts in order.

Sergio, on the verge of following her—because why the hell did she have to overreact to a perfectly simple word of warning?—stopped in his tracks and took notice of what had not been visible when they had stumbled into the bedroom.

The bookshelf at the side of the bed.

The top shelf groaned under the weight of art books and the remaining three shelves were crammed with illustrations of varying sizes painted onto hardboard, some of them overlapping. He went closer. They were exquisite. Very detailed. Some depicted birds or flowers, others recognisable cartoon characters in comic poses.

She hadn’t been lying. Not about this, at any rate.

Of course it made no difference, he decided. She might not be the gold-digger he had first thought, but...

She was in the shower. He could hear it going and he roamed through her tiny sitting area, taking in all the expensive little trinkets that were dotted here and there.

So she had expensive tastes? Maybe she saved whatever little money she earned and splashed out on expensive stuff?

Or maybe they were presents from rich ex-lovers?

Not caring for the thought of that, he headed straight for the bathroom and pushed open the door. He hadn’t expected it to have the sophistication of something as simple as a lock and he had been right. No lock.

She gave a startled shriek as he yanked back the shower curtain and he smiled drily when she tried to cover all her private parts with her hands—which left a cute little nipple showing, as well as some deliciously damp pubic hair peeping past her fingers.

‘If you don’t mind,’ Susie nearly shouted, still seething because she had managed to ignore every single warning sign and fly into bed with someone who had filled her flat with stupid roses and was now trying to think of a way of dispatching her.

‘I don’t if you don’t...’ Sergio grinned slowly and then stepped into the shower with her.

He was far too tall, and far too broad, and it was beyond cramped but he didn’t mind. Whether it was because he’d discovered those paintings, worked out that she had at least told the truth about one thing, whether she’d listened to his warnings or not, he knew that there was no doubt in his mind that this was just too damned good to end just yet...

‘What are you doing? I don’t want you in here with me!’

‘Why not? I can reach lots of places you can’t reach with the soap...’ He cupped her protesting face in his hands and kissed her while the water streamed over them.

Susie tried her best to resist. She was confused. Could she do this? Was this really her? Was she a woman who could have a full-blown affair with a guy when she knew—when she had been told in no uncertain terms—that it was going nowhere?

Did a relationship have to go anywhere, anyway? Of course she was essentially a romantic, someone who believed in love and happy endings, but that wasn’t life most of the time—and what was the point in denying herself the joy of adventure, the fun of searching, the excitement of the unknown in the meanwhile?

The forthcoming wedding and her anxious desire to show up with someone halfway decent had thrown everything out of proportion. She had suddenly become desperate to find someone suitable, to prove herself in her family’s eyes...and desperation had made her lose perspective.

She didn’t need guarantees of anything to have fun. He had been brutally honest and she had learnt a valuable lesson from that honesty: take what was on offer and ask for nothing more or else walk away right now...

‘I was tactless,’ Sergio murmured, drawing back and staring down at her. ‘Forgive me.’

He reached for the bar of soap, rubbed at it until it lathered and then began to soap her, his body pressing against hers as though they were doing a very slow dance together. He soaped her back, her buttocks and then her stomach.

By the time his hands made it to her breasts she was no longer thinking straight. In fact she wasn’t thinking at all.

‘I’d suck your nipples,’ he murmured, ‘but this cramped space won’t allow that sort of luxury. Next time we do anything under running water it’s not going to be here. You’ll have to settle for me playing with them instead... Like it? How much...? You have fantastic nipples...nice and big and very, very suckable... Shall I tell you what I’d really like to do now?’

‘No! You’re turning me on too much...’

‘I like that. We could head for the bed, but I’m enjoying this experience...enjoying thinking about how much more we could do if we had just a little more space... I could get down on my knees and taste you down there...would you like that?’

‘Stop...’ she begged.

She wanted him inside her so badly that it hurt, but he was right. The shower cubicle was fashioned on the same small scale as everything else in the flat. She couldn’t even let him lift her onto him—couldn’t wrap her legs around his body, couldn’t let him penetrate her that way. Not without paramedics getting involved.

‘Play with me,’ he urged. ‘There are other ways of getting some satisfaction...’

He moved under the water, his hand pressed against the tiled wall, his powerful body jerking as she excited him with her hand until he had descended from his climax.

Her body was craving fulfilment. She parted her legs and moaned softly as he slipped his fingers into her. With his hand on her back, he manoeuvred her until he found the perfect position, the perfect place to bring her to her own shuddering orgasm.

She flung back her head, not caring that he was looking at her in her most intensely private moment, and her whole body stiffened as those magical fingers stroked and rubbed, fast then slow, hard then gentle, taking her to the very peak of physical pleasure.

The water was beginning to go cold when she was once again breathing evenly, her eyes drowsy with satisfaction.

Sergio switched off the shower and then dried her off, very tenderly.

She was spent. She felt like a rag doll, quite happy for him to take her in hand.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you by being blunt,’ he said, once he’d sat her down in the sitting room, with her bathrobe around her and a cup of coffee in her hand. ‘I just wanted to make sure that there weren’t any mixed messages.’

‘I know.’ Susie sipped her coffee and realised this was what it was—his way of gently but firmly reminding her of the conditions for whatever relationship they enjoyed. It wasn’t going to last. He was giving her an out.

The dozens and dozens of roses were proof of how much he wanted her...but if she didn’t agree to his terms and conditions there would be no more of those. The pursuit would be well and truly over.

‘I’m not a kid, whatever you might believe. I’m not after your money either. I can look after myself, and I understand perfectly what you’re saying to me. No involvement except of a sexual kind.’ She shrugged. ‘A little light-hearted fun...sounds like a brilliant idea...’

Sergio dealt her a slashing smile. ‘Good.’ Midnight-blue eyes fixed on her with immense satisfaction. ‘Come lie on me, in that case, and tell me all about those paintings I saw in your bedroom...’

CHAPTER FIVE

THE WRETCHED WEDDING was here. In the thrill of being with Sergio she had forgotten about it, even though her mother and her sister had made sure to remind her at frequent intervals, had quizzed her as to whether she had bought a dress.

Susie wondered whether they expected her to show up in an artist’s smock with a paintbrush stuck behind her ear. Or maybe wearing a pair of jeans and a tee shirt and trainers, because she always left the ‘looking smart’ stuff to Alex, who did it so much better. Alex was tall, leggy, brunette, sophisticated. Clothes just always seemed to hang better on her.

Being five foot four, prone to looking round, with wild blonde hair that strenuously resisted the call of straighteners was always going to be a challenge to smart outfits.

But she had bought a dress and now, sitting cross-legged on her bed, she stared at it without really seeing it at all.

Of course Sergio wouldn’t be going with her. Even though they had now been seeing one another for nearly two months—two blissful, sexy, passionate months.

She felt a lump in her throat and tears begin to gather at the back of her eyes, because soon it was all going to have to draw to a painful close. Painful for her, at any rate.

She had only gone and disobeyed his orders not to get involved, not to see what they had as anything more than what it was—fantastic sex. It was the lynchpin of their relationship. They couldn’t keep their hands off one another. He had confessed that he was surprised, because he had expected it to fizzle out after a couple of weeks, and she had taken that to mean that however good the sex was she really didn’t have what it took to hold his interest.

