But he had done none of those things. And now, for all he knew, somewhere in this vast city she was laughing at him. At how easily she’d cut him down to size.
Laughing, perhaps, with her lover.
A woman with a face like a madonna’s would surely have a lover.
Would he be a man she could command? Yes. Of course. And what a pity that was because what the lady needed was a lover whose touch would make her tremble. Whose kisses would melt her icy hauteur. Who would make love to her until she begged for mercy…
“Barbieri!”
Nicolo forced the darkness away, looked at the expressions on his friends’ faces—and realized that he had held his glass so tightly it had shattered.
Whiskey puddled on the table.
“Merda,” he growled, and dabbed furiously at the spreading pond of golden liquid with a napkin.
“Never mind that. Did you cut yourself?”
Had he? Nicolo checked.
“No. Not a scratch.” He forced a laugh and held out his hand. “See? Relax, Reyes. There won’t be a lawsuit.”
But Lucas wasn’t buying into the poor attempt at humor.
“Amigo, I’m not the one who needs to relax. You’re wound tighter than a spring.”
Nicolo thought about denying it but what was the point? These men knew him too well.
“You’re right. I am, and I’m sorry I’m spoiling your evening.” He pushed back his chair. “The truth is, I can’t keep my mind on things tonight, so I’m going to head back to my hotel. I told you, that meeting—”
“We’ve known you too long to fall for that. Tough negotiations don’t stress you, Barbieri. You live for them.” Laughing, Damian nudged Lucas in the ribs with his elbow. “It’s a woman. Admit it.”
Nicolo gave a deliberately careless shrug. Maybe if he made light of it…
“Okay,” he said, “it is. But I’ll get over it.”
“Of course you will.” Lucas leaned closer. “And I know the quickest way to do it. It’s like drinking, Nicolo. Remember, back in college? The hair of the dog cure after too much partying? You wake with a hangover, you get rid of it by taking a drink. Well, you have a woman on the brain, you cure that by—”
“Lucas,” a soft voice purred, “darling Lucas, here you are! We’ve been looking everywhere.”
Five women had materialized beside the table. All stunning. All smiling as if they’d found the lost treasure of the Amazons.
“The hair of the dog, my man,” Damian whispered, and Nicolo thought, Why not?
Chairs were dragged over. Introductions were made. Champagne corks popped. After a few minutes, one of the women—her name was Vicki—turned to Nicolo.
“Lucas tells me you’re a royal”
Nicolo looked over her shoulder. Lucas grinned and winked.
“Lucas is a comedian,” he said.
“I’m famous, too.” She giggled. “Well, not yet but someday. Maybe you’ve seen me? I’ve been in—”
A list of plays. Or TV shows. Or something. He didn’t know, didn’t care, and stole a surreptitious glance at his watch. When could he get out of here without insulting the lady or putting a damper on the party?
Not that she wasn’t beautiful. And friendly. She smiled a lot. Put her hand on his arm. Asked him the questions a man likes to be asked.
It was an old game, one he’d played often. The outcome was always understood. And pleasant.
Amazingly pleasant.
He felt his blood tingle. Damian was right. Lucas, too. This was what he needed. A willing, beautiful woman. A game with a predictable ending. A night’s pleasure.
Wasn’t it bad enough the woman with the violet eyes had made a fool of him once? Was he going to let her do it again by keeping him from what waited for him now?
Nicolo pushed back his chair. Took Vicki’s hand.
“Dance with me.”
He led her down the steps to the dance floor. Salsa music blasted the air, its insistent beat almost as sexual as the moves of Vicki’s ripe body lightly brushing his.
Yes. This was good. This was what he needed…
But it wasn’t. It was the wrong body, teasing his. The wrong face, lifted to his and smiling. The wrong eyes, filled with heat and desire.
Basta, he thought in disgust, and he put his arms around the woman and brought her tightly against him as the music segued into something slow and sexy.
She settled close against him as if she’d been waiting for the invitation. Her hair tickled his nose. It was stiff and smelled of hairspray.
Those honeyed curls this afternoon had been soft and fragrant with rain.
“It’s terribly noisy here,” Vicki said, her breath warm against his ear.
Why don’t we find a quieter place? That was the next line. His, or in these days of supposed equality, it could be—
“Why don’t we find a quieter place?” she whispered.
Nicolo cleared his throat.
“You know,” he said, “I think that’s—I think it’s—” An excellent idea. “I think I’ll have to take a rain check on that,” he heard himself say.
She looked as surprised as he felt but, damn it, he didn’t want this woman.
No substitutes, he thought as the music began to pound again, and the need, the desire he’d been suppressing all these hours ignited and threatened to consume him.
He knew what he wanted. What he needed. And there had to be a way, had to be something he could do to—
Nicolo caught his breath. He stopped dancing, let the other dancers and the music swirl around him.
There she was!
Honey-colored curls. Violet eyes. The woman who was driving him insane. No black suede coat. No hood. No boots. Instead she wore a clinging scrap of crimson silk that barely covered her body. Gold sandals, all straps and sky-high, needle-sharp heels. She was dancing, if you wanted to call it that. Moving in a man’s arms. Breasts swaying. Hips rotating. Head up, eyes locked to the man’s face, mouth turned up in a smile…
A smile she had denied him.
