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‘Very funny.’
‘I like the idea that you’re sewn into your dress. It could be erotic.’ He prowled around her, his eyes on her body. ‘So what do they expect you to do if you need to have wild, animal sex?’
‘I’m not going to need that.’
He scanned her dress. ‘This is your punishment for not picking something from the House of Corretti. Our clothes would make you feel seductive and feminine. We don’t have to sew our women into their dresses for them to look good. the dress becomes part of the woman.’
She’d forgotten that he ran the fashion house but it explained his effortlessly stylish appearance. Even with his shirt collar open and strands of dark hair falling over his forehead, he looked spectacular.
‘I didn’t pick this dress.’ Heat and hunger made her irritable. ‘I wore what your cousin told me to wear.’
‘He’d never pick anything from my company,’ Luca drawled, ‘it might signify approval and God forbid the rivalry between us should ever die. That fabric isn’t allowing your body to breathe. I could help you with that.’
‘Nice try.’
‘I’ve got moves that would make you weep.’
‘I’m sure you make women weep a lot, but I’m not a crier.’
‘I like you more and more. You could bathe naked in the fountain.’ He reached for the chilled bottle of champagne. ‘Or I could roll this over your skin.’
Her skin was prickling with the heat and she made a sound that was half laugh, half groan. ‘Now you’re torturing me. Talk about something else, before I melt.’ Taylor knew she should walk away but she decided it was safer to wait a few minutes until the people they’d overheard were safely back among the guests. Just five minutes, she promised herself. Five minutes. ‘So who is this woman you’re running from?’
‘I have no idea. Apparently her name is Portia but that was news to me.’
Taylor lifted her hair away from her neck to try and cool herself down. ‘You’re terrible.’
‘Not terrible enough to induce her to dump me, sadly. She was alarmingly difficult to shift.’
‘Some women find bad boys attractive.’
‘And from what I’ve heard, you know a lot about that.’
‘Do you often listen to gossip?’
‘All the time. Gossip makes me laugh.’ The cork flew out of the bottle with a pop. ‘So tell me the truth, Taylor Carmichael? How do you like your men? Welldone, medium or rare?’
‘Rare.’ Sticky and uncomfortable from the heat and the conversation she squirmed, wishing she could dip her toes in the water. ‘So rare I can’t remember when I last touched one.’
‘So I’m looking at a desperate woman.’
‘You’re looking at a controlled woman. I’m no longer a slave to my impulses.’
‘That sounds like the tag line for a good bondage movie. Slave to Her Impulses. The sequel could be Slave to His Impulses. I might be willing to star in that for a price providing you were the leading lady.’ That mocking smile touched the corners of his mouth and he tipped champagne into a glass and held it out to her. ‘Drink. It will help numb the boredom of the wedding.’
Hating the fact that she was even tempted, Taylor reluctantly shook her head. ‘No, thanks. Champagne is on my list of banned substances, particularly on an empty stomach.’
‘Personally I have a taste for banned substances.’ Shrugging, he tilted his head and drank, the sun glinting off his dark hair.
Just for a moment, because he wasn’t looking at her, she looked at him. At those slanting cheekbones, that nose, the olive skin—
It was so long since she’d looked at a man and found him attractive, the spasm of sexual awareness shocked her.
She reminded herself that Luca Corretti was probably the most dangerous man she could possibly have found herself with. ‘I thought you were trying to behave yourself.’
‘This is me behaving myself.’ He took another mouthful of champagne and she laughed in spite of herself, sensing a kindred spirit. A part of her long buried stirred to life.
‘So both of us are making a superhuman effort to behave. What’s your excuse?’
‘I have to prove myself capable of taking charge of another chunk of the family business.’ Underneath the light, careless tone there was an edge of steel and it surprised her because she didn’t associate him with responsibility.
That thought was followed instantaneously by guilt. She was judging him as others judged her, based on nothing but gossip. She was better than that.
