At the Boss's Beck and Call

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Now that he had a wife.

‘You have no former editorial positions listed. What other work have you done to qualify you for your present job?’

There was sensuality in the brilliant dark eyes devouring her face. At one time she’d have found that so invigorating. Maybe she still did, though—could she be imagining it, or was there an edge of underlying turbulence? But what was it? Violence? Anger? And whose anger? Hers, or his?

‘Well, part-time work mainly, as an editorial assistant. Bill thought I had some rather good references from the publishing house where I started off. And I have done quite a lot of studies in literature. As you…as you might remember.’

She appealed to him with a smile, but he evaded it, lowering his gaze to hold her at a distance, as though any further mention of their former relationship was now forbidden. She supposed she should respect that, although he didn’t have to be so cold.

Even—hostile.

She hastened to fill the silence. ‘Bill seemed to think I was worth a chance with the children’s book list. He…’

He looked up, irony in his intelligent dark eyes. ‘He liked you.’ That sexy mouth hardened. His gaze flickered to her throat.

‘Well, yes.’ She found herself sounding almost defiant, as if there had been an accusation wrapped in the words. ‘I suppose he did.’

‘Of course. He would.’

Though politely said, it didn’t sound like a compliment. There was an uncomfortable pause, while she struggled to understand the implications. Was he suggesting that in some way she had cheated her way into Bill’s good graces?

She felt as if the Alessandro she’d known was behind a barrier, as smooth and hard and slippery as glass. In an effort to reach him, she leaned forward a little, smiling and opening her hands in appeal. ‘Look, Alessandro… It feels so strange, talking to you like this when we know—knew each other so well. How—how have you been?’

He raised his glittering black gaze to her. ‘I think it would be best if you could forget our brief personal acquaintance. It’s ancient history now. My task is to reform your company into a viable asset for Scala Enterprises. I prefer to focus on that.’

She recoiled as if from a slap. She bit her lip, and the blood came rushing up to her cheeks. ‘Oh, right. Of course. Absolutely. If—that’s what you want.’

Ancient history. Was that all she was to him? Why was he being so cold? Had he heard something about her? Or…was it something from the past? The remote possibility she’d occasionally entertained sprang into her mind, though surely not. He wouldn’t have. Over and over she’d rationalised that likelihood out of contention.

He wouldn’t have flown back because he’d never been serious about her. Five minutes after saying goodbye he’d married someone else.

She tried to read his face. ‘Alessandro, is there something I’m not getting? I mean, I know it’s a bit awkward us working temporarily in the same place, but it doesn’t have to be a problem, does it? Surely we can…put aside…’

His black gaze flicked up to laser into hers for a long suspenseful second, then his mouth edged into an enigmatic smile. ‘Our old liaison? Sure we can.’ He made a lazy gesture with one lean, bronzed hand. ‘Consider it never happened.’ The dark eyes dwelling on her face were veiled, their lids heavy. ‘As far as I am concerned, there was no summer idyll between lovers. No long afternoons of passion.’ His glance drifted to her mouth. ‘No lingering kisses, seducing our senses until we were drunk with each other. Forget that your lips ever touched mine.’ He grimaced. ‘Frankly, it’s a relief to hear you take such a sensible attitude. Viewed in hindsight, these things often appear to have had a magic that is, in fact, deceiving. The most intelligent course for us now is to regard each other as strangers.’

‘Strangers!’ She flushed, warmed by the involuntary stirring of her body at his reference to those long afternoons, the kisses, at the same time hurt by the casual dismissal of the most passionate, the most heartfelt love she’d ever experienced with a man.

To be honest, the only love.

‘I’m not sure I’ll ever be that sophisticated. I don’t think I can regard you as a stranger.’ She added very sweetly, ‘Though, of course, I’m not the one who got married.’

His thick black lashes swept down. There was a small, smouldering silence, as if a volcano brooded in some subterranean vault. As she waited for him to respond she observed his sexy mouth harden.

When he looked at her his black eyes were hard as jet.