“Nicolo?”
Vicki, whatever her name was, said his name. Said something more and put her hand on his chest. He brushed it aside. Stepped away. Abandoned her in the middle of the crowded dance floor.
The part of his brain that was of this century knew all that. Knew, too, that his response to the events of the afternoon might not be entirely rational.
But the part that was as old, as savagely male, as time whispered, This is what I want. And I’m going to have it.
And Nicolo heard nothing else.
The music had turned wild; the throbbing pulse matched the insistent thump of his blood, the beat of his heart….
The fury eating inside him.
Fate, always capricious, had decided to favor him tonight. The woman who’d made a fool of him was here.
Now, he could even the score.
He shouldered his way through the crowd, eyes locked to his quarry. She was oblivious to him. Good, he thought grimly. He wanted to reach her before she had time to think.
But halfway there, she suddenly stopped dancing. Her partner said something; she didn’t answer. Instead she moved out of his arms and stood like a doe at the edge of a clearing, sensing the presence of a hungry predator.
Later, Nicolo would wonder if it weren’t the whole world that had gone still and waited, waited, waited.
A minute, an eternity, swept by. Then the blonde raised her head and looked directly at him.
He let a tight smile curve his mouth. Whatever beat its wings within him must have been in that smile, because the color drained from her face.
She took a step back.
He thought, again, of the doe.
Run, he thought.
And, just as if she’d read his mind, the woman with the violet eyes swung away from him and fled.
Nicolo didn’t hesitate. He went after her.
CHAPTER THREE
YOU COULDN’T end up in the same place wit
h the same man twice in one day. Not in a town the size of New York.
At first, when she saw him, Aimee told herself it had to be some other tall, dark-haired guy. There were tons of dark-haired, good-looking men in the city.
A second glance and that hope vanished. It was the overbearing, supermacho jerk who’d kissed her. It had to be. The truth was, nobody else would be as…
All right. No other man could possibly be as easy on the eyes. He was despicable—but he was gorgeous.
The last few minutes, she’d felt…What? A premonition? She didn’t believe in any of that stuff, but how else to explain that tingle at her nape? That feeling that eyes were following her as she danced with Tom or Tim or, dear God, she couldn’t even remember the name of the guy who’d bought her a drink, then led her onto the dance floor.
He was nice enough. Good-looking enough. And he was working hard at making an impression.
And he wasn’t the stranger from this afternoon.
No way would Tom, or whoever he was, grab a woman and kiss her, look at her through icy deep-blue eyes in a way that would make the memory of him lodge itself in her brain.
She hated men like the Neanderthal, no matter how hot-looking a Neanderthal he might be.
So, yes, it was good that the guy dancing with her wasn’t like that…Wasn’t it?
Of course it was.
He’d been coming on to her like crazy. And she’d tried her best to respond. Smiled. Laughed. Gone onto the dance floor and did her best to lose herself in the music, working off her frustrations to its insistent beat the way she’d have worked them off in the gym.
And then, suddenly, she’d felt a tingle, as if someone was watching her.
Well, of course, someone was watching her! People danced, other people watched.
Aimee had danced harder, throwing herself into the music with abandon, and the guy with her kept saying things like, “Wow, you’re good, baby,” and “That’s it, babe, way to go,” as if he were cheering her on.
Objectifying her, she’d thought with detached clarity—except, wasn’t that part of the deal tonight?
She’d come here to have fun, she’d thought grimly. To pick up a man. She was going to have a good time.
Except, she wasn’t.
She despised places like this. Not the club itself: it was, she had to admit, spectacular. It was what went with the place. The noise. The lights. The crowd. The desperate pickup lines.
And this was not the time to turn into an anthropologist studying the natives.
So she’d agreed when Jen said it was absolutely fantastic, laughed at what she assumed were jokes, let a nice-looking guy buy her a margarita, tell her she was the most beautiful woman in the place and lead her to the dance floor.
And tried not to cringe each time Ted or Tim or Tom called her “baby.”
And worked really, really hard at pretending she was having fun when the truth was, she didn’t belong here, didn’t want to be here, certainly didn’t want to go home with Ted-Tom-Tim or anybody else for a night of meaningless sex.
She’d never treated sex casually. Never had a one-night stand. Never, not once.
Why on earth had she thought she’d want to now?
Because, a sly voice inside her had whispered, you thought it just might make you forget the stranger. The one with the hard, beautiful face and the body that was all muscle.
The one who kissed you as if he had the right, as if he could kiss you, do anything to you that he wanted.
That you wanted.
And that was when Aimee felt the tingling, looked around…And saw him. The stranger from this afternoon. Watching her with what could only be fury in his eyes.
He was angry? At her? That was crazy. She was the one who was angry. And “angry” wasn’t the word. She’d been the one harassed by him. By his attitude. His arrogance. His unwanted kiss.
His eyes met hers. Everything faded. The insistent throb of the music, the people around her, everything.