‘But you already run a business. I read that you’d turned the House of Corretti around.’
‘I have a flare for figures.’
‘Especially when those figures belong to models?’
He laughed. ‘Something like that. Unfortunately trebling the profits of Corretti isn’t enough for them.’
She had to stop herself reaching for the champagne in his hand. Because she wasn’t able to get out of her dress, she’d avoided drinking and now her throat was parched from the heat. ‘But why do you want to meddle in other parts of the business?’
‘Sibling rivalry.’
‘But you’re all members of the same family. Surely that qualifies you for a seat on the board.’
‘The qualifications for a seat on the board seem to be old age and sexual inactivity.’ He suppressed a yawn. ‘I suppose that’s why they call it a “bored.” Needless to say I’m bombing out big-time. I have a feeling that whatever I do, I will always be in the wrong.’
Taylor felt a flicker of sympathy. ‘I know that feeling.’
‘I’m sure you do. You, Taylor Carmichael, are one, big walking wrong.’ His gaze lingered on her mouth. ‘So tell me what else is on your list of banned substances.’
‘Men like you.’
‘Is that right?’ His eyes on hers, he lowered the champagne bottle back into the fountain. Somehow, without her even noticing how he’d done it, he’d moved closer to her. His dark head was between her and the sun and all she could see was those wicked eyes tempting her towards the dark side.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Testing a theory.’ His mouth moved closer to hers and suddenly she struggled to breathe.
‘What theory?’
‘I want to know whether two wrongs make a right.’ His smile was the last thing she saw before he kissed her.
CHAPTER TWO
WHAT THE HELL was she doing?
Taylor opened her eyes and found herself staring into two dark, slumberous pools of molten male hunger.
As his mouth moved skilfully on hers, desire punched low in her belly and then spread through her body with a speed that shocked her. One minute she was thinking, the next minute she was kissing him back, gripped by a deep, visceral emotion she couldn’t even name.
He seduced her mouth with lazy expertise, his tongue teasing hers with a delicious skill that weakened her legs with frightening speed.
Her stomach twisted. Her body melted. She wanted to stretch luxuriously into the warmth of that hand resting high on her bare thigh.
Her bare thigh?
Horrified, she tried to pull back but her body was weakened by pleasure. ‘My dress—’ The words were swallowed by the heat of his mouth. ‘Luca—’
‘I agree. The dress has to come off.’
‘No.’ She was laughing and appalled at the same time, her hand covering his as she stopped him sliding the fabric upwards. ‘You’ve ripped the stitches.’
‘No, you ripped the stitches,’ he purred, ‘when you wrapped your leg around me.’
‘You pulled my leg round you—we shouldn’t be doing this. I don’t want to be doing this.’
‘Tell that to your pulse rate. It’s revving like the engine of my Ferrari.’
‘I thought you were trying to prove to the board you’re responsible?’
‘I’ll use a condom. Does that count?’
Appalled by how much she wanted to laugh, Taylor locked her hand in the front of his shirt, feeling hard male muscle against the backs of her fingers. ‘I don’t think that’s what they have in mind. You don’t want to take this risk and neither do I. We have to get back to the wedding before the bride comes.’
‘If I have my way you’ll come before the bride.’ Laughing wickedly, he delivered a slow, sensual kiss to the corner of her mouth. ‘Some things are worth taking a risk for and you, Taylor Carmichael, are definitely one of those. You are sexy enough to make me forget all about being good—’ his hand was buried in her hair and his mouth was on her neck ‘—and it really turns me on to know that underneath your icy, composed exterior you are still a bad, bad girl.’
Taylor closed her eyes but that simply intensified the crazy swirl of feelings so she opened them again. ‘You’re wrong. That isn’t who I am.’ It couldn’t be. ‘I don’t want this.’
‘You’re crushing me, dolcezza.’ He was kissing her jaw and she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘Think of my poor, delicate ego.’
