Читать книгу It Started With A Proposition: Blackmailed into the Italian's Bed / Contract with Consequences / The Passion Price - Miranda Lee - Страница 9

GINO clicked off the phone, amazed by what Cliff Hanson had just told him.

Apparently Jordan had left her office building at ten past six and walked with a female friend towards Wynyard Station. The man tailing her had presumed she was going to catch a train home. Instead, she and her companion had turned into the Regency Hotel and they were, at this very second, sitting in the bigger of the two hotel bars, having a drink.

The amazing part was that the Regency was where Gino himself was staying.

For the second time that day fate had placed Jordan on a path which could have crossed with his.

This time, however, he wasn’t in ignorance of the fact. Which was why he’d ordered Hanson to tell his operative to sit close to the door and keep an eye on Jordan till he could get down there.

Adrenaline coursed through Gino’s veins as he swept up his wallet from the bedside table and slipped it into the breast pocket of his leather jacket. For a split second he hesitated, worried over what would happen when he confronted her after all these years.

Would she be pleased to see him? Or not?

Impossible to gauge how she might react. She’d loved him and he’d hurt her, no doubt about that.

Jordan was not a girl to easily forgive and forget. That he did know.

At the same time, their love affair had been ten years ago—a long time to nurse a broken heart or bitterness.

Gino scowled as he whirled and headed for the hotel room door. He’d cross those bridges when he came to them, because nothing short of death was going to stop him from going down there right now and talking to her.

Still, he was glad he’d had time to shower and change from the sleek Italian business suit he’d been wearing earlier today. Casual clothes were more in keeping with the Gino Jordan had once known, not the Gino he had become.

Which is what, exactly? he asked himself during the lift ride down to the ground floor.

A man who’s forgotten what it’s like to have fun, that’s what.

A man weighed down by responsibility towards his family.

A man about to ask a girl he doesn’t love to marry him.

An Italian girl.

If only he hadn’t made that rash promise to his father on his deathbed.

But he had, and there was no going back.

Those last words echoed in Gino’s head as he stepped from the lift and headed for the bar in question.

No going back

What he’d once shared with Jordan was gone. If he was strictly honest, it had never been real. He’d been living a fantasy. A sexy Shangri-la which had disappeared the moment he’d received that call about his father’s illness.

All that was left was a guilty memory, plus the ghost of pleasures past.

Tonight he would face that guilty memory and hopefully lay its ghost to rest.

A bouncer stood at the door to the bar, giving Gino a sharp look as he approached, but not barring his way inside.

The room was huge, with a dark blue carpet underfoot, disco-style lighting overhead, and a glitzy central bar. There were several different sitting areas, but most of the bar’s patrons were clustered near the far left corner, where a three-piece combo was playing soul music.

Only a smattering of people were sitting at the tables in the area nearest the entrance, which was currently designated a no-smoking section.

Gino located the operative without any trouble—an innocuous-looking guy of around thirty, who’d blend into most crowds.

‘She’s over there,’ he said, as soon as Gino sat down, nodding towards a table located on the edge of the dance floor.

As Gino stared through the faint smoke haze at the girl who’d once captured his heart he realised he probably wouldn’t have recognised her if he’d walked right past her! Not with her glorious blonde hair scraped back up in that severe style, and certainly not dressed in that mannish trouser suit.

What had happened to the feminine girl he’d known?

She was thinner too, her face all angles.

Yet she was still beautiful. Beautiful and sad.

Both moved him: her beauty and her sadness.

‘I’ll take it from here,’ he said gruffly to the operative. ‘You can go home.’

‘Are you absolutely sure?’

‘Absolutely.’

The man shrugged, swallowed the rest of his beer, and left.

Gino sat there for some time, watching Jordan. She glanced repeatedly at a redhead in a red dress, who was dancing cheek to cheek with a tall, good-looking guy. Clearly this was the female colleague she had come here with. Also clearly, Jordan wasn’t happy with being left to sit alone.

As soon as the band stopped playing the redhead returned to the table, accompanied by her dancing partner. After a brief conversation with Jordan, the redhead and the man headed for the exit, arm in arm.

When Jordan started downing her almost full glass of wine with considerable speed, obviously intending to leave also, Gino decided it was time to make his presence known.

