Читать книгу Modern Romance Collection: February 2018 Books 5 - 8 - Kelly Hunter, Kate Walker - Страница 13
ОглавлениеPIA STOOD OUTSIDE Raphael’s imposing set of offices on the tenth floor of Vito Automobiles in front of his assistants’ desks—apparently Raphael required two assistants—and fought the urge to turn tail and run.
She would have to run a long way though, for the stretch between the bank of elevators to the wide swath of those desks was an ocean of gleaming marble.
Stay away from me.
She cringed at the words she’d thrown at him a mere ten days ago. If only she could somehow manage a semblance of sophistication in his presence. If only her insides didn’t turn to jelly the moment he was near.
But she’d never experienced anything like her attraction to him, and she didn’t know how to control it.
She was still debating whether she should just cut her losses when the door to his office opened and he stepped out.
His suit jacket was gone, and he seemed to have carelessly pushed the sleeves of his white dress shirt back, revealing hair-roughened forearms and a gleaming Rolex. His hair needed a trim, and there were dark shadows under his eyes.
He was so painfully gorgeous that he took her breath away.
“Pia? How long have you been waiting?”
His frown cut through the light-headedness.
The two assistants’ gazes swung to her. They shot to their feet, a torrent of Italian volleying out of their mouths.
Pia forced herself to move toward him. “I just arrived and I... I hadn’t even had the chance to inquire if you were around.”
He scrutinized her, from her wild hair to her summery blouse and her denim shorts—which suddenly seemed far too short—even down to her wedges, cataloging, it seemed to her, every detail before returning to meet her eyes.
There was that intensity again, that displeasure—as if there was something about her he didn’t like. “Come in.”
She clutched the strap of her purse tight. “It’s nothing...important. Relevant even.” Her idea was ridiculous. Outrageous. “I’ll talk to you when you see Gio...whenever.”
She hardly turned on her heel before he was there, next to her. The warm, male scent of him buckling her knees. His fingers wrapped around her bare arm sending a shocking pulse of awareness through her.
He didn’t really pull her, yet Pia found herself drifting alongside him. “No interruptions,” he warned the gaping assistants before closing the door.
Pia looked around his huge office, more to avoid looking at him than with real interest. A dark mahogany desk took center stage with a sitting area to one side, and a walkthrough to a bedroom and walk-in shower.
She retreated to the other side of the desk while he leaned against the closed door, all casual elegance. “You should not roam by yourself in a strange country.”
Some heretofore-unknown imp goaded her. “Worried about my safety?”
He rolled his eyes, which in turn made her smile. “Giovanni Vito’s American granddaughter is quite the sensation right now.” His gaze skimmed her face for an infinitesimally breathtaking moment. “You’re a shiny target for any number of men.”
He called her the vilest of things, took offense to her presence in Gio’s life and yet, something in his expression made her wonder if he actually was worried about her.
Or maybe she was beginning to delude herself.
She sighed, helpless against the longing that, for one moment, he would see her. Pia. Not Giovanni’s scheming granddaughter. But then, if she weren’t, he’d probably not even look at her at all.
“I begged Emilio to give me a ride since he was coming into the city anyway. Gio is visiting his sister.”
His gaze lingered on her mouth. Just for a fraction of a second, but there. Luckily, the desk hid her trembling legs. “Which one?”
“That mean old dragon Maria.”
One brow shot up.
She colored. “She’s the one who created the rift between my grandmother and Giovanni. Filled both their heads with lies. Turned their young love bitter.”
He scoffed. “Don’t you think their love should have stood against Maria’s meddling? It shouldn’t have sent Lucia running across the ocean and Gio to marry three different women just to mend his broken heart.”
“I know what my Nonni felt each and every day of her life. And I’ll... I’ll thump you before I let you poison the memory of their love.”
He pushed off from the door with a feline grace that sent her pulse speeding. “And Giovanni keeps assuring me that you are a sweet, too-good-to-be-true young woman who likes everyone in the world.” He spoke as if her very existence was an impossibility.
Tracing the edge of the desk with her fingertip, she walked around it before he could reach her. “I usually don’t hold grudges.”
“Is that a warning, Pia?” he said softly behind her. She hadn’t realized how close he was. “You will only let me accuse you of so many things before I become unforgivable?”
