He gave her a sleepy-eyed smile as if he found her refusal motivating. A stimulating challenge he couldn’t wait to overcome. ‘Don’t you want to know what I’m proposing before you say no?’
Izzy gritted her teeth, mentally apologising to her orthodontist. ‘I have no interest in anything you might say to me.’ Especially if it involves the word marriage. But would he offer to marry her? For what possible reason?
He held her gaze in a silent lock that made her heart skip a beat. Two beats. The air seemed to be tightening as if all the oxygen was being sucked out of the atmosphere, atom by atom. He was looking good. More than good. But then, he always did. Tanned and toned, with the sort of classic features you mostly only saw in men’s expensive aftershave ads. The bad boy made good. His not long, not short wavy black hair was styled in a casual manner that highlighted his intelligent forehead and the strong blade of his nose. The dark slash of his eyebrows—one of them interrupted by a zigzag scar—over eyes so dense and deep a brown it was hard to tell what was pupil and what was iris. Knowing, assessing eyes fringed by thick lashes that every now and again would lower just enough for her to think...
No. No. No.
She must not think about sex and Andrea in the same sentence.
Izzy could outstare most men. She could put them in their place with a cutting look or a sharp word.
But not Andrea Vaccaro.
He was her nemesis. And, damn him to hell, he knew it.
‘Have dinner with me.’ It wasn’t an invitation. It was a command.
Izzy raised her eyebrows like a haughty schoolmarm. ‘I’d rather eat a fistful of fur balls.’
His gaze moved over every inch of her face, from her eyes to her mouth, lingering there for so long she became aware of her lips in a way she had never been before. They started tingling as if his mouth had brushed them. Heated them. Tempted them. Whenever he looked at her she thought of sex. Hot bed-wrecking, pulse-racing sex. The sort of sex she hadn’t been having.
Had never had.
Izzy wasn’t a virgin but neither had she had as much sex as the press had made out. She didn’t even like sex. She was hopeless at it. Embarrassingly, pathetically hopeless. And the only way she could tolerate it was to get tipsy so she didn’t have to think about how much she wasn’t enjoying it.
Andrea’s obsidian-black gaze came back to hers. ‘We can discuss this out here on the street where anyone can hear or we can do it in private.’
Do it in private.
The double entendre of his words sent a shiver rolling down her spine. Images popped into her head of him doing it with her. His hands on her breasts, his mouth on hers, his body pumping and rocking and—
Izzy pulled away from her thoughts like someone springing back from a sudden flame. She hoped she wasn’t showing any sign of how flustered she felt, but she suspected there was little Andrea Vaccaro missed. It was why he was so successful in business. He could read people. He could read situations. He was clever and calculating and tactical.
She hated how he made her feel. Hated how easily he could trigger anger or desire in her. Or both. She had no interest in repeating her foolish behaviour of the past. She was no longer that brash attention-seeking flirt. She was no longer the spoilt little rich girl acting out her inner pain and shame.
She had reinvented herself.
‘I’m not doing anything with you in private, Andrea.’ Izzy only realised her vocal slip when she saw the way his dark eyes gleamed. Got you.
‘Scared of what I might say?’
Scared of what I might do. Izzy raised her chin and eyeballed him. ‘Nothing you say is of the remotest interest to me.’
Something moved at the back of his eyes. A camera shutter movement before the screen came back up. ‘Just dinner, Isabella.’ His Italian accent caressed the four syllables of her name. He was the only person who called her by her full name. She wasn’t sure if she liked it or not.
Just dinner. Could she go and see what he had to say? He had intrigued her interest, and with the clock ticking like a nuclear bomb on the deadline she would be crazy not to hear him out. But being anywhere near him unsettled her. His energy collided with hers and created something in her she wasn’t sure she could control.
Wasn’t sure she wanted to control, which was even more disturbing.
Izzy folded her arms and sent him one of her trademark bored teenager looks. ‘Tell me the time and the place and I’ll meet you there.’
