by Lynne Graham
‘You missed me,' Carlo positively purred, stretching out his long, lean thighs in an attitude of indolent relaxation as the jet engines whined up to take-off. He rested his dark head back and surveyed her from below a screen of lush black lashes, hooding his gaze to a sliver of gleaming awareness. 'I can feel the heat from here.'
A hectic flush coloured her cheekbones. Her soft mouth tightened. She felt entrapped by her own weakness, as easily read as a pre-teen suffering from a giant crush. Carlo let his eyes wander with sensual intensity over her, his attention lingering shamelessly on the taut buds of her tilted breasts plainly visible beneath her camisole. She threw up her chin. 'It's the air-conditioning!' she snapped in outrage.
Carlo was still laughing when they were airborne. He twisted his head and said something to Spiros, who was seated behind him. The younger man left his seat as the stewardess appeared with a tray of drinks and her attention was so entirely pinned to Carlo that she very nearly spilt Jessica's.
But she might as well not have existed. Carlo's attention was centred with smouldering potency on Jessica. Releasing his belt, he slid upright and settled down beside her. Removing her drink from her nerveless fingers, he pulled her out of her seat with easy strength and yanked her down on top of him. He took her by surprise, and she collapsed across his hard thighs in a tangle of limbs.
'What the hell ?'
Both lean hands pinned to her cheekbones, he drove his tongue deep into her mouth in a hot, erotic invasion
that sent her every sense into instant, shuddering meltdown. With a husky groan, he repeated the assault in a blatant imitation of a far more intimate possession and a tight, coiled spring of need fired her every skin cell. She couldn't get enough of him. He was a feast after a famine, the heat of the tropics after a long, endless winter and she was helplessly greedy for every sensation so long denied.
"There's a very comfortable bed in the cabin.' His palms still framing her face, brilliant golden eyes, blazing with desire, scanned hers.
Simultaneously, her nostrils flared. Obsession. A definable aroma of the exclusive perfume clung to him. Her stomach twisted painfully. Carlo had been in close bodily contact with another woman. Nausea doused her excitement. She jerked her head free and slid upright on wobbly legs.
‘No doubt you're very familiar with those kinds of facilities.'
An ebony brow elevated. 'Do you want the truth or a polite fiction? Of course there have been women in my life, but never more than one at a time.'
Furiously she turned her head away. All she could smell was that perfume and it was turning her stomach now, reminding her what a fool she was in this male's presence. He made her wanton, reckless. It was one thing to acknowledge his attraction, another thing entirely to accept that that same attraction could humiliate her. Her lips still stung from the carnal imprint of his, her unsatisfied body still ached. But she was torturingly certain that Carlo was not suffering from similar rigours of celibacy. Carlo had been with another woman...and why not?
This was the son of one of the twentieth century's most renowned womanisers. Four wives and innumerable mistresses. And six years ago Carlo had acted like a real chip off the old block, offering her nothing
but sex and the good life and the cool assurance that marriage wouldn't feature anywhere in the equation. Perhaps it was time she reminded herself that all Carlo was doing now was putting a sensual gloss on their supposed relationship for his father's benefit.
'What do you want from me?'
The answer came inwardly. Much more than you will give... It shook her.
'Together we're sexual dynamite. Why deny yourself the pleasure I can give you?' Grimly amused dark eyes rested assessingly on her taut profile and unexpectedly she turned and caught the gleam of mockery.
'You didn't expect me to go into that cabin with you...did you?’
'I like watching you torment yourself,' Carlo confided, the full intensity of his probing gaze resting on her. 'You're a fascinatingly complex little creature. Passionate and repressed. Wild and inhibited. And secretive, intensely secretive...'
Her lips compressed bloodlessly. 'I don't know what you mean.'
Carlo laced lean brown fingers calmly round his glass and surveyed her as if she were a specimen under a microscope. 'What made you what you are? What goes on inside that beautiful head? Most of my women have told me the story of their lives by the end of the second date. But you tell me nothing and you never did. Not about your family, not about your marriage. You keep it all locked up tight inside...'