She shrugged. “My nonna meant everything to me. I can’t forgive someone who caused her considerable harm. Which is why, while I resent your accusations, I try my best to understand your reasons for behaving as you do.” She looked up and met his gaze. “You care about Gio.”
Shadows filled his eyes before he nodded. “He means everything to me,” he said, using her own words. “He’s the one person who always believed in me. Who never asked anything of me.”
The stark emotion in his voice, the honesty in his eyes—Pia shivered. This was the true Raphael. A man whom no one saw. A man, she was becoming sure, who didn’t appear much. A man she respected and even liked. She cleared her throat, wishing she could shrug off the increasing connection she felt with him. “Now that we’ve established a common goal—”
His arm shot out to capture hers when she would have sidled away again. “If you don’t stop being so nervous around me, I’ll give you a real reason.”
“Like what?” she goaded, pushed by his nearness.
“Are you sure you want to know?”
No, she didn’t. This was dangerous. She had no business playing games with Raphael. So she sat down.
To her immense relief, he took the opposite seat. His long legs folded along the length of her own without touching. “You’ve been avoiding me.”
“I’ve been avoiding the entire male population of Milan. Unsuccessfully.”
His frown deepened, while his long fingers played with a paperweight. “So Gio is still determined to find a prince for his perfect princess. Tell me, is it because you’ve been thwarted in love that you’ve decided to let Gio buy you a nice, convenient husband instead?”
She stood up so fast her head whirled. “If all you’re going to do is mock me, I’ve—”
His arm shot out and caught hers, stalling her. “Mi dispiace, si?”
“You can’t say things with every intention of cutting me, and then expect to be let off by saying sorry. The last thing I want is to involve you. I came because I’ve no choice. And because, believe it or not, I trust you.”
His gaze flared, caught hers, compelling and dominant. But it was she who held it, letting him know she might quiver at his touch but it didn’t make her weak.
A muscle flicking under his jaw, he looked away first.
Pia felt as if she had won a minor battle. She took a drink of water and watched him over the rim of her glass.
Whatever had passed between them, it was gone. Smoothed away beneath his perfect featured mask. “Tell me why you’re here.”
“You were right. Giovanni hosted that ball with the intention of introducing me to eligible men. Introducing being a euphemism.
“I haven’t had a day to myself since that blasted night.
He’s dragging me to party after party, brunch after brunch as if I were...a mule he’s determined to be rid of.” Raphael’s mouth—that sensuous mouth, twitched, and Pia glared at him. “It’s not funny.
“I can’t turn around before there’s a grandson or a son or a twice removed cousin of one of Gio’s friends visiting. There’s so many of them I can’t even keep their names straight. If I refuse to go on an outing, Gio encourages my escort to walk around the estate with me. If I refuse to accompany one of them to a party, Gio takes me there anyway and then abandons me with them.
“I know and you know and the whole damned world knows that it’s not my infinite charms or my breathtaking personality that brings them to me in droves. But Gio refuses to acknowledge it. Pretends as if he can’t hear me when I say half of them are just plain...”
“Idiots?” Raphael offered unhelpfully.
“I’ve had enough of the false attention, the warm looks, the overdone praise of my nonexistent beauty. I’ve taken to packing a picnic lunch first thing in the morning, and escaping to remote corners of the estate to avoid them.”
“No one can stop Gio when he gets an idea into his head. Why do you think he’s estranged from not only three ex-wives but also his brothers and sisters?”
“He’ll listen to you. He thinks you walk on water.”
Raphael shook his head. “I already warned him this would happen. But he’s determined to find you a...” He raised his hands palms up. The defeated gesture didn’t suit him at all. “Don’t shoot the messenger.
Why don’t you tell him to back off?”
“Every time I bring it up, he gets all teary and sentimental, starts rambling about the mistakes he made with Nonni and about leaving me to face men like Frank alone. He works himself into quite a temper.
“He raves about going to his grave knowing that you and I are all alone in the world. He feels responsible for you too, you know.”
Raphael snorted. “You do realize that your grandfather is a manipulative bastard, si?”
“That’s a horrible thing to say.”
“Doesn’t make it any less true. Giovanni will manipulate you until you agree the sun revolves around the earth.”
She rubbed her forehead, something clicking. “Wait...so you don’t think I’m an impostor anymore?”
“My PI informed me that you’re indeed Lucia’s granddaughter. And Giovanni’s.”