He gave a sudden laugh that made something at the back of her knees fizz. ‘Nice try.’
‘I mean it, Andrea. I will only have dinner with you if I come by myself.’
The satirical gleam was back in his eyes. ‘Do you usually prefer to come by yourself?’
Izzy could feel her cheeks pulsating with heat. But they weren’t the only part of her body pulsating. Her feminine core gave off little pulses of lust that reverberated through her entire body. She put on her game face—the face she’d perfected during her wilful teens, the wild child seductress face. The I-don’t-give-a-fig-what-you-think-about-me face. Driven by an urge she couldn’t quite explain, she moistened her lips with a slow sweep of her tongue, secretly delighted by the way his eyes followed the movement.
He wasn’t immune to her.
The realisation was strangely thrilling. He might not like her. He might not respect her. But he sure as hell wanted her. He had resisted her seven years ago. Resisted her easily. Made her feel foolish for trying to seduce him. He’d called her a silly spoilt child playing at grown-ups.
But now he wanted her.
Izzy tucked that knowledge away and gave herself a mental high five. It gave her an edge, a bit of power in a relationship that had always been tipped in his favour in the power stakes. She gave him a look through her half-lowered lashes. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’
His eyes darkened until they were black bottomless pools of male mystery. ‘I’ll make it my business to find out.’ His voice was smooth with a base note so deep every nerve in her body trembled like a shivering leaf.
Izzy knew she was being reckless in flirting with him. Reckless and foolish. But something about the way he interacted with her always made her feel like challenging him. Pushing him. Needling him. Peeling back the carefully constructed layers of civilised man-about-town to reveal the primal man she sensed was simmering just under the surface. ‘Where shall we have dinner?’
‘I’ve booked a table at Henri’s. Eight thirty tonight.’
Izzy was annoyed she hadn’t put up more of a fight. She didn’t like thinking of herself as predictable. She had made a lifetime’s work of being anything but. How had he known she would give in? Had he been so sure of her?
Maybe because there’s less than twenty-four hours left on the deadline?
Argh. Don’t remind me.
‘Your arrogance never ceases to amaze me,’ Izzy said. ‘Does anyone ever say no to you and mean it?’
A smile flirted with the edges of his mouth. ‘Not often.’
Izzy could well believe it. She had to get her willpower back into shape. Send it to boot camp. Pump it full of steroids or something. She couldn’t allow him to manipulate her into doing what he wanted. She had to stand up to him. To show him she wasn’t like the droves of women who paraded in and out of his life. She might have slipped once, but she was older and wiser now. Older and wiser and wary of allowing him any hold over her. Of allowing any man any hold over her. She adjusted the strap of her tote bag over her shoulder and turned to leave. ‘See you later, then.’
‘Isabella?’
Izzy turned back to face him, carefully keeping her features in neutral. ‘Yes?’
His gaze drifted to her mouth and back to her eyes, holding them like a steely vice. ‘Don’t even think about not showing up.’
Izzy wondered how he could read her mind. She’d plann
ed to leave him waiting in that restaurant to show him she wasn’t going to play whatever game he had in mind. He had probably never been stood up before. It was time he was taught a lesson and she would enjoy every second of teaching him it.
But now she had to think of another plan. She couldn’t show up at that restaurant and meekly agree to his ‘proposal’. Couldn’t. Couldn’t. Couldn’t. He was the last man she would ever consider marrying. For it was marriage he wanted, of that she was sure. She could see the ruthless determination in his eyes.
She was desperate, but not that desperate.
‘Oh, I’ll show up.’ She gave him a smile so sugar-sweet it would have made any decent dentist reach for fluoride. ‘I quite fancy a free dinner. You did say just dinner, right?’
His eyes smouldered with incendiary heat, making her insides coil and twist and tighten with need. A need she didn’t want to feel. A need she had strictly forbidden herself to feel. ‘Just dinner.’
