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Annie gave a startled glance down at the mobile she still held in her hand. The mobile from which a concerned voice could be heard squawking, if not the actual words being spoken.
Oliver.
In her utter shock at seeing Luc again, Annie had completely forgotten that she had been talking to Oliver when she had crashed into the tall Italian.
She swallowed hard. ‘If you will excuse me?’ She deliberately turned her back on the powerful effect of this man’s close proximity, intending to escape to somewhere more private to continue her call.
Although she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to talk to Oliver with any degree of normality after this chance, disturbing meeting. In fact, the sooner Annie was able to get away from Lake Garda—no, from Italy altogether—and the man she’d had a one-night stand with, who didn’t even remember her, the better she was going to like it.
Deeply aware that Italy was the place where she had met Luc and behaved so impulsively, Annie hadn’t wanted to attend this management course at the conference centre in a hotel on the shores of Lake Garda at all, and had only done so because her father had insisted.
A father who, still reeling from the death of Lillian, his beloved third wife and Annie’s stepmother, had become dictatorial with all of his daughters following the scandal that had rocked the family to its very core during the celebration of the centenary Balfour Charity Ball the previous month.
Annie froze as she felt strong fingers curl about her upper arm before she had chance to walk away. Luc’s fingers. Long, elegant fingers that nevertheless possessed a compelling strength.
Fingers that had once caressed and touched Annie more intimately than any other man ever had. And which still had the power to send an electrifying jolt of awareness down the length of her arm and up into the fullness of her breasts. Breasts that, to Annie’s embarrassment, instantly responded to the familiarity of that touch as they swelled inside her bra, the nipples pressing against the lacy material.
Annie’s eyes, the deep Balfour blue eyes, were flashing a warning as she turned back to face Luc. ‘Take your hand off me!’ She spoke between gritted teeth, her face having once again paled.
Luc lowered hooded lids at the vehemence he heard in her tone. No, he had not imagined it earlier; there was definitely some resentment being displayed here towards him, a resentment he wished to know more of.
He made no effort to release her. ‘Would you care to have dinner with me this evening?’
Her eyes widened as she stared up at him uncomprehendingly for several long seconds. ‘What?’ she finally snapped even as the colour rushed back into her cheeks.
Luc gave a brief humourless smile. ‘I asked if you would have dinner with me this evening. In apology for having almost knocked you over just now,’ he added, both of them fully aware that it was her lack of attention to where she was going that had caused the collision.
She gave him a speaking glance. ‘Thank you for the invitation,’ she answered drily. ‘But no.’
Luc narrowed dark eyes, unaccustomed to being turned down by any woman. ‘Why not?’ he asked bluntly.
Eyes the colour of cornflowers, and surrounded by thick dark lashes, glared at him fiercely. ‘Because I don’t allow myself to be picked up by men I don’t know in hotel hallways, that’s why! Now would you please let go of my arm or do I have to call a member of the management and have them throw you off the premises for harassing one of their guests?’
That might prove interesting, considering that Luc’s family owned the hotel!
‘That will not be necessary,’ he murmured even as he slowly uncurled his fingers and released her arm. ‘The dinner invitation was no more than a gesture of apology on my part.’ He shrugged dismissively.
Annie, having already been completely thrown by Luc’s unexpected invitation to dinner, thankfully felt the easing of that tingling sensation in her arm and breasts once he had released her.
Just as she also felt slight disappointment that she couldn’t—no, daren’t—accept his dinner invitation…
Oh, no—she couldn’t still be attracted to this man! Could she?
No, of course not! He had erupted into her life, taken what he wanted from her and then literally disappeared into the sunset.
As Annie had taken what she wanted from him?
With three older sisters, all of whom had made headlines in the daily newspapers at one time or another, and three younger sisters—four now!—who looked to be heading the same way, Annie was the one who had always preferred to remain firmly in the shadows of the publicity so often connected with the Balfour name.
A fact her father had been well aware of when he encouraged her to join her university friends on that skiing holiday in Italy more than four years ago.
To Annie’s surprise, away from the pressure and publicity that so often accompanied being a Balfour, and the constant competitiveness so typical of a Balfour family holiday, she had found herself relaxing and enjoying herself.
Consequently, when Luc had flashed that dangerous grin at her and issued his challenge for her to accompany him down the steepest black run at the resort, Annie had been more than open to his heady brand of seduction.
So much so that she had behaved completely out of character after going back to Luc’s luxurious chalet with him. As he had suggested, they had drunk schnapps together while cooking a meal, Annie wrapped in a glorious rosy glow as the two of them made love in front of the blazing log fire.
