Читать книгу A Deal To Carry The Italian's Heir - Tara Pammi - Страница 13

NEHA WALKED ONTO the picture-perfect balcony attached to her suite and took in the astonishingly beautiful view of the grounds surrounding the villa and the glittering lights of Lake Como. After a relaxing day at a luxurious spa and lunch at a café overlooking the beautiful canal district of Navigli with Natalie’s irreverent companionship, Neha was equipped to face the evening.

Greta’s eightieth birthday celebrations—the perfect event for Neha and Leonardo’s first public appearance as an official couple. Today, they’d confirm the rumors that had already been whipped into a frenzy by Leo’s carefully orchestrated trips to her offices, even at the opening of a new, trendy café in London.

They’d seen more of each other in the last two weeks than they had in the last fifteen years. He was doing it for the press coverage, but she struggled mightily to not fall into the fantasy right out of her head.

Like sending her favorite exotic orchids the day after she’d returned from Milan.

Like showing up at work last night and packing her off to Lake Como so that she could attend Greta’s party and get a weekend away in the process. Neha had protested at first—it was a whole extra day she didn’t need to bunk.

“You expect me to accept the fact that you want to retire seriously, and yet you won’t cut yourself a break after an eighty-hour week,” he’d said, his powerful frame shrinking the size of her vast office. The broad sweep of his shoulders had electrified her senses after a long day, the reality of seeing him in her space making everything she’d set into motion achingly real.

The attraction she felt for him all the more painful to deny for he was just as out of reach now as ever. But he’d been right about her needing a break.

The two weeks since she’d returned had been packed with back-to-back meetings, a visit to a newly launched bakery in east London where she hadn’t been allowed inside the huge, state-of-the-art industrial kitchen but posed for pictures with delicious treats she hadn’t created, and reading hundreds and hundreds of pages of contracts with the legal personnel for a book deal she was going to sign soon.

A cookbook with her brand name but the actual recipes had been created by a team of world-class chefs.

She’d been thrust right into her soul-sucking life and desperate for escape, but Neha had given in. Even as the cautious part of her whispered that running away with Leo and to Leo was a dangerous habit.

Every free moment of the last two weeks had been spent replaying that scene between her and Leo in his bedroom. She’d fantasized in the most wicked detail what it would have been like if she’d taken his mouth for a kiss she’d wanted for so long. If she’d asked him to conceive their child by making love to her...