PRICELESS

“Sharon Kendrick transports readers to a fantasy land with rich, indulgent characters and an abundance of romance.”

—RT Book Reviews

“Once this entertaining tale begins, Lucas does a terrific job of keeping the reader off-balance right to the end.”

—RT Book Reviews on Bought: The Greek’s Baby

Priceless
Bought for
The Sicilian
Billionaire’s Bed

Sharon Kendrick

Bought:
The Greek’s Baby

Jennie Lucas

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Bought for
The Sicilian
Billionaire’s Bed

Sharon Kendrick

About the Author

SHARON KENDRICK started story-telling at the age of eleven and has never really stopped. She likes to write fast-paced, feel-good romances with heroes who are so sexy they’ll make your toes curl!

Born in west London, she now lives in the beautiful city of Winchester—where she can see the cathedral from her window (but only if she stands on tip-toe). She has two children, Celia and Patrick, and her passions include music, books, cooking and eating—and drifting off into wonderful daydreams while she works out new plots!

Dear Reader,

When I started Bought for the Sicilian Billionaire’s Bed, I wanted an unlikely heroine. A poor but proud woman juggling two jobs in order to survive is someone that most people can identify with. And I wanted a powerful and provocative hero who would sizzle off the pages in the way that Sicilian men just do!

Sexy billionaire Salvatore Cardini has hordes of women in hot pursuit—plus some well-meaning friends who are always trying to marry him off. But Salvatore has no intention of marrying and he needs someone to masquerade as his girlfriend. He’s the last man you’d imagine dating his office cleaner, yet Jessica has something which appeals to him—not least her petite and curvy body!

I’m a sucker for a Cinderella story. The image of someone poor and downtrodden being whisked off her feet by a powerful man is an enduring fantasy for most women. I hope you enjoy reading this one.

And I’m delighted to be “twinned” with Jennie Lucas whose Bought: The Greek’s Baby is a crackling page-turner. Jennie writes with all the passion and pizzazz you expect from a Modern™ author—but with her own very distinctive voice. Her heroines are women you can identify with and her heroes are, well … hot!

Two fantastic stories in one volume. A bit of a wish come true.

Happy reading,

Sharon Kendrick

www.sharonkendrick.com

Twitter: @Sharon_Kendrick

To Janet, Barbara and Allen, with love.

CHAPTER ONE

‘MADONNA MIA!’

The words sounded as bitter as Sicilian lemons and as rich as its wine, but Jessica didn’t lift her head from her task. There was a whole floor to wash and the executive cloakroom still to clean before she could go home. And besides, looking at Salvatore was distracting. She swirled her mop over the floor. Much too distracting.

‘What is it with these women?’ Salvatore demanded heatedly, and his eyes narrowed when he saw he was getting no response from the shadowy figure in the corner. ‘Jessica?’

The question cracked out as sharply as if he had shot it from a gun—taut and harsh and unconditional—and Jessica raised her head to look at the man who had fired it at her, steeling herself against his undeniable attraction, though that was easier said than done.

Even she, with her scant experience of the opposite sex, recognised that men like this were few and far between, something which might account for his arrogance and his famous short temper. Salvatore Cardini—the figurehead of the powerful Cardini family. Dashing, dominant and the darling of just about every woman in London, if the gossip in the staff-room was to be believed.

‘Yes, sir?’ she said calmly, though it wasn’t easy when he had fixed her within the powerful and intimidating spotlight of his eyes.

‘Didn’t you realise I was talking to you?’

Jessica put her mop into the bucket of suds and swallowed. ‘Er, actually, no, I didn’t. I thought you were talking to yourself.’

He glowered at her. ‘I do not,’ he said icily, in his accented yet flawless English, ‘make a habit of talking to myself. I was expressing my anger—and if you had any degree of insight then you might have recognised that.’

And the subtext to that, Jessica supposed, was that if she possessed the kind of insight he was talking about, then she wouldn’t be doing such a lowly job as cleaning the floor of his office.

But in the past months since the influential owner of Cardini Industries had flown in from his native Sicily, Jessica had wisely learnt to adapt to the great man’s quirks of character. If Signor Cardini wished to talk to her, then she would let him talk away to his heart’s content. The floor would always get finished when he left for the night. You ignored the head of such a successful company at your peril!

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ Jessica said serenely. ‘Is there something I can help with?’

‘I doubt it.’ Moodily, Salvatore surveyed the computer screen. ‘I am invited to a business dinner tomorrow night.’

‘That’s nice.’

Turning his dark head away from the screen, he threw her a cool stare. ‘No, it is not nice,’ he mocked. ‘Why do you English always describe things as nice? It is necessary. It makes good business sense to socialise with these people.’

Jessica looked at him a little helplessly. ‘Then I’m afraid I don’t really see what the problem is.’

‘The problem is—’ Salvatore read the email again and his lips curved with disdain ‘—that the man I’m doing business with has a wife—a rather pushy wife, it would seem. And the wife has friends. Many friends. And …’ the words danced on the screen in front of him ‘“Amy is longing to meet you,”‘ he read. ‘“And so are her girlfriends—some of whom have to be seen to be believed! Don’t worry, Salvatore—we’ll have you engaged to an Englishwoman before the year is out!”’

‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ asked Jessica shyly, even though a stupidly misplaced pang of jealousy ran through her.

Salvatore gave a snort of derision. ‘Why do people love to interfere?’ he demanded. ‘And why in Dio’s name do they think that I am in need of a wife?’

Jessica gave a helpless kind of shrug. She didn’t think he actually wanted an answer to this particular question and she rather hoped she didn’t have to give him one. Because what could she say? That she suspected people were trying to marry him off because he was rich and well connected as well as being outrageously good-looking.

And yet despite the head-turning quality of his looks she thought his face was rather ruthless and cold when you got up close. True, the full mouth was sensual, but it rarely smiled and there was something rather forbidding about the way he could fix you with a gaze which froze you to the spot. Yet somehow, looking the way Salvatore did, he could be forgiven almost anything. And he was.

She’d seen secretaries swoon and tea-ladies get flustered in his presence. She’d observed his powerful colleagues regard him with a certain kind of deferential awe and to allow him to call all the shots. And she’d watched simply because he was a joy to watch.

He was tall and lean and his body was honed and hard, with the white silk shirt he wore hinting at the tantalising shape of the torso beneath. Raven-dark hair contrasted with glowing olive skin and completed the dramatic colour pallet of his Mediterranean allure.

But it was his eyes which were so startling. Bright blue—like the bluest sky or the sea on the most summery day of the year. Jessica had never imagined an Italian having eyes which were any other colour than black. The intensity of their hue seemed to suck all the life from his surroundings and sometimes she felt quite dizzy when they were directed on her. Like now.

And from the faintly impatient crease between his dark brows it seemed that he was expecting some kind of answer to his question.

Distracted by his presence, she struggled to remember exactly what it was he’d asked her. ‘Perhaps they think you want a wife because you’re … er, well—you’re about the right kind of age to get married, sir.’

‘You think that?’ he demanded.

Jessica felt trapped. Backed into a corner. She shook her head. If he wasn’t planning to whisk her off her feet, then she thought he should remain a lifelong bachelor!

‘Actually, no. Your marital future is not something I’ve really considered,’ she hedged. ‘But you know what people are like. Once a man passes thirty—which I assume you have—then everyone starts to expect marriage.’

‘Sì,’ said Salvatore and he ran a slow and thoughtful thumb over the hard line of his jaw where the shadow of new growth had already begun to rasp even though he had shaved that very morning. ‘Exactly so. And in my own country it is the same!’

He shook his dark head impatiently. Had he really believed that things would be different here in England? Yes, of course he had. That had been one of his reasons for coming to London—to enjoy a little uncomplicated fun before it came to the inevitable duty of choosing a suitable bride in Sicily. For once in his life he had wanted to escape all the expectations which inevitably accompanied his powerful name—particularly at home.

Sicily was a small island where everyone knew everyone else and the subject of when and whom the oldest Cardini would marry had preoccupied too many, and for too long. On Sicily if he was seen speaking to a woman for more than a moment then her eager parents would be costing up her trousseau and casting covetous eyes over his many properties!

This was the first time he had lived somewhere other than his homeland for any length of time, and it had taken little more than a few weeks to discover that, even within the relative anonymity of England, expectation still ran high when it concerned a single, eligible man. Times changed less than you thought they did, he thought wryly.

Women plotted. And they behaved like vultures when they saw a virile man with a seemingly bottomless bank account. When was the last time he had asked a woman for her phone number? He couldn’t remember. These days, they all seemed to whip out their cell phones to ‘key you in’ before he’d even had time to discover their surname! Salvatore had fiercely traditional values about the roles of the sexes, and he made no secret of the fact. And the fact was that men should do the chasing.

‘The question is what I do about it,’ he mused softly.

Jessica was unsure whether or not to pick up her mop again. Probably not. He was looking at her as if he expected her to say something else and it wasn’t easy to know how to respond. She knew exactly what she’d say if it was a girlfriend who was asking her, but when it was your boss, how forthright could you afford to be? ‘Well, that depends what choices you have, sir,’ she said diplomatically.

Salvatore’s long fingers drummed against the polished surface of his desk, the sound mimicking the raindrops which were pattering against the giant windows of his top-floor office suite. ‘I always could turn the dinner invitation down,’ he said.

‘Yes, you could, but you’d need to give a reason,’ she said.

‘I could claim that I had a cold—how do you say, the “man-flu”?’

Jessica’s lips curved into a reluctant smile because the very idea of Salvatore Cardini being helpless and ill was impossible to imagine. She shook her head. ‘Then they’ll only ask you another time.’

Salvatore nodded. ‘That is true,’ he conceded. ‘Well, then, I could rearrange the dinner so that it was on my territory and with my guest-list.’

‘But wouldn’t that be a little rude? To so obviously want to take control of the situation?’ she ventured cautiously.

He looked at her thoughtfully. Sometimes she seemed to forget herself—to tell him what she thought instead of what he wanted to hear! Was that because he had grown to confide in her—so that some of the normal rules of hierarchy were occasionally suspended?