Not the way he held hers. The way that made her want more...the way that made her think of commitment and permanence...the way that made her crave a future and plans that went further than what they were going to do the following evening.

She wouldn’t be seeing him tonight because he was in New York, clinching a big deal. He had been gone two days and he would be gone two more, conveniently over the wedding weekend, so she hadn’t even had to skirt round the issue.

Not that he would have volunteered to come anyway. She had grudgingly confessed that the reason she had been so idiotically tempted into online dating had been to see whether the love of her life might have materialised out there, so that she could show him off at her cousin’s wedding and kill all those muted whispers about when she was going to find herself a decent guy.

He had grinned and told her that he had never heard such a crazy reason for dating losers who went online to see what they could catch.

She lay down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, considering her options.

Next to her was the little stick with the bright blue lines announcing that her life as she knew it was over.

Pregnant!

He had been beyond careful every single time they had made love except for that very first time, when he had moved inside her and then withdrawn almost immediately—but not fast enough, because he had left behind enough of himself to create the little tiny life that was beating away inside her now.

He was going to go mad.

He was going to run faster than a speeding bullet.

Oh, yes, he would do the decent thing by her financially, but he didn’t do long-term relationships.

She was facing a sea change and there would be no one by her side. Her parents were going to be disappointed. Her mother would shake her head and try to find a silver lining somewhere. Her father would make noises about her moving back home to live with them—although they spent most of their time out of the country anyway, so it wasn’t as though they would be around for babysitting duties. She and Alex had had nannies from birth, so it was unlikely that a surprise grandchild would suddenly convert her parents into the sort of people who would enjoy pushing a pram in the park and feeding the ducks.

And Alex would be disappointed as well. How could you have been so careless? Contraception is free, Susie! So that this sort of thing can be prevented! She could almost hear her sister’s voice ringing in her ears.

Disappointment all round.

A wave of self-pity washed over her. Just when she was beginning to build up a steady base with her freelance work, just when she was on the verge of getting a commission from one of the museums to illustrate the natural history section for a book to be brought out the following year...

Her cell phone buzzed and she glanced at Sergio’s number and debated whether she should just let it ring. He had called her at least twice a day since he had been in New York.

‘Hi.’

She couldn’t resist hearing the deep drawl of his sexy voice. Even from across the Atlantic it still managed to do weird and wonderful things to her tummy.

But she knew that she sounded flat, and she decided that she didn’t care because soon there would be no more of him anyway.

She wasn’t quite sure when she would break the news. No rush. She had to take time out to get her head round it herself before she started trying to cope with his horror.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ She tried to inject her usual ready laugh into her voice, but it petered out into a sigh and she lacked the energy to take it up a notch.

Instead, she asked him what he was doing, how his deal was going, whether he had sorted it out. They never talked about his work. She knew he did high-powered stuff involving complicated finance and tricky acquisitions. And she now had a better idea of just how much he owned. Enormous amounts of money. Companies all over the place—from restaurants to a publishing house.

However, she just didn’t have it in her to get detailed when it came to showing her interest—which, she guessed, was just one of those chasms between them. His future would include a woman who understood the ins and outs of what he did and could fully follow if he chose to discuss the details.

Thinking about that brought her right back to a future he certainly wouldn’t want—and that would be one with a child he hadn’t banked on and a woman he fundamentally didn’t see as having a lasting place in his life.

‘Huh?’ She surfaced to realise that he had asked her something.

‘Spit it out, Susie. What’s bugging you? You’ve just asked me about my deal, which is something you never do, and you haven’t said a word about what you’ve been doing. Where’s my sexy chatterbox disappeared to?’

Susie stiffened. Sexy. Chatterbox. That was what she represented to him, she thought with unusual bitterness. She was someone to get into bed with who talked a lot. She bored him with inane chatter about her work, her illustrations, conversations she’d had with random people during the course of the day, gossip she’d shared with her friends, all their escapades and little adventures. He always listened, but that wasn’t to say that he listened with interest, was it? He listened because it came as part of the package deal that included the sex he was always reminding her was the best he’d ever had.

‘You’re not angsting over that wedding, are you?’ Sergio drawled drily.

Should he tell her that he had decided to surprise her there with his presence? He really didn’t want her getting the wrong idea, and weddings were occasions when wrong ideas could easily start taking shape, but he wanted to fill in some missing pieces. He wasn’t into meeting the family members of the women he slept with, but for someone so open she was reticent when it came to family stories.

What was she hiding? He might not be in it for the long haul but he didn’t like secrets. Secrets made him uneasy. He liked knowing the layout of the land around him. He liked control, and if that meant meeting her relatives, then so be it. He wanted a complete picture. The picture might throw up all the suspicions he had had of her in the beginning again, and then it would be a shame but he would have to get rid of her.

And, on a more fundamental level, he was missing the feel of her responsive little body.

‘Er...yes, I guess so...’ Susie clung to this lifeline. ‘You know...there’ll be so many people there...relatives I haven’t seen for a million years...all that small talk...’

‘You’re good at small talk.’ He shook off the uncomfortable thought that he wanted to believe what she told him.

She gritted her teeth. ‘And I’m beginning to think that I should have got the blue dress instead of this brown one. Brown’s such a drab colour.’

So he thought she was only good for sex and small talk? Well, she might just as well live down to his expectations! She droned about the dress with suitable enthusiasm until she began boring herself.

‘You looked sexy as hell when you tried it on for me...’ Sergio murmured, thinking ahead to ripping it off her. Or maybe he wouldn’t. Maybe he would just push the flimsy fabric up and take her while she was still dressed to kill. Maybe he would insist that she left on the high stilettos...

He relaxed, comfortable with thoughts of the fantastic sex they would have. A quiet place somewhere...assuming there would be a quiet place...because he had no idea where the venue was.

He only knew that the wedding was being held in the country somewhere. Berkshire. Probably a town hall...or a village pub... He had the address, but it meant nothing to him because he rarely saw fit to venture outside London.

‘In fact...’ He dropped his voice a couple of levels, ‘I’ve been having some rather interesting fantasies involving that dress...’

Susie didn’t want to hear. She didn’t want to be reminded that she was just all about the sex and the small talk. She also didn’t want to feel the liquid she was now feeling pooling between her legs, making her want to touch herself right here, right now.

‘Shouldn’t you be focusing on your work...and...er...not having...fantasies about me in a drab brown dress...?’

‘You’re cute when you fish for compliments, Susie...’

‘I was doing no such thing!’

‘Of course you were. You want me to tell you that the dress isn’t brown...and it isn’t drab—at least not on you. You want me to tell you that those chiffon layers give just enough of a hint of what’s underneath to drive any sane man crazy with desire... You want me to tell you that if you were wearing that dress for me and me alone I’d insist you don’t wear a bra. But, considering you won’t be, then you’re under orders to wear your sturdiest, least attractive bra—because I don’t want any other man’s eyes lingering too long on your breasts...those breasts are for my eyes only...’

‘Stop...’ She hated the way he could make her blood run hot in her veins, the way he could make her blush and giggle and could drive every coherent thought from her head.

