by Lynne Graham
Her breath catching in her throat, she stared back at him, wholly enchanted by the charisma of that breathtaking smile. ‘I’m not lying...’ she muttered without even being aware of what she was saying.
Rocco reached out and closed his hands over hers. At first contact, a helpless shiver ran through her. Slowly, he smoothed out her tightly clenched fingers, one by one. Like a rabbit caught in car headlights, she gazed up at him, heart banging against her ribcage, aware only of him and the seductive weakness induced by the heat blossoming inside her. He eased her inches closer. His warmth, the feel of his skin on hers again, the powerful intoxicant of his familiar scent overpowered her senses.
‘I said I wouldn’t touch you again if I was dying but...’ The rasp of his voice travelled down her responsive spine like hot, delicious honey.
‘But?’
‘Dio...’ Rocco husked, drawing her the last couple of inches. ‘I believe I could be persuaded otherwise, tabbycat...’
The sound of that endearment made her melt.
‘However, you would have to promise to keep it quiet—’
‘Quiet?’ All concentration shot, she didn’t grasp what he was talking about.
‘I don’t want to open a newspaper on Monday morning to find out how I scored between the sheets again—’
‘Sorry...?’
Without warning, Rocco released her hands and, since he was just about all that was holding her upright on her wobbling lower limbs, she almost fell on top of him. He righted her again with deft cool. ‘Think about it,’ he advised, stepping away from her.
For an instant, Amber hovered, breathing in deep, striving to get her brain into gear again. She did not have to think very hard. ‘Apart from the obvious, what are you trying to imply?’
‘I’m bored this weekend and you challenged me.’
In considerable emotional disarray as she appreciated that she had been standing there transfixed and hypnotised, entirely entrapped by the sexual power he had exercised over her, Amber spun round. ‘I beg your pardon?’
Rocco sent her a sizzling glance of mockery. ‘Maybe I want to see you faking it for my benefit.’
Amber reddened to the roots of her hair. ‘No chance,’ she said curtly and stepped past him to hurry back out to the sitting room.
Without the slightest warning whatsoever, the door she was heading for opened and Kaye Winton walked in. At the sight of Amber, she frowned in astonishment, pale blue eyes rounding. ‘What are you doing up here?’
Mind a complete blank, Amber found herself glancing in desperation at Rocco.
Brilliant dark eyes gleaming, Rocco said, ‘I asked for someone to remove the flowers.’
‘The flowers?’ the beautiful brunette questioned.
‘I’m allergic to them.’ Rocco told the lie with a straight face.
‘Oh, no!’ Kaye surged over to the centre table as if jet-propelled. Gathering up the giant glass vase, she planted it bodily into Amber’s hastily extended arms. ‘Take them away immediately. I’m so sorry, Rocco!’
Her sweater soaked by the water that had slopped out of the vase with the other woman’s careless handling, Amber headed for the corridor at speed, her shaken expression hidden by the mass of trendy corkscrew twigs and lilies she had arranged earlier that day. It was ironic that she should be grateful for Rocco’s quick thinking, even more relieved that her employer’s wife had not come in a minute sooner and found her in his bedroom. How on earth would she ever have explained that?
Indeed, how could she even explain to herself why she had allowed Rocco to behave as he had? She had acted like a doll without mind or voice and offered no objection to his touching her. Sick with shame at her own weakness, Amber disposed of the floral arrangement and pulled on her work boots again with unsteady hands. Rocco was bored. Rocco was playing manipulative games with her to amuse himself. Dear heaven, that hurt her so much. And she knew it shouldn’t hurt, knew she should have been fully on her guard and capable of resisting Rocco’s smouldering sexuality.
Wasn’t she supposed to hate him? Well, hatred had kept her far from cool when he’d turned up the heat. And there she was blaming him when she ought to be blaming herself! Rocco had made her want him again...instantly, easily, reawakening the hunger she had truly believed she had buried for ever. But with every skin-cell alight with anticipation, she had just been desperate for him to kiss her. And he hadn’t kissed her either, which told her just how complete his own control had been in comparison to her own.
