скачать книгу бесплатно
Going Too Far
Tori Carrington
Attorney Marie Bertelli needs a fling–badly. With a stressful job and a big Italian family known for scaring off the opposite sex, Marie figures she'll have to proposition the next man to cross her path.Luckily for her, that man is sexy lawyer Ian Kilborn. And while she might not want to read his legal briefs, she definitely wants to get into them….Ian has been fighting a bad case of unrequited lust for Marie for years. But she never seemed to have the same burning desire for him…until now. Suddenly shy, sexy Marie has become a sexual tigress, determined to seduce the life out of him. Not that Ian's complaining… Their interludes are hot, intense…wicked. But when their fling becomes something more, is either one of them willing to go the distance?
Ian shouldn’t be thinking about bedding his client’s daughter…
But Marie was so much more than that. She was 100-percent woman. A woman he’d already seduced. A woman he wanted to seduce again…
Without realizing it, Ian had backed Marie up until her bottom leaned against his glass desk. She held on to the blunted edge tightly with both hands and her small breasts moved with her sudden shortness of breath.
Ian realized he was having a little problem finding air himself. He eyed Marie’s mouth, but he didn’t kiss her. Instead he skimmed his hand down over her slender hip, lingering on the tender skin of her bare thigh, then slowly inched the material of her skirt up until her panties were revealed.
Oh, there was no thong for Marie Bertelli. Instead her underwear was cotton and white and sexier than any scrap of silk and lace known to man. It clung to her womanhood like only cotton could. And made his mouth water with the urge to lower himself to his knees and press his lips against the swollen flesh just underneath.
And one look in her eyes told him she wanted it just as much as he did….
Dear Reader,
We wholeheartedly believe that everyone has a bit of rebel in them. You know, that tiny voice that tells you to go ahead and eat that ice cream? Buy that piece of naughty lingerie? Makes you lust after a man you shouldn’t have? Well, that’s exactly what happens to our heroine Marie when she stumbles across fellow attorney Ian Kilborn, the last man on earth she should be tempting.
In Going Too Far, good-girl-to-the-bone Marie Bertelli wants a man to see her for who she truly is. It’s not enough that her friends have found sizzling soul mates or that her family chases off her dates, she’s delivered the ultimate professional blow when her father runs into a legal problem and hires Ian, Marie’s first lover, rather than coming to her. So Marie sets out to prove she’s the better person for the job. Only, once she crosses paths with Ian, she doesn’t just want to read his legal briefs, she wants to get into them….
We hope you enjoy the last installment in our LEGAL BRIEFS miniseries. We’d love to hear what you think. Write to us at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43613, or visit us online at www.toricarrington.com.
Here’s wishing you happy—and hot—reading!
Lori & Tony Karayianni
aka Tori Carrington
Going Too Far
Tori Carrington
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
For our Greek brothers and sisters Katina and Georgos,
Andreas and Lambrini, Victoria and Alfon,
Theonesis and Dina, and Thotheres and Georgia,
whose enduring love proves that happily ever after aren’t
merely words on a page. You inspire us.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
1
MONDAYS HAD A WAY OF challenging even Marie Bertelli’s good-girl tendencies. The weekend always seemed to go by too quickly. All too often the first day of the workweek seemed more like an ugly three-eyed monster to conquer rather than a fresh start to finish what she hadn’t the week before.
She laid on the horn then shouted at the driver who had just cut her off, showing a tiny glimpse of the bad girl she had let out once and only once in her twenty-six years and didn’t dare let out again. She justified the brief transgression by pointing out the other driver couldn’t hear her through the windows of her ’67 ragtop Mustang, closed against the late January chill of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Of course, it didn’t help that she hadn’t had a man in her life for…well, much longer than she cared to think about. Especially when Valentine’s Day loomed around the corner and everywhere she turned red and pink hearts were popping out at her, reminding her of the pathetic state of her love life.
She glanced at her watch. What also didn’t help was that she’d been waylaid by an accident on I-40, and now grumpy and preoccupied Monday morning drivers threatened to send her careening over an emotional edge that she’d preferred not to be teetering on just then.
“Marie Antonia Bertelli, is that the mouth you use to talk to your mother?”
Marie sighed and moved her wireless phone from under her chin where she’d thought her mother couldn’t hear her. Ha. “I wasn’t talking to you, Mama.”
Although for all intents and purposes she should say exactly what she’d said to the driver to Francesca Bertelli. Her mother sometimes acted like she’d immigrated from Italy last week, with her old-world traditions and speech patterns, rather than the second generation Italian-American that she was, who’d placed first runner-up in the Miss New Mexico beauty pageant.
Francesca went on as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “About dinner tonight. I want you to wear the blue dress. You know the one I’m talking about? The one you wore to Anthony’s wedding. It makes you look like you have breasts. And, of course, it brings out the blue in your eyes.”