‘I wouldn’t stop,’ he murmured huskily, glancing down at his watch and realising that in under fifteen minutes someone would tap him on the shoulder and tell him that he was ready to board, ‘but I’ve got to run. And...’

‘Time is money. Yes. I know.’ It was what he always said, in that teasing voice of his, and it had become their private mantra—which was just one of the stupid little things that had lulled her into falling in love with him. One of the shared jokes which made their relationship feel so intimate to her but which really didn’t mean anything to him at all.

She remembered the pregnancy test stick, temporarily forgotten, which was on the bed next to her.

‘I’m not sure I can see you on Sunday evening when you get back,’ she said flatly. ‘Things aren’t going to end until quite late Saturday night...probably not until the early hours of Sunday morning...and I’m thinking I might just hang around for the rest of Sunday there...catch up with all those relatives I haven’t seen in such a long time...’

‘I thought catching up with the relatives you haven’t seen in a long time was one of the things bugging you about going in the first place...?’

‘There are quite a few I do actually want to see...so... Maybe next week we can...er...meet up...?’

Normally she would be hopping up and down at the thought of seeing him, not politely putting him off, but these weren’t normal times, were they? Normal times were at an end, and she had to start laying the foundations for her eventual withdrawal. She had to train herself to get used to not having him around—and widening the gaps between the times when they saw one another was step one on that road.

Her mind fogged over. Because there were now so many steps on this new road that she wasn’t sure where to put the first one.

‘No problem,’ Sergio said easily, thinking that she would be seeing him a whole lot sooner than she anticipated.

‘No problem?’

‘I’ll call you.’

‘Right. Yes. Call me.’

‘Really have to go now... I’ll see you when I see you...’

He disconnected. Susie stared at her mobile phone, heart thudding. He hadn’t expressed any disappointment at the thought that he wouldn’t be seeing her the weekend when he returned from New York.

Was he tiring of her? Had she reached her sell-by date? She had always known that it existed, but now that it was staring her in the face she felt sick, desperate with longing, panicked at the thought that he might be in the process of dumping her, and angry with herself for not being stronger when it was going to happen anyway—just as soon as she detonated her bomb under his carefully organised life.

She barely slept at all, woke the following morning far later than she had planned, and then spent the remainder of the morning rushing around, trying to do clever things with her hair, looking at the clock, and frantically wrapping the present she had bought in paper she had designed herself but unfortunately not in quite the right size, so that she had to camouflage the gap with ordinary brown paper and very wide ribbon.

In between all of this she kept stopping in front of the mirror, gazing at her still flat stomach and wondering what was going on inside.

The wedding ceremony kicked off at three, at the small church in the village where her aunt and uncle lived. It was the sort of picture-postcard-perfect place that only the super-rich could afford. No one would ever guess that it was a thriving commuter hub for many of those top businessmen who had to get into the City, where they could earn sufficient money to install their families in the rolling mansions and quaint cottages that dotted that part of Berkshire.

As a child, she and Alex had always enjoyed making the trip down to see Clarissa. Their own parents, Louise and Robert Sadler, had lived further north, and being close to London had seemed like a grand adventure whenever they had ventured south.

Clarissa and her husband-to-be, Thomas, at twenty-two and twenty-eight respectively, were good candidates for the Berkshire lifestyle. He was an up-and-coming barrister and she was destined to be the perfect stay-at-home wife.

On the way out of her flat Susie paused to look at her reflection in the mirror again and thought to herself that Clarissa might have beaten both she and Alex up the aisle, much to her mother’s dismay, but she would be the first to deliver a grandchild.

Even if, she thought with a grimace, the standing ovation might be a little muted.

She had planned on taking the train and then a taxi to the church, but on the spur of the moment she threw parsimony to the winds and decided on a taxi for the entire trip.

It meant dipping into the trust fund which she had always refused to touch, because it was there for when she decided to find somewhere to buy, but she honestly couldn’t face the hassle of the train station in her wedding outfit.

Not when her thoughts were all over the place. Not when she felt sick with tension at the unexpected future in front of her. Definitely not when she thought of Sergio and the way he had casually dismissed her.

Outside, it was the perfect day for an early spring wedding. The skies were blue and cloudless, and the air was crisp rather than cold. Coats were needed, but thin ones, and there was no mud anywhere for delicate high heels to subside into.

Clarissa would be thrilled to bits. She had always had an uncanny ability to make people and things in general fall in line with what she wanted, and lo and behold the weather was being obedient.

Susie grinned, relaxing as she was driven to the church and only tensing once more when she was deposited outside, to join the two-hundred-strong throng of people piled in front.

Immediately her parents descended, followed by her sister, and for the next two hours there was blessed reprieve from her thoughts.

With all the romance in her soul she was tearful during the ceremony, and proud as punch at the stunning picture her cousin made in her meringue of a wedding dress, befitting a girl who had spent the first eight years of her life believing that she was a fairy princess.

There were hundreds of photos outside the church, and then the bride and groom left for Clarissa’s parents’ house in a white Bentley. Everyone else made their way the five miles or so in assorted cars.

Susie, sandwiched between her mother and her sister, half listened to Alex telling them about her new promotion, which would see her in line to become the youngest ever neurosurgeon at one of the leading hospitals in London. When there was eventually a lull in the conversation she half-heartedly told them that she was finally beginning to see some light in trying to track down clients for her illustrations.

At least her mother had steered clear of talking about guys so far.

‘Susannah, darling, what’s happening on the man front with you? I thought you might have surprised us by bringing a nice young man with you to the wedding...’

‘Er...they’re thin on the ground, Mother...all getting snapped up by beauty queens like Clarissa...’

‘Darling, you look perfectly charming today...’

‘What about all the other days?’ Susie asked wryly.

Louise Sadler gave her a fond pat on the arm. ‘You could add to your wardrobe of jeans with some more feminine clothes...you look an absolute dream in dresses...’

‘A bad dream.’

Up ahead, the mansion that was Kate and Richard Princeton’s house rose splendidly into view.

‘The house looks nice. I like the lanterns lining the sides of the drive...’

‘It’s all a bit much, if you ask me, but you know my sister...she’s never been able to resist the lure of trying to impress everyone... Still, I suppose Clarissa is the first in the Thornton line to get married. Hopefully you’ll be next...’

‘Or Alex.’ She poked her sister in the ribs and Alex instantly chipped in that there was no time even to think about marriage—not when she was building a demanding career that ate up most of her leisure time.

Alex was just the sort of woman Sergio was drawn to. She, Susie, was the exception that proved the rule. Wasn’t that why she had never mentioned her high-achieving family? Because she didn’t want any comparisons? Because she wanted to keep living in a little bubble where she was appreciated in her own right? If he never met her family then he would never take a step back and wonder what the heck he was doing with her.

It was a mortifying thought, tapping into her own silly insecurities, and she fought against it, knowing that it wasn’t fair.

In the bigger scheme of things, silly insecurities were the least of her problems.

‘I myself am not a believer in marriage,’ she declared, to the astonishment of both her mother and her sister, and also her father, who craned back and looked at her with raised bushy eyebrows.

‘Since when?’ he demanded.