Well, she was going to spend the rest of the weekend at her sister’s house and stay well out of Rocco’s way, she told herself impulsively. Then she recalled that she couldn’t do that. True, she was babysitting at her sister’s that evening, but she had to work Saturdays and would have to turn in as usual. Harris Winton was usually home only at weekends and the reason Amber got a day off mid-week instead was that her employer insisted that she be available for his weekly inspection tour of the grounds.
She trudged round to the old coachyard and climbed into the ten-year-old hatchback her brother-in-law, Neville, had given her on loan, saying it had been a trade-in for one of the luxury cars he imported, but not really convincing her with that less-than-likely story. Furthermore, the car was on permanent loan, Amber reflected heavily, once again reminded of just how dependent she was on Neville and Opal’s generosity.
The independence she had sought was as far out of her reach as it had ever been, she conceded heavily. Her sole source of pride was that she was no longer living under her sister’s roof. But she was only able to work because she shared the services of the expensive but very well-trained nanny her sister employed to look after her own child. Amber’s low salary would not stretch to full-time childcare or indeed towards much of a contribution towards the nanny’s salary. So she kept on saying thank you to her family and accepting for Freddy’s sake, striving to repay their generosity by making herself useful in other ways. It occurred to her then that she could have wiped the sardonic smile from Rocco’s darkly handsome features with just a few words.
As she drove over to the exclusive housing development where her sister lived, she asked herself why she hadn’t spoken those words to Rocco when she had finally got the opportunity.
‘Rocco Volpe is pond scum,’ her sister, Opal, had pronounced on the day of Freddy’s birth. ‘But I’d sooner cut my throat than watch you humiliate yourself trailing him through the courts to establish paternity and win a financial settlement. Rich men fight paternity suits every step of the way. The whole process can drag on for years, particularly when the father is not a British citizen. He could leave the country and stonewall you at every turn. Keep your pride...that’s my advice.’
Her pride? The very thought of telling Rocco that she had given birth to his child flicked Amber’s pride on the raw. Rocco had pulled no punches when he’d ended their relationship. Amber’s troubled thoughts took her back in time an entire eighteen months. Had she had proper pride and sense, she would never have got as far as a first date with Rocco Volpe...
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN she was seventeen, Amber had started work as clerk in an accountant’s office. She had gratefully accepted the offer of day release and evening classes to study for accounting qualifications; it had been four years before she’d moved on. At twenty-one she had applied for and got a job at the merchant bank, Woodlawn Wyatt, where she had become second in command in the accounts department; her salary had doubled overnight.
‘You’re the token woman,’ her section senior had told her patronisingly.
But Amber hadn’t cared that she’d had to work with a male dinosaur, angry that his own choice of candidate had been passed over. Finally having got her foot onto a promising career ladder with that timely move and promotion, she had been happy to work long hours. Busy, busy, busy, that was what she had been, li
ttle time for friends or a man in her life, falling into bed exhausted night after night, driven by a desperate need to prove herself and terrified of failing.
She had met Rocco when Woodlawn Wyatt had thrown a big party for the outgoing managing director. Sitting with a fixed smile during the speeches, she had surreptitiously been drawing up a study schedule on a napkin in preparation for her next exam. She had not even noticed Rocco at the top table and when the lights had lowered and the dancing had begun, she had been on the brink of going home, having made her duty appearance.
‘Would you like to dance?’
Rocco came out of nowhere at her. She looked up with a frown, only to be stunned by the effect of those spectacular tawny eyes of his. ‘Sorry...who are you speaking to?’ she mumbled, not crediting for one moment that it might be her.
‘You...’ Rocco told her gently.
‘I don’t dance...I was about to leave, actually—’
‘Just one dance—’
‘I’ve got two left feet,’ she muttered, getting all flustered. ‘Did one of my colleagues put you up to this for a joke?’