He realised that he spoke to Jessica in a way he wouldn’t dream of speaking to one of his assistants, or their secretaries—for he had seen the inherent dangers in doing that before.

An assistant or secretary often misjudged a confidence—deciding that it meant he wanted to share a lifetime of confidences with them! Whereas the gulf between himself as chairman and Jessica as cleaner was much too wide for her ever to fall into the trap of thinking something as foolish as that. Yet she often quietly and unwittingly hit on the truth. Like now. He leaned back in his chair and thought about her words.

He had no desire to offend Garth Somerville—nor to appear to snub his wife or her eager friends. And what harm would it do to attend a dinner with such women present? It wouldn’t be the first time it had happened, or the last.

Yet he was in no mood for the idle sport of fending off predatory females. Like a child offered nothing but copious amounts of candy, his appetite had become jaded of late. And it didn’t seem to matter how beautiful the women in question were. Sex so freely and so openly offered carried with it none of the mystique which most excited him.

‘Sì,’ he agreed softly. ‘It would be rude.’

Almost without him noticing, Jessica plucked a cloth and a small plastic bottle from the pocket of her overall and began to polish his desk. ‘So it looks like you’re stuck with going after all,’ she observed, and gave the desk a squirt of lemon liquid.

Salvatore frowned. Not for the first time, he found himself wondering just how old she was—twenty-two? Twenty-three? Why on earth was she cleaning offices for a living? Was she really happy coming in here, night after night, wielding a mop and a bucket and busying herself around him as he finished off his paperwork and signed letters?

He watched her while she worked—not that there was a lot to see. She was a plain little thing and always covered her hair with a tight headscarf, which matched the rather ugly pink overall she wore. The outfit was loose and he had never looked at her as man would automatically look at a woman. Never considered that there might be a body underneath it all, but the movement of her arm rubbing vigorous circles on his desk suddenly drew attention to the fact that the material of her overall was pulling tight across her firm young breasts.

And that there was a body beneath it. Indeed, there was the hint of a rather shapely body. Salvatore swallowed. It was the unexpectedness of the observation which hit him and made him a sudden victim to a heavy kick of lust.

‘Will you make me some coffee?’ he questioned unevenly.

Jessica put her duster down and looked at him and wondered if it had ever occurred to the famously arrogant boss of Cardini Industries that his huge barn of an office didn’t just magically clean itself. That the small rings left by the numerous cups of espresso he drank throughout the day needed to be wiped away, and the pens which he always left lying haphazardly around the place had to be gathered up and put together neatly in the pot on his desk.

She met the sapphire ice of his piercing stare without reacting to it. She doubted it. Men like this were used to their lives running seamlessly. To have legions of people unobtrusively working for them, fading away into the background like invisible cogs powering a mighty piece of machinery.

She wondered what he would say if she told him that she was not there to make his coffee. That it wasn’t part of her job description. That it was a pretty sexist request and there was nothing stopping him from making his own.

But you didn’t tell the chairman of the company that, did you? And, even putting aside his position of power, there was something so arrogant and formidable about him that she didn’t quite dare. As if he were used to women running around doing things for him whenever he snapped his fingers and as if those women would rejoice in the opportunity to do so.

She walked over to the coffee machine, which looked as if a small spacecraft had landed in the office, made him a cup and carried it over to his desk.

‘Your coffee, sir,’ she said.

As she leaned forward he got the sudden drift of the lemon cleaning fluid mixed with some kind of cheap scent and it was an astonishingly potent blend. For a second Salvatore felt it wash unexpectedly over his senses. And suddenly an idea so audacious came to him that for a moment he allowed it to dance across his consciousness.

Imagine if he took someone with him to the dinner party. Someone who might deflect the attention of women on the make. Wouldn’t a woman on the arm of a known commitment-phobe send out a loud message to the world that Salvatore Cardini might be taken? Especially if that woman was so unlikely as to take their collective breath away and give them something to gossip about!

The sound of the rain continued to lash against the windows of the penthouse office and Salvatore watched as Jessica picked up her cloth and began to attack a smear of dust. It was as if up until that moment she had been nothing but a piece of paper onto which the outline of a woman had been drawn and only now had the fine detail begun to emerge. Salvatore had an accurate and swiftly assessing eye where women were concerned and for the first time he used it on the woman who was dusting behind a lamp.

Her bottom was curved and her hips were womanly, that was for sure. For the first time he allowed himself to notice the indentation of her waist—and a tiny little waist it was, too.

And yet, although he could be a maverick in business, he liked as many facts as possible at his disposal before he made a decision. He never acted on instinct alone. She might be unsuitable for the task, in so many ways.

‘How old are you?’ he questioned suddenly, and as she turned round he could see that her eyes were grey and amazingly calm—like the stones you sometimes found at the bottom of a waterfall.

Jessica tried not to show her surprise. It was a very personal question from a man who had always treated her as part of the furniture in the past. Her hand fell from the lamp and the cloth hung limply by her side as she looked at him.

‘Me? I’m … I’m twenty-three,’ she answered uncertainly.

He stared at her bare fingers. No ring, but these days you could never be sure. ‘And you are not married?’

‘Married? Me? Good heavens—no, sir.’

‘No jealous boyfriend waiting for you at home, then?’ he questioned lightly.

‘No, sir.’ Now why on earth had he wanted to know that?

He nodded. It was as he had thought. He gestured to her bucket. ‘And you are contented with this kind of work, are you?’

Jessica looked at him from between narrowed eyes. ‘Contented? I’m afraid I don’t really understand the question, sir.’

He shrugged, gesturing towards her mop and her bucket. ‘Don’t you? You seem intelligent enough,’ he mused. ‘I would have thought that a young woman would have had horizons which lay beyond the confines of office cleaning.’

It hurt. Of course it hurt. Apart from being completely patronising he made her sound like some kind of mindless robot in a pinny! Yet surely his damning judgement showed just how arrogant and completely lacking in imagination he was.

Silently, Jessica counted to ten, knowing that several options lay before her. She could pick up her bucket and upend it over that dark head and handsome, mocking face, imagining the water soaking through that fine silk shirt—and his look of dismay and of shock. That would surely be the most satisfying reaction of all. Except, of course, she wouldn’t dream of doing it—because that really would be professional suicide.

Or she could answer calmly, intelligently and maybe, just maybe, make him eat his judgemental words.

‘I’m not a full-time cleaner,’ she said.

‘You’re not?’

‘No. Not that there’s anything wrong with cleaning,’ she defended fiercely as she thought of all her fellow workers at the Top Kleen agency, some of whom squeezed in as many hours as they could while juggling life and work and babies in the most adverse conditions imaginable. ‘As it happens, I actually have a day-job. I work for a big sales company and I’m training to be an office manager, but …’ Her words tailed off.

‘But?’ His voice was silken as he prompted her.

She forced herself to confront the dazzling sapphire blaze of his eyes. ‘My job isn’t particularly well paid. And living in London is expensive. So I top up my salary with a little cleaning work on the side.’ Jessica shrugged. ‘Lots of people do it.’

Not in his world, they didn’t—but didn’t her relatively impoverished state make his idea a little less audacious? Maybe they could both do each other a favour.

His eyes flickered over to the rain-splattered window which overlooked the glittering lights of London as he began to wonder what her hair was like underneath that hideous scarf. It might, he thought, be shorn close to her head and coloured in a variety of shades. In which case his suggestion would never be made—for it was inconceivable that Salvatore Cardini would ever be seen out in public with a woman like that!

‘How do you get home from here?’ he questioned idly.

How did he think she got home? By helicopter? ‘By bus.’

‘You’ll get wet.’

She followed the direction of his gaze. Droplets were scudding down the window and the rain was so thick that you could barely make out the distant buildings beyond. It really was the foulest of nights. ‘Looks that way. But that’s okay—I’m used to it. Don’t they say that rainwater is good for the skin—counteracts all the bad effects of central heating?’

Salvatore ignored the attempt at small talk. ‘I’ll get my driver to drop you off home. He’s waiting outside for me to finish.’

Jessica found herself flushing. ‘No, honestly, sir—that’s fine. I’ve got my brolly and a waterproof—’

‘Just accept it,’ he clipped out. ‘What time do you finish?’

‘Usually around eight—depends how quickly I work.’

‘Make it seven-thirty,’ he instructed.

‘But—’

‘No arguments.’ Salvatore glanced at the expensive gold timepiece which gleamed against his wrist and his mouth hardened into an odd kind of smile. ‘Consider it done,’ he drawled.

And punching out a number on his telephone, he began to speak rapidly in Italian before turning his back on her—as if she was of no real consequence at all.

CHAPTER TWO

JESSICA carried on working at an increased pace in order to get everything done in time, but something had changed and it wasn’t just because she was alone in the office with Salvatore. Reserve and shyness had entered her body along with the rapid thunder of her heart as it suddenly occurred to her what she had agreed to. It was like every wistful daydream come true—her gorgeous boss was insisting on giving her a lift home in his chauffeur-driven limo!

And what, Jessica?

You think this is the powerful Sicilian’s not-so-subtle attempt to get you, his office cleaner, alone away from the office? Maybe so that he can try to seduce you? Yes, sure he is—and he won’t really be collecting you in a car at all, but in a glass carriage!

Just accept his generosity with good grace, she told herself as she removed a smear from the coffee machine with a fierce wipe. Enjoy the novelty of a trip home in a luxurious car—it’ll make up for all the patronising remarks he made earlier.

At seven thirty on the dot, she picked up her bucket and cleared her throat. ‘I’ll go and get changed then, sir,’ she said, feeling faintly foolish. ‘Er, shall I meet you downstairs?’

‘Mmm?’ Salvatore glanced up at her, his eyes narrowing as if he’d forgotten she was there. ‘Yes, sure. Where?’

‘Do you know where the back entrance is? It’s a bit tricky to find.’