‘Since...er...living in London...’ she said airily. ‘I guess I finally see that it’s perfect for an independent woman to live her life without a guy in the background, nagging about when the dinner’s going to be put on the table while he watches the footie...’

‘You really do need to get rid of those young men you seem to like hanging around with...’ Louise Sadler gave a little moue of distaste.

‘And just for the record...’ this as her father’s driver was pulling into the courtyard, making a graceful turn before pulling to a stop and rushing round to open doors ‘...I think in this day and age it’s absolutely acceptable for a woman to bring a child up on her own! You could say I’m a changed person—forging ahead...pretty much a feminist... It took me a while to get there, but better late than never!’

She leapt out of the car and immediately immersed herself in the nearest group of guests hovering by the front door. But she was nervously perspiring, relieved that neither of her parents had had the chance to follow up on that remark.

* * *

No drinking. Just one measly glass of champagne. She wondered how on earth she would make it stretch until one in the morning.

She knew a huge amount of the invited guests. There were relatives from all corners of the globe. But she’d barely had a chance to chat to the bride and groom—just a few snatched words of congratulation.

The marquee, which dominated much of the enormous back garden, was a thing of splendour, with lots of white swirling drapes and chandeliers. The flower arrangements on the tables were so huge that they would struggle to get through her front door, and they would take up more space in her sitting room than...

Than a hundred assorted roses.

She and Sergio had transported most of them back to his place the morning after he had brought them for her, had laughed and then fallen into bed—and had kept falling into bed because they couldn’t not.

She felt a lump in her throat, and was on the verge of pinning a bright smile on her face to cover the moment of sadness when a voice behind her drawled, ‘Don’t burst into tears. It’ll look like sour grapes...’

Susie swung round, shocked to her very core, scarcely believing her eyes.

She’d been standing at the very edge of the garden, half concealed by dense shrubbery, nursing her single glass of champagne. He had crept up on her, unobserved, and for a few breathless seconds she was lost for words.

‘Surprised?’ Sergio asked softly.

If she was, then she couldn’t be more surprised than he was. He had had no reason to question his assumption that she came from humble origins. So she had a couple of expensive things in her flat...? Certainly not enough to make him think that she was anything but a girl venturing out in a fairly hazardous profession. He had assumed that whilst she might have moral support from her family, that was pretty much it on the support front.

In fact he had dared to question Stanley’s map-reading skills, only realising that he was, indeed, at the right place when the car drove up the lantern-lined drive.

And now here he was.

And there she was. Staring at him as though she expected him to disappear in a puff of smoke.

‘What are you doing here?’ Susie demanded.

He looked perfect. Every inch the drop-dead gorgeous, brooding alpha male who had stolen her heart.

‘I couldn’t resist the prospect of pulling you behind the bushes and having my wicked way. Something about that dress...’

‘You’re supposed to be wrapping up a deal in New York.’

‘I like breaking with the expected now and again. Where’s the radiant bride and the lucky groom? I have to say...this isn’t what I was anticipating...’

Susie flushed guiltily. She knew why she hadn’t breathed a word about her family—knew that if she had he would have seen her as just another little rich kid, all caught up in doing nothing much because she knew that she could be bailed out of her discomfort if she got bored or fed up. Why would someone like him want to go out with someone like that?

‘What did you anticipate?’

‘Why did you let me assume that you were penniless?’

‘I didn’t let you assume anything. Did you decide to come here so that you could check out my background?’

‘Comes with the terrain,’ he answered coolly. ‘We’ve been lovers for over two months. I like to know exactly what I’m getting into.’

‘And what if you’d found that you’d “got into” someone from a council house background? Or worse...a criminal background...? Would you have got out of it pronto?’

‘I don’t deal in hypothetical situations. At any rate, I never took you for someone from a long line of train robbers...’

That said it all, she thought.

Suddenly everything seemed very complicated. Her parents would adore him. He was just the kind of guy they’d been hoping she would bring home one day. But what was the point of introducing them to someone who wasn’t going to be around for very long? And when she broke the news to them that she was pregnant...

Susie blanched. They would immediately know the identity of the father. Did she want that? Would her parents make it their duty to confront him? They were very traditional.

She felt that she hadn’t thought anything through—but then how could she? She’d barely had time to digest the revelation herself.

‘You shouldn’t have come,’ she told him flatly.

Sergio looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘Not the response I was expecting...’

‘This isn’t a normal relationship, Sergio. This is...sex—and meeting my family isn’t part of the deal...’ She had to say it because she needed to start distancing herself.

‘But I’m here now...’

‘Not because you wanted to come as my partner.’ She looked up at him steadily. ‘In a normal relationship we would have travelled here together. You would have wanted to meet my parents, wanted to take that next step into the future...a future of getting to know one another’s family and friends...’

‘Where has this come from?’

‘Does it matter? I’m just telling it like it is. You showed up here to do a background check on me... I suppose now that you’re here and my family has passed muster it’s all right for you to meet them?’

‘You’ve managed to blow all this out of proportion and I’m wondering why...’

Dark eyes that saw far too much rested on her flushed face and Susie did her best to get her breathing under control.

‘I’m a little stressed,’ she muttered, looking down. ‘It’s not every day the guy you’re going out with decides to check up on your family to make sure they’re not escaped convicts.’

‘That’s not the only reason I came.’

Sergio was willing to let this go. What they had was good—better than good. He didn’t want her to start getting ideas about his place in her life because she was at her cousin’s wedding. He didn’t need long, intense conversations about normal relationships, where boyfriends couldn’t wait to meet the family and have friends over for Sunday lunch.

‘Isn’t it? What, then?’

‘I missed you.’ He smiled slowly.

‘Why is it all about sex for you?’

She could read that smile as easily as she could read a book, and it still had the power to turn her legs to jelly even though her mind was doing its best to resist.

‘It’s not. Making money ranks highly as well. Ah. I spot curious eyes and a few people descending... Looks like you’re going to have to do a round of introductions whether you like it or not.’

So he’d wanted to show up unannounced...? He couldn’t see what the big deal was. When he had started this fling with her he had not expected it to last longer than a week or two. She didn’t fit his profile, and he was smart enough to work out that if the women who did fit his profile were done and dusted within a month or two then there was no chance that her novelty value would outlast a night in the sack, maybe two.

But she was still around, and he wasn’t sick of her yet... And, that being the case, it had made sense to see her in her own surroundings—the surroundings she had always made sure to keep quiet about. He had wanted to know exactly what he was dealing with instead of taking her at face value. That was just the man he was. Where was the problem?

She was still looking at him with wounded, accusing, angry eyes.

‘You know where I’m coming from,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t need you getting weepy and hysterical. I came here to make sure you weren’t playing some kind of long game. But, like I said, that wasn’t the only reason. And now that I’m here there will be questions asked if you’re sour and defiant about introducing your boyfriend to your family. So relax, Susie.’

She’d forgotten just how inherently suspicious he was, but it had been brought back to her now. She had fallen in love with a man who would only ever let her get so far and no further. There would always be part of him that was locked away. He was a charming, seductive lover, but a proper relationship would always threaten his self-control so he would never allow it. She’d conveniently managed to forget that part of him, and it hurt now to have been reminded of it.

