Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,19

desk. How incongruous it would sound if she told him that she’d awoken with a feeling of shame that she could have so compromised their professional relationship. And she had panicked, wanting to keep what little was left of the tatters of her pride. Running away had seemed the only way out at the time.

Deep down she had known that she’d behaved badly—but now she could see that she had thrown a poor light on more than her reputation. Because a woman who so bitterly regretted having taken a lover would look like a very indiscriminate woman indeed …

‘I’m sorry I ran out like that. I’m sorry I took the car,’ she said baldly and looked up into the cold black eyes. ‘There. You have your apology. What else do you want me to do about it?’

Conflicting thoughts began to spin around in his head and for once in his life, Gianluca wasn’t sure.

He wanted to tell her to go to hell!

But he also wanted her to lift her hand and unclip her hair and let it fall all around her shoulders and … and …

He stifled a groan. Ultimately, what did he really want?

Yet he knew the answer to this. It had been eating away at him for weeks—ever since he had realised that she had no intention of contacting him again. A woman he had bedded not begging for more!

At first, he hadn’t believed it—he had thought that she was playing a game of cat and mouse, as women tended to. But no. The expected, slightly awkward phone call had not come—nor the e-mail purporting to be about business, but with a tell-tale ending like: It was great to see your vineyard … and if ever you’re over in London …

Nothing! And like all men who had always had their every whim and hunger indulged—to be denied something was uniquely appealing. Did she know that? Was she playing some kind of elaborate game with him—knowing all the right buttons to press? Thinking that if she gave him just a taster and then retreated, he would be prowling round her like an alley-cat?

She was the best head-hunter he had ever employed, but this had nothing to do with her skill at that. He wanted to possess her one last time—enough to let her go without a backward glance—but he recognised that he was going about it the wrong way. The woman who sat behind the desk was now on her own territory and it wasn’t quite so easy to call the shots.

But she still worked for him, didn’t she?

For the first time since he’d walked into her office, he moved away from the door towards her, seeing her pupils dilate at the same time as her fingers flew up to her throat in an instinctive gesture of sexual awareness, and his mouth twisted into a hard smile.

Did she think he was just going to go over to her and take her in his arms? With a certainty which had never failed him, he knew that if he began to kiss her then he would soon have her parting her legs and pleading with him to take her there and then.

The heavy beat of desire throbbed deep in his groin and briefly he contemplated taking such an action, but decided against it. Such a victory would be meaningless. The submission of her body too easy. She would submit with her mind and she would submit willingly! She wanted him, no matter what she protested to the contrary—and wouldn’t the triumph of such a conquest quell his anger as well as his desire?

‘Actually I wanted to talk to you about work,’ he said softly.

The taut sexual tension in the air shattered like a bubble being pierced by a needle and Aisling’s mouth opened and then closed again, his words taking her completely by surprise. ‘Work?’ she echoed dully.

Black eyes seared around her office like a laser-gun. ‘Sì, cara,’ he drawled sarcastically. ‘Work—that well-known four-letter word.’ His black gaze lanced into her and taunted her. ‘Shame on you, Aisling—has all your ambition deserted you? Sapped by a night of sex? I mean, I know I’m good—but that good? You are still in business, I suppose? I take it you still have staff wages to pay?’

‘Well, yes—of course I do. It’s just that I didn’t …’ Her voice trailed off, in a way which wasn’t her usual style at all.

‘Didn’t what, Aisling?’ he probed softly, wondering what had made those ice-blue eyes suddenly