Nothing about him was delicate. Not the powerful shoulders, nor the rock-hard biceps. He was all muscle and masculinity and Taylor was so desperate for him her whole body ached. ‘I don’t want you.’
‘Yes, you do. You want me as much as I want you but you’re determined to deny your true self.’
‘I’m not denying anything.’ Panicking, she shoved at his chest. ‘Enough! Damn it, Luca—get away from me.’ In the past two years she hadn’t even looked at a man and suddenly here she was, pressed against the hardness of him, her body melting against the heat of his. The chemistry was off the scale and it terrified her. Of all the men she could have found herself with, he was the most dangerous of his species. ‘I’m not that person any more. I’ve changed.’
‘That person? What person? You mean the woman who embraced her life without apology?’
‘The woman who screwed up her life by trusting men like you,’ Taylor snapped, ‘and I’m not doing it again so stay away. I mean it, Luca. If you want to live up to your reputation then go ahead, but I’m not going to let you take me down with you.’
‘Why are you so ashamed of yourself?’
‘I’m not ashamed—’ she spoke so quickly she stumbled over the words ‘—but I’ve grown up.’
‘Grown-ups accept their mistakes instead of running from them.’
Hers haunted her.
The threatening messages never ended.
Her heart was pumping as she backed away from him. ‘Good luck with your future. I hope you manage to convince the board to trust you before you give in to the worst part of yourself and blow it completely.’
‘Ah, but that’s the difference between us, angelo mia.’ Reaching for the bottle of champagne again, he leaned his hips against the fountain, effortlessly sophisticated and insanely sexy. ‘I consider it to be the best part of myself. The fact that no one else appreciates it is their problem, not mine.’
For a brief moment she felt a flash of envy that he was so indifferent to what people thought and then the urgency of her situation propelled her into action and she jammed her feet into her shoes, the movement parting the seam of her dress as far as the waist. Gripping it with her hand, she held the two sides together and hurried through the shadowed corridors of the maze, grateful for the high hedges that concealed her from prying eyes.
If a photographer had been hiding in the maze, or even another guest—one of Luca’s disgruntled women—it would have looked awful and no amount of explaining would have worked.
She would have ruined everything before she’d even started filming.
The thought of how close she’d come to doing just that made her feel sick.
Weak with relief that her reputation was still intact, she pulled her phone out of her bag and texted the designer one-handed.
Ready to be sewn back into my dress. Meet me by the maze.
Luca let her go, that exercise in self-restraint costing him dearly in terms of physical discomfort. He shifted slightly and decided he didn’t dare leave the maze until his hormones had settled down.
Lifting the champagne to his lips, he paused as he spotted a woman approaching down another greenlined tunnel.
‘Luca, there you are!’
Cursing under his breath, he lowered the bottle of champagne. ‘Paula!’
‘It’s Portia.’
‘That’s what I said. The maze distorts sound.’
Her eyes were a little less warm than they’d been earlier. ‘Were you hiding from me?’
‘I didn’t trust myself around you,’ Luca said smoothly. With the taste of Taylor still on his lips, he felt no inclination to take her up on her less than subtle invitation. ‘Last night should not have happened. You’re a beautiful woman but I need to behave myself.’
Her eyes narrowed and she stared down the path where Taylor had recently disappeared. ‘Really? So you’re telling me women are off the agenda today?’
Something in her tone made Luca wonder if she’d seen Taylor but he decided that wasn’t possible. No one could have sneaked up on them without him noticing.
‘Sadly, yes. What we shared was very special—’ he pulled out one of his stock phrases ‘—but I can’t risk anything else at this point which is killing me because last night was one of the best of my life.’
‘All right. If that’s the way it has to be then so be it.’ She looked at him for a long moment, as if she were working something out. ‘You’re never going to forget me, Luca Corretti.’
‘Of course I’m not.’
‘And you’ll never again forget my name.’
‘It’s your own fault for being beautiful—I take one look at your face and my memory goes.’