There wasn’t a flicker of reaction on his rugged features. ‘Not really, but no doubt I can manage without a map,’ he said drily. ‘The car will be waiting and I don’t like to wait. So don’t be long.’

‘I won’t,’ said Jessica, and sped off.

But her heart was thundering as she pulled off her pink overall and untied the scarf, wishing that she were wearing something other than a plain skirt and jumper with a great big waterproof coat to put on top.

Yet why should she? This wasn’t the kind of job that you dressed up for—dressed down for, more like. She took off her flat black shoes and put them in the locker along with her overall and scarf, then set about brushing her hair—which was her one redeeming feature. It fell to her shoulders and, although it was a rather boring shade of brown, it was good and thick and nearly always shiny.

Jessica squinted into the mirror. Her face looked pale and drained without make-up but she found the end of a tube of lip gloss at the bottom of her handbag and her fingers hovered over it with hesitation.

Would it look a little obvious, as if she might be expecting something, if she applied some make-up? But suddenly, Jessica didn’t care. A woman had her pride, and even if she happened to be wearing cheap clothes then surely it wasn’t a crime to want to make the best of a very bad job.

Fortunately, because she had knocked off slightly early, there was no one else around. None of the other cleaners offering to walk to the bus-stop with her—or, worse, witness her sliding into the back seat of a fancy car.

Why, to any other member of staff it would look … Jessica went pink around the ears. It would look highly suspicious and throw a not very flattering light on her character.

But there was no time for any further doubts. He had specifically told her not to be late, so she grabbed her bag and hurried out. And sure enough there sat a long, low limousine purring like a mighty cat by the back entrance.

Jessica gulped down the dryness in the back of her throat. It was odd to think of someone regarding this kind of car as normal—when in her world it was the type of vehicle which was usually used for weddings.

Convulsively, her fingers clenched around the strap of her handbag. Weddings? Weddings? Now what on earth had made that thought pop into her head? Probably because Salvatore had rather surprisingly asked her whether she was married. And why had he wanted to know that?

But there was no time for further thought because a uniformed chauffeur was actually opening the door of the luxury car—for her!

‘Thanks very much,’ she said hurriedly, trying to slide into the back of the car as decorously as possible—something which wasn’t especially easy since Salvatore was sitting on the other end of the soft leather seat, his long legs sprawled out in front of him. His arms were crossed and she couldn’t make out the expression on his face because the interior of the car was shadowed, but she saw the glint in his narrowed eyes as he watched her.

‘So here you are,’ he murmured, though his initial thought was one of disappointment. His crazy scheme was just that, he realised. Crazy. With her cheap and bulky coat concealing her slight frame and her pale face she looked just what she was. Ordinary. There was no way that this young woman could accompany him to anything, other than perhaps to help carry his shopping in to the apartment. Who would believe that a man like him was dating a woman like her? Nobody with more than one brain cell, that was for sure. ‘Where do you live?’

Jessica sat bolt upright. ‘Shepherd’s Bush.’ She gave the name of the road to the driver, who then closed the interconnecting glass so that she was left alone with Salvatore. The last time she had felt as out of place as this was her last day at school, when she’d forgotten that it was a ‘no uniform’ day.

Salvatore’s mouth curved with wry amusement as he registered her stiff frame and uptight body-language. She was nervous, he realised. Did she think that he was about to leap on her? If so, then she clearly had an over-inflated view of her own appeal! ‘Relax,’ he said softly.

Jessica leant back in the seat—though the leather was so soft and squishy that it was hard to believe that she was actually sitting in a car.

‘This is really very kind of you,’ she said.

‘Not a problem.’

‘Where … where do you live?’ It seemed like a very personal question to ask—but what were the rules for a situation like this? She couldn’t spend an entire journey asking him if he was satisfied with the level of cleanliness in his office!

‘Chelsea.’

Of course he did. Rich, glamorous Chelsea with its glorious white villas and springtime trees daubed with cherry blossom.

‘I don’t want to take you out of your way, sir.’

The ‘sir’ seemed oddly inappropriate under the circumstances, but she was a thoughtful little thing, he realised. Salvatore smiled as he leaned back and glanced out of the window.

‘I can easily have the driver drop me off first if I choose,’ he said coolly. ‘But there are parts of your city with which I am unfamiliar—and so I shall see this place Shepherd’s Bush for myself.’

Don’t hold your breath, Jessica wanted to say, but instead she smiled back. She half wondered if she should chat and ask him about whether he was enjoying his time in England, but he seemed to have an aversion to small talk. And besides, he was the kind of man who liked to lead a conversation—not to follow it.

Salvatore felt oddly soothed by the silence which filled the car and which—surprisingly—she didn’t try to fill with inane chatter. Why could women never see the value in peace and always insist on shattering it with unnecessary words?

They drove through a rainy city and for once he felt completely cocooned within the purring warmth of the car. It was all too easy to take luxury for granted, he found himself thinking as the limousine slowed to turn into a road featuring a row of terraced houses.

‘It’s that one on the end,’ said Jessica, glad that the journey had passed without anything going wrong. But she also felt strangely reluctant to leave the sumptuous cosiness in exchange for the cold reality outside. ‘Just here.’

‘You own this, do you?’ questioned Salvatore as the car came to a halt in front of a small house.

Jessica turned to him. Was he crazy? No, he was just rich and the rich were different—everyone knew that. It wasn’t his fault that he had no comprehension of how people like her lived their lives. She shook her head. ‘Property’s hugely expensive in London. I rent—in fact, I share this house with two other girls. Willow works in the fashion business and Freya is an air stewardess—though she’s away a lot.’

But Salvatore wasn’t really listening. Maybe it was because the rain had finally stopped. Or maybe it was because the moon had appeared from behind the dark curtain of a cloud. It was amazing what a little light could do.

He found himself looking down at her face, at skin which looked impossibly pure and clean. Her grey eyes were illuminated by that same light and so was the subtle gleam of her mouth. Unexpectedly, she looked all eyes and lips and her pauper-like appearance suddenly crumbled to dust in his memory.

‘Are you busy tomorrow night?’ he questioned suddenly.

Jessica blinked. ‘No. Why?’

‘How would you like to accompany me to that dinner I was telling you about?’

‘You mean, as your guest?’ she queried, her voice quivering on the brink of astonishment.

What did she imagine he wanted—that he was taking his own personal cleaner? But at least with Jessica, Salvatore knew that he could be upfront. A girl like her was unlikely to read anything into the situation, but he’d better make it clear.

‘Yes, of course,’ he said impatiently. ‘But what I really want is for you to act like my girlfriend—’

‘Your girlfriend?’ she interrupted, even though everyone knew you should never interrupt your boss but this was so bizarre that the normal rules had gone flying out of the window.

‘It’s just a little role play,’ he murmured. ‘Nothing too demanding. Gaze into my eyes a little. Look at me adoringly once in a while. Think you could manage that without too much trouble?’ His eyes mocked her with the question because Salvatore knew that there wasn’t a woman alive who would find that an impossible task. ‘Get the predators off my back once and for all, and let them know that if I want a woman, then I’ll do the choosing myself.’

‘But there must be a million women you could ask!’ exclaimed Jessica.

‘Oh, at least a million,’ he answered, with cool and mocking humour. ‘But none of them suitable for all kinds of reasons.’ The main one being that they saw him as husband-material, something which this little thing would never be guilty of.

‘But won’t …?’ Jessica bit her lip. Wasn’t it more than a bit humiliating to have to ask the next question? But ask it she needed to. ‘Won’t it be slightly unbelievable … someone like me going out with someone like you?’

‘Possibly,’ Salvatore conceded, his eye flicking disparagingly over her bulky waterproof. ‘If you were dressed like that it might be very difficult indeed.’

‘Oddly enough, it didn’t occur to me to put on my best party dress for work,’ she said, hurt.

‘You mean you might have something suitable tucked away?’

For a moment she felt like saying no, she didn’t, because surely that would get her off the hook? But somehow she didn’t think that Salvatore would let it rest now that he’d made up his mind about this strange assignment. If she said that she didn’t have anything to wear, then mightn’t that look as if she was angling to be given something? Just because she cleaned his office didn’t mean that she couldn’t scrub up well!

And besides, there was an undeniable part of her which was thrilled at the thought of accompanying Salvatore Cardini to a party. Didn’t life sometimes throw opportunities at you which would be a crime to turn down?

‘Of course I’ve something suitable to wear,’ she said proudly, and then a sudden, heady sense of her own power swept over her in a way it had never done before. ‘But I haven’t said I’ll go yet, sir.’

The preposterous statement made him smile, but it made a pulse begin to beat heavily at his temple, too. She would be very foolish indeed if she began to tease him—she was dealing with a man and not a boy. He could bend her to his will with the mere whisper of his fingertip.

Fractionally, he leaned forward, his face closer, his voice soft. ‘But I think you will, won’t you, Jessica? And while we’re at it, I think you should lose the “sir”, don’t you? In the circumstances it might be a bit of a giveaway.’

He was so close that she could see the moonlight glinting in his sapphire eyes and sense his animal warmth, the tangy scent of soap and raw masculinity. This close he was … Jessica felt her heart give an irregular skip. He was irresistible.

Was she playing with fire?

‘Yes, I’ll come,’ she said, and then stumbled out of the car before either of them could change their minds.

CHAPTER THREE

‘YOU’RE going where tomorrow night?’ demanded Willow in a voice of sheer disbelief.

‘Out to dinner,’ said Jessica faintly as she took off her bulky jacket. The limousine had just driven away and it was almost as if she needed to repeat the words to herself to believe that they were true. ‘With Salvatore Cardini.’

Willow’s eyes widened. ‘That’s the Salvatore Cardini? The Italian billionaire playboy who owns that company where you play Mrs Mop in the evenings?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Let’s make sure we’re talking about the same man here, Jessica. Black-haired, blue-eyed, sex-on-legs but with a mean, dangerous look about him?’

‘Well, yes—that just about sums him up.’

Willow brushed a lock of dead-straight blonde hair out of her eye. ‘You do realise that he’s an international playboy with a reputation as a heartbreaker?’

