Torre’s breath had been knocked from his body by the force of his heart slamming against his ribs. In that instant he had forgotten who she was, or rather what she was. But in reality he knew that Orla had had her own agenda when she’d slept with him years ago and he was certain that she had traded her virginity in the expectation that he had been as gullible as his father, who had married her parasite of a mother.
It was fortunate that Jules had walked down the drive. His timely appearance had saved Torre from repeating the mistake he’d made in the past, when passion had overruled his good sense. He frowned as he thought of his stepbrother. He liked Jules, even though their personalities were diametrically opposite. Jules was far kinder than Torre would ever be and had inherited his unassuming nature from his mother.
Sandrine had become Torre’s stepmother when he was ten, and she had to a large degree filled the gaping void inside him left by his mother’s death when he was six years old. He had been unable to comprehend why his father had replaced gentle and gracious Sandrine with the avaricious trollop that was Kimberly Connaught. So, when Orla had revealed after he had spent the night with her that she was Kimberly’s daughter, he had angrily accused her of duping him. He had been even more furious with himself because he’d fallen into the same honey trap as his father and allowed himself to be seduced by feminine wiles. Worst of all, Torre had felt a sense of guilt that he had in some way betrayed his stepmother’s kindness by sleeping in the enemy’s camp.
‘Torre.’
He jerked his mind back to the present. Orla had obviously grown tired of waiting for him to notice her and he heard a faint click as she closed the library door. Her voice was clear and soft like a mountain stream and Torre felt as though a velvet-gloved hand had wrapped around his body. All through that damned lunch he had been unable to take his eyes off her and his stomach had rebelled at the idea of food when he’d wanted to assuage a different kind of hunger.
But he was not a callow youth riding high on a surfeit of hormones, he reminded himself. He did not allow anyone to threaten his self-control, especially not a woman who, according to press reports, was as mercenary as her mother. Torre breathed deeply before he swung round from the window to face Orla and scowled. Her cool composure infuriated him and made him want to disturb her the way she disturbed him.
How did she manage to look so goddamned innocent when he had definitive proof that she was not? he thought bitterly. He was halfway across the room before he could help himself, and it occurred to him that it was unwise to get close to her when he felt crazily out of control. But now it was too late and he halted in front of her, close enough that he saw a flicker of wariness, and something else—a startled awareness—in her eyes before her long lashes swept down and hid her expression.
He remembered how in the throes of passion the green flecks in her hazel eyes had darkened to olive. Her long, straight hair streamed down her back like a curtain of silk. Torre knew he should not feel inordinately pleased that she hadn’t gone platinum blonde and her hair was its natural shade of rose-gold—the same colour as the sprinkling of tiny freckles on nose and cheeks that were noticeable against her porcelain skin. Quite simply he had never seen anything so lovely. She was a work of art, as fragile as a rare orchid and as exquisite as a precious jewel.
Thick, black anger clogged his throat as he acknowledged that he had never wanted any other woman as much as he wanted Orla. He hated himself for his inherent weakness that caused his blood to thunder through his veins and made him so hard it hurt.
‘Why are you here?’ he said harshly.
She looked genuinely puzzled. ‘You told me to meet you in the library to discuss my CV.’
‘I meant why have you come to Villa Romano?’
‘You know why. Giuseppe invited me to his birthday celebrations.’
‘He invited you to his last three birthdays. What made you accept an invitation to this one?’
‘Seventy is a landmark birthday.’ She shrugged. ‘When Jules suggested that we could travel to Amalfi together it seemed like a good idea.’
‘I bet it did.’
She frowned. ‘What do you mean? Why did you say it in that sarcastic way? I don’t understand.’ Frustration edged into her voice and her eyes flashed with angry fire. Good, Torre thought. He wanted to ruffle her. Eight years ago she had been refreshingly unsophisticated—in fact, she’d been several years younger than he’d assumed, and he had been shocked when he’d learned that she had been eighteen. He had only discovered how inexperienced she’d been when she’d gasped and her body had gone rigid beneath him, but by then it had been too late for him to refuse the unasked-for gift of her virginity.