‘I think you are understating your ability to move on, Lara,’ he said, his accent all at once very evident in his quiet, icy voice. ‘However, much as I would love to dwell on the enchantments of undressing you in some long-ago hotel room, I have a mountain of work to get through.’ As though unaware of her sharp intake of breath, he gave the file a little shake. ‘So?’ He lifted an aristocratic eyebrow to chivvy her along. ‘Can we leave our personal issues aside? Shall we continue?’

His imperious tone set her hackles bristling. Was this the man she’d fallen in love with? She sat stiffly, her muscles clenched, and smouldered with resentment.

He cast her a veiled glance, then carried smoothly on.

‘There’s one thing that strikes me. I am curious. You have been with this company a short time, yet when last we met you were well on your way to an illustrious career in publishing. What have you been doing with your—impressive talents, apart from this part-time work as an assistant?’

That infinitesimal pause. The way he’d flicked down his eyelids on the word impressive. There had definitely been sarcasm there. She felt a surge of anger as an exquisite small face with big dark eyes, long luxuriant lashes and a halo of dusky curls rose before her.

Here it was. The moment of truth. The point to which all the tortuous pathways of her life had so far conspired to bring her.

Unfortunately, the moment hardly felt ripe.

She sat back and examined him. The Marquis of the Minor Venetian Isles was not the charming man she remembered. He was an icy, mocking, work-obsessed autocrat. Did he even deserve to hear what she could tell him, if she had a mind to?

She folded her arms under her breasts and smiled coldly. ‘I don’t want to bore you with the details of my little life, Alessandro. The truth is, I suspect that what I’ve been doing is probably too personal an issue to interest you. Suffice it to say I’ve done other things besides work in publishing.’

He narrowed his gaze to study her through his long lashes. ‘There’s no need to be defensive, Larissa.’

‘Isn’t there?’ She wiped her smile, leaned forward and said in a low, trembling voice, ‘You know, you aren’t the man I remember.’

His brows shot up. ‘No? Who do you remember?’

‘Someone else. Someone—kind.’

His eyes glinted, but his expression remained hard and implacable, though she noticed a tiny vein jump in his temple. ‘Whereas you, on the other hand, are exactly as I remember.’ He added softly, ‘To my regret.’

She gasped. ‘Fine.’ She gathered her bag, and, drawing her dignity around her, rose to her feet. ‘In that case, I won’t waste any more of your time.’

He sprang up as well, and to forestall him from opening the door for her and ruining her grand exit she turned quickly towards it. He must have lunged at the same time, for somehow his ankle hooked around hers, and their bodies entangled in an electrifying physical collision. It was like flint striking flint. At the points of contact at hip and thigh a high-voltage shock sped through her flesh, while the sudden blaze that flared in his dark eyes gave her a sensation of being showered in hot sparks.

Intensely aware of his arms whipping around to steady her, her deprived senses surged to the friction of his long, muscular thighs grazing hers, his evocative masculine scent and the strength of his big, iron-hard frame.

His hands slid to her upper arms, and he held her against him for a breathtaking moment that stretched into infinity.

‘Careful, now.’ His deep voice was a growl.

She was almost preternaturally conscious of the raw proximity of the hard body beneath the clothes brushing hers. Her mouth dried as her glance slid to his lips, and somehow those fire sparks in his eyes and voice must have crept under her skin, because she felt shaken all over.

Shaken and stirred.

Then abruptly, almost as if at some urgent signal, at the exact same instant they thrust each other away. She was left feeling giddy and disturbed, with a wild tingling in her breasts as though all her aroused blood cells were unwilling to lie down again.

‘So sorry,’ he said, a rasp in his voice. ‘I don’t know how that happened.’ For a second his eyes were agleam as though he was about to say something more, but the nuance quickly vanished.

She pulled herself together and made for the door, then hesitated with her hand on the handle. His attitude about their past relationship had been so—negative, so repressive. But did she have to allow him the last word?

She turned proudly to face him.

He was back at his desk, tidying files and placing them in his briefcase.

‘Alessandro?’ That brush with him had given her voice an unwelcome huskiness.

He paused to glance up at her, one querying brow raised.

‘There is something I need—to ask you. Something I need to get straight.’

‘Si?’ His eyes sharpened.

‘Do you remember the pact?’

