Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,27

don’t seem interested in a repeat performance.’ His black eyes narrowed. ‘And I can’t for the life of me work out why.’

Maybe it was his use of the word ‘performance’ which rankled, or maybe it was just his arrogant assumption that any woman, having tasted the pleasures of his body, wouldn’t be able to keep from coming for more—no matter the wear and tear it might inflict on a susceptible heart. ‘Oh, can’t you? Is that because your damned ego is so big?’

He was laughing now. ‘Not my ego, cara, no.’

She felt the flame which flared over her cheeks and dropped her voice to a furious whisper. ‘Do you want me to get up and walk out of this room right now?’

‘Yes,’ he retorted, his gaze imprisoning hers. ‘If it means you’ll come up to my suite and let me make love to you and damned well rid my blood of the fire you’ve lit within it.’

She stared at him in shock and the beating of her heart accelerated. ‘Gianluca! What kind of a proposition is that?’

‘One night,’ he said flatly. ‘Just one night. We finish off what was started in Italy. And that’s it.’

‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing,’ she breathed.

‘No? Then I implore you to be honest with yourself, cara. The thought of you is driving me wild—and don’t tell me you don’t feel the same way, because I won’t believe you. I can see it in your eyes, too—though you replace it with that icy coolness when you sense that I’m looking at you. But it’s there, and you can’t hide it. The hunger. The need—gnawing away inside you.’

‘You make it sound like an … appetite.’

‘Because that’s exactly what it is.’ He leaned forward, his expression intent, realising that this was at least one good thing about making a proposition to Aisling. At least she saw things in black and white and not dressed up in idealistic shades of make-believe. To a woman with such a good head for business—she would consider this a viable proposition.

‘A hunger which can be fed and then forgotten,’ he continued. ‘We’re colleagues. Neither of us want all the complications of a long-distance relationship—so why not draw a line under the whole affair in the most delightful way possible? We put it to bed, so to speak—and then forget it ever happened.’

Aisling stared into his beautiful face while her heart warred with her head, because it was never going to be up there with one of the Great Romantic Declarations, was it? And yet it was honest.

Some women might have found it insulting—so why didn’t she? Was it because he hadn’t made it out to be something it wasn’t? He’d spoken nothing but the stark, unvarnished truth—and didn’t that count for much more than the kind of empty promises which had seen her mother disappointed over and over again?

There had been no coyness between the two of them that night in Umbria—and that had been the most amazing night of her life. He was treating her as the independent woman she claimed to be. Speaking to her as an equal. Two grown-ups who both wanted each other. He had spoken of ridding himself of a fire in his blood—might she not do the same with this one night?

But what if she couldn’t forget him?

In the flicker of the candlelight his eyes gleamed like jet and her heart turned over with longing. What if one night with this man wasn’t enough? Didn’t women operate differently from men and wasn’t she running the risk of putting herself in the type of terrible emotional danger which she had always sought to avoid?

Yet what was the alternative? An unresolved desire which ran the risk of dominating her world and her life?

The waiter put two plates in front of them, but she barely noticed them.

‘And if I agree—what about … afterwards?’

He gave an odd sort of smile. ‘It will be gone. Finito. Remembered occasionally, no doubt—taken out and remembered as one might remember an especially delicious meal or a particularly beautiful holiday destination, but nothing more than that.’

She thought of the job she worked so hard for. Of the people who relied on her—of the security all those things gave her, that and the sense of being needed. She owed it to those people to put their needs before her own desires. ‘And the contract?’ she questioned.

There was a moment’s silence and his mouth twisted. He had been right—she had nothing in the way of a heart!