She must be twenty-six or -seven now, and he was surprised that appearance-wise she had not developed the sharp features and calculating expression of her mother. But she had lost her joyful spontaneity that had made her eyes sparkle, he thought with an irrational sense of loss. The grown-up Orla was reserved and aloof, a beautiful ice maiden with an untouchable air that could easily drive a man to distraction.
Torre strode back across the room and indicated to Orla to sit down on the chair in front of the desk. The obvious thing for him to do was to walk round and sit in the big leather chair facing her, but instead he leaned his hip against the desk and loomed over her so that she had to tilt her head to look up at him. ‘I’ve read you CV,’ he said, picking up the document lying on the desk. ‘You seem to have the relevant secretarial qualifications but I cannot see any evidence that you have experience of working in an accounts department.’
‘That’s because I haven’t worked in an accounts office before.’
‘Then why did you apply to be a PA to the audit manager at ARC UK?’
‘Secretarial duties are pretty much the same in any department,’ she said stiffly. ‘Jules told me about the vacancy in the accounts office where he works and suggested I apply for the job.’
It did not surprise Torre to hear that his stepbrother had tried to facilitate Orla being employed in the same department as him at ARC UK so that he could see her every day. ‘You assumed that Jules would be able to influence the MD at the London office and persuade him to offer you the job.’ Torre’s tone was deceptively mild and he was fascinated by the rosy colour that ran up under her skin.
‘I didn’t assume anything,’ she threw at him. But she quickly controlled her anger and the gleam of temper in her eyes dulled. Torre felt an urge to shake her, or kiss her; anything to shatter her serene expression, which irritated the hell out of him.
‘Two things puzzle me. Firstly, I’m wondering why you are looking for a job when it was widely reported in the English press that you received a substantial divorce settlement from your ex-husband.’
She flinched and once again hectic colour ran along her delicate cheekbones. But she did not rise to his baiting and said flatly, ‘A few totally untrue stories about my marriage break-up were printed in the tabloids. It’s your problem if you choose to believe the lies written about me.’
‘If the reports were untrue, why didn’t you seek a retraction or sue the publications for libel?’
Her bitter laugh tugged on something raw inside Torre. ‘I didn’t receive any money from David. I didn’t want anything from him. But ironically it meant that I couldn’t afford the legal costs of taking action against the newspapers.’
He must be a gullible fool because he found himself wanting to believe her. ‘So you applied for a job at ARC UK,’ he said curtly. ‘But the managing director turned you down. Does Jules know that you were sacked from your previous job at a company called Mayall’s because of the amount of time you took off as sick leave? I phoned Richard Fraser to ask him why he rejected your application,’ he said when she looked startled. ‘He told me that he had spoken to the manager at Mayall’s and discovered that you had been fired because of your appalling absence record.’
Orla stared resolutely down at her lap, and he felt a strong urge to capture her c
hin between his fingers and force her to look at him. ‘I was going through a difficult time and I was unable to work because of...’ her voice faltered—a clever piece of theatre, Torre thought cynically ‘...personal reasons that I’d rather not go into.’
‘I’m sure Jules was very sympathetic when you told him your sob story. It must be useful for you to have a faithful lap dog constantly at your beck and call.’
She jerked her gaze up to his face, temper making those green flecks in her hazel eyes gleam. Torre felt a surge of satisfaction that he had finally jolted Orla back to life and got a reaction from her. A voice inside him mocked that his behaviour was like that of a small child seeking attention. He wanted Orla to notice him.
‘That’s not a nice way to speak about Jules,’ she said huskily. ‘He and I are friends...’
‘He’s in love with you. Any fool can see that.’ Torre rested his eyes on her flushed face. ‘And you might be a lot of things, Orla, but you are not a fool.’