It had been a time out of time. When she could just be Annie. And Luc could just be Luc.
But who was he really? Annie wondered now as she glanced at him cautiously. Because, from the expensive cut of his hair, the tailored suit, silk shirt and tie and handmade leather shoes, he was obviously someone important.
Not to mention someone she had wanted to avoid seeing again at all costs!
‘No apology is required,’ she assured him crisply. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I really do have to finish my call.’
Luc regarded her with guarded intensity. ‘I cannot help feeling that the two of us have met before,’ he insisted.
‘In another lifetime perhaps,’ she retorted.
‘Perhaps,’ Luc echoed slowly.
There was something about the delicate curve of this woman’s jaw, the deep blue of her eyes, the husky, sexy softness of her voice, that he knew.
Nor had Luc missed her response to merely the touch of his fingers on her arm. Her breasts had visibly swelled beneath the jacket of the black suit, the nipples pebble hard against the soft material of her blouse.
And he thought her eyes once again widened in alarm at his persistence in suggesting that they had met before.
‘Will you be remaining at the hotel for long?’ he asked curiously.
‘The weekend only,’ she replied curtly. ‘But I’m here on business and expect to be kept very busy, so I doubt that we will have a chance to meet again,’ she added firmly.
She so obviously hoped that they would not meet again, Luc acknowledged.
Interesting.
Having taken over as head of the family business empire four years ago following his father’s near-fatal heart attack, Luc was accustomed to being hotly pursued by women intent on becoming his wife or, failing that, his mistress. Whereas this woman could not have shown her lack of interest in him any more clearly.
Which only increased Luc’s own interest in her. An interest he intended pursuing, with or without her cooperation…
He gave a determined smile. ‘I would not be too sure of that, if I were you.’
Once again she blinked, her creamy throat moving convulsively as she swallowed before speaking. ‘Just talking to you has already made me late for a meeting.’ She gave a pointed look at the slender gold watch on her wrist.
He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Then a few minutes more will not make any difference, hmm?’
The woman shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I dislike tardiness, in myself as well as others.’
Luc knew she was not in the least sorry. In fact, she couldn’t wait to get away!
The fiery snap in her stunning eyes, and the stubborn set of her chin, told Luc that she had no idea how her obvious determination to get away from him only increased his interest rather than diminished it.
‘In that case, I will say goodbye. For now,’ he added softly.
‘We will not meet again, signore,’ she insisted, the delicate colour that entered her cheeks now due to temper rather than embarrassment at her previous rudeness.
Luc found himself giving her one of his rare smiles. ‘Fate has a way of deciding these things for us, I have found.’
Fate had already led Annie into behaving completely irrationally in this man’s company once, and she had no intention of putting that temptation in her way ever again.
Yet, if anything, this Luc was even more devastatingly attractive than the man Annie had met before. There was a hard ruthlessness about him now, a haughty remoteness, that challenged as much as it beguiled.
As for his smile…!
Those moulded, sculptured lips had pulled back briefly over white and perfectly straight teeth, in a familiar wolfish smile that, although fleeting, had nevertheless made Annie’s heart pound harder and louder.
Despite everything, she realised with horror that she was still attracted to him!
Her mouth firmed. ‘I really do have to finish this call.’
Luc’s mocking humour faded as he recalled that she had been talking to someone called Oliver when they had collided a few minutes ago.
A man named Oliver, who, from the lack of rings on her long and slender fingers, had not yet made a public claim on this woman, despite the fact that she’d huskily assured him that she loved him too.
He nodded abruptly. ‘I too am late for an appointment.’
The woman’s smile was saccharin sweet. ‘Then I really mustn’t delay you any longer, must I?’
This woman needed to be put across someone’s knee, and her bottom firmly spanked, Luc decided ruefully. Her bare bottom. Her lush and curvaceous bare bottom.
It was an erotic image that flowered and grew in Luc’s mind and caused his thighs to throb and harden as he became fully aroused—something that hadn’t happened to him in years at just the thought of making love to a specific woman.
Luc had spent years rebuilding his family’s wealth and business empire. Four long years when he had allowed no other distractions, least of all an interest in a woman, to interfere with those plans.
Attractive as this woman was, Luc very much doubted that she would hold that interest for very long either. But her prickly nature indicated a passion that might prove fun while it lasted.
‘Signorina.’ He inclined his head in farewell, secure in the knowledge, in the pleasure, of her presence at Lake Garda for several more days at least.
Annie held her breath as she watched Luc’s long and arrogantly confident strides until he turned left at the end of the hallway, leaning weakly back against the wall of the hallway once he had disappeared from view.