Izzy turned and walked back along the street towards the antiques shop where she worked. She was conscious of Andrea’s gaze following her but didn’t turn back to look at him. She was quite proud of her willpower—it had made a remarkable recovery, although it had been touch and go there for a minute. But when she got to the front door of her workplace and glanced back, Andrea’s tall figure had disappeared into the crowd. Why she should be feeling disappointed she didn’t know. And nor should she care.
But somehow—annoyingly—she did.
CHAPTER TWO
‘GOSH. DO YOU need a bodyguard with you when you’re wearing that dress?’ Izzy’s flatmate, Jess, asked later that evening when she poked her head around Izzy’s bedroom door.
Izzy smoothed her hands down the front of her shimmery silver mini dress that sparkled like Christmas tinsel. ‘How do I look?’
‘Seriously, Izzy, you have amazing legs. You should give up your job selling those dusty old antiques and be a model instead.’ Jess tilted her head to one side. ‘So who’s your date? Anyone I know?’
‘Just an acquaintance.’
Jess’s eyebrows rose. ‘That’s a pretty impressive show of thigh for a mere acquaintance.’
Izzy picked up a tube of blood-red lipstick and smeared it over her lips and pressed them together to set it in place. She knew she would be risking press attention by being seen with Andrea dressed in such a way but this time she didn’t care. It would be worth it to show him she wasn’t playing by his rules. He was known for dating elegant and sophisticated women. She would be the antithesis of elegant and sophisticated dressed in this get-up. This outfit screamed party girl out for a wild time. ‘I’m teaching my...date a lesson.’
‘A lesson in what? How to look but not touch?’
Izzy recalled the firm press of Andrea’s hand with a delicate shiver. She was still trying not to think about him pinning her to a bed with his body doing all sorts of wicked things to her. ‘I’m teaching him not to be so arrogant.’ She pulled out the large Velcro rollers she’d put in her hair to give it extra volume, and finger-combed it into a cloud of curling tresses around her shoulders.
Jess sat on the edge of Izzy’s bed. ‘So, who is this guy?’
Izzy glanced at her flatmate in her dressing table mirror. She had only known Jess a few months and didn’t want to go into the details of her complicated relationship with Andrea. She picked up a pair of cheap dangly earrings and inserted them into her earlobes, then adjusted the front of her dress to boost her cleavage. ‘Just someone my father used to know.’
Jess got off the bed and came to stand next to the dressing table mirror so she could face her. ‘But isn’t this the last day before the deadline on your father’s will?’
Izzy wished she hadn’t let slip about the will in an unguarded moment a couple of nights ago over a takeout curry and a bottle of wine. It was a little lowering to admit to her friend and flatmate that her father had wanted to punish her from the grave. Her father had known how against the institution of marriage she was. She had witnessed him over-controlling her mother like a bullying tyrant until her mother hadn’t been able to decide what clothes to wear without asking him first. No way was Izzy going to allow any man that sort of power over her and especially not Andrea Vaccaro. ‘Yes, but he’s not a candidate.’
‘Are you going to forfeit your inheritance, then?’
Izzy slipped on a collection of jangling bracelets. ‘I don’t want to, but what else can I do? I can’t just walk out on the street and pick up someone to be my husband.’
Jess’s gaze drifted over Izzy’s outfit again. ‘You probably could wearing that get-up.’ She frowned again. ‘But this guy you’re meeting tonight. Why isn’t he a candidate? Has he actually said no?’
Izzy picked up a slimline evening purse and popped the lipstick tube inside and snapped it shut. ‘I haven’t asked him. And I never will. I know what I’m doing, Jess. I know how to handle men like Andrea Vaccaro.’
Jess’s eyes went as wide as the make-up compact on the dressing table. ‘You’re going on a date with Andrea Vaccaro? The hotel king Andrea Vaccaro? And you think he’s not a candidate? Are you out of your mind? That man is the world’s most eligible bachelor.’
Izzy scooped up a leather biker jacket from the bed and fed her arms through the sleeves, pulling her hair out of the back of the collar and settling it back around her shoulders. ‘He might be considered a prize catch but I don’t want him. I would rather rummage through rubbish bins and sleep under cardboard for the rest of my life than marry that arrogant, up-himself jerk.’