Marie’s mood worsened with each word her mother said. “I’m not coming to dinner tonight, Mama,” she told her for the third time in as many minutes. Her mother had a habit of only hearing those things she chose to hear. Which was very little of what Marie had to say.
“The blue dress,” her mother said again.
The blue dress was the most hideous of hideous bridesmaid’s dresses and was packed away in the bottom of a box somewhere, though Marie had seriously considered burning it. The poofy clown-like nightmare made her look like a blue elephant.
“I’m making your favorite. Farsumagru o briolone. You have to come to dinner,” her mother complained.
The Sicilian meat roll wasn’t her favorite. It was her older brother Frankie Jr.’s favorite. But to tell her mother that now would only encourage her to go on. In fact, the mix-up might be a trap altogether. Entice her into an argument of what they would have for dinner, and she would end up going to the dinner and forgetting that it was the last thing she wanted to do tonight…or ever.
Marie bit the inside of her cheek. She’d finally moved into her own apartment a week ago after living with her family for ten months upon her return from L.A. Since the move, every morning like clockwork her mother called to invite her to dinner. Marie had made the mistake of going last Sunday, thinking there was only so much her mother could do during a family meal. She’d been sorely mistaken. There, seated to her right, had been Benito Benini, a guy she’d gone to kindergarten with and twenty years was not enough time to erase the memory of him launching green Play-Doh out of his nose. A nose that had grown considerably since then.
“No,” Marie said. “Absolutely not.” She hesitated as she negotiated a right-hand turn into the Bernalillo County Courthouse parking lot. “I…I already have plans.”
She resisted the urge to bang her forehead against the steering wheel as she said the words. What was she thinking?
“Plans? With whom? What’s his name? Do we know him?”
“We,” of course, referred to the entire Bertelli family. Her father, Frank Sr. Her mother. And her three older brothers, Frankie Jr., Anthony and Mario, all married and either with or starting families of their own. And each with their own reason for butting into every aspect of Marie’s private life.
“Never mind, Mama,” Marie said as she zoomed into a parking space in front of another car. She ignored the blast of the other driver’s horn and gave a friendly wave. She moved the wireless phone to her other ear then shut off the car engine. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’m at the courthouse and I’m already late meeting my client.”
“Late? See, you should have stayed home. You wouldn’t be late if you were home.”
“I was late because there was an accident, Mama. The highway was backed up for miles.”
“Accident? You got into an accident?”
“No. I said there was an accident. One that, I am happy to say, I was not involved in.” But with five minutes more of this conversation she might wish otherwise. “Goodbye, Mama. I’ll call you later.”
“This is how you would leave your mother? Worrying about what ax murderer you’re meeting tonight?”
Marie leaned her head on the rest behind her. “I’m not going out with an ax murderer. I’m meeting Dulcy and Jena for dinner.”
“Oh.”
Was that a note of disappointment in her mother’s voice? Yes, it definitely was. The realization made even her little white lie easier to swallow.
Marie smiled. Interesting. Was her mother to the point where she’d welcome even a potential ax murderer into the family just so long as he was a possible husband?
“You could bring them to dinner. It’s been so long since we’ve seen your friends.”
That was because on the few occasions that her best friends had met up with her family the police had almost needed to be brought in. Mostly because Jena had a hard time believing the family really did think they had a right to meddle in Marie’s life and had challenged them on the point. And the Bertellis had a habit of referring to Jena as “the loose one” who would tarnish their only daughter’s reputation.
If only that were the case. Marie couldn’t even pay for a reputation, good, bad or otherwise.
“I don’t think so, Ma. Gotta go. Love you, bye.”
She clicked her wireless closed on her mother’s automatic protest then quickly switched the phone off altogether, routing any incoming calls to her voice mail.
How she’d survived twenty-six years in the Bertelli family was anyone’s guess. And the phone conversation she’d just had with her mother was nothing compared to what it was like to actually grow up in the Bertelli house. Directions on how she should do this, wear that, fix this. Oh, she adored her family. Loved them to death. Unfortunately, she also feared they would be the death of her.
She put her keys in her purse and gathered her things together from the passenger seat. Whatever had possessed her to pick up her phone without looking at the display so early in the morning? She should have known it would be her mother trying to railroad her into another blind date with another old classmate that used to do something disgusting with play materials. Last week it had been third grade and Johnny Russo who had tried to paste her to her desk chair. The week before that she’d been hopeful that her family was running out of prospects when they’d actually invited a third cousin to dinner. A cousin was family, no matter how many times removed, and she’d easily sidestepped that matchmaking attempt by casually bringing up the increase in risk of birth defects all throughout dinner. “Why just the other day I heard that someone who had married her cousin four times removed on her mother’s side had a baby with two noses. Two.” She’d held up two fingers to emphasize her point.
