Читать книгу The Italian Boss's Mistress - Lynne Graham - Страница 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Santo Cielo,’ he murmured thickly.

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

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

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

‘This is crazy,’ she mumbled shakily.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Philly…?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I never forget anything,’ Andreo confided.

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

‘You can trust me,’ Andreo purred.

‘A little bird told me your namesake—’

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

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

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

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

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

Pippa almost smiled at his absolute certainty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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