‘I’m relaxed!’

‘You could have fooled me,’ Sergio murmured. ‘I think I know how to relax you, though...’

He kissed her on her mouth, felt a whisper of protest, and then she melted into him until he drew back and looked down at her with a sexy smile.

‘Much better.’

‘Mum! Alex...’

It wasn’t much better. She might have been able to hide away in their private little bubble before, but now she had to stand up and be counted—because there was a third party on the scene: a baby. She couldn’t keep going weak at the knees every time he glanced in her direction, pretending that the future was something that would take care of itself in due course.

‘This is... This is...’

‘I know who you are...’

Alex had moved into charming mode, and Susie sighed as she watched her older sister do what most women did when those deep, dark eyes fastened on them. Her brilliant, sharp, independent and undeniably striking sister blushed.

‘Mother, this is only Sergio Burzi. I might be a neurosurgeon,’ she added coyly, ‘but even I know who you are. How on earth did you meet Suze?’

‘You naughty little thing!’ Louise Sadler was smiling, her beautiful aristocratic face creased with delight as she looked at Susie. ‘You kept this one well hidden under your hat. I expect you were hoping to surprise us...?’

‘Or maybe,’ Alex inserted, ‘you didn’t want to say anything just in case your date didn’t turn up. You must have your diary filled to overflowing, Mr Burzi...’

‘Sergio, please...’

‘You probably don’t remember me at all, but we were at the same art gallery opening a few months ago...’

‘Sergio...’ Louise stepped forward, still thrilled to bits, and took his arm. ‘You must come and meet the rest of the family. Your father is going to be delighted,’ she whispered to Susie, who had reluctantly fallen into step as they moved towards the main party, ‘that you’ve brought along such a gorgeous chap...’

‘Mum...’

Too late. Events had been taken out of her hands. Or rather transferred from her hands into her family’s hands—and now, as the evening progressed, everyone else’s hands.

So many people had heard of him. She hadn’t known him from Adam when she had plonked herself next to him uninvited because she had been on the run from her dinner companion. She hoped to God that he didn’t breathe a word about that.

Having had him all to herself for the past few weeks, she was awestruck at the ease with which he mixed. He knew just what to say to everyone. He charmed. He was witty. He was flatteringly attentive to her. And she couldn’t help but feel a treacherous burst of pride at having his arm slung over her shoulders.

Even Clarissa, who was getting steadily more tipsy as the evening wore on, and who barely had time to talk to anyone because she was so wrapped up with Thomas, dragged her to one side and told her that she wanted to hear everything the very second they were alone together once she’d returned from her honeymoon.

Under any other circumstances, Susie would have been over the moon. Had they been seriously involved, and had their relationship gone beyond sex—had she not now been carrying his baby—she would have been bursting with happiness and daydreaming about being the next one to walk up the aisle.

As things stood...

‘Did Stanley bring you? I guess you’ll be wanting to head off now...’

Most of the guests had left. Only a circle of hard-core friends, all drunk, were swaying inside the marquee with glasses in their hands.

Outside, the temperature had dropped and she hugged her pashmina around her.

Somewhere in the course of the evening Sergio’s bow tie had been discarded, and she wanted to slip possessive fingers under his shirt and feel that hard, roughened chest against her skin. She itched to do it.

‘You’re not drinking?’

‘I...I’ve had a headache all day,’ Susie mumbled.

‘What’s eating you?’

‘Why didn’t you tell me that you were coming?’

‘Not this again. I wanted to introduce the element of surprise—let’s not breathe new life into that particular argument.’

‘You don’t know what you’ve gone and done.’

‘Really? Enlighten me.’

‘Now that my parents have met you...especially in the presence of every single one of my family members on my mother’s side...they’ll all be thinking that what we have is serious—is going somewhere...’

‘I’m not responsible for what other people think.’

The cool detachment in his voice washed over her like freezing sleet, penetrating through every part of her being. ‘I know you’re not.’

‘I’m taking it that you can’t face everyone’s disappointment when this is over and we part company?’ he said, in the same horribly remote voice.

‘My parents have had a very happy marriage. Uncle Richard and Aunt Kate the same. I come from a long line of boring, happily married people...’

‘They surely can’t expect you to marry the first guy you meet?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then you have nothing to worry about.’

‘It’s not that easy, Sergio. You’ve got the makings of the perfect son-in-law—especially after some of the guys they’ve met in the past. You’ve come here... They’ll be thinking that...’

That we’re in love...because they’ll want someone like you for me...

It occurred to her that she had never told him how she felt about him, never breathed a word, because she had been so sure that she could play by his rules. No wonder he was having a hard time trying to work out why she was so hot and bothered because he had shown up.

‘Stop analysing everything. You’re so keyed up, worrying about what other people might think, that you can’t seem to see that it’s your life at the end of the day. You live it as you see fit. If other people have other plans in mind, then tough.’

‘You’re so black and white.’

‘Like I said, I’ve seen what misplaced emotion can do. I stick to what I know. It makes life a damned sight less complicated.’

‘What...what was that girl like?’

She hadn’t been aware that she was going to ask that question until it left her mouth and Sergio, caught on the back foot, raised his eyebrows in a perplexed, impatient frown.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You once said that you’re the way you are because you had a learning curve... Who was the woman who provided the learning curve?’

‘What difference does it make?’

‘None. And if you don’t want to talk about it, then forget I asked.’

She shrugged, started making for the kitchen door of the house, which she knew would lead to the spacious ground floor and eventually the front door and her way out—although how she was getting home she had no idea. Her ride, in the form of her parents and Alex, had gone an hour and a half ago. It would have to be another taxi.

‘Where are you staying?’

‘Bed and breakfast. It’s in the village. A bunch of us are booked in there.’

‘And I,’ he said smoothly, ‘am booked into the one and only five-star hotel ten miles away.’

‘I’d rather not come with you...’

‘Sure about that?’

And he swooped to kiss her, his tongue probing into her mouth, enveloping her in a swirl of heated responses that shook her to the core.

He did this every time. She needed to think...not say goodbye to all her thought processes and cling to him like a vine.

Yet of their own volition her arms curled round his neck and she found herself gently but efficiently propelled back until she was pressed against the wall in the deserted hallway.

‘We can’t... Not here...’

‘Then I guess that means you’ll be coming back with me...’

CHAPTER SIX

‘HER NAME WAS Dominique Duval. Still is, for all I know—although who can be sure? She might have moved on to marriage number two...or three...or four by now. It’s been a few years, and no one could ever accuse Dominique of being anything other than a fast worker. I met her in a club.’

‘You know, you don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to...’

Was she really ready to hear a story of thwarted passion? Was she ready to learn all about his one and only true love and how she’d let him down? Left him to marry someone else?

‘You asked, and after more time together than I’d anticipated it’s only fair that you understand why me and commitment will never have anything more than a passing acquaintance.’

‘When you fall in love with someone it can be brutal when things go pear-shaped—especially if you’ve pinned your hopes on it working out.’

She heard a certain wistfulness in her voice and pulled herself up sharply, because the last thing she wanted was for him to guess at the depth of her feelings for him. When she told him that she was pregnant she would do so as a calm, collected adult whose only priority was to discuss technicalities and to reassure him that he could take as much or as little interest as he wanted.