'I am not one of your women, Carlo.' But it was a shaken retort. She was appalled by the direction of the conversation. It was an attack on the privacy she cherished.
'If it were not for your father, I wouldn't even know how your late husband died.' Carlo seemed to be selecting his words with immense care. 'I find it surpassingly strange that this great love that encompassed so
many years of your life should never, ever be mentioned even accidentally. But I've yet to hear his name pass your lips.'
She stared at him with huge amethyst eyes dark with
pain. 'I don't want to talk about it '
'But isn't that unnatural? He's only been dead a year and I understand that you nursed him for many months beforehand,' Carlo continued with merciless persistence, 'leukaemia... that must have been a harrowing experience...'
Jerkily, Jessica swung away from him. She wanted him to shut up. She wanted to cover her ears. She wanted to run away but there was no place to go. Carlo had chosen to stage his interrogation well. She folded her arms. 'It's none of your business.'
'But I've made it my business,' Carlo pointed out gently. 'By the time we part, all of my questions will have been satisfied. I will know everything about you.'
It was a threat. In defiance of her own inner insecurity, she thrust up her chin. 'And do you plan to be similarly expansive?'
'I doubt it. I tend to keep my own counsel'
She flung her head back, silver hair flying back from her exquisite face. 'Even to the ridiculous extent of not telling me who your father is?'
'So the penny finally dropped.' Carlo's expressive mouth curved into a sardonic smile.
'Spiros told me and I'd like to know why you didn't!'
'It's not an announcement I've had to make in recent years. It is of no importance,' he asserted.
And suddenly she understood and she was speared by a sharp pang of pain. 'You didn't trust me, did you?' she condemned shakily. 'You knew I didn't know and you didn't trust me enough to tell me!'
A broad shoulder lifted in a fluid shrug. He met her distressed gaze unflinchingly. 'It did cross my mind that you could sell the information for hundreds of thou-
sands of pounds in the right quarter. His death will create havoc on the international money market. Foreknowledge would give certain speculators the opportunity to make a fortune. And even if you had simply chosen to approach a tabloid, you could still have made more than sufficient money to clear your father's obligations to me.'
Jessica looked at him, incredulous and deeply wounded. 'And you think that I would have done that?'
'Let us say that I saw no reason to take an unnecessary risk.'
Numbly she shook her head. 'Dear God, what sort of woman do you think I am?'
'Tough. Been there, done that,’ he traded with dry mockery. 'Delicate wrapping round a steel backbone.'
'I would never have done something so disgusting!' Jessica told him vehemently. 'I do have some standards.’
Golden eyes glittered over her tautened figure. 'Then where were they six years ago, caraV
Her stomach turned over, every muscle tightening as
though to ward off a punch. 'I made a mistake...a
dreadful, inexcusable mistake '
Carlo vented a sardonic laugh and drained his glass, the hard planes of his dark features chillingly set. 'Are you calling me a mistake... or himV he drawled softly.
Although she was trembling, she
stood her ground. 'What do you think?'
'That I will never forgive you either way,’
Sharply disconcerted, she collided with gleaming gold and it was like ice sliding slowly down her tautened spinal cord, the most frightening chill spreading with sick certainty through her limbs. The colour drained from her face.
'You're telling yourself right now that you don't want or need my forgiveness,' Carlo murmured with shattering accuracy. 'But you will find that you do. You already look for me when I'm not there, don't you, cam’!
How did you sleep the last few nights? Did you expect me to call and wonder why I didn't? And just how did you feel when you first saw me today... elated? Sexually excited? You're halfway to falling in love with me already. I recognise all the symptoms and this is where I normally beat a strategic retreat in an affair... but not with you.'
Throughout she had stood there, entrapped by the wicked allure of his beautiful eyes and the hypnotic mastery of his rich, dark voice. She was transfixed by fascination, had to struggle just to unglue her tongue from the roof of her dry mouth. 'You're out of your mind,' she whispered. 'I could never love you.'