He stilled. For a full second it was as though his big frame had been snap frozen, and she had the scary sensation of having blundered onto a live mine. For a second his lean, handsome face might have been carved from ice.

Her heart began to tremble as his eyes narrowed on her face with a hard intensity.

‘Pact?’

‘The pact we made.’

His expression didn’t change, but she was so sorry she’d mentioned it. How could she have offered it up for re-inspection in this hostile climate? But he was waiting now, and she felt condemned to plough on.

‘You know,’ she persevered in a breathless voice. ‘When you had to go back to finish your studies at Harvard. The deal—that if we still felt the same way…’ It was so embarrassing now, having to refer to their former feelings. ‘If we thought there was a chance of us still—wanting to—be together, we’d meet in six weeks at the top of the Centrepoint Tower.’

He glanced down at the floor, a sardonic quirk to his mouth as if there were something nasty on the rug, then he looked up, his glittering eyes narrowed. ‘Remind me. What was my part in this deal?’

‘You—you agreed to fly back from Harvard in your mid-semester break.’

He considered her in silence, his eyes veiled, then his lashes drifted down. ‘And your part was…?’

‘Oh, well…’ In truth, from a travel perspective she had always been shamefaced about the lightness of her end of the pact. From a certain angle, it could have looked to outsiders as though her sincerity was above reproach, whereas his…

Her lips dried with discomfort. ‘I—I was to meet you there. Travel down from Bindinong.’

He strolled around to the front of the desk and leaned his big frame on the edge, his arms folded across his powerful chest, brows lifted.

‘All the way from Bindinong?’ he drawled softly, with a mockery that made her insides squirm. ‘Sacramento, I think it’s clear who had the easier end of this deal.’ There was a flash of something she couldn’t interpret in the depths of those black eyes.

She wished she’d never brought it up. Certainly, Bindinong in the Blue Mountains wasn’t that far from Sydney. When she’d lived there with her parents it had only been a ninety-minute train trip. Not quite as far as Harvard. Viewed now from the vantage point of maturity, the whole thing made the younger Lara Meadows look like some dewy-eyed tyrant, willing to put a man through hell to prove himself.

She made a small gesture of appeal. ‘I know, I know it sounds unlikely from this distance, but at the time we both believed… We sincerely felt… Don’t you remember?’ As she tried to interpret his expression she felt herself growing hot. ‘There were good reasons to make sure. You wanted me to go away with you—well, that’s what you said—and I was young. I’d never travelled overseas, away from my parents. I was unsure, understandably, of risking everything for…’

‘For me, apparently,’ he said with a derisive lilt of his eyebrows.

It shook her, that he’d think of it, of her, in that hard way, then she started to see how the pact might have looked through his eyes, and felt all her doubts rise to the surface.

‘And tell me…whose idea was it?’ he continued the ruthless pressure. ‘This—pact?’

He nearly spat the word. His uncharacteristic cynicism gave her a shock. Anyone would think she’d behaved badly. She had a flash of herself as acting like some capricious princess in a mediaeval fairy tale, setting endurance tests for her suitors.

So all right, he had been reluctant at first to agree, but he’d come to appreciate her reservations, and he had agreed. Heavens, who could expect a woman to just toss everything up and plunge into life with a man on just three weeks’ acquaintance, without taking some time to think?

In the end, he’d seen the wisdom of her small delay, and his acceptance of the pact had been as wholehearted and sincere as her own. Well, it had seemed so at the time. She had to keep reminding herself that it had all been a sham on his part. To look at him now, though, you would hardly think so, his expression was so hard and unforgiving.

‘Well?’ he queried.

‘Oh, well…’ What was this, the Spanish Inquisition? She could see by his stern mouth and the set of his handsome jaw that he wasn’t about to admit to remembering it. ‘Look, forget it. Just forget it. This clearly isn’t the time.’

She made a move towards the door, but rocked to a halt when he said, ‘So tell me, Lara Meadows. Did you? Keep your end of the deal?’

There was mockery in his voice and it caught her on the raw. She swung round to face him. His dark eyes were shimmering with a sardonic, enigmatic light.

‘No. No, I didn’t,’ she said, anger welling in her at being mocked for what was, in fact, the tragedy of her life. ‘And neither did you, or you’d have known