‘Jules is not in love with me. You are so wrong.’ She leapt to her feet, her breasts rising and falling jerkily. Now that she was standing, she was closer to Torre and trapped by the chair behind her knees. He watched the pulse hammering at the base of her throat and wanted to press his mouth to it, lick his way along her collarbone and taste her silken skin.
‘Jules and I are friends. He’s sweet and kind, but I don’t suppose you can understand that it is perfectly possible for a man and woman to have a platonic relationship. You’re so...macho.’ She made it sound like an insult, like she was too refined to bear the idea of hard, raw masculinity. ‘Not everything is about sex.’
‘My stepbrother is a man, like any other man,’ Torre said flatly. ‘He wants to have sex with you and it’s not hard to see why.’
He roamed his eyes over her, noting how her silk dress moulded the small, perfect mounds of her breasts with their jutting nipples. He could hear the harsh sound of his own breaths and the quickening of hers, and he saw the expression in her eyes change from anger to awareness that darkened those green flecks in her gaze to olive.
‘At lunch I watched Jules panting over you like a dog when it catches the scent of a bitch on heat. He’s besotted with you, and you give him just enough encouragement to keep him sniffing around you like a devoted puppy.’
The colour fled from her face, leaving her skin so pale it was almost translucent, and the fine blue lines of her veins were visible beneath the surface. ‘You’re disgusting.’ Her voice shook slightly. ‘What the hell gives you the right to talk to me like that?’
‘I like and respect my stepbrother and I’m not going to sit back and watch him make a fool of himself over you when it’s obvious what your game is.’
‘And what is my game?’ she snapped.
‘The same game that you tried with me eight years ago. But even though you played your trump card and lost your virginity to me—presumably in the hope that I would marry you—I recognised that you had the same mercenary tendencies as your mother when I found you trying to steal some jewellery that had belonged to my mother.’
She made a frustrated sound. ‘I explained that Kimberly had lent me some earrings that Giuseppe had given her. I wore them at the beginning of the party but I was scared of losing them and took them off and put them in my handbag until I could return them.’
Torre ignored the tremor in her voice and he was not fooled by her innocent victim act. The emerald earrings had been his mother’s favourite items of jewellery. He remembered she had worn them even in the last days of her life when she had been so thin because of the cancer that she hadn’t looked like his mamma any more.
He had been shocked and furious when Orla had dropped her bag and the earrings had fallen out. At the time he had refused to believe that his father had made a gift to his new wife of Elisabetta Romano’s jewellery. But in the years since then he had discovered that Giuseppe had given away other items of his first wife’s jewellery to several of his mistresses. Maybe his father had given the earrings to Kimberly, Torre brooded, feeling a faint tug of guilt that he that he might have misjudged Orla. But even if she was telling the truth about the earrings, she was no saint, he reminded himself.
‘You had better success when you married a wealthy English sports star,’ he said coldly. ‘But if your ex-husband had any sense he would have insisted on a prenuptial agreement. So either you did not receive as big a settlement as was reported in the press, or you’ve spent the money. But luckily your best friend Jules is in love with you and he’ll do anything for you, including trying to use his influence with Giuseppe to get you a job at ARC UK. Unfortunately for you, my father has handed the company over to me and I am not taken in by you. I assume your ultimate goal is to marry Jules? He’s rich and he conveniently adores you. But there is a problem with your plan.’
‘You don’t say?’ Orla’s eyes flashed with temper but her voice was coolly mocking, challenging him and loosening the tenuous threads of Torre’s self-control so that he felt undone. Heat roared inside him. Heat and a terrible hunger that years of meaningless sexual encounters had never assuaged. All this for a fragile slip of a woman who wasn’t even his type, he thought with savage self-derision. He went for athletic, laid-back blondes who liked their sex as uncomplicated as he did. There was no reason why Orla, all big hazel-green eyes, pale red hair and a tragic expression on her too-pretty face, should tie him in knots. But, God help him, she did.
He straightened up from where he had been leaning against the desk and his body almost brushed against hers.