Dear God!
How had this happened? Why had it happened?
It had happened for the simple reason that her father, newly fired with a desire to guide the lives of his wayward daughters into less notorious and hopefully more worthwhile channels, had decided that Annie was to take a more active role in the Balfour business empire by attending this management course!
Her protest that she had no interest in taking on a more high-profile role in her father’s management team hadn’t seemed to matter a jot to him. As the only one of Oscar’s eight daughters who actually worked for him, usually at the office complex at Balfour Manor, Oscar had just overridden all of Annie’s objections by threatening to sack her.
Annie had known that he had meant that threat too. That Oscar was absolutely adamant in his decision that it was time—past time—that all of his daughters went out into the world to find themselves and what they really wanted out of life. Even if the majority of them, Annie included, went kicking and screaming!
Which brought Annie back full circle to her presence here at this glamorous hotel set on the shore of beautiful Lake Garda in Italy.
A hotel at which Luc, her ex-lover, was obviously also a guest…
Chapter Two
‘SO, signorina, you have found time from your busy schedule to relax after all.’
Annie’s heart jolted in her chest just at the sound of that sexily familiar voice, and she was grateful for the dark glasses that shielded the expression in her eyes as she looked up to see Luc standing beside her. She had been hoping for a little peace and quiet as she lay on a towel on the sand of the private beach in front of the hotel.
But she would obviously get no peace today. The man was gorgeous. Decadently. Wonderfully. Indecently. Lethally gorgeous.
Luc had been vitally and excitingly handsome when Annie had met him all those years ago, but the skimpy pair of black bathing trunks that were all he wore now showed an added toughness to the lean and muscled contours of his body.
His skin had always been the colour of mahogany. But his shoulders were wider, and more muscled. A light dusting of dark hair covered a chest and washboard abdomen. His hips and thighs were lean and powerful, and those black bathing trunks seemed to emphasise rather than disguise the telling bulge between those spectacular thighs.
Thighs that Annie had once been intimately familiar with…
She sat up abruptly, her manner instantly defensive as she glared up at him from behind her brown sunglasses. ‘Are you following me?’
Luc felt only amusement at the accusation. Knowing that the flush of heat on her cheeks, and the way her nipples had hardened against the material of her blue bathing costume, was due to physical awareness rather than the angry indignation she wished to convey.
In truth, he’d had no idea she was even on the beach when he decided to indulge in a swim before his meeting later this afternoon. But as he had stood on the warmth of the sand looking for a place in which to place his towel, he had spotted that familiar chestnut-coloured hair that had seemed to glow a deeper auburn in the warmth of the midday sun.
Having swiftly established that it was the little firebrand of earlier this morning, Luc had been unable to resist the impulse to join her. To annoy her further perhaps? She did look so very beautiful when she was scowling at him.
The black business suit and white blouse she had been wearing this morning had not done her justice, Luc realised once he had crossed the beach to stand looking down at her from behind black sunglasses.
Her bare skin was tanned a pale gold, the top of the blue bathing costume cupping full and exquisite breasts, the thin strip of material that connected the top to the bottom of the costume at the front revealing the toned flatness of her waist and stomach above enticingly curvy hips and long, shapely legs.
‘What if I were following you?’ He answered her accusation teasingly.
A frown appeared between her eyes. ‘Then I really would have to report your harassment to the hotel management.’
‘Please feel free to do so,’ Luc invited as he dropped down onto the sand beside her.
The fact that he seemed so unconcerned by the threat told Annie that he somehow knew she would be wasting her time in making such a complaint.
Just as her inner feeling of panic also told her that she was completely aware—achingly aware—of the hard promise of Luc’s almost naked body so close to her own that their thighs were almost touching.
So close that she could feel the warmth emanating from his body. So close that she could smell his delicious masculine scent. So close she could have easily reached out and touched one of those hard and muscled thighs…
Her fingers clenched so tightly in an effort not to do exactly that, that her nails dug painfully into the palms of her hands. ‘What is it you want, signore?’ she asked instead. ‘Surely there are enough willing women at this hotel that you don’t need to harass the only one who isn’t interested in you?’ Annie hadn’t missed the openly lascivious female glances in Luc’s direction since he had joined her on the sand. ‘Or is that the challenge?’ she added in disgust.
An amused smile curved those sculptured lips. ‘Are you not being a little unkind to these other women?’ He ignored her second taunt.
‘I prefer to think of it as being truthful,’ Annie retorted waspishly.
He raised dark brows. ‘And are you always truthful?’
