“Have dinner with me tomorrow night.”
“What—like a date?” Natalia asked.
“Yes, a date,” Giancarlo confirmed. “One where we get to know each other outside the work environment….” He touched her soft, crushable lip with a finger.
She knew what he was saying—the sultry look in her deceitful eyes told him so, as did the sensual pulse in the air surrounding them. And as his body throbbed, and his anger roared, and his eyes burned with his intentions, he felt those soft lips move on her answer.
“Yes,” she said.
Triumph sang in his blood. She was his for the taking, and he was going to take her. By the time this thing was over, Natalia Deyton was going to belong to him body and soul, Giancarlo vowed.
Body and wretched, lying soul….
There are times in a man’s life…
When only seduction will settle old scores!
Pick up our exciting new series of revenge-filled romances—they’re recommended and red-hot!
Coming next month in Harlequin Presents®:
The Determined Husband
by Lee Wilkinson
Harlequin Presents
#2183
Michelle Reid
A SICILIAN SEDUCTION
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
EPILOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
GIANCARLO CARDINALE arrived in the doorway of Knight’s executive dining room to the surprise discovery that some kind of function was taking place. The remains of a gourmet-style lunch still lay in evidence amongst a scatter of empty wine bottles, and the twenty or so people who were gathered there were now standing around in small groups talking while they sipped at champagne.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked the man beside him.
‘Lunch between presentations to one of our best clients,’ Howard Fiske explained. ‘And Edward really should have made the effort to be here for it.’
His anger was clear. If it wasn’t bad enough that the corporate chairman himself should have turned up here unexpectedly, to have done so on a day when Edward should have been presiding over such an important meeting, annoyed Howard intensely.
Giancarlo said nothing, but he sympathised. He knew all about Edward’s irresponsible streak, after all. In fact Edward’s flagrant lack of responsibility on all fronts was the sole reason for his being in London. He had come to deal with it once and for all, and the sooner he got it over with the better it was going to be for everyone. Which left him with only one question he needed answering before he got down to the nasty business of dealing with the problem.
Which one was she?
As he stood there, still unnoticed by the rest of the gathering, his gaze began moving over the newly refurbished ultra-modern room with its beech-wood surfaces and flashes of so-called inspirational colour—all paid for with his money in an attempt to haul Knight’s out of the dark ages.
But it was not so easy to revamp the people, he observed, seeing the same starched collars and the same grey faces, with their grey little minds which collectively helped to keep the company in a state of near peril.
His teeth came together on a snap of irritation. Edward had promised to restructure his workforce last year when they’d discussed merging Knight’s into the Cardinale Group. In fact, Giancarlo had insisted upon it before he would agree to ratify the deal. Edward might be his brother-in-law but the Cardinale Group was not run as a charity. As a venture capitalist Giancarlo looked for potential in any proposed merger before he even considered putting together a rescue package.
Edward had been told this, had understood it, and had agreed to all the provisos at the time. So—other than for laminate flooring and some splashes of colour on the walls—where had all the money he had been steadily shelling out to Edward gone? For none of these grey, slightly bored faces he could see in here showed a hint of a change in attitude.
Which was why Giancarlo had no problem at all picking out his quarry, since she was the only one that fitted the description his source had provided him with, of a young, very nubile, bottle redhead, with an inherent ability to distract any man.
If this really was Natalia Deyton, then Edward could certainly pick them, Giancarlo decided as he stood watching the way she worked around the room like a true professional.
Professional in what? he then found himself pondering cynically as his darkly lashed gaze shifted from her admittedly exquisite profile to the revealingly flushed one belonging to the young man she was talking to at present. Her job description had her down as the personal assistant to Knight’s namesake and managing director. But with a face and a figure like that, it wasn’t surprising that Edward Knight had given her job title a whole new twist.
Anger suddenly began to bite as he stood watching the provocative way she was teasing that blushing young fool. Tying him in knots, he saw. Making it plain that she was open to suggestion.
Brazen bitch, he thought sourly. Then—
Brazen bountiful bitch, he found himself extending when the crowd suddenly shifted and he got a glimpse of what it was that was hooking their attention. She had the kind of cleavage a man could dive into—as her skimpy white top with its dipping neckline was blatantly advertising!
No wonder half the men in here looked hot about their starched collars. And no wonder Edward couldn’t keep his damn hands off her, Giancarlo added harshly when he felt even his own more discerning loins give him a stinging kick that actually forced him to draw the muscles in around his sex to stop the obvious from happening.
‘Dio,’ he breathed, when as if sensing his scrutiny she suddenly turned to look straight at him.
Those eyes, those amazing eyes! He had never encountered anything like them! Blue, they were blue. A smoky, steamy, sultry blue that had his imagination shooting into overdrive as he began to wonder what happened to those eyes when she was beneath a man and in the throes of an orgasm.