The distance from his table to hers seemed endless, his chest growing tighter with each step. Just before he reached the table Jordan put down her empty wine glass then bent to her left, to retrieve her bag from the adjoining chair.

She actually had her back to him when he said, ‘Hello, Jordan,’ the words feeling thick on his tongue.

She twisted back to face him, her chin jerking upwards, her lovely blue eyes widening with surprise.

No…not surprise. Shock.

‘Oh, my God!’ she exclaimed. ‘Gino!’

Shock, but not bitterness, he noted. Nor hatred.

Relief flooded through him.

‘Yes,’ he said with a warm smile. ‘It’s me. Gino. May I join you? Or are you here with someone?’

‘Yes. No. No, not any more. I—’ Jordan broke off, a puzzled frown forming on her small forehead. ‘You’ve almost lost your Italian accent!’

Trust her to notice something like that, Gino thought ruefully, as he sat down at her table. She’d always been an observant girl, with a mind like a steel trap.

When he’d first met her he’d not long been back from a four-year stint at the university in Rome, his Italian accent having thickened during his extended stay.

This reunion was going to be more awkward than he’d ever imagined. For how could he explain her observation without revealing just how much he’d deceived her all those years ago?

He had no option but to lie.

‘I’ve been back in Australia for quite a while.’

‘And you didn’t think to look me up?’ she threw at him.

‘I couldn’t imagine you’d want that,’ he said carefully. ‘I thought you’d have moved on.’

‘I have,’ she said, and tossed her head at him.

A very Jordan-like gesture, but it didn’t have the same effect as it had when her hair was down.

‘You became a lawyer, then?’ he asked, pretending he didn’t already know.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Your mum must be very proud of you.’

‘Mum passed away a few years back. Cancer.’

Another reason for her to look sad and lonely. ‘I’m so sorry, Jordan. She was a nice woman.’

‘She liked you, too.’ She sighed, looking away for a moment, before looking back at him. ‘So what are you doing nowadays?’

‘I’m still working in the construction business,’ he replied, hating himself for keeping up with the deception. But what else could he do? This wasn’t going to go anywhere. It couldn’t. This was just…closure.

Yet as he looked deep into her eyes—such lovely, expressive blue eyes—it didn’t feel like closure. It felt as it had felt the first day he’d met her.

The temptation to try to resurrect something here was intense. So was his escalating curiosity about her love-life. Okay, so she wasn’t married. That didn’t mean she didn’t have a lover, or a live-in boyfriend.

‘You’re not married, I notice,’ he remarked, nodding towards her left hand, which was empty of rings.

‘No,’ she returned, after a slight hesitation.

Gino wondered what that meant. Had she been married and was now divorced?

‘And you?’ she countered, her eyes guarded.

‘I might get around to it one day,’he said with a shrug.

‘You always vowed you wouldn’t marry till you were at least forty.’

‘Did I?’

‘You very definitely did.’

Gino decided to stop the small talk about himself and cut to the chase.

‘What are you doing here alone, Jordan?’

‘I wasn’t alone,’ she returned sharply. ‘I was with a work colleague, but she ran into an old boyfriend of hers and he asked her out to dinner. They’ve just left.’

‘You didn’t mind?’

‘Why should I mind? We only came in for a drink. It’s high time I went home, anyway.’

‘Why? It’s only early. Is there someone special waiting for you at home? Boyfriend? Partner?’

Anger flared into her eyes. ‘That’s a very personal question, Gino. One which I don’t feel inclined to answer.’

‘Why not?’

Her eyes carried exasperation as she shook her head at him. ‘You run into me by accident after ten years and think you have the right to question me over my personal life? If you were so interested in me, then why didn’t you look me up when you came back to Australia?’

‘I’ve been living in Melbourne,’ he said, by way of an excuse.

‘So? That’s only a short plane trip away.’

‘Would you have really wanted me to look you up, Jordan? Be honest now.’

Her face betrayed her. She had wanted him to. But no more than he’d wanted to himself.

‘You could have written,’ she said angrily. ‘You knew my address. Whereas I had no idea where you were, other than in Italy.’

‘I thought it better to make a clean break—leave you free to find someone more…suitable.’

She laughed. ‘You were being cruel to be kind, then?’

‘Something like that.’

She stared at him, her eyes still furious.

Gino had forgotten how worked up she could get when she thought someone wasn’t being straight with her. Jordan had no tolerance of lies—or liars.