‘Why would anyone do that?’
As it was her responsibility to keep a choke hold on business expense claims, Amber knew herself to be disliked by executive personnel, who loathed the way she pursued them for receipts and explanations of extraordinary bills. It was an unpopular job but she told herself that she wouldn’t be doing it for ever.
Embarrassed then by the low self-esteem she had betrayed with her foolish question, she found herself grasping Rocco’s extended hand and rising. And from that moment, her safe world started tilting and shifting and becoming an unrecognisable place of sudden colour and emotion. Nothing that followed was within her conscious control. After midnight, she left the party with him, aware of the shaken eyes following in their wake, but it had truly been as if Rocco had cast a spell over her. She had still been with Rocco at lunchtime the following day.
‘What attracted you to me?’ she had asked him once, still mystified.
‘My ego couldn’t take not being noticed by the one woman in the room worth looking at?’
‘Seriously...’
‘You had your shoes off under the table and you have these dinky little feet and I went weak with lust—’
‘Rocco.’
‘I took one look and I wanted you chained to my bed, day and night.’
Had she initially been a refreshing novelty to a sophisticated male accustomed to much more experienced women? Sinking back to the present, Amber parked at the rear of her sister’s big detached house and went inside. As they often did, her sister and brother-in-law were staying on in London to go out for the evening with friends before returning home. Amber was booked to babysit as it was their nanny Gemma’s night off.
The red-headed nanny was sitting in the airy conservatory with the children. Amber’s two-year-old niece, Chloe, was bashing the life out of an electronic teaching toy while Freddy sat entranced by both the racket and the flashing lights.
Freddy...with the single exception of hair colour, Freddy was Rocco in miniature, Amber conceded. He had black hair, big dark golden brown eyes and olive skin. She studied her smiling baby son with eyes that were suddenly stinging. She loved Freddy so much and already he was holding his arms up for her to lift him. As Gemma greeted her while attempting to distract Chloe from the ear-splitting noise she was creating, Amber crouched down and scooped Freddy up. In just over a week, when Christmas arrived, Freddy would be a year old. She drank in the warm, familiar scent of his hair, holding his solid little body close to her own, grateful that she didn’t need to worry about taking him back to her cottage at the Wintons’ for at least another twenty-four hours.
* * *
‘YOU’RE VERY QUIET. Don’t tell me you’re still worrying about your car not starting,’ her brother-in-law, Neville, scolded as he dropped her off in the cobbled coachyard at the Wintons’ early the following morning. ‘Look, I’ll have that old banger of yours back on the road by this lunchtime. One of my delivery drivers will run it over here for you.’
Sheathed in the fancy black designer dress that she had borrowed from her sister’s dry-cleaning bag because she had forgotten to pack for her overnight stay the evening before, Amber climbed out of Neville’s Mercedes sports car, and gave him a pained smile. ‘Yes, as if it’s not bad enough that I have to drag you out of bed on a Saturday morning to take me to work, I now wreck the rest of your day by sentencing you to play car mechanic—’
The older man gave her a wry grin. ‘Give over, Amber. I’m never happier than when I’m under the bonnet of a car!’
Yeah, sure, Amber thought, guiltily unconvinced as he drove off again. Maybe that was true if the car was a luxury model, but she could not credit that a male who owned as successful a business as Neville did could possibly enjoy working on an old banger. Barefoot and bare-legged because she hadn’t wanted to risk waking her sleeping sister by going in search of shoes and underwear to borrow, a bulk, heavy carrier bag containing the previous day’s clothes weighing down her arm, Amber rummaged for her keys for the cottage.
She got the fright of her life when a slight sound alerted her to the fact that she had company. Head flying up, she focused in astonishment on Rocco as he stepped into view out of the shadowy recesses behind one of the open archways fronting the coachyard. Casually, if exclusively clad in a husky brown cashmere jacket and tailored beige chinos, luxuriant silver fair hair tousled in the breeze above his devastingly attractive dark features, Rocco literally sent her composure into a downward tailspin.