Did Edward already know? Was he still man enough to acquire that heady kind of knowledge? Giancarlo’s sister said no. In fact his sister had been quite disconcertingly open about Edward’s recent inability to satisfy her on that front. But this was different. The woman standing here could incite a dying man to take one last sip of the nectar.
Without any warning, a new kind of emotion was suddenly overwhelming him. It was a hot, tight, primitive emotion that sank its roots deep into his possessive psyche, where it lashed him with the burning message that he did not want Edward to know what Natalia Deyton was like in bed. He didn’t want any other man but himself to know what, in that single blinding hot flash of a moment, he knew he fully intended to make his exclusively…!
Oh, good grief! Natalia found herself gasping inwardly as she caught the full heat of the stranger’s expression. In all her life she had never encountered a look quite like it. Men looked at her and wanted her, she was used to that. She would be lying if she tried to deny an effect she had been having on the opposite sex for most of her adult life.
But the way this man was looking at her was something else entirely. It was hot and compulsive and so very possessive that she actually felt as if he were crawling right inside her skin and claiming total occupancy.
Stunned and shaken by the whole experience, she quickly dragged her eyes away. But too late to stop a tight, breathlessly excited feeling from permeating her blood, and, although she tried very hard to concentrate on the conversation taking place around her, she was really he
aring nothing but a strange roaring taking place in her head. Her eyes had glazed over, leaving only a mirror image imprinted on her retina of a tall, lean, very attractive stranger with black hair, olive skin and dark, dark compelling eyes that even now, while she wasn’t actually looking into them, still made her feel as if she were being invaded. Who was he? What was he? Why was he standing there looking at her like that?
It was almost impossible not to look back at him—just to check that he was real and the small sip of champagne she had allowed herself hadn’t started her hallucinating.
It was most definitely a relief to find Howard Fiske had claimed his attention. But the power of the physical man still seriously disturbed her. Everything—everything about him from the long, slightly hooked shape of his nose that should have spoilt his playboy good looks but didn’t, to the lean tight structure of his body clothed in the finest Italian tailoring, affirmed the man’s sexual appeal. He oozed it, pulsed it, threatened and promised it.
Oh, my God—she looked away again, so appalled by her own lustful thoughts that they made the sexual way he had been looking at her fade into insignificance.
‘Are you feeling all right, Natalia?’ a voice from what seemed like a long distance off managed to squeeze its way into her consciousness.
‘Yes,’ she replied, though it took all she had in her to find the light, reassuring smile to go with the answer. ‘But I think the champagne is beginning to get to me.’ Another passable smile—a rueful one—and she placed her glass down on the nearest table. ‘Never could take alcohol during daylight. Another sip and I would probably end up snoring for the rest of the day.’
‘You would never snore…’ Very intense, deadly serious—it was almost a relief to look into Ian Gant’s besotted eyes because his boyish attraction to her was so easy to deal with.
‘Tell me about your lovely fiancée,’ she urged, glancing briefly to his left as she did so. ‘The wedding is only a few weeks away, I believe?’
It was enough. He took the hint. The flush of attraction changed to a flush of embarrassment when he recalled the presence of Randall Taylor, his future father-in-law who, hearing weddings mentioned, turned to join in the discussion.
After that she was able to put the stranger out of her mind while she concentrated on the business in hand. Which was, in part, supposed to be an exercise in public relations because Taylor-Gant were threatening to take their business elsewhere if Knight’s did not improve their overall performance.
A grave step—a tough step when you took into consideration that Taylor-Gant had been using Edward’s marketing skills since for ever.
The sudden tap on her shoulder had her turning with a smile at the ready for whomever it was who wanted her attention.
But the smile died the moment she found herself looking down at Howard Fiske. Cold-eyed, mean-mouthed, and with the naturally aggressive manner that seemed to come along with his short, thin stature, he drew her apart from the others with a set of fingers on her arm that dug in just a little too tightly for her liking.
‘Your presence is required,’ he said, flicking his eyes to her cleavage with an insolence that made her grit her teeth. ‘Edward’s office. As of now.’
Edward—the magic word. ‘He’s turned up at last?’ she exclaimed, so relieved she couldn’t contain it. But she had been worrying about him throughout the whole morning when it had become clear that he’d gone missing without telling anyone. It wasn’t the first time he’d done this recently, but this particular day it had been important that he be here to soothe the Taylor-Gant ruffled feathers. But Edward wasn’t thinking too clearly at the moment, due to a struggle he was having with himself. Many struggles, she then extended painfully. To him his whole life was in a mess and he just didn’t know what to do to make it better.
‘Just excuse yourself and go,’ Howard Fiske tersely instructed. And as he removed his fingers from her arm she was almost positive they brushed against the side of her breast quite deliberately.
It made her want to shudder, though she contained the need, having learned very early on in her six-month conflict with Howard Fiske that a response—any kind of response to his blatant touching—was just what gave the nasty man his kicks.
So with a blank face she nodded in silent acquiescence, then turned to make her excuses.