‘I sort of guessed that for myself.’

‘And that every glossy magazine worth its salt has been trying to gain access to do a feature on him? Jessica, what are you like?’

Jessica shook his head. ‘I didn’t know that—and I don’t care and it’s no good you looking at me that way, Willow. I know you work for one of those glossies and I know you’d love an exclusive, but you’re not getting it via me. Salvatore is my boss—one of the reasons I have that job is because I’m discreet.’

‘But it’s a rubbish job!’

‘Which means I can pay my bills here!’ Jessica retorted, thinking of the steep sum she had to shell out for the tiny boxroom of the three-bedroomed house. But then, unlike Willow and Freya, she wasn’t cushioned by the comfort of family money if her finances ran into real trouble.

‘Perhaps some time you could tell him that your friend would love to do a sympathetic interview and he could even have say on the final copy? I’d be eternally grateful.’ Willow shook her elegant head. ‘And he’s taking you out,’ she said. ‘Unbelievable!’

Jessica could understand her incredulity only too well. Her housemate lived up to her name—she was tall, blonde and stylish and legions of men were always attempting to beat their way to her door. Yet not even Willow had managed to attract a man of Salvatore’s calibre—and here was mousy little Jessica doing just that.

‘It is a bit incredible,’ she admitted.

‘So why has he done it, Jessica?’

Jessica dipped a teabag into a mug of boiling water so that her face was partially hidden. Wouldn’t it be humiliating to have to tell the whole truth—that essentially she was being taken out as some kind of deterrent to other women? Wouldn’t it be acceptable to allow herself the fantasy, just this once—especially as it was just going to be once?

‘I think he just wants company,’ she prevaricated.

‘Yes, but—’

Jessica turned round as suddenly the reality made her heart sting. ‘But what, Willow? You mean what’s a rich bloke like him doing with a poor, plain girl like me?’

‘No, I didn’t—’

‘Yes, you did,’ interrupted Jessica gloomily. ‘And what’s more—you’re right. Don’t you think it was the first thing which occurred to me?’ She walked back into the sitting room and sat down on the battered sofa, her fingers clutching at her steaming mug of tea. How could she have been naïve enough to think about maintaining a fantasy like this for more than a second? Who would ever believe it?

‘These people he’s having dinner with are trying to set him up and he’s fed up with people trying to marry him off,’ she explained. ‘So he’s taking me as a defiant gesture, in the hope that word gets out and they’ll stop trying.’ She saw Willow’s face and knew that further explanation was indeed necessary. ‘And presumably he’d picked me and not someone else more glam because I won’t get any false hopes in my head. Because I know my place and I’ll just accept the evening for what it is.’

‘Is he paying you?’ asked Willow sharply.

Jessica put her mug down with a shaking hand, her cheeks flushing. ‘You’re making me sound like some kind of … of … hooker!’

Willow shook her head. ‘That’s not what I meant at all. But it seems to me that you’re doing him a pretty big favour—so what’s in it for you?’

Jessica bit her lip. Honesty not only made you vulnerable, it also made you weak and in a modern world you needed all the bolstering defences you could get. But suddenly she didn’t care. ‘I just fancy a glimpse into a different kind of life for a change. I’ve certainly been on the outside looking in for long enough. The only trouble is whether I can fit in and what I’m going to wear.’ She looked up at Willow hopefully. ‘I was hoping you might be able to help.’

Willow, who was at least four inches taller and several pounds lighter, smiled. ‘Oh, I think I can help. Don’t worry, Jessica Martin—we’re going to make sure you knock his sizzling Sicilian socks off!’

The next day Jessica skipped lunch so she could leave the office early and spent far too long in the bathroom. She nicked her ankle when she was shaving her legs and her nerves built up as the bathwater grew cold and the sky outside the window darkened.

Under Willow’s critical eye, she must have tried on twenty different outfits before finding one that she felt comfortable enough to wear, automatically rejecting anything too tight or too low because she thought that would make her look cheap.

By the time eight o’clock arrived her hands were shaking with nerves and when the doorbell rang it didn’t surprise her when she heard Willow yelling: ‘I’ll go!’

She sprayed on some perfume, took one final glance in the mirror and went to find her boss, who was standing by their rather tatty velvet sofa talking to Willow. And the moment Jessica looked into the narrowed sapphire eyes she knew that her nerves had been justified. In the office he was distracting enough—but tonight he looked as if he should be carrying a government health warning.

His immaculately cut dinner suit emphasised the long legs and the narrow, sexy hips. He looked expensive, urbane, and so totally out of her league that Jessica’s heart began to race and she felt the hot pin-pricking of nerves at her forehead. Suddenly she felt daunted. What the hell was she going to talk to him about?

‘Hello, Jessica,’ he said softly.

‘H-hello.’

‘You look very … different,’ he said slowly.

‘Well, that’s a relief!’ she said quickly and caught Willow’s warning glance. If she spent the whole night emphasising the differences between them, then the evening was going to be a disaster. ‘Er, thank you,’ she amended.

Salvatore watched while she picked up her coat. The fitted black silk dress was a little conservative, it was true, but he liked that—and it accentuated a figure which was really very good. His eyes narrowed. Very good indeed. Her hair was thick and shiny and it swung in a healthy bell around her neck. She looked better than he had anticipated—though she was still light years away from his normal type.

But wasn’t it strange how your whole opinion of someone could alter in a single moment? Suddenly he was seeing more than the clear grey eyes and the pure skin—now he found his gaze drawn irresistibly to the way the black silk skated so tantalisingly over her pert bottom. His breath was a little unsteady as he took the coat from her and held it open. ‘Here, let me.’

Jessica had grown up in a world where men and women considered themselves equals. No man she knew would ever dream of holding open a door or a coat for her, and as she slid her arms into the garment she thought how stupid it was that such a simple little gesture should be so disarming. Was she imagining the lingering brush of his hands and the corresponding quickening of her heart? Had he meant to touch her like that?

‘Come on,’ he said. ‘My car is outside.’

‘Bye, Salvatore—nice to meet you,’ said Willow, with a megawatt smile. ‘Hope to see you again.’

They walked out to the waiting limousine, but as the driver opened the door Jessica looked up at the Sicilian and his face looked shadowed in the moonlight.

‘Did you … did you tell them you were bringing someone?’

‘I did.’

‘And what did they say?’

Shaking his head, he placed his hand at the small of her back and propelled her into the car, suddenly wondering if this was such a good idea after all. Was she too unsophisticated to cope with the evening ahead?

‘It doesn’t matter what they said,’ he said softly as the car pulled away into the traffic. But then she crossed one leg over another and all he could think about was whether the sheer, dark silk which covered her slender legs was tights, or stockings.

Maybe you’ll find out later, taunted a voice inside his head as they drove through the darkened streets, and Salvatore cursed silently and shifted in his seat as unexpected and unwanted desire again began to tug at his senses.

It was just at that point that his phone rang and he pulled it out with a feeling of relief and began to speak.

Jessica stared out of the window as Salvatore spent the entire journey conducting a telephone conversation in rapid Italian, which seemed to magnify her feeling of not belonging. And that feeling only intensified when the car drew up outside an enormous house in Knightsbridge, which looked like something you might see in a film.

‘Oh, my goodness—it’s huge,’ she breathed.

He glanced at her. ‘It’s just a house.’

To him it might be just a house—but to Jessica it was the kind of place for which you’d normally have to pay an admission fee. Inside were uniformed staff who whisked her coat away and someone else who guided them through to the murmuring guests, who all looked up as she followed Salvatore into the glittering room.

She was aware of a blur of names and faces as they were introduced, but Jessica’s overwhelming feeling was that the women looked like birds of paradise in their jewels and bright dresses and that she had been a fool to come in black—because wasn’t that what all the waitresses were wearing?

Their host and hostess were Garth and Amy and there were two other women called Suzy and Clare—neither of whom seemed to be attached to a rather bloodless-looking man named Steve and a wiry individual with light brown hair who introduced himself as Jeremy. And that was it.

So it really had been a set-up, thought Jessica as the redhead named Suzy shimmied over to stand directly in front of Salvatore.

‘Hi, Salvatore—do you remember me?’ she was asking him, with a coy smile. ‘We met in Monte Carlo and I told you that Sicily was my favourite place in the whole world.’

Although she was straining to hear while trying to look as if she weren’t, Jessica didn’t quite catch Salvatore’s response, but she turned away with a sudden pang, telling herself that feeling jealous about her partner certainly wasn’t on tonight’s agenda.

‘Champagne?’ questioned Garth, offering her an engraved flute with pale liquid foaming up the sides. ‘It’s rather a good vintage.’

‘Yes, please.’ Jessica smiled as if she drank vintage champagne every day of her life. She took a sip and began to chat to Jeremy, who—despite his unlikely appearance—turned out to be something very powerful in the City.

‘And what about you?’ he questioned. ‘Do you work?’

Jessica supposed that this was a world where women didn’t have to work. ‘Oh, yes, I’m … I’m …’ Oh, why hadn’t she prepared something? Jessica looked up to find Salvatore watching her.

‘Jessica is training to be an office manager,’ said the Sicilian smoothly and she blinked at him in surprise. Had he really remembered that?

‘Oh, is that how you two met?’ butted in Clare. ‘In the office?’

Jessica’s gaze locked with his. Say what you want to say, those blue eyes seemed to tell her.

‘Kind of,’ said Jessica, and blushed.

Salvatore hid a smile. Oh, but she was perfect for the role! Perfetto. The way the blush of rose crept into her cheeks made her look coy and sweet—as if she were embarrassed about a supposed office romance. So that no one, not even the woman Clare with her heavy eye make-up and brazen cleavage—would have had the guts to interrogate her any further.

‘Let’s go in to dinner, shall we?’ said Amy sharply.