‘Your problem,’ he told her softly, ‘is that you are not a very convincing actress. You freeze every time Jules gets close to you or shows you affection, and sooner or later the poor sod is going to realise that you don’t want to have sex with him.’
‘I don’t want to have sex with him, you moron.’ She put her hands on her hips, perhaps to stop herself from strangling him, Torre thought. But the subtle shift of her body brought her breasts closer to his chest and when he stared into her eyes he watched her pupils dilate. ‘You’re mistaken,’ she choked. ‘I have no plans to marry Jules.’
‘I’m not mistaken about this.’ Torre’s control snapped and he gave in to the urge to touch her. Finally. He wrapped a strand of her long hair around his fingers and wrapped his other arm around her waist. ‘You don’t want to have sex with Jules, but you do want to have sex with me, don’t you, cara?’
‘You are so arrogant.’ She glared at him, but she did not deny it, did not attempt to pull free from him. The green flecks in her hazel eyes gleamed with fiery brilliance, sending out a challenge that Torre could not resist. With a harsh groan he captured her mouth with his and kissed her, hard, and the fire inside him became an inferno.
Orla placed her hands on his chest, but instead of pushing him away, as he’d half expected her to do, she spread her fingers wide and slid her hands up to his shoulders while her lips parted beneath his. Her sweet breath filled his mouth and Torre felt a fierce sense of triumph when she kissed him with a hunger that matched his own—almost as if she had been starving for him for the past eight years, in the same way that he had felt an ache in his gut every time he’d thought about her.
He tangled one hand in her hair and pulled her slender body hard against him so that her pelvis was pressed up against the swollen, aching length of him. She was shaking, or maybe it was him. He was lost in the sweet ardency of her response as he kissed her again and again. And his control was gone, replaced by a desperate need that enraged him because he did not understand why he desired Orla with an all-consuming intensity that he had never felt for any other woman.
That thought infiltrated the sexual haze surrounding his mind and finally kicked his brain into functioning again. He did not need Orla, he told himself grimly. But just like eight years ago she had made him lose his iron grip on his control and with it his self-respect. He was weak like his father, a fool to his desire for a beautiful woman who he was damned sure was
as avaricious as her mother.
He wrenched his mouth from hers, self-loathing congealing in the pit of his stomach as he stared at her softly swollen lips and hungered to taste them again. Fool. His nostrils flared as he sought to bring his traitorous body under control.
‘The PA job at ARC UK has been filled by another applicant,’ he told her curtly. ‘But even if the position was still vacant I would not have given it to you, or any other job within the company.’
Orla blinked as if she had been jolted back to reality and the sultry heat in her eyes turned to wariness that made Torre’s gut twist with something like regret. She stepped away from him and pushed her heavy swathe of hair back from her face with a hand that shook a little, he noted. But it did not detract him from what needed to be done.
‘Take my advice and keep away from Jules. Move out of London and look for someone else to cast your spell on. God knows, you’re beautiful enough that you’ll have no trouble finding another puppy dog who’ll fawn over you.’
He watched her throat work as she swallowed. ‘You’re wrong about Jules,’ she whispered.
‘He’s a romantic and he thinks you are the princess in her ivory tower who he hopes to wake with a kiss,’ Torre went on relentlessly. ‘Little does he know that you are a mercenary tramp, and if he wants you, he’ll have to pay for you. I’m curious—are you going to sell your body to him by degrees? How much will you charge for a kiss? For a feel of your breasts? Is your plan to make him wait until you’ve got the security of your name on the golden ticket otherwise known as a marriage certificate before you allow him between your legs?’
Torre was transfixed by the gleam of incandescent rage in her eyes and he was unprepared when she moved with surprising swiftness as she swung her hand up and slapped his cheek with a resounding crack.
The sound somehow jolted him out of the insanity that had gripped him since he had spotted Orla standing by his car. Maybe he had needed that slap to bring him to his senses, he conceded as he touched his face and felt the heat where she’d struck him.
Hired for Romano's Pleasure Page 4