Gino conceded he’d dug a real hole for himself all those years ago. Not that it mattered what she thought of him. What mattered was whether she was happy or not.

The evidence of his eyes was troubling. She looked tired, and stressed, and frustrated. If she did have a live-in lover—or a boyfriend—he wasn’t making her very happy.

‘So there’s no special man in your life right now?’ he asked.

She glanced away for a second, then looked back at him. ‘Not right now. Look, I—’

‘Would you dance with me?’ he asked, before she could bolt for the door.

The band had started up again, a bluesy number with a slow, sensual rhythm.

Jordan stared at him. But not so much with anger now. With a type of fear, as if he’d just asked someone scared of heights to step with him to the edge of a cliff.

Maybe she thought he was coming on to her.

He wasn’t. He just wanted to find some way to get past her defences, to have her open up to him about her life.

She was a good dancer, he knew, but so was he. They’d loved going dancing together.

‘For old times’ sake,’ he added, standing up and holding his hand out to her.

She stared at it for a long moment, as if it was a viper about to strike.

Finally she rose, taking off her jacket and draping it over her bag on the chair before placing her hand in his.

How soft it was, he thought as he drew her onto the polished wooden dance floor. Soft and pale, with long, elegant fingers and exquisitely kept nails.

She’d always had a thing for painted nails, he recalled. Both fingers and toes. Her favourite colour had been scarlet, but she’d had bottles and bottles of nail polish, of every imaginable shade.

Tonight her fingernails were painted a deep cream, matching her blouse.

Now that her jacket was off, he could see she still had a lovely figure, despite being thinner: her breasts were still pert, her waist was tinier than ever, and her stomach athletically flat.

His mother would have said she didn’t have good childbearing hips—the way Italian girls did—but Gino had always found Jordan’s slender shape extremely attractive. He loved her tight little butt and her long slim legs, loved her blonde hair and her pale soft skin.

Naked, she looked like an angel.

‘Put your arms up around my neck,’ he suggested, after he swung her round to face him.

‘You always were a bossy man,’ she replied, but did as he wanted, her fingertips like velvet as they slid under the collar of his leather jacket and settled on the sensitive skin at the nape of his neck.

Gino swallowed when he started to respond. This was not what he’d intended when he’d asked her to dance. But he seemed powerless to stop himself from becoming excited.

Planting his hands on her hips, he kept his lower half a decent distance from hers—not an easy thing to do once she started swaying to the slow, thudding beat of the music.

His good intentions, Gino suspected, were doomed to failure.

‘You are real, aren’t you?’ she said suddenly. ‘Not some figment of my imagination.’

‘I’m very real,’ he said drily. Just as his arousal was.

Her head tipped charmingly to one side as she looked up at him.

‘Amazing,’ she murmured. ‘And you’re not fat at all.’

He tried not to laugh. If only she knew…

‘Why would I be fat?’ he asked.

‘Lots of men gain weight after they turn thirty. What are you now? Thirty-five?’

‘Thirty-six. You’ve lost weight.’

‘A little.’

‘You’re still very beautiful.’

Her eyes stabbed his with reproach. ‘Don’t, Gino.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Don’t sweet-talk me.’

‘You used to like me sweet-talking you.’

‘I used to like you doing a lot of things.’

He wished she hadn’t said that. Her words were sparking memories which would have been better kept buried.

And they in turn sparked something he’d been trying to deny all day, struggled to control ever since he’d asked her to dance. Which was that he still wanted her—despite the years which had passed, despite everything. He wanted to take her upstairs to his hotel room right now and strip her of those sexless clothes, wanted to take down her hair and just take her, as he had ten years ago.

She’d been a virgin back then, a fact he hadn’t realised till it was too late. Her innocence had shocked him at the time, but her passion had quickly banished any qualms.

That passion was still there: he could see it in her blazing blue eyes and flushed cheeks.

And it was still overriding his conscience.

‘Some things don’t change,’ he growled.

‘Everything changes, Gino. Nothing stays the same.’

‘Is that so?’

His hands shifted, one sliding up her spine, the other downward to her tailbone, giving him the leverage to press her close.

As their bodies made more intimate contact a wave of dark desire ripped through Gino, obliterating what little was left of his conscience.

‘This hasn’t changed, beautiful,’ he whispered huskily.