A table was laid up with gleaming crystal and silver and studded with tightly bunched white roses in small vases. As she unshook a giant napkin over her knees Jessica found herself wondering whether she was going to be presented with any unfamiliar foodstuffs which she wouldn’t have a clue how to eat, even though Willow had given her a crash course in posh dining while she’d been getting dressed. Oysters and artichokes were apparently the biggest hurdles to clear, but thankfully neither of them made an appearance and so she was able to concentrate on what was being said around the table.

Which was easier said than done. Most of the conversation went right over her head and she noticed that most of the food remained uneaten—though everyone seemed to drink plenty of wine.

She forced herself not to feast her eyes on Salvatore—whose black hair and blue eyes and formidable physique seemed to dominate the entire table. Maybe everyone else was aware of him, too, Jessica thought—because the women certainly didn’t seem to be intimidated by the fact that he had brought a partner with him. They flirted with him as if flirting had just been invented.

Did he ever get bored with such a gushing reaction? she wondered suddenly as she turned to talk to the man beside her.

What she knew about banking and takeovers could be written on the back of a postage stamp, but she gently quizzed Jeremy about what he did to relax. It turned out that he was mad about fishing and real enthusiasm entered his voice as he told her about digging for bait.

‘Rag worms or lug worms?’ she enquired and a silence fell over the table.

Jessica looked up to find Salvatore’s gaze on her, the bright blue eyes narrowed in mocking query.

‘They’re talking about worms—ugh!’ shuddered Clare theatrically, her breasts pushing against the fine silk of her pink dress as if they were fighting to get out.

‘You like to fish, do you, Jessica?’ questioned Salvatore softly.

For some stupid reason, colour stole into Jessica’s cheeks and she shrugged her shoulders a little awkwardly as she answered him. ‘Oh, I did a bit, when I was a child.’ In that faraway time when her parents had still been alive and the days had always seemed full of sunshine and games. Her mother would take her down to the riverbank and Jessica would sit solemnly with a hook and line dangling from an old gardening cane.

‘Presumably you must have been a tomboy,’ observed Suzy.

It was like being in one of those awful nightmares where everyone was staring at you waiting for an answer and you couldn’t speak. Except that this wasn’t a nightmare and she could speak. So stand up for yourself, Jessica, she thought. Don’t let this woman intimidate you just because she’s crazy about Salvatore.

‘I liked climbing trees and fishing and swimming in the river, yes,’ she said. ‘But I never considered them pastimes which were exclusively for boys—why should they be when they’re such fun?’

‘Bravo!’ said Jeremy softly, and laughed.

She felt on a bit of a high for the rest of the meal, especially when Jeremy offered to take her fishing in Hampshire, where apparently he owned a stretch of the river—and he pressed his card into her hand as she was leaving.

But her exhilaration evaporated the moment the car door closed on her and Salvatore and they were enclosed in their own small, private world.

Slowly, he let his eyes drift over her as if reassessing her potential. ‘So I have seen the little English mouse in action,’ he murmured.

‘What … what’s that supposed to mean?’

In the darkness his eyes gleamed. ‘Quiet. Unassuming. Then she throws off her overall and becomes the unlikely temptress—’

‘Temptress?’ echoed Jessica. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Ah, but you tempted Jeremy—that much was plain,’ mused Salvatore silkily. There was a pause. ‘And you’re tempting me. Right now.’

Too late she sensed the danger in the air and too late she read the sexual intent in his eyes.

It was too late for everything, because Salvatore Cardini had pulled her into his arms and started to kiss her with a passion which took her breath away.

CHAPTER FOUR

FOR a moment Jessica thought that this must be like drowning—when they said your life flashed before you. As Salvatore’s lips covered hers she saw the past speed by—with its good and bad, its sadness and joy. But it was as if she had been only a shadow of herself before and his powerful kiss was awakening all her senses.

He tasted of wine and desire and promise and Jessica’s lips opened beneath his, her fingers reaching up to clutch at his broad shoulders as if she was afraid that she might collapse. But that was just how it felt—as if a sudden gust of air might blow her clean away.

‘Salvatore—’ she breathed into his mouth, shockingly aware that it was the first time she had ever used his Christian name, but surely such a situation demanded it.

‘Sì?’ Groaning, he caught her by the waist, his hands moving beneath her coat to rest proprietorially on the silk of her dress. He slid his palms up to her breasts and cupped them, as if he were examining their weight, before fingering their peaking points through the straining silk.

‘Oh!’ she gasped, in shock and delight.

He stroked her hips. Her bottom. The curve of her thighs—his hunger for her tempered by a sudden shaft of objectivity. This was crazy, he told himself. This was not what he had intended—not at all. Was that why it suddenly seemed unbearably exciting—because he liked to control a situation and here was one which seemed to have blown up in his face? ‘Tell me what you like to do, cara,’ he whispered. ‘Show me what you like.’

She touched her lips to his neck; she couldn’t seem to stop herself as her every dark fantasy sprang to life. ‘Salvatore …’ she whispered again.

Her hand had fluttered down to alight like a butterfly on the tensed muscle of his thigh and his head jerked back as it moved away again. ‘I live not far from here,’ he bit out. ‘Come on—we’re going. Adesso!’

His hungry words wove themselves into her consciousness as her fingers wove into the silken tangle of his dark hair. Jessica felt as if she had stepped on an escalator which was hurtling her towards a shockingly unexpected pleasure. But even while her body gave itself up to the sensations which were washing over her with such sheer, sweet allure she felt the first unwelcome stir of protest in the back of her mind.

‘Salvatore—’

‘Mmm?’

His lips were at the base of her neck now, drifting in a tantalising path down towards her breasts. And she held her breath, not wanting to break the moment nor the feeling even as some stubborn resistance reared again its unwanted head. Go away, she told her doubts fiercely—but somehow those doubts refused to die. ‘I mustn’t—’

‘Sì, you must.’ He smiled against her skin as the tip of his tongue flicked against her skin. ‘You want to. You know you do.’

Jessica felt herself slipping under—as if sensual dark waters were lapping over her. Her eyelids fluttered open and all she could see was the ceiling of the luxury car. The car! He was seducing her in the back seat of his car! ‘You … you … oh, oh!’

But, ironically, it was as his hand began to slide its way up her thigh that reality hit her like a sudden spray of ice-water and Jessica tore herself out of his arms, wriggling over to the corner where she surveyed him as if she had found herself alone with an unknown and deadly predator.

Her fingers reached for her neck and she could feel the rapid rise and fall of her breast as she struggled to cope with her ragged breathing.

‘What … what on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she breathed.

‘You know exactly what I’m doing—I’m going to make love to you.’

Jessica swallowed. ‘You are not!’

‘But you want me to.’

Oh, the arrogance and the assurance which was printed all over that gorgeous face—but even worse was the glaring truth which underpinned his words. She did want him—more than she could ever remember wanting anyone, but, oh, at what price? Her dignity? Her job? She tugged at the black silk dress which had ridden up round her thighs. ‘Maybe for a moment I did—but this certainly wasn’t supposed to be part of the plan tonight!’

‘No?’ he drawled, infuriated now by the sudden, abrupt ending and by the growing feeling of disbelief that a woman should be turning him down. And such a woman as this! ‘I wasn’t aware that we had drawn up some kind of itinerary for the evening.’

‘That’s not what I meant and you know it!’ she flared.

‘No?’

‘No!’ And suddenly Jessica was angry—not just with herself but with him, too. ‘Did you think that I’d jump into bed with you at the drop of a hat?’ she demanded.

He wanted to say that it was far more likely to be a drop of her panties, which—unbelievably and infuriatingly—he had yet to see. ‘I think you were pretty close to it, Jessica. Sì.’

‘You think that all you have to do is to whisk me off to a fancy dinner in a chauffeur driven car and I’ll be so … so … grateful that I’ll capitulate to you!’

Salvatore was beginning to grow bored now. ‘I hadn’t actually given it that much thought,’ he told her damningly. ‘It wasn’t a situation I’d anticipated.’

Stupidly enough, this only added to her anger. So now he was saying that he hadn’t even considered he might find her attractive enough to make a pass at her! Was that why he had chosen her—because she was too plain to provide any temptation? Well, thank heavens she had seen sense before it was too late.

Imagine if she’d gone back with him—let him make love to her, and then what? Would he have sent her on her way in the middle of the night—to be taken home by his driver, like a toy he had grown bored with playing with? Or, even worse, being given money for a taxi to conveniently disappear from his bed?

‘We are just a man and a woman,’ he mused, when still she said nothing. ‘And sometimes passion comes along when you are least expecting it. It is the way of these things.’

As he spoke he reached out to brush a stray strand of the thick, shiny hair which had fallen over her face and that one innocent, almost tender gesture was almost Jessica’s undoing. Because that was the kind of thing that a real lover might do—especially if he was trying hard to seduce you. Not that Jessica was the world’s biggest expert on lovers, but she knew what was considered acceptable by most women with a degree of self-respect and what was not.

If she allowed Salvatore to make love to her now, then it would be tantamount to telling him to treat her like a disposable cloth—to be thrown away when he’d finished with her!

And by tomorrow, his desire would have died. Why, he might even thank her for having been level-headed enough to put a stop to things before they got out of hand. True, facing him again in the workplace wasn’t going to be the most comfortable option, but there were ways of dealing with that.

She pulled her head back from the enticement of that touch. ‘Maybe it’s the way of things in the world you live in,’ she said pointedly. ‘But not in mine.’

He searched her face for a teasing look, the telltale expression on her face which would indicate that this was merely female playfulness, but to Salvatore’s disbelief there was none. Just the kind of jutting-chinned certainty which women often assumed when they meant something, and which made his heart sink.

This was worse than being back in Sicily! Did she really imagine that he was going to start courting her? That she would allow him certain privileges each night? One night the kiss, the next the breasts—until she breathlessly allowed him to take her whole body, as she would have been hungering for from the very beginning?

Did she really think he had the time or the inclination to waste on a leisurely pursuit of a woman for whom his desire was already waning—someone who should have been thanking her lucky stars to be here with him in the first place? His mouth twisted. What a little fool she was—to have called time on what would have been the best experience of her life!