‘Or so I would imagine,’ she added.

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ Sergio informed her. ‘I was never in love with that woman. It’s true she made a pass at me the first time we met, but I was involved with someone else at the time, and having fun with two women at the same time has never been my style.’

‘You were never in love with her? But I thought...’

‘You assumed—from a couple of throwaway remarks.’

‘How can you have a learning curve from someone you met in a club when you never had a relationship with her? Did she try and pickpocket you?’

‘My hotel. We’re here.’

Susie followed the direction of his finger to see a grand country house that was lit from top to bottom. Two uniformed men stood outside, as if guarding the entrance. She knew her aunt and uncle came to this hotel on a regular basis with friends. Apparently it did a very good dinner.

‘And, no...pickpockets don’t engender learning curves. Dominique Duval was a nurse, and she made a pass at me because she knew who I was. I was young at the time—barely out of my teens—and from a wealthy family. My mother had died years before and my father had never remarried. I was in line to inherit his fortune, but I think she knew from the get-go that a fortune in the future was a lot less enticing than a fortune she could lay her hands on immediately. Maybe if I’d been interested she would have climbed into bed with me for the fun of it, but she had set her sights higher.’

Looking back, he had been able to make sense of the interest she had shown in his background, in his widowed father—the caring, attractive ex-nurse, with a heart full of compassion and empathy because, after all, she had seen so many hurt and lonely widowers in her line of work.

‘She was a nurse? I thought that was a caring line of work...’ She was hanging on to his every word, barely noticing the grand surroundings of the hotel, or the way the woman manning the reception desk in the early hours of the morning jumped to attention the second he strode in and then scrambled behind them as they headed straight to the bank of lifts.

‘You’d think...’ Sergio flicked her a wry glance. ‘My first powerful lesson in never judging a book by its cover.’

‘And in always assuming the worst when it comes to other people’s motivations...’

‘Very good.’

‘What happened?’

Sergio’s eyes narrowed and he shrugged. His face was hard and coldly unforgiving, even though he was recalling a past situation and not currently enduring it.

‘She made sure to engineer an introduction to my father and pulled out all the right cards. She was a caring, fun girl, thirty years his junior, who could understand just what he might have been going through. She told him a life alone was no kind of life—not for a sexy silver fox like him. He was flattered. For the first time in years he decided that life was worth living after all. They were married within six months and it didn’t take long before her true colours started appearing. The caring, sharing nurse became the free-spending gold-digger she had been all along—and if that wasn’t enough she contrived to get my father to change his will. When he died suddenly of a heart attack pretty much everything went to her, and within five years she had managed to work her way through most of his fortune. Fortunately, he’d had the sense to leave the majority of his companies to me. She was cash-rich, with a couple of houses to spare, but she was still greedy enough to consult a lawyer, in the hope that she might get her hands on some of the companies. I spent five years batting her off until she finally gave up. Where she is now is anybody’s guess.’

Susie wandered over to the chaise longue by the window and sat down, her own problems temporarily on the back burner as she worked out just how he had ended up where he had.

There was safety in a hard-boiled career woman. She thought of her own sister. Alex would never be interested in anyone’s money, or in furthering herself on the back of someone else. She was fiercely independent and ambitious to get ahead under her own steam. That would be the sort of woman he would be seriously interested in. A woman who had her own life—just as he had his own life.

‘I’ve seen how a person can imagine they’re in love,’ he continued, taking up a position on the chair facing her, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his expression cool and remorseless. ‘They get swept away by emotion, lose all sense of perspective, abandon their self-control. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the sort of thing that never has a good ending.’

Susie thought that he might have been describing her.

‘In due course,’ he drawled, ‘I imagine I will want to settle down, but when that time comes it will be rather more of a business arrangement than a giddy loss of judgement.’

He was uneasily aware of just how fast his self-control disappeared when he was presented with her glorious body, but immediately dismissed that as a cause for concern because there was a clear line of demarcation between the physical and the emotional. On the emotional front he knew exactly where he was going, and on the physical front... Well, a little loss of self-control was perfectly acceptable...it made a great change to his usual predictable diet.

Susie heard the unmistakable clang of his boundary lines being repositioned.

Her breathing quickened and she flushed under the steady gaze of his eyes.

Why had she let herself be talked into coming back here with him? She knew why. Because she was weak and in love. Because one kiss from him could send her common sense flying in all directions. Because she was just the sort of emotional type he had told her he didn’t need as a long-term investment.

‘It’s late.’

‘So it is...’ He slanted her a smile that turned her bones to jelly. ‘Come here.’

‘I’m not in the mood for sex.’

‘No? Do you want to put that to the test?’

‘We need to talk, Sergio. There are things... Well, things I need to say to you...’

Sergio frowned. Women who had a pressing need to talk rarely said anything he wanted to hear. He reminded himself that she wasn’t like the other women he had dated. She talked a lot. She probably wanted to talk about the wedding—her parents, her sister, her huge array of cousins. It made such a change from his non-existent family, as an only child born to only children.

His face cleared and he smiled.

‘Let’s go to bed...’

‘This isn’t pillow talk.’

‘Who said it was? I’m just finding it hard to keep going with the chat when we could be doing other things. Why don’t you give an old man a kick and do a striptease for me...?’

‘You’re only thirty-two!’ Her face warmed and her body was going into its usual meltdown.

Sergio grinned and remained where he was, enjoying the way he had hardened for her, enjoying the thrill of what was going to follow. Sooner or later he would move on because, as she had pointed out, they weren’t suited to one another, but just at the moment familiarity was a long way from breeding contempt.

He tried to swallow down his dislike of her reminding him that he wasn’t her type, but it nagged away like a thorn in his side he couldn’t quite reach.

He stood up, strolled towards the bed, shedding his clothes en route until he was left in only his trousers, which he began to remove while she watched in her usual trance-like state of fascination.

Her body was as it always was. There were no outward signs of her pregnancy. But what would happen, she wondered, when she did begin to show? When her flat stomach began to go round...when her breasts grew even bigger...? What would happen to that overwhelming lust he felt for her, which was the one and only thing that kept him going?

It was just one more thought to pile on all the other thoughts that were buzzing around in her head like a swarm of bees.

For the moment...

What if this was the last time she had him—really had him? Because she would break the news to him in the morning and then leave, giving him time to digest the indigestible.

From that point on what they had would officially be over. Which would make right now her last chance to have him make love to her, to have him touch her and feel her and want her...

If she was a coward to be snatching it with both hands then so be it.

She followed him, kicking off her high shoes, and then stood at the side of the bed, with his deep, dark eyes on her, and performed the striptease he had asked her to do.

Sexy, erotic, sensuous... In the dark so that their bodies were shadows and angles...

She was wet for him by the time she slid under the covers. Their bodies seemed perfectly matched. She had felt comfortable with him even that very first time, and she felt so much more comfortable now.

His hands knew just where to touch, what turned her on. He nuzzled her breasts and took her nipples into his mouth in a way that sent delicious sensations zapping through her. He licked her and played with her and toyed with her...taking her to the edge before bringing her back...until her whole body was on fire.