* * *
Which was why Raphael hadn’t visited Gio. But four days and a million thoughts hadn’t been enough for him to figure out how to handle the fact that Pia was Gio’s granddaughter. Or to convince himself not to handle her, in any way.
There were a hundred more beautiful, more sophisticated women among his acquaintances. Women who would suit him for any kind of arrangement he wanted. Women who didn’t look at him with barely hidden longing.
Women who were not his complicated godfather’s innocent granddaughters.
He’d been waiting it out. Telling himself that she was just a novelty with her honest admissions and her innocent looks.
That he’d always preferred experienced women—both in bed and when dealing out of it.
And yet, from the moment he’d seen her standing outside his office, awareness had hummed in his blood.
Today, she looked the part of an elementary teacher with her black-framed geeky glasses, her brown hair in a messy knot precariously held together with a wooden stick, he realized with a grin, and a frilly, floral blouse and worn-out denim shorts that clung to her nicely rounded buttocks and displayed her mile-long legs.
With no makeup on, she should have looked ordinary. But he’d already looked past the surface. Knew that beneath the plain facade was a woman who felt everything keenly. Knew that if he touched her, she would be as responsive and ravenous as he was.
The summery blouse made her look more fragile than usual. He wanted to trace the jut of her collarbone with his fingers. And then maybe his tongue. He wanted to pull that stick in her knot so that her hair tumbled down. He wanted to slowly peel those shorts down until he found the silky skin of her thighs so that he could...
Fingers at his temple, he forced the far too vivid, half-naked image of her from his eyes. Christ, even as a hormonal teenager he hadn’t indulged like that. For one thing, he’d never had a spare minute.
“You had a PI dig into my background?”
He shrugged, glad that he was sitting. “Gio has been hoodwinked by three ex-wives into not only marrying them but settling fat alimonies on them.”
She got up, walked around the coffee table that separated them and sat down at the other end of the sofa he was sitting on. Tilting her chin up, she gave him a haughty look. “I’m waiting, Raphael.”
He grinned. “For what?”
“An apology. What do you think?”
“Didn’t you just tell me you don’t want apologies for things I’m not really sorry about?”
“You’re the most arrogant, annoying man I’ve ever met.”
“Tell me what brought you here, despite that.”
“Last night we had a really bad argument. He was pushing me into a corner and I... I said something really awful.” Big fat tears filled up her eyes. And just like that Raphael went from mild irritation to a strange tenderness in his chest.
Raphael leaned forward and took her tightly clasped hands in his. Even as he fought it, awareness seeped through him from her hands. The rough calluses on her hands, the slender wrists, the blunt nails—everything about her enthralled him.
He looked up and his gaze snagged on her wide mouth, pinched in sadness. “What happened?”
She tugged at her hands and he let go with the utmost reluctance. “Of all the men who have been...pursuing me, for lack of a better word, I like Enzo the best and it was easier to spend time with him than run around trying to avoid the rest of them. I enjoy his company and we’ve been pretty inseparable the last two weeks. He’s kind, genuine and he told me the first moment that—”
“Enzo Castillaghi?” Raphael snapped. Everything inside him came alert.
“He’s gay and he told me within two minutes of meeting me. He said his family would lose it if they knew. Both Giovanni and his father, Stefano, are pushing really hard for this to go through.”
Raphael jerked up straight, his blood curdling. “Stefano? He was there?”
Pia nodded, her gaze searching his. “I didn’t realize Gio knew so much about my thing with Enzo. Anyway, yesterday afternoon out of the blue Enzo and Stefano arrived for lunch. After lunch, we... Enzo...proposed to me in the garden while they watched from the terrace. He said he liked me, and we could marry as a convenience for now. It would get his parents off his back and I... Gio and the unwanted attention. Just as a stopgap measure.”
Raphael cursed hard and long.
For Gio to make a deal with Enzo’s father, Stefano Castillaghi, when he knew how much Raphael loathed Stefano, and with good reason... Something wasn’t right. The thought of Pia married to Enzo while Stefano pulled his strings from behind, while Stefano got his hand into Vito Automobiles... His blood boiled.
What the hell kind of a game was Giovanni playing?
“Raphael, you look downright scary. Is the Castillaghi family that bad?”
Somehow, he managed to swallow the poison that swirled within. “Enzo is harmless but completely under his father’s thumb. Stefano, on the other hand...”