‘If you think that such resistance will elevate you to a truly irresistible status in my eyes, then I am afraid you are sadly mistaken, cara. Do you not think that I have been privy to every devious game played by women? I know them all—and it won’t work, for I am immune to them all.’

Jessica sat bolt upright. She hadn’t been so angry since … well, actually, she couldn’t ever remember being as angry as this!

‘Oh, don’t worry, Signor Cardini,’ she retorted, trying to match his withering tone with one of her own and in that hot moment of fury not caring that she might be jeopardising her job. ‘I really hadn’t given any thought to game-playing—why would I? I thought I was coming out to act as some kind of decoy—not to be leapt on in the back of your car! And now, if you don’t mind—I’d like to be taken home.’

There was a moment of brief, stunned silence as the impact of her words sank in, until in the shadowed gloom Salvatore’s mouth curved into a cruel and mocking smile. ‘I think you forget yourself, cara mia,’ he drawled damningly. ‘You will certainly be dropped off—but only after the car has taken me home.’

He pressed a button by his seat, tersely issued the instruction to his driver and drew a sheaf of documents from one of the side-pockets. And then, clicking on a reading light, he leaned back in his seat and began to flick through them, as if he had simply forgotten she was there.

CHAPTER FIVE

BUT the craziest thing of all was that Salvatore couldn’t get Jessica out of his mind—and the irony of this didn’t escape him. How could one short, bogus date have resulted in him thinking almost non-stop about his damned cleaner? Unable to shake from his mind the memory of her grey eyes, that pure skin and the decadent delight of those luscious breasts.

The light glinted on his razor as he stared in the mirror, his dark jaw half shaved and his blue eyes narrowed. Intellectually he recognised that her improbable attraction was because she had turned him down. He was used to women fawning. Plotting. Enticing and scheming. Why, it was not unknown for a woman to beg him to make love to her!

Jessica intrigued him because in a world where one thing was predictable—his effect on the opposite sex—the unexpected would always have the power to tantalise him.

So had she been playing games with him? Knowing that precisely the right button to press was not to let him press any buttons at all? To let him touch a little, but not too much. To give him a taste to whet his appetite but leave him hungering for more?

He went to his club and swam for an hour, had a breakfast meeting in a chandelier-lit room overlooking Hyde Park and took a conference call from an Australian banker before most of the world was awake. Yet still he was restless.

How could some plain and mousy little cleaner know how to handle any kind of man—but especially a man like him?

All day long he was distracted, though he was astute enough not to make any major decisions until her infernal perfume had left his senses. Some scent he was unfamiliar with—which had reminded him of springtime and softness and clung to his skin last night until he had viciously washed it off beneath the jets of a cold shower.

‘Maledizione!’ Damn her!

Giovanni Amato—an old friend from Sicily—was flying in from New York and Salvatore had arranged to meet him for dinner. Yet he found himself strangely relieved when Giovanni’s secretary rang to say his flight had been delayed, and that he was running late.

‘Get him to call me,’ Salvatore said to her. ‘We’ll change it to another night.’

As he slowly put the phone down Salvatore felt the stealthy beat of excitement combined with the strong tang of self-contempt. Surely you aren’t hanging around the office waiting to see whether that pale little nobody will dare show her face here tonight? he asked himself furiously.

But as he cleared his desk of paperwork he recognised that maybe he was. He glanced at his watch. That was if she was going to bother to turn up.

He had signed the last of a pile of letters and was just putting his gold pen down on the blotter when he heard the door click open behind him. Salvatore felt himself tense, though he didn’t move. He didn’t dare move. He hadn’t felt this kind of hot, instant lust for a woman for a long time and he wanted to prolong it—knowing that the second he turned round, his fantasy would crumble into dust. He would no longer be looking at the woman who had made him feel so deliciously hard all night, but at some mousey little office worker.

He swivelled the chair round to face her. ‘Hello, Jessica,’ he said softly.

Clutching her bucket and her mop, Jessica froze as she stared across the huge office in horror.

He was still here!

Despite her leaving his office until the last possible moment—until she was certain that he had gone—Salvatore Cardini was still at his desk, his icy blue eyes mocking her with memories of what had almost happened in his car last night! She bit down on her lip so hard that she risked cutting it and the hand which wasn’t holding onto the mop clenched into a tight fist by the side of her pink overall. Of all the nightmare situations, this had to be the very worst.

Hadn’t she hesitated about coming in here at all, tempted to phone Top Kleen and tell them she was sick? And hadn’t there been a tiny part of her which had wondered about leaving the agency altogether—to sign on with someone new? Someone who might not have a prestigious client like Cardini, but who would guarantee a peaceful working environment where she would be untroubled by ridiculous fantasies.

But Jessica had a strong work ethic, which made her baulk at such behaviour, as well as a stubborn streak of pride which insisted that she had done nothing wrong. Nothing to be ashamed of.

So where was that strong conviction now? Staring across the vast space, she could see the sardonic glint in Salvatore’s eyes. Her mouth as dry as parchment, she drank him in. His black hair, his broad shoulders and outline of that amazing hard body. The image of that same body pressing itself close into hers in the back seat of his car drifted tantalisingly into her mind and fiercely she tried to block it.

What the hell was she going to say to him when their last meeting had ended in a frozen silence?

Just act normally. As if nothing happened. Wipe it from your memory—as he has probably wiped it from his.

She cleared her throat. ‘Good evening …’ she hesitated. ‘… sir.’

Salvatore gave a slow, mocking smile. So they were back to ‘sir’, were they?

His eyes flicked over her. She was wearing the same pink overall which she always wore and her hair was almost completely concealed by the hideous pink scarf. Her face was bare of make-up and her grey eyes were wary, watchful. She looked exactly the same as she always did and yet something had changed.

In him?

Was it because he had kissed those bare lips and tangled his fingers in the glossy hair which now lay covered from his gaze that made him so acutely aware of her presence in a way he had never been before? Was it because he now knew the luscious curves and unexpected temptations of the body which lay beneath the unflattering garment?

‘Sleep well?’ he questioned softly.

Infuriatingly, Jessica blushed. No, of course she hadn’t slept well! She’d spent the entire night tossing and turning and bashing her pillow into shape and then getting up to make herself a cup of camomile tea, unable to get Salvatore out of her mind.

It had been the memory of his kiss which had troubled her more than anything. Because wasn’t it rather shaming that in all her twenty-three years—the one kiss which had sent her heart soaring was delivered by a man for whom she’d been nothing but a convenience?

She wondered if he was astute enough to notice how awful she looked. Wouldn’t the dark circles beneath her eyes show her to be lying if she claimed to have slumbered like a baby?

‘Not really, no,’ she answered briskly.

‘Me neither. I tossed and I turned all night.’ His lips lingered on the words as he leaned back in his chair and studied her. ‘But I guess that isn’t really surprising, is it, cara?’

She wished he wouldn’t dip his voice like that—as if he were dipping a rich, ripe strawberry into a bowl of thick, melted chocolate. And she wished he wouldn’t stare at her like that, either. As if it were his unalienable right to arrogantly appraise her, with the kind of slow scrutiny of a man performing an imaginary striptease. So just blank all his sensual allusions. Behave as you normally would and sooner or later he’ll tire of the game and leave you alone.

‘No, not surprising at all,’ she said, deliberately misunderstanding. She picked up a plastic bottle which appeared to show two lemons going into battle against an army of germs. ‘The food at dinner was very rich.’

‘But you hardly touched a thing all evening,’ he reminded her.

‘I’m amazed you noticed,’ said Jessica.

‘Oh, I noticed all right.’ His blue eyes gleamed with provocation. ‘Just as I noticed that Jeremy Kingston seemed to think you were the most fascinating thing to come into his life since his last tax break.’

‘Only because I asked him about fishing. He says he gets fed up with people always wanting to know which bank he’s taking over next.’

‘Are you aware that he’s one of the most powerful financiers in Europe?’ questioned Salvatore coolly.

‘No, of course I’m not,’ scoffed Jessica. ‘Finance not only doesn’t interest me—it also confuses the life out of me. Now, do you mind if I start working?’

He linked his long fingers together. ‘You don’t usually ask.’

She wasn’t usually remembering just what it felt like to have his lips all over her neck, his hands splayed over her silk-covered thighs. ‘So I don’t,’ she agreed tightly. ‘But under the circumstances, I thought I’d make an exception.’

Clutching her bucket, she walked across the office to the cloakroom, horribly and yet skin-tingling, aware that he was watching every step as she passed him, like a clever cat before it leapt onto a helpless little mouse. She reached for the tap. Hadn’t he called her a mouse last night? And wasn’t that an insult?

Salvatore could hear the sound of running water and he screwed his eyes together. He had been expecting—what? That she would have prettied herself up for him this evening? Flirted a little? Undone a few buttons and flaunted a little cleavage? Or acted in that deliberately coy way that women sometimes did, and which men could rarely resist, even when they knew they were being manipulated.

Yet here she was, behaving as if nothing had happened!

But nothing did happen, his aching body reminded him, and his natural sexual arrogance made his fists clench with anger that frustration imposed on him from such an unlikely source. Noiselessly, he rose from his desk and followed her into the cloakroom. ‘You don’t usually run away from me either, do you, Jessica?’

She turned round, her face flushed, heart-thumpingly aware of his proximity and the way that he seemed to dominate the space around them. Suddenly, her bravado seemed to have deserted her. ‘No, I don’t,’ she agreed unsteadily.

‘Just like you don’t usually stare at me all wide-eyed like that, as if I’m the big, bad wolf.’

Jessica attempted to make her face look normal—but how the hell did you do something like that when all you could think of was how utterly irresistible the man was? ‘Don’t I?’

He smiled, but it was a hard edged smile. ‘You know you don’t.’

He seemed to be deliberately misinterpreting the situation. Didn’t he have any inkling how difficult she was finding this? Didn’t he realise that she had feelings for him but was sensible enough to know that such feelings were totally inappropriate? Jessica frowned, but part of her felt a sudden sadness, too.