Marie hoisted her bulging briefcase from the passenger’s seat, wondering if coming up with inventive stories to shock her parents was going to be the state of her life forever or if eventually her family would wake up and realize that what they had in mind for her, and how she saw her life, were two completely different things. She didn’t want to be matched up with a guy to whom marriage was synonymous with slavery. Didn’t want a loveless marriage to a man who was acceptable by the sole criteria that he was either full-blooded Italian or Italian-American and knew the difference between pinzimonio and agliata.
You would have thought they’d have learned after she ran away to L.A. nearly three years ago.
Marie stared at her reflection in the rearview mirror, scrunching a couple of runaway red curls, then smoothing the liner under her right eye. No, she supposed her family wasn’t very quick on the uptake. When they’d virtually gone ahead and planned a wedding without her being aware of it, sent out invitations and the whole nine yards, then told her a week before the event that she was marrying a man coming in from Italy, she’d finally blown her stack and pointed her vintage ’67 Mustang in the direction of L.A. and hadn’t stopped until she got there. Not even her best friends, Dulcy and Jena, had known where she was until she’d landed a job in the L.A. district attorney’s office and had sublet an apartment from a B-movie actress going off on a two-month film shoot in South America. She’d passed onto them the responsibility of telling her family she was okay. She hadn’t been surprised to find out they’d filed a missing person’s report on her. She’d spent two hours on the phone with the Albuquerque sheriff’s office assuring them she was fine and wasn’t rotting away in a Dumpster somewhere.
She hadn’t directly contacted her parents until three weeks after that. She’d called and told them she was okay, that she hoped the wedding went well without her, and that she would be in touch. Nothing more. Because she knew if she had told them where she was, her brothers would have promptly been sent to drag her back home.
No, she hadn’t shared her apartment address until she was sure her parents had gotten the picture. Either butt out of her personal life or she was going to butt out of their lives…permanently.
Of course, that really hadn’t been her first real revolt. The first one had involved sexy neighbor Ian Kilborn, a lifetime of suppressed hormones, and a boatload of rebellion aimed toward her controlling family. But only she, Ian and the pantry walls knew about that one incident—a steamy, heat-filled white-hot flash in time when she was eighteen and had unleashed the wild woman that lurked just below her good-girl surface. And, oh, what a time she and naughty Ian had had. And if now, eight years later, she thought about reliving the event every now and again, it was only because, instead of living down the street from each other, she and Ian now spent most of their time in the same courthouse as attorneys.
Marie self-consciously cleared her throat as she climbed from the car, then closed the door after her. January in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was a world away from the weather L.A. was experiencing right now. And she’d still be there enjoying the sun and her freedom if Dulcy and Jena hadn’t contacted her nearly a year ago and held her to the promise they’d made when they were young. They’d convinced her to sign on with well-known attorney Bartholomew Lomax and establish the partnership they’d always planned on.
And now her mother was resorting to her old behavior.
A hot guy exited the seven-story brand-spanking-new courthouse as she neared. Marie smiled at him but he seemed to see right through her. He passed and she slowed her step. Was she really that desperate that she had to rely on her family to fix her up to land a man? She glanced at her plain navy-blue suit. Okay, so maybe she wasn’t Nicole Kidman, and she was on the short side, but she’d never thought she was unattractive.
Was she?
A man opened the courthouse door in front of her. She moved to step around him only he entered before her, nearly causing her to slam into his back. She frowned then caught the door before it could slam against her back.
Okay…
So maybe she was having a bad day. Everyone had them every now and again, didn’t they?
If only it didn’t look like she was having a bad decade.
She hurried down the hall, trying to forget the state of her personal life and concentrate on her professional—something she usually did very well.
“Marie!”
She was halfway down the hall before she realized someone was calling her name. She turned to find her friend and partner Jena McCade rushing after her.
“God, woman, where is your head? I must have called you three times before you heard me.”
Marie made a face. Jena looked great. As usual. With her shiny straight black hair, her sexy figure, her confident posture, Marie was sure no one ever let a door close on Jena.
Of course, now that Jena was married to ex-hockey hunk Tommy “Wild Man” Brodie, her attractiveness seemed to have merely increased. Her skin always seemed flushed and her eyes always had a faraway dreamy look in them. Jena had told Marie and Dulcy that it was the properly laid look. Marie preferred to think it was love.
Jena twisted her lips. “I’d ask if it was a man messing with your head, but I’m guessing it’s probably your mother.”
“Right.” Marie made a face. “She wants me to come to dinner again tonight.” She looked down at the hall. “What are you doing down here so early?”
“Judge Bullock wanted to talk to me in chambers. Seems there have been some problems with the district attorney’s office and all cases are being put on hold.”