Aimee stopped dancing.
It was all she could do not to run.
The look in his eyes terrified her…but the slow heat spreading through her veins terrified her even more.
She took a long, deep breath. Or tried to. For some reason, she couldn’t seem to get any air into her lungs.
Suddenly the rage in his expression changed. Something else glittered in his dark blue eyes. Something male that she despised.
The innate male determination to dominate.
To dominate, in bed and out.
With breathtaking swiftness, she felt a rush of heat sweep through her. Her nipples tightened; a honeyed warmth spread low in her belly.
No, she thought frantically, no! She’d never want someone like him to put his hands on her. His mouth on her. To take her, hard and fast, again and again until she collapsed in his arms….
He started toward her, heedless of the people in his way, everything about him focused, with hot intensity, on her.
And she turned and ran.
She went through the crowd blindly, banging into people, ignoring their indignant protests. Her heart was racing.
God, oh God, oh God!
He was the hunter. She was his prey. A sob rose in her throat and, just in time, she spotted the flashing neon sign that marked one of the club’s unisex bathrooms.
Jen had dragged her into it earlier.
“Doesn’t look like a bathroom at all,” Jen had bubbled.
Right now, it looked like a sanctuary.
Aimee pulled open the door. Slammed it after her. Started to turn the lock…
Bang!
The door flew open and the man burst into the room. She shrieked and fell back, reached behind her to the vanity. Wrapped her hand around a heavy bottle of something. Hand lotion. Body oil. Who gave a damn what it was? It was a weapon.
That was what counted.
“Don’t,” she said.
Her voice shook. Was that the reason for the little smile that began at the corner of his mouth?
“Get out of here! Do you hear me? Go away or I’ll scream.”
He laughed. She couldn’t blame him. There wasn’t a chance in the world anyone would hear her. You wouldn’t hear a siren above the music. It was muted here, but it still filled the room like the beat of a giant heart.
She raised the bottle over her head. “One step,” she panted, “just one, and I’ll smash you with this!”
He laughed. “You already tried that, remember?”
“I’m not kidding! You—you unlock that door and get the hell out of here or so help me—”
He started toward her. She let fly with the bottle but he dodged and it shattered against the wall.
“Listen to me.” Her voice trembled; she hated herself for it but she knew damned well there was nothing she could do to prevent it. “This is a terrible mistake. You won’t—you won’t get away with—”
“At first,” he said, his tone almost conversational, “I thought, ‘Well, that is just the way she deals with men.’”
She’d noticed his accent this afternoon. You couldn’t miss that husky, sexy quality to his voice. It seemed more obvious now, his pronunciation more careful.
“I told myself it was not important.”
Aimee swallowed. “Look, what happened this afternoon—”
“Still,” he said, in that same easy way, as if he were explaining the day’s news to a friend, “still, I admit, it bothered me. That a woman should be so impolite. So downright rude. But I put it out of my head.”
“I didn’t do anything! It was—it was just something that happened.”
“Just something that happened.” He nodded. “Yes, that’s an excellent way to put it. In fact, that is exactly the conclusion I reached.”
He was inches away from her now, so close that she had to tilt her head up to see his eyes. Even in her heels, he was much taller than she. And, God, much bigger.
“But then I saw you, here.”
“You
mean, you followed me here!”
“You give yourself too much importance, cara. Do you really think I have nothing better to do than to spend my time following you?” A little muscle was ticking in his cheek. “I came here with friends. To enjoy the evening.” He paused. “And, it would seem, so did you.”
“Yes. And—and my date will be looking for—”
“Your date didn’t move a finger to prevent you from abandoning him. Or to keep me from going after you.” He paused, and she saw his eyes darken. “I noticed that you treated your gentleman friend differently than you treated me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Cara. Please, don’t try my patience. You laughed with him. Smiled when he spoke to you.”
“Of course. I mean, I know him—”
“Really? What’s his name?”
“Ted,” Aimee said quickly.
“No. It is not.”
It had been a gamble, but a good one. Nicolo watched as the woman worried her bottom lip. He’d guessed right. She had no idea who she’d been dancing with. She’d picked the man up.
For many of its patrons, that was the purpose of a place like this.
Her business, of course.
That was what he’d told himself, when he first saw her with the man.
But he’d watched as she smiled. Flirted. Shook her hips, her breasts. Practiced the fine art of seduction.
For another man.
Not for him.
Not for him, he’d thought, and suddenly he’d known that confronting her, kissing her, would not be enough.
He wanted her.
It didn’t make sense but it didn’t have to. His body, his blood, knew what he needed.
And what he needed was this beautiful, condescending stranger dancing with him…
Dancing in his bed.
Slowly he reached out, laced one finger under the thin strap of her red dress and tugged. She stumbled toward him, arms raised, hands balled into fists.
He caught her wrists in one hand.
“Don’t struggle,” he said in a low voice. “It will only make things worse.”
“Please.” Her voice trembled. “Please, don’t do this.”
“I told you this afternoon, you lack manners, cara.”
The Billionaires' Brides Bundle Page 3