‘That girl is a credit to this company,’ Randall Taylor remarked as he, too, watched the way she took her leave of each person in turn before eventually escaping through the door.
You wouldn’t be saying that if she were bedding your future son-in-law behind your daughter’s back, Howard thought with a smile that hid his real contempt for Edward’s so-called personal assistant as he watched her slip quietly out of the room.
Suddenly he felt almost happy, because he had a very good feeling that Natalia Deyton was about to meet her Waterloo—or Giancarlo Cardinale was not the man he was reputed to be…
Natalia, on the other hand, was too busy worrying about Edward to think about anything else as she took the direct route across the dove-grey carpet covering her own office floor on her way to Edward’s office.
The door was firmly shut, but it didn’t deter her. With only a cursory knock to warn of her arrival, she opened it and sailed right in there with all guns blazing. ‘Edward—you have to know that I am very angry with you,’ she announced. ‘I really can’t believe that you’ve let everyone down like this! Where have you been all morning? What is it you—’
‘It’s not Edward,’ a smooth, deep, totally unfamiliar voice with the merest thread of a foreign accent inserted.
In the process of closing the door behind her, Natalia spun on her slender heels then froze, totally stunned to see the tall dark stranger from the dining room comfortably ensconced in the chair behind Edward’s desk, and looking as if he had every right to be there!
He had even removed the jacket to his dark suit, so the bright white of his shirt stood out against the black leather back of Edward’s chair, adding extra emphasis to the width of his shoulders and the breadth of his chest, which set that same tight, tense breathless feeling that had attacked her earlier stinging through her system.
It was awful—stifling and confusing because she didn’t understand what was happening here! Not the tingling sensation, nor the baffling fact that some total stranger seemed to have taken up residence in Edward’s office. And what was just as bad was the way he was running those eyes over her again as if he had every right to do that also!
‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘What right have you to be in here?’
He didn’t even bother to answer. Instead he just continued to inspect her from the top of her gleaming head to the tips of her shiny black leather court shoes. It was like being stripped to the bare skin by a pair of black lasers, she likened, automatically stiffening up in outright objection.
‘I asked you a question,’ she snapped out.
‘Actually, you asked two,’ he drawled in a soft, dry, husky tone that had her stomach muscles curling in on themselves in response.
A sensual response, she noted in helpless confusion. What was wrong with her? Who was he, and why was he making her feel like this?
It was deliberate too; she was at least functioning sharply enough to be aware of the hint of calculation behind his lazily seductive regard.
‘I’m going to call Security,’ she announced, turning back to the door again.
‘Three questions, if we include the one you thought you were asking Edward,’ he tagged on very silkily.
And like a trigger that had the power to control her every movement, his use of Edward’s name had her freezing yet again as a few very salient points began to filter into her stunned brain cells at last.
She’d first seen him standing with Howard. Now he was installed behind Edward’s desk. And he had removed his suit jacket, which suggested that he intended to be there for quite some time. The jacket to his Italian-made suit, which went so well with his rich, dark Italian ac
cent.
Oh, no. Her heart sank as full understanding finally hit her, and her skin began to prickle for a completely different reason. ‘Giancarlo Cardinale,’ she breathed out unsteadily.
‘Well done,’ he commended with a smile she didn’t like. ‘Now, please…’ he waved a hand towards the chair opposite him ‘…come and sit down, Miss Deyton. We need to talk, I think, and we may as well be comfortable while we do so.’
But now she’d had his identity confirmed, she had no wish to move another inch away from this door until she had a few important answers. ‘What’s happened to Edward?’ she asked in a short, tense voice that revealed her anxiety. ‘Is he all right? Has he taken ill?’
Anger leapt to life so abruptly in those lazy dark eyes that it took her completely aback. ‘Nothing has happened to Edward,’ he clipped out. ‘Edward is never ill—as I am sure you are already aware of.’
Natalia didn’t like his tone. It stiffened her backbone, as did the cold cynicism suddenly hardening his expression.
So what had happened to bring about a change in his attitude? And where was Edward? It was a question that sent a sudden cold little chill chasing down her spine. ‘His wife, then,’ she prompted, too anxious to realise that she was treading a very unstable line here. ‘Has your sister taken ill or something?’
From anger, Giancarlo Cardinale turned to ice. ‘You ask a lot of questions for a lowly clerk,’ he incised.
‘I am not a lowly clerk,’ she denied.
‘What are you, then?’
If it was possible her backbone went even straighter—and seemed to become a live conduit for the warning shot of electricity that went tingling down its full length. He couldn’t know, could he? Warily she studied his dark face for any clues as to what exactly was going on because something dire certainly was, or he wouldn’t be here like this.
Had he found out about her relationship with Edward…?
Sitting there watching the play of emotions taking place on her face, Giancarlo was experiencing a quiet sense of satisfaction for having so quickly brought her to the point where she was considering the frightening prospect of full exposure.
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