Usually they had an easy rapport, which sometimes happened when two people of completely different social standing came together. You sometimes heard about very rich men confiding in their driver, or a billionairess divulging all her secrets to the girl who painted her toenails. But it didn’t mean anything—not in the grand scheme of things.

Because such unlikely relationships only worked on the basis that both parties knew their place. That there were strict boundaries which neither should attempt to cross.

And so it had been with her and Salvatore—until last night. Last night they had broken the rules, big time. The taking her to dinner could have been classified as nothing but a minor transgression—but what had happened afterwards could not.

She couldn’t deny what she’d done—or nearly done. And although she had called a halt to that blissful bout of passion she couldn’t deny that her body had been crying out for him.

She looked at him. If she allowed herself to sink further into stupid fantasy, then her body could very easily start crying out for him right now. His black hair was ruffled, the bright blue eyes narrowed and the hard and autocratic line of his jaw was shadowed with new growth. He looked imposing and almost magisterial and a whole universe away from her. Standing here now, it seemed almost impossible to believe that they had briefly been so intimate.

Jessica knew that she had a choice—and the only sane one which lay open to her was not to rise to his teasing remarks or the sensual light which lurked in the depths of his sapphire eyes. He’s only playing with you, she told herself, and she knew she couldn’t afford to join in—neither financially, nor emotionally. That if she wanted to keep her job and carry on as before, then she had to forget the rapport they used to share. Forget everything except doing what she was paid to do, which was to clean his office.

‘I’d better get on with the floor,’ she said awkwardly, turning the hot tap on full and then jumping back as the red-hot water splashed onto her hand, and she gave a little yelp of pain. ‘Ouch!’

‘Sollecita!’ Salvatore made a clicking noise with his tongue as he walked over to her. ‘Here.’ And he calmly turned on the cold tap and held her flaming fingers beneath it.

The water was deliciously cool and soothing but his touch was even more unsettling than the stinging pain. Jessica tried to pull away but he wouldn’t let her.

‘Leave it under the running water,’ he ordered. ‘I said, leave it, Jessica.’

She didn’t have the strength or the inclination to disobey him and yet this was just too odd. He was here, in the most inappropriate of settings, administering hasty first aid to her. She felt dizzy with shock and pleasure. Everything was all wrong and yet through all the confusion of her thoughts came the overwhelming sensation that she liked him touching her.

She swallowed. Of course she liked him touching her—who wouldn’t?

After a couple of minutes, he turned the hand over and examined it, tracing a light fingertip over the still-heated flesh. ‘I think you’ll live,’ he said softly.

The surprising gentleness of the contact was completely disarming, as was the sudden deepening of his voice.

‘It’s okay. I mean, I’m okay,’ she amended, trying to pull her hand away.

‘Maybe you are,’ he objected as he drew her towards the warmth of his body. ‘But I’m not.’

Her eyes opened wide, startled by pleasure and shock. ‘What … what are you doing?’

‘This,’ he said, his voice distorting savagely as he stared down into her pale face. ‘I have to do this.’

She knew he was going to kiss her—she could read it in the fractional dilation of his eyes. She could sense it in the sudden tension in his body and in the raw tang of masculine desire which made her forget everything she had vowed last night as she’d listened to the ticking of her bedside clock and waited for the alarm to ring. He was going to kiss her and, although she knew she should stop it, she could no more have stopped it than willed the earth to stop turning.

‘Salvatore …’ she whispered.

The ‘sir’ had gone once more, he thought, with grim satisfaction. ‘Sì,’ he agreed arrogantly, her breath warm against his lips. ‘That is my name.’

With a groan, he drove his mouth down on hers. She tasted sweet and minty, as if she had just brushed her teeth. Had she done that specially, hoping that he would kiss her? The thought that she had been anticipating this—wanting this—made him harder still.

He pulled her closer, his hands reaching down to cup her buttocks, and for the first time he appreciated how small she was. Positively tiny. In the car their bodies had been on a level, but now she seemed to slip into his arms and disappear into them, melding into his body like a pocket Venus.

Jessica clutched onto his shirt as his lips beguiled her, the palms of his hands skating with arrogant possession over her bottom. On and on his mouth continued to plunder hers until suddenly her knees threatened to give way—and perhaps he also sensed too that things were getting out of hand because he stopped kissing her, though he didn’t let her go. She gazed up at him uncertainly, in a daze.

His blue eyes looked almost black and his breathing was ragged and there was an odd kind of expression on his face, as though he liked what he was doing but despised it all at the same time.

‘We can’t stay here,’ he said flatly. ‘Come back to my apartment.’

Jessica swallowed. Stay focussed. Don’t behave like you’re expendable. You may have a lowly job but that doesn’t mean you don’t have pride. ‘No,’ she answered stubbornly. ‘I can’t.’

He shook his head impatiently. ‘Forget the cleaning for tonight.’

Jessica almost laughed. He thought that her refusal was solely about some loyalty to the dust levels in his office! Was that the only kind of thought he believed her capable of? ‘That wasn’t what I meant.’

Salvatore stilled as he heard the note of determination which had crept into her voice. He had allowed her a token show of defiance last night—but she was trying his patience now. Was she daring to bargain with him?

‘What did you mean?’ he demanded dangerously.

But Jessica was not going to be bowed or bullied simply because he was in a position of authority. She lifted her chin up and stared at him. ‘You think I’m just going to come back with you to your flat and let you make love to me?’

‘Why, are you planning to go all demure on me when we both know that’s what you want, cara mia?’

Jessica took a step back, needing the space and looking at him with a kind of defiance. ‘Life isn’t just about doing what you want, Salvatore, it’s about doing what’s right, too.’

Dark eyebrows rose in haughty surprise. ‘Don’t tell me we’re going to start talking morals now?’

Jessica shook her head, hurt now, but impatient, too. ‘Is it because I clean your offices that you think you can just pick me up like an ornament and put me down again? Do you treat all women like that? No, of course you don’t! If I were someone else—you’d at least do me the courtesy of going through the motions of normal behaviour. You might ask me out to the theatre, or take me out to dinner. You might at least pretend that you’re interested in getting to know me as a person, rather than how quickly you can get me into your bed!’

Her breathing was all over the place and she stared at him with a boldness he had rarely seen directed at him, and certainly never by a woman.

‘Finished?’ he questioned.

Go on, then, thought Jessica. Sack me, and see if I care! ‘Yes,’ she said.

Salvatore’s lips twisted into an odd kind of smile. ‘I think I get the drift. You’re objecting not because I want to go to bed with you, but because I have not gone through the necessary rituals which society demands?’

‘Are you making fun of me?’

‘Not at all. For who am I to argue in the face of such a passionately put plea?’ Such passion boded well for the bedroom, he mused as he looked down at her flushed cheeks with some amusement. ‘What is it they say? The mouse who roared. Very well—I have heard you, my little mouse, and we shall play the games according to your rules.’ He glimmered her a mocking look. ‘So will you have dinner with me, Jessica?’

She swallowed. ‘As another pretend date, you mean?’

He shook his head and this time his tone was almost gentle. ‘No. As a real one this time.’

She was so taken aback that for a moment words completely failed her. ‘When?’

He gave a low laugh. ‘How about Tuesday?’

Jessica stared at him. How could he go from such urgency to a day which seemed ages away? ‘Tuesday?’ she questioned tentatively.

‘Sì, that is the first evening I have free. I’m flying to Rome for the weekend.’

‘Rome?’

‘Mmm. Ever been there?’

‘No. Never.’ She wanted to ask him who he was going to Rome with, but that was none of her business.

He moved a little closer and he could see the sudden wild darkening of her eyes, the instinctive way that her lips parted. He should kiss her now, take her here and have done with it—it wouldn’t be hard to overcome her coy reluctance.

Yet he had never been forced to wait. Nor to dance attention to a woman’s demands, and it was oddly exciting. Why not let her enjoy her brief moment of power while it lasted? Soon he would have her exactly where he wanted her. ‘So are you going to see me on Tuesday?’ he murmured.

‘Yes, I can do Tuesday,’ she whispered.

He stared down at her for one long moment, drifting a contemplative finger over the outline of her lips and feeling them tremble beneath his touch. He read her silent plea to have him kiss her once more, to seal the agreement in another traditional way—and with a brief, hard smile he turned away. Let her simmer. Let her wait as she had forced him to wait.

‘Until then, cara,’ he said softly.

And holding onto her stinging hand, Jessica was left weakly staring after him as he walked out of the room without another word.

CHAPTER SIX

THE restaurant took Jessica’s breath away. She’d heard of it, of course—but never actually imagined eating there. It was right in the middle of London’s theatre-land and so anonymous from the outside that you wouldn’t know it was there. A secret door opened straight onto the pavement. You stepped in from a crowded and busy street and it was like entering a different world.

It was a large yet intimate space with stained glass windows filtering in coloured light while keeping it private from prying eyes outside. Although it was a Tuesday evening, it was packed out. One of those places where it was impossible for mere mortals to get a table at short notice, though Salvatore had managed it without any trouble.

He seemed to be known here, thought Jessica as they were shown to their table. The waiters beamed. The sommelier nodded at him with a smile. Were staff in places like this taught to remember the names of all their influential customers, she wondered—or was it Salvatore’s bright blue eyes and dark, towering presence which would always stamp him indelibly on people’s minds?

She had never felt more self-conscious as they wove their way through the linen-draped tables. She saw a couple of faces she recognised from TV and spotted a well-known author who had won a literary prize last year and whose book she had at home.

The women all looked very thin and very beautiful. A couple of them glanced up as they passed and Jessica was certain she wasn’t imagining their faint frowns. They looked as if they were trying—and failing—to place her.

What’s a guy like him doing with a girl like her? their carefully made-up eyes seemed to ask—or was that just her own insecurity talking? All the same, she wondered what they’d think if they knew the truth!

‘You are amused by something?’ questioned Salvatore as she sat down.

Jessica let the waiter unfold a giant napkin onto her lap. ‘I’m just hoping I don’t pick up the wrong fork.’