‘So it’s true,’ Rocco pronounced with grim emphasis. ‘You’ve got a middle-aged man in a Merc in tow.’
The hand Amber had extended towards the keyhole on the cottage door fell back limp to her side. ‘What are you
d-doing out here at this hour?’ she stammered, wide-eyed, still to come to grips with his first staggering statement.
Rocco vented a humourless laugh. ‘You should know I never lie in bed unless I’ve got company—’
‘But it’s barely eight in the morning.’ Amber didn’t really know why she was going on about the actual time. She only knew that she was so taken aback by Rocco’s sudden appearance and her own inability to drag her eyes from that lean, darkly handsome face that she couldn’t think straight.
‘I’ve been waiting for you. I want to know if what Kaye Winton said about you after dinner last night was a wind-up,’ Rocco bit out flatly, raking brooding dark eyes over the short fitted dress she wore, lingering in visible disbelief on her incongruously bare legs and feet. ‘Dio mio...he chucks you out of the car half naked in the middle of winter. Where have you been? In a layby somewhere?’
Shivering now in the brisk breeze, Amber was nonetheless welded to the spot, frowning at him in complete incredulity. ‘What Kaye Winton said about me? What did she say about me?’
‘She warned me to watch out for you coming onto me as you were the local sex goddess...only she got rather carried away and didn’t manage to put it quite that politely.’
Amber’s generous lips parted and stayed parted. ‘Say that again...’ she finally whispered shakily when she was capable of emerging from the severe shock he had dealt her with that bombshell.
‘I believe you enjoy a constant procession of different men in flashy expensive cars and regular overnight absences...’ Rocco grated in seething disgust, striding forward to snatch her keys from her loosened grasp and open the door. ‘Go inside...you’re blue with cold!’
‘That’s an absolute lie!’ Amber exclaimed.
Rocco planted a hand to her rigid shoulder and thrust her indoors, following her in to slam the door closed again in his wake. ‘I think it’s past time you told me what’s going on with you—’
Amber flung down her carrier bag and rounded on him. ‘Now, let me get
this straight...Kaye Winton told you—’
‘After what I’ve seen with my own eyes I wouldn’t swallow a denial,’ Rocco cut in angrily. ‘So don’t waste your breath. Are you hooking to support some kind of life-threatening habit?’
Amber closed her eyes, outraged and appalled that he should even suggest such a thing. ‘Are you insane that you can ask me that?’
Rocco closed his hands over hers and pulled her closer. ‘Amber, I want the truth. I was tempted to close my hands round that vicious shrew’s throat last night and squeeze hard to silence her! I honestly thought it was sheer bitching I was listening to—’
‘I want to hear this again. In front of witnesses, that woman—’
‘No witnesses...the other guests were at the far end of the room when she chose to get confidential—’
Only a little of Amber’s growing rage ebbed at that clarification. ‘Right, I’ll have it out with her face to face—’
‘It would be wiser to keep quiet than encourage her to spread such tales further afield—’
Amber lifted angry hands and tried to break his hold. ‘Let me go, Rocco. I’m going to tip that dirty-minded besom out of her bed and—’
Rocco held fast to her. ‘Looking like you’re just home from a rough night at a truck stop, that will be so impressive!’
‘How dare you talk to me like that? How dare you suggest that I might be...that I might be a whore?’ Tears that were as much the result of distress as fury lashing her eyes, Amber slung those words back at him with the outrage of raw sincerity.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended and hurt you, but I need to know.’ Releasing her with relief unconcealed in his brilliant dark incisive eyes, Rocco expelled his breath in a stark hiss. ‘So when did you get into men in the plural just for fun?’
Amber swept up the jampot of dying wild flowers on the small pine table and flung it at him. The glass jar hit the stainless steel sink several feet behind him and smashed, spattering shards all over the work surface.