“What about him?”
Raphael wondered if she realized she was touching him. That all he’d have to do was tilt his head and his mouth would touch hers. A thread of her scent warmed by her skin teased his nostrils. Damn Giovanni!
“What about Stefano, Raphael?”
He ran a hand through his hair. This day was going from bad to worse. “Stefano was my father’s business partner for twenty years. Even as families, we were very close. As a business, my father, Stefano and the third partner made some unwise, risky investments. When the investments failed to pan out and the business went under, we found that Stefano and the other partner had cleverly claused themselves out of the debt.
My father was the only one responsible. We lost everything—our house, the business, the cars—overnight because he was determined to pay everyone back. But it wasn’t enough.”
“Couldn’t Stefano and the other guy be held responsible by law?”
He hated talking about that time. Talking about the man he’d once hero-worshipped. Being reminded that the void his father had left had only hardened with bitterness. “No.”
“You’re not telling me something.” Distress rang in her voice. “Your father...what happened to him?”
How could she know what he had left out? “He killed himself.”
Her hands clasped his tightly, her silence saying more than words ever could. He didn’t know why he held on to her fingers as if she were a lifeline. He didn’t know what magic she wove but something shifted in his chest.
“Was he a good man, Raphael?” she asked in a soft voice. It was a question no one had ever asked, and it burrowed through his flesh and blood like an arrow, lodging deeply and painfully.
“He was a coward,” he said harshly. And flinched, for his own words hurt him. Still. After all these years.
“You...how old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Raphael, you don’t think—”
He pushed away from her, loath to discuss his father and the past any longer. “I owe Giovanni everything but I’ll be damned if I let Stefano’s shadow touch Vito Automobiles. What was your answer to Enzo?”
Her gaze turned searching, and then she sighed. “I refused him. Enzo is sweet. And this offer...it will get everyone off my back, and maybe provide a measure of relief to Gio too. But marriage is sacred.”
He snorted. She glared at him. “It is for me. I could no more marry Enzo as a convenience than I could marry...you to make Gio happy.”
“There’s one point in my favor over Enzo, si?” That she distracted him enough to joke less than a minute after thinking of Stefano Castillaghi said something about his attraction to her.
“Fat good that does me,” she mumbled.
“What does that mean?” he asked, genuinely curious now. Dio, no woman sent him on a roller coaster as she did.
Color stole up her cheeks. “Can I finish telling you what happened?” she said tartly.
He grinned, liking her all riled up like this. “Si.”
“After they left, Gio told me I should accept Enzo, that he would be a kind husband. When I said I had no intention of marrying in the near future, he got...agitated. I told him I’d had enough of him manipulating me. He said it was his right to select a husband for me, to make sure another man didn’t cheat me like Frank did.
“We yelled at each other some more and I said if he kept pushing me like that, if he... I’d leave and never return, like Nonni had done.” She rubbed a hand over her eyes, but the tears fell anyway. “His face went white...he couldn’t speak. One of the staff called his physician.
“This was not like one of his usual temper tantrums, Raphael. The doctor took ages to get there and I thought—God!” Her tears turned into soundless sobs and Raphael pulled her into his arms.
She came to him as if she had no strength left. Arms vined around his neck, she buried her face in his chest.
A strange sort of weight seemed to lodge in his own throat. He wasn’t worried about Gio. The mean old bastard would live to a hundred and torture Raphael and Pia in the process.
No, it was the sound of Pia’s wretched grief that shook him.
He had never seen anyone grieve like that. With everything of themselves poured into it. His belief that all she wanted was easy money from this trip—suddenly, his cynicism, his hard shell, felt dirty near her.
Her back was slender against his broad palm; even now he was unable to stem the awareness of her soft body against his. “Pia, nothing will happen to Gio.”
“We don’t know that. I can’t lose him. Not when I’ve only just found him. To see him lying on the bed, helpless like that... All I could think of was my Nonni. I can’t... I couldn’t forgive myself if anything happened to him. I can’t let him go on worrying about me.”
“You can’t marry a gay man however decent you think he is,” he added softly, just to make sure they were on the same page. Right now, he couldn’t even try to fathom the underpinnings of his godfather’s Machiavellian mind.
She sniffled elegantly and wiped her cheeks. “No, I can’t. I couldn’t sleep. I was working on a toy and finally I hit on the perfect solution.”