Salvatore gave a low laugh. ‘I remember the first time I left Sicily. I went to stay in France and one of my uncles took me out to eat in the most famous restaurant in Paris. I could see what looked like fifty pieces of cutlery at each setting, and the very crème of Parisian high society surrounding me.’

‘And were you scared?’ asked Jessica, for a moment forgetting all her nerves, the anxieties which had plagued her all day, about how the evening was going to end and whether she looked okay.

Salvatore shrugged. He supposed that it wouldn’t be particularly helpful to her to know that nothing ever really scared him. That men were there to be strong and doubts were for women—but he wasn’t going to invent a timid persona just to make her feel better.

‘No. I watched my uncle and copied exactly what he did. The only difference was that he left food on his plate. It was a thing that people did then, to show that they were not peasants, but I had the hunger of youth, and finished mine. Every scrap.’

Jessica nodded, eager to hear more. The unexpected glimpse into his past made him seem less daunting somehow. More like the man who usually chatted to her in the office before this whole sexual attraction thing had blown up in their faces. It made it easier to forget what this evening was about and to pretend that they were alone in this gorgeous restaurant for no other reason than that they liked one another.

‘And don’t tell me,’ she teased, ‘that no food has ever tasted as good as the meal you ate that night?’

He shook his dark head. ‘On the contrary,’ he demurred softly. ‘They had messed around with the menu so that everything I ate was almost unrecognisable as the original ingredient. The best food of all is simple, and fresh—the fresher the better. The fish you pull from the water yourself and throw onto the flames. The rabbit whose blood is still warm and which goes straight into the pot. And no orange is sweeter than the one plucked from the tree.’ But other appetites had been satisfied that night, he recalled, with an ache of nostalgia.

He remembered the beautiful waitress who had slipped him her phone number while his uncle was paying the bill. Later, he remembered sneaking out to her tiny room close to the Sacre Coeur and the long, sensual night which had followed. The sound of the church bell striking the hour and voices shouting in the street outside as she had moaned her pleasure beneath him. The bowl of strong, sweet coffee he had drunk amid the rumpled sheets in the morning. How sharpened his senses had been then.

He stared at Jessica, at the way her hair hung in two shiny wings by the side of her face, and he felt an unexpectedly savage kick of lust. He wanted her, he realised, with a sharp hunger he had not felt in a long time.

All weekend he had thought about just how much he wanted her and how her sweet, flowering perfume had invaded his senses. He felt a pulse beating deep at his groin. Maybe he just liked the kind of woman who would never make any demands on him.

The waiter came over with two glasses of champagne and made as if to leave them alone with their menus, but Salvatore waved him back, eager for the formality and constraints of the meal to be over. ‘Shall we order?’ he questioned unevenly.

‘Yes, of course.’ He might as well have announced, Let’s get it over with! Jessica knew exactly why he wanted to speed through the meal—she could read it in the way he was looking at her and the sudden tension in the air. The way his face had changed. The sudden tension in his body.

This whole occasion was a formality, she reminded herself painfully—it wasn’t real, it was phoney. And suddenly the nerves which had been simmering away came bubbling up to the surface. She forced a smile, clasping her hands together so he couldn’t see them trembling. ‘What would you recommend?’

‘Let’s have steak, and salad, oh, and a half bottle of Barolo,’ he added, glancing up at the waiter and then leaning back in his chair to study her once the man had gone. ‘So where do you usually go to eat?’ he questioned politely.

‘Small independents, mainly,’ she answered, horribly aware that they were now going through the motions of having a conversation. As if Salvatore really cared where she normally ate! ‘Though it’s hard when there are so many chains. I’m not really mad about—’

‘You’re looking very … delectable tonight,’ he cut in softly.

‘Am I?’

‘Yes, you are. Almost unrecognisable. That colour suits you.’

‘Thank you.’ Nervously, Jessica licked her bottom lip as she responded to a compliment she wasn’t really sure she merited. It was another borrowed outfit, loaned once again by Willow, but given more grudgingly this time.

‘He’s taking you out again?’ Willow had demanded in disbelief when Jessica had arrived back from work, pale-faced with shock as she’d shared her news.

‘That’s right. For dinner.’

She hadn’t said why. She hadn’t dared. She found it hard to believe it herself—that she should be pursuing something which had the power to wreck her admittedly dull, but relatively ordered life. She had been the one who had wanted this evening to happen and yet now it had arrived she felt as flat as a punctured balloon.

And that was the trouble. When Salvatore had taken her to that dinner party she’d had nothing to lose—she had been there acting as his girlfriend. She had been given a role and known how to play it. But tonight was different. The meal was one that she had demanded in order to put a gloss of respectability over something which wasn’t respectable at all. She was contemplating going to bed with her boss.

Tonight she was here as herself and never had the differences between them seemed so glaringly obvious. Had she really thought that they could just sit through a meal together and then go off to have sex as if it were the most natural thing in the world? Didn’t matter how much she wanted him or how long she’d had a stupid crush on him—deep down she knew this was wrong. It had to be wrong, surely, when two people came from such different worlds?

Jessica stared down at her plate. ‘It was a mistake to come here tonight,’ she said unhappily.

Salvatore surveyed the gleaming and neatly parted crown of her head, the way that her silk-covered shoulders were hunched in an expression of defeat. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because … oh, come on, Salvatore—you know why,’ she whispered.

‘I thought you wanted to eat dinner with me.’

‘Yes, I did—but maybe I was wrong to want it. Or maybe the circumstances surrounding it were wrong. Are wrong.’

‘You weren’t being so coy or so dismissive the other day,’ he said slowly.

‘I know that. And maybe I’m regretting it now.’

‘Are you?’ When she didn’t answer, his voice deepened into a silken caress. ‘Jessica, look at me.’

In the background she could hear the distant laughter and chatter of the other diners and the chink of glass and cutlery. Everything sounded as if it were coming from a long way away.

Reluctantly, she raised her head and stared into the bright blue eyes—instantly caught and mesmerised by their sensual light. She could feel the inevitable leaping of her heart, the heavy singing of excitement in her blood as she looked across the table into his ruggedly handsome face.

Had he known that would happen—one look and she would be captivated? Yes, of course he had. He wasn’t a stupid man and he must have capitalised on his undeniable power over women time and time again.

Reaching across the table, he took one of her hands in his, turning it over to study it. The nails were cut short and filed down sensibly and the skin was unusually dry. The women he usually dated had silky-soft flesh, buffed and creamed and indulged during their innumerable sessions at the beauty salon.

These were worker’s hands, he realised with a start, and suddenly he found himself wanting to pamper her. He had thought that this place might be a treat for her—but now he could see that it might be something of an ordeal. ‘We don’t have to stay here, you know,’ he said.

‘But we’ve only just ordered.’

‘We can cancel it. Go back to my place and have something there, if you’re hungry.’

‘I’m not.’

‘No.’ Their eyes met. ‘Neither am I.’

Jessica swallowed, because now his thumb was stroking a tantalising little circle on her palm. He was weakening a resolve which was already terminally weak. She looked at the sensual curve of his lips, scarcely able to believe that they had kissed her so passionately, and yet just the touch of him was making her shiveringly aware that they had. ‘Won’t it look … strange if we just walk out?’

Salvatore smiled. ‘Who cares what it looks like? I don’t spend my life seeking the opinion of others.’ He gave a shrug and his thumb began to stroke a bigger circle, and then to trace a slow path up the length of her middle finger. He smiled as he saw her eyes darken at the unconscious eroticism. ‘Come on,’ he ordered huskily.

In a way, it was the craziest solution of all. If Jessica had felt out of place before, then choosing to leave just as the waiter was bringing out the red wine and salad was guaranteed to focus attention on them.

But even in spite of that, she felt an overwhelming sense of relief that they were going—because anything was better than trying to maintain a façade that this was like a normal date, when clearly it was anything but. Of having to try to chew her way through a piece of steak, no matter how tender it was, when food was the last thing she wanted right now.

When they got outside she could tell him that the whole thing had been a bad idea and that it had all been a stupid mistake on her part. She should never have asked for this. But at least if she called a halt to it now, she wouldn’t get hurt.

The January air which hit them was bitingly cold and Jessica wished she’d remembered to bring gloves.

‘I think maybe it’s best if we just forget all about tonight,’ she said, pulling her coat tighter around her. ‘I can make my own way home on the Tube.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Are you crazy?’ he questioned silkily. ‘You think I’m letting you go anywhere without me tonight?’ The limousine purred up to a silent halt beside them and, aware of the paparazzi hanging around, he pulled open the door and quickly pushed her inside.

‘Salvatore,’ she said as he slid onto the back seat beside her and Jessica’s heart began to race. ‘You can’t take me somewhere against my will.’

‘Does protesting and playing the innocent salve your conscience?’ he questioned. ‘Or does it simply turn you on?’

‘That’s unfair. And it’s not true.’

‘No?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

He tipped her pale face upwards, his thumb beneath her chin. Her grey eyes were smokier tonight, he thought, and her lips gleamed at him enticingly and they were trembling. Very slowly, he lowered his head and drifted his mouth across hers, feeling it shiver and hearing the instinctive little escape of her breath. It was a lingering, unhurried whisper of a kiss, the brush of their lips the only point of contact. She had every opportunity to stop it but she did not.

Salvatore could feel his own desire building. He could sense her impatience, could hear the faint flutter of her hands as she tried to prevent herself from reaching out to touch him. Still he teased her with the merest whisper of a kiss until, with a small cry of her own surrender, Jessica reached up to clasp his face between both her hands.

‘Oh, Salvatore,’ she whispered brokenly. ‘Salvatore.’

He stared deep into her eyes and nodded. ‘Yes, cara. You have proved it to yourself. You want me, and I want you. It is so simple, isn’t it? You are coming home with me,’ he said softly, and thought that he disguised his triumph well.

Jessica stared up into the gleam of his brilliant eyes, her lips parting as he lowered his mouth to kiss her properly this time as the car sped off towards Chelsea.

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