‘I will settle for nothing less,' Carlo told her softly in the steadily thickening atmosphere.
'You belong in a cave, Carlo!' Jessica managed a laugh that sounded oddly forced even to her own ears. 'Do you honestly imagine that I have so little control over my own emotions?'
Carlo dealt her an insolent.smile that made her palms
itch to slap him hard. 'I hate to be crude but you have
very little control over your body ‘
Fury seized hold of her and she snatched up her glass and flicked the contents over him.
'And even less over your temper.' He withdrew a silk handkerchief and calmly wiped the drops from his cheekbones. 'In fact you are quite appallingly juvenile in your reactions when you do lose your head. Like a child hitting out blindly in a tantrum,' he mused reflectively. 'Almost as though you haven't allowed yourself the luxury of freely letting go of your anger very often... so you really can't handle it, can you?'
The insight inherent in that careless stab dismayed her and she stepped hurriedly back from him. 'Has the game-playing moved into the field of therapy now?' she asked with sarcasm dripping from every syllable.
'One,' Carlo itemised, 'this is not a game for me. And two, I'm more into shock treatment than therapy. I lack the necessary patience. When I want something, I want it yesterday.'
Frustration currented through her. She needed to fight back but was now too afraid that hi anger she might be guilty of revealing too much. Disturbingly, Carlo smiled, his cool composure untouched. 'You should go and lie down for a while. I'll wake you up before we land on Grand lurk.'
'I don't want to lie down.' Every fibre rebelled from the concept of retreat. 'Is Grand Turk where your father lives?'
'He lives on Paradiso Cay which he owns.'
With determination, Jessica took a seat again. If she talked, she would not be required to think about Carlo's unashamed lust for revenge. 'And how long has he lived there?'
'Five years. He bought Paradiso when ill-health became a feature of his life,' Carlo said unemotionally.
'You are so filled with compassion,’
'He is not a man who inspires compassion,' Carlo
fielded drily. 'And he would be furious if he was given
it. He has lived his life exactly as he wanted to live it.
He has never followed medical advice. He smokes, he
drinks, he loves the richest of foods and his sexual ap
petite was once legendary. He would tell you that
childhood deprivation made him greedy for the luxuries
but the reality is that Lukas has never seen the need for
temperance in any field and never, to my knowledge,
considered any human being's needs above his
own '
Jessica swallowed hard. 'You're describing a monster, Carlo.'
Quite spontaneously, Carlo laughed. 'To you, perhaps, for restraint in all things is your holy icon, isn't it? Everything neat and tidy, nothing unpredictable...'
She dredged her startled gaze from him. 'You were
talking about your father '
'He's volatile, fiercely proud, and no doubt bitterly resents his failing strength. He will fight for life to the very last moment and will probably die cursing all who survive him.'
'Does that include you?'
'I would hope not.' Carlo's strong features shadowed
and then he shrugged with Latin acceptance. 'But I would
not like to make a career out of second-guessing Lukas.
He loves surprising people. A pussycat one moment, a
predator the next ‘
‘A lot like you, then,' she muttered hi a 'forewarned is forearmed' tone.
'At least what you see is what you get with me.'
But what did she see? she questioned, flipping her vulnerable eyes away out of his probing reach. So kind to her father, so unrelentingly cruel to her. He had waited until they were airborne before he told her what he had in store for her. But he couldn't make her love him. Liking and respect and sharing were the prelude to loving. 'Everything neat and tidy, nothing unpredictable ...' Her teeth gritted. She wanted to tear his honey-smooth drawl out of her head, no matter how much it hurt!
How could he have thought that she might sell the revelation that his father was dying to the highest bidder? She shuddered with revulsion. Of course, she had been hurt. Nobody could easily accept such a charge. So, he didn't trust her as far as he could throw her... but what had made him like that? She remembered him saying that knowledge was a