Raphael pulled her hands away from his neck because the graze of her breasts against his chest was more than he could take in his current mood.
And because, while she was obliviously dwelling on her worries over Gio, his attention had wandered from her grief, from Stefano, to the pressing weight of her thighs against his. To the span of her tiny waist and the flare of her hips in his hands. To how soft and sweet she smelled.
To the semi hard-on that was fast swelling into something else.
He only meant to create some distance between them.
But the moment she realized what he’d done, her eyes widened. Furious color rushed up her neck and she sidled off his lap as if she were on fire. Or maybe it was he who was on fire.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to... I just...”
Pretending a calm he didn’t feel, Raphael poured a glass of water and handed it to her.
Did the woman still not realize how close he had been to kissing her again? Was she really that naive? Did she not realize her appeal, as unconventional as it was? Had the lowlife she’d mentioned shattered her confidence completely?
It was still nowhere near what Enzo with his kindness and Stefano with his schemes would do to her.
The thought shattered his desire. He couldn’t let Stefano get his dirty hands on the company he had made into a global leader. But he was also running out of options.
Options that didn’t involve Pia. And getting involved with Pia, his gut told him, was not a path from which he could turn back. Even if he wanted to.
He felt as if there was an invisible noose tightening around his neck.
It made his voice harsh when he said, “What is your solution, Pia?”
“You should pretend... I mean we should pretend to be interested in each other.” When his frown morphed into a scowl, Pia hurried on. “As if we were dating each other. As if we were...violently attracted to each other and nothing else, no one else would do. It’s the perfect solution,” she added when he just stared at her.
“How?”
She folded her hands, realized how defensive she looked and dropped them. Did the man have to look so displeased just by the notion of them dating? “Gio thinks the world of you. If you weren’t so utterly out of my league, I think he would have pushed you and me toward each other.”
“What?”
“Do you need me to spell it out? It’s all I’ve been hearing from Gio, from everyone’s mouths since I arrived in Milan. About the kind of women you go for. Even Gio isn’t foolish or stubborn enough to wish for something between us. Which, perversely, makes it the perfect solution.”
“I have to admit your scheming does prove you have Vito blood.”
“Most of the men I’ve met over the last few weeks, Enzo included, wouldn’t dream of coming near me if you made it clear that I belonged to you. They are all in awe of the force that is Raphael Mastrantino,” she added caustically.
His lips twitched. “Are you mocking my reputation?”
Pia smiled. His eyes lit up; he looked incredibly gorgeous. “I wouldn’t dare.”
“And you would be okay belonging to me?”
She shuddered. “It’s archaic, but nothing else, I fear, would keep them away. This way, you can rest easy that I won’t get my hands on Gio’s fortune. Gio would be thrilled that I have somehow enthralled you and I... I can make plans. As much as I’m making a deal with the devil.”
“I am the diablo?” he said in a soft croon that sent shivers down her spine.
“Si,” she replied.
But Raphael was no devil. Nor Prince Charming either. He was more like the big bad wolf. But sometimes it was the wolf that provided the most protection. It was the wolf you could trust to keep others at bay.
How she would survive a fake relationship when she couldn’t even look at him without melting on the inside she didn’t know. But this was the only way.
For Gio and for her own peace of mind.
He reached out to her and tilted her chin up. “What plans would those be?”
“Plans that don’t concern you.”
“If we start this charade, I will know everything about you, Pia.”
Why did that sound like a declaration of possession? “What does it matter when you can keep me away from the till?”
Just silence. And those intense black eyes. Pia squirmed like a fish on a line.
“I... I’ve been thinking about staying beyond summer. Last night, seeing Gio’s reaction... I realized I was just fooling myself about returning. There’s nothing there for me. Not anymore.
“At the risk of confirming your worst suspicions, I want to stay here and take care of him. The thought of leaving him alone, with all his relatives who really don’t care about him, leaving him with hired help, it twists my stomach.”
A tightness emerged around his mouth. “Taking care of Gio, or any old man, is a full-time job, Pia.”
“I know that. When Nonni was ill, it was just me and her. I took a long leave of absence and I looked after her for two years. I can—”
“How old were you?”
“Twenty. I had been working only for a few months.”
“Didn’t you miss having a life? The excitement of your job and friends?” His disbelief was apparent in his voice. As if he had personal experience to negate her claim.