Jess’s brows disappeared under her fringe. ‘Wow. I’ve never seen so you...so worked up. Did something happen between you two in the past?’
Izzy did a final adjustment of her outfit. ‘He thinks he can have anyone he wants but he can’t have me.’ She smiled a confident smile. ‘Don’t worry. I know exactly how to handle him.’
* * *
Andrea hadn’t planned on being late for his dinner date with Isabella but he got caught up in traffic after a minor accident in central London. He’d sent her a text to tell her he would be a few minutes late but she hadn’t replied. Her attitude towards him was exactly the reason he was going to offer her a temporary marriage. He needed a wife. A temporary wife who wouldn’t make a fuss when he called it quits. No love-you-for-ever promises. No happy-ever-after. What he wanted was a six-month contract that would conveniently solve two problems with one brief, impersonal ceremony.
The teenage stepdaughter of an important business colleague was making things difficult for him by making no secret of her crush on him. The hotel merger he was working on would be jeopardised if he didn’t take preventative action. And because Andrea had been asked to be best man at the businessman’s upcoming wedding in a few weeks, he had to do something, and do it fast.
If it had been any other business deal he would have walked away without a qualm. There were plenty of other hotels he could buy. But this one was the one he wanted the most. Buying the hotel he’d once hung outside of as a homeless teenager looking for scraps of food made it too important to walk away. Buying that hotel in Florence—more than any other he’d bought or would buy in the future—would signify he had moved on from his difficult past.
Moved on and triumphed.
A convenient wife was what he needed and Isabella Byrne was the perfect candidate.
He figured he could help Isabella with her little dilemma while sorting out his own. Marriage was not something he had ever considered for himself. He had personally witnessed the human destruction when a match made in heaven turned into a hell on earth. He admired those who made it work and felt sorry for those for whom it failed. He enjoyed his freedom. He enjoyed the flexibility of moving from relationship to relationship without any lasting ties or responsibilities.
But he was prepared to sacrifice six months of his freedom because he wanted to nail that deal.
And, more importantly, to prove he could still resist Isabella Byrne. He didn’t want to want her. It annoyed him she still had that effect on him. It was a persistent ache he’d always tried his best to ignore. He had always kept his distance out of respect to his relationship with her father. Benedict Byrne had had his faults, but Andrea would never forget how Benedict’s early help had launched him in the hotel business, allowing him to put his disadvantaged past well and truly behind him. He had worked hard to build an empire even bigger than Benedict’s. An empire that more than made up for the miserable months he’d spent living as a street kid. No one looking at him now would ever associate him with that starving and shivering youth who had fought so hard to survive a childhood of poverty and neglect.
But now his mentor was dead, Andrea figured a short-term marriage to settle the terms of Isabella’s father’s will would also give him the chance to prove once and for all he no longer suffered from the Isabella itch. The itch that had been driving him mad for the last seven years.
For as long as he’d known her she’d been acting out, bringing shame to her long-suffering father. She’d been the typical trust fund kid—spoilt, overindulged, lazy and irresponsible. Not much had changed now she was an adult. She was still wilful and defiant, with a body made for sin.
He couldn’t be in the same country as her without going hard. It irritated the hell out of him that she had that effect on him. He was no stranger to lust—he enjoyed a satisfying and active sex life. But something about the attraction he felt for Isabella unnerved him. Her feminine power over him was unlike any he’d felt before. He prided himself on his ability to control his primal urges. He had boundaries he skirted around but never crossed. It would be dangerous to compromise those boundaries by marrying her, but just this once he was prepared to risk it. He would insist on a paper marriage. A hands-off affair that would give them both what they wanted.
She had less than twenty-four hours left to find a husband. He’d spent the last three months bracing himself for the announcement of her engagement to some man she’d somehow managed to convince to marry her.
Bound by a One-Night Vow Page 2