They moved together as one, in perfect unison. He enjoyed it when she straddled him, so that her breasts hung teasingly by his mouth. When she did that she was bombarded by the dual sensations of having him suckle on her breast while he teased her below with his fingers. When she took him in her mouth she knew just how to angle her body so that he could simultaneously take her in his, suck and lick her until her clitoris could take no more, and only then, when they had enjoyed one another to the max, would he don a condom and complete her fully.

This time she didn’t want their lovemaking to end. She didn’t want to close her eyes and fall asleep, knowing that the morning light would bring all sorts of problems to their horizon.

‘So...’ Sergio nuzzled her ear.

He had long since given up his habit of abandoning the woman in his bed in favour of his computer. And he had broken with tradition by allowing her to sleep over, because his mornings were always so much more satisfying when he could wake up and make love to her.

‘So...?’

‘So you didn’t paint the full, unexpurgated picture of your background because your high-achieving family make you feel insecure...’

‘Where did that come from?’ She rolled over onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.

‘I’m a problem-solver. I like it when things add up.’

‘And I’m something that needs adding up?’

‘Your father told me that they pleaded with you to use their apartment in Kensington but you wouldn’t. Why not?’

‘Because I’m not a kid. I can stand on my own two feet.’

Even though it meant living in a cramped, disgusting hovel. He could only admire her tenacity.

‘You might think that you sister has it all, but she envies you...did you know that?’

Susie swung to look at him, although in the darkness she could barely make out his expression. ‘Did she tell you that?’

‘She didn’t have to. I could decipher it from the way she described you...free-spirited...taking each day as it comes...’

‘Alex enjoys her life. She’s so clever you wouldn’t believe it.’

‘She’s also the eldest. There’s a lot riding on her shoulders.’

‘I never thought about it from that point of view. Maybe you’re right.’ She sighed. ‘Who cares anyway?’

‘You do.’

‘I’m tired.’ She made herself yawn. ‘It’s been a big day. I’d quite like to get some sleep now.’

Sergio cupped her breast, liking the feel of its heaviness in the palm of his big hand. He rubbed her nipple with the abrasive pad of his thumb and felt it stiffen.

‘You wanted to tell me something,’ he murmured. ‘What was it?’

Susie stilled. This was not the right time. When she detonated that bomb she knew that she would have to take cover.

‘In the morning,’ she mumbled. ‘I’m way too tired to string a sentence together now...’

‘Too tired to touch me?’ He guided her hand to his erection and felt her whole body soften and yearn towards him.

They made love slowly, like two people dancing underwater. When she came it was a long, deep climax, and she fell asleep almost immediately, her body curled into his.

Light was streaming through the windows when she next woke, and the bed was empty. She surfaced groggily and for the first five seconds was blissfully forgetful of the daunting task that lay ahead.

Her peace of mind didn’t last long and she sat up, rubbed her eyes and spotted him at the desk, working.

‘What time is it?’

‘After ten.’

Susie yelped and flung herself out of bed. Shower. Get cleaned up. Put her dress back on—which was going to look ridiculous at ten in the morning. And of course she had no make-up with her...not even a hairbrush.

She couldn’t face having this talk until she was fully dressed. Being naked and in his bed made her vulnerable.

She locked the bathroom door. For the first time. No sexy, steamy shared shower. No touching. She wasn’t even sure she would be able to look him squarely in the face, never mind having his hands on her, exploring her body, turning her brain to mush.

‘Why the big rush?’

He looked at her as she emerged fully clothed from the bathroom. As jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof. Suddenly that vague feeling was back with him—the feeling that something wasn’t quite right. And yet...they had spent another incredible night together. What could be wrong? She had recovered from her little fit of pique at the thought that he had gatecrashed the wedding so that he could see for himself where she came from.

He shot her a slow, deliberate smile and it took all the will power in her repertoire not to fold.

‘I’m going to call a taxi to...er...take me back to London.’

She stuck out her chin and looked at him challengingly and Sergio frowned.

‘Why? Stanley’s waiting. My very lucky chauffeur was treated to a night in one of the finest hotels in the county so that he could be on standby for when I was ready to leave.’ He relaxed back in the chair, folded his arms on his chest and gazed at her.

‘I’m going to have to detour via the bed and breakfast I was booked into...get the stuff that I left in the room...change clothes...that sort of thing...’

Sergio didn’t say anything and silence filled the room, as heavy as a lead weight.

‘This is beginning to get on my nerves, Susie. What exactly is it that you want to say? If it’s a little speech about our future, then I’ll spare you the trauma of initiating the subject. You know how I feel on the matter.’

Sudden tension lent his voice a sharp edge that made her flinch back, as if she had been struck.

‘Of course I know!’ she snapped tensely. ‘You’ve made it perfectly clear from day one and you haven’t let up since!’

Startled at her own outburst, because it was so unlike her, she felt tears prick the back of her eyes. She blinked rapidly and took a few deep breaths. She’d been snapping at him since he had arrived and she would continue until she got what she had to say off her chest.

Sergio’s jaw hardened. ‘The reason I’m repeating myself,’ he drawled, with just the right level of boredom to induce in her another jag of misery, ‘is because weddings can sometimes do things to a girl. She sees her best friend, or in your case her cousin, walking up the aisle and suddenly she starts thinking that it’s about time her turn came along.’

‘I wasn’t thinking that.’

‘No? Because your father happened to mention in passing that a big white wedding is the only thing you’ve ever really wanted. Apparently you used to spend your childhood days dressing up your dolls in big wedding dresses and marrying them off to whatever stuffed toy was handy.’

Susie’s cheeks flamed. She’d forgotten about that. She’d certainly never thought that her father had paid the slightest bit of attention to that phase of her life.

‘I had no idea you’d been having such in-depth conversations with my parents. What else did they happen to mention “in passing”?’

‘That you insisted on that secretarial course which had only ever been a suggestion. You clung to it and stuck it out—even though it was obvious from day one that you were allergic to all things technological and got bored the second you stepped foot inside an office.’

Shaking, Susie slithered towards the chaise longue and sat down, giving her wobbly legs a rest.

He had no right to just turn up and then to burrow his way into her past via her parents. Not now. Not when everything was changing.

‘That’s not the way I remember it...’ she said, distracted. ‘Alex was always the golden girl.’

‘Memories can get a little distorted. The truth usually lies somewhere in the middle.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter. The truth is your showing up uninvited to Clarissa’s wedding...meeting my parents...wasn’t a good idea.’

‘Because they might get the wrong impression and think that this is more serious than it actually is...? Your mother might start shopping for a hat...? Your father will begin to prepare his father-of-the-bride speech...? You’ve already mentioned that. This conversation is beginning to go round in circles.’

‘It’s okay for you to sit there and smirk!’ she said in a high-pitched voice. ‘But you don’t know what it’s like!’

‘And maybe you’re overplaying how you think your family might respond to the fact that you’re going out with me. They might, actually, be a little more pragmatic than you give them credit for... They might be just a little more realistic...’ He shifted, looked at her with cool, assessing eyes. ‘And since when have you taken to shouting?’