“All we had was each other. I know Gio has you but you’re always so busy.”
“I see the logic in your plan. It serves both our purposes, si? But whether it will work, whether Gio and the world will believe that I would be violently attracted to such a—” he let his gaze roam over her with a thoroughness that both excited and embarrassed her “—what did you say? Shy, plain, boring elementary science teacher, that I’m not sure about.”
In the process of tugging her bag over her shoulder, Pia stilled. Smoke should’ve been coming out of her ears. The gall of the man! She turned to face him, and his warm, wicked smile carving deep grooves in his cheeks, stole her indignation.
It changed him, that smile. The way he had held her when she’d cried—that was a Raphael she could like. “Just as it’ll be hard for me to act as if you’re God’s gift to women,” she said with a put-upon sigh. “But I’ll do anything for Gio.”
He took her hands in his and tugged, a devilish twist to his smile. “Simply liking will not be enough, cara mia. First, you have to stop being so nervous and jumpy around me. Then you have to act as if you adore me.”
He dipped his head while locking Pia against the door with his arms on either side of her, “And then—” his breath stroked her neck while the scent of him enveloped her “—as if you can’t keep your hands off me.”
“No,” she whispered, her entire body languorous as if someone had replaced the blood in her veins with warm honey.
A feral smile curved his mouth. “Si. Didn’t the gossip mill tell you the last bit about me?”
Pia couldn’t move her gaze from his mouth. The defined upper lip and the lush lower lip. No man should have lips like that. The need to taste that sensual mouth, the need to press her body against those hard muscles was like a physical ache. How could she feel an attraction this strongly when it was one-sided?
“That you never have a girlfriend, only lovers,” she forced herself to say, remembering the tidbit. And yet, apparently, it didn’t put off most of the women.
“If we have to make the entirety of Milan believe that we’re together, I can’t be seeing other women on the side, si? So it’ll be up to you to keep me in—”
Pia slapped her palm over his mouth, a thrill running through her.
If she wanted to live in Italy, if she wanted to be a part of Gio’s life, it meant Raphael would forever be a part of it too, in some way.
Was she forever going to spend it shying away from him? Twisting inside out because of her attraction to him? Letting him mock her like this?
Something within her rebelled, made her say, “Maybe it won’t be so bad pretending to be your girlfriend.”
His eyes widened. “I realized something about Frank and me in the last few days. He singled me out for his attentions for a reason. I... I wouldn’t have been taken in by his sweet words if I’d had more experience with men, si? Both emotionally and...sexually.” It was one thing to want to take down his arrogance a notch, and completely another to do it with his mouth against her palm, his stubble scraping her fingers.
He wrapped his fingers around her wrist and tugged it back, his face so close to hers now that she could see the slight widening of his pupils, the flare of his nostrils. He wasn’t just playing with her, something whispered at the back of her mind.
“Even I didn’t realize how perfect we are for this pretense. It’s clear that I’m not the type of woman who could interest you in a million years.” The sound of his choking laugh made her glare at him “And... I could never have a relationship with a man like you.”
“Non?”
“No. You’re arrogant, cynical and...far too gorgeous for me. I’d have to beat off women for the rest of my life. I’d be reminded every day how fortunate I was to have you. Things would always be unequal between us. Love or not, I’m determined not to be with a man who looks down on me, who thinks he’s doing me a favor by being with me.”
A faint flush appeared under his cheekbones. “Pia, whatever that lowlife said—”
“Let’s not forget the whole you despising marriage thing,” Pia cut in, refusing to let him finish. The last thing she needed was Raphael’s pity.
“You still want to marry?”
“Of course I do. I refuse to let Frank break my beliefs that’ve been a part of me much longer.” Though he had come pretty close. “My parents, from what I remember of them, were devoted to each other. I want a man who’ll respect our relationship, a man who’ll trust me, a man who wants to spend his life with me. And in the meantime, I can hone myself on you, can’t I?”
“What would this...honing yourself on me entail exactly?” He made the words sound so utterly debauched, so wickedly filthy that Pia could feel heat burning up her neck.
Turning the handle behind her, she slipped out without answering. But his laughter, a deep, sexy sound, a sound that rendered his assistants awestruck, a sound that sent tingles up her spine, stayed with her all the way through the ride home.
Making her wonder what she’d signed up for.