‘I wasn’t shouting. I was trying to make a point.’ She sighed and ran her fingers through her tumbling hair. ‘Maybe this is just a side to me that you haven’t seen before. The shouting side.’

She wiped her perspiring hands on her dress and flopped back on the chaise longue, because her legs were beginning to come over all weak and wobbly again.

‘Look...I just want you to know that I don’t expect anything from you. Nothing at all.’

Sergio’s eyes narrowed. He tilted his head to one side, as though listening for something only he would be able to hear.

‘I’m not following you.’

Tense as a bowstring, Susie sprang to her feet and began pacing the room, her movements agitated. Every so often her eyes slid across to him—and the closed expression on his beautiful face didn’t exactly fill her with confidence.

She fought against the temptation to put off this awkward conversation for another day. When she was feeling a little stronger. After she had absorbed all the ramifications of her situation for herself and rustled up some kind of plan. At which point she would be able to present him with a fait accompli, all-corners-covered type of situation...

‘There’s something you need to know...and I’m afraid it’s going to put a completely different spin on what we...er...have...’

Sergio stilled. Normally so adept at reading situations, he discovered that his breathing had slowed down and his brain was not operating to its usual heightened state of efficiency.

Something was wrong. What? She still fancied the hell out of him. Even sitting there, barely meeting his eyes and wringing her hands, he could sense the mutual attraction pouring between them like a wave of electricity, undiminished.

Was she about to announce that she had done something at the wedding? While he had been busy discovering all sorts of things about her, thanks to her parents and her sister? She had seemed to know nearly every one of the guests there, including all the young men, who were obviously mutual friends of the bride and her cousins.

Jealousy rammed into him with such force that he drew his breath in sharply. Graphic images of her sneaking off with some guy behind his back competed in his head to make him feel physically sick.

Jealousy? Since when had he ever been jealous when it came to any woman?

‘I’m losing patience with this long-winded non-explanation,’ he said tightly, reining in unfamiliar emotions with difficulty. ‘If you have something to say, then why don’t you stop going round the houses and just say it?’

‘I’m pregnant.’

It was the last thing he had expected to hear and so it took him a few seconds to digest the revelation.

Then he laughed mirthlessly.

‘You have got to be kidding.’

‘Do I look like someone performing a comic routine, Sergio? I’m pregnant. I only found out yesterday. I did the test. In fact I did two tests. There’s no mistake. I’m having a baby. I’m having your baby.’

He vaulted upright, stared at her and raked his fingers through his hair. ‘You can’t be.’

He stood in front of her, feet apart, challenging her to defy that simple statement of truth.

But in his heart he recognised the ring of sincerity and fought against it.

Pregnant? How the hell had that happened? He was going to be a father? Even when he had loosely contemplated the idea of eventually settling down with a suitable woman his thoughts had not stretched into the realms of fatherhood.

His eyes flew to her stomach and just as quickly looked away.

‘Don’t tell me that I can’t be,’ Susie snapped.

She glared at him. Did he think she was lying? No, of course not! He was desperately clinging to denial because the alternative was so hideous that he couldn’t bring himself to give it credence. He was a man who liked to control every aspect of his life, and just like that he’d lost it.

She’d gone into this with her eyes wide open, never realising that she would be playing with fire. This was what it felt like to end up loving someone who didn’t actually love you back. A sick, empty feeling, as if you were spinning in a black abyss, not knowing how to get out.

But there was no point getting all worked up in the face of his reaction.

‘I’ve worked out that it happened that first time,’ she said, gathering herself. ‘Yes, we were careful all the other times—but there you go. I don’t see the point of wasting time trying to blame one another...’

‘Who said that I was apportioning blame?’

‘I wish you’d sit down, Sergio. You’re not making this any easier for me. I...I’m having to take all this in myself...’

‘You knew the entire time we were at the wedding?’

She nodded.

‘And you said nothing to me?’

‘I hardly expected you to turn up unannounced, Sergio! Besides, this isn’t the sort of conversation to be had over some bubbly and canapés.’

‘You were taken aback when I showed up...’

His brain cranked slowly back into gear. He sat down, and hunkered forward, forearms resting lightly on his thighs.

‘You didn’t want me to meet your parents because if I was in the picture it would be hard to eliminate me as the father. Were you planning on telling them that you were pregnant by some guy you’d met by chance?’ His mouth twisted sardonically. ‘Some mustard-wearing creep you met on a misguided online date, maybe?’

‘No! But if you want the truth,’ she told him bluntly, ‘I knew it would complicate things if you were around. It’s going to be horrendous enough getting through this...explaining to everyone that I’m pregnant...’

Except maybe he was right... Maybe they weren’t going to be as disappointed as she had imagined—maybe they would accept it the way they perhaps, possibly, had accepted her—and she hadn’t even seen that because she’d always been so busy comparing herself to Alex and to her high-achieving, brilliant parents...

‘And our unmarried state is going to be hard for them to swallow, given their traditional views on life,’ he said acidly. ‘Erasing me would have made a hell of a lot more sense. You’re right. Maybe you could even have made me out to be some kind of bastard who got you pregnant and did a runner...? The possibilities are endless, aren’t they, when it comes to disposing of an inconvenient lover...?’

‘You’re not being fair...’

‘No?’ he mocked.

‘No. You can hardly blame me for not wanting to shout it from the rooftops. You’ve made it crystal clear to me how you feel about long-term relationships and how you feel about me.’

‘And how do I feel about you?’

‘We have great sex and that’s it. I get it—of course I do. I mean...it works both ways... We’ve...um... Well, I’m not about to start dumping this on you and expecting you to do anything about it.’

Sergio banked down explosive rage.

‘When you say that you don’t expect me to “do anything about it”, what exactly do you mean?’

Her eyes flicked nervously across to him. What was he thinking? What was going through his head? His world had been turned upside down but at least he hadn’t shouted, or accused her of deliberately trying to pin him down. Given his experiences with his father’s second wife, he might have.

‘I mean this isn’t part of your life plan,’ she said. She stared down at her clasped fingers but could still feel his eyes pinned to her. ‘And you don’t have to think that you’re going to be lumbered with...with taking responsibilities you hadn’t banked on. As you may have noticed, my parents are pretty well off... I’ll manage financially...’

‘I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear what you just said,’ Sergio told her evenly. ‘And I’m going to get this back on track by pointing out a few things. The first is that you don’t know me at all if you think that I am the kind of man who sleeps with a woman and then walks away from a situation like this. The second is that my baby is my responsibility. I have no intention of handing that responsibility to your parents or any other member of your sprawling family, for that matter. Am I making myself clear on this?’

‘That’s fine,’ Susie whispered. ‘If you want to contribute financially, then I won’t say no. I just think it’s important for you to understand that—’

‘You’re not hearing me!’

Susie started, and stared at him nervously. ‘You want to...to help out with money. I understand.’

‘This is not just your deal. Whether I wanted this explosion in my life or not, it’s happened—and I intend to be a fully committed player in the game. I’m not just going to set up a direct debit to your account and visit as and when I can... Oh, no. And if you’re thinking along those lines, then you’ve completely misread the situation, Susie. Start the countdown, my darling. Whether either of us wants it or not, you’re about to become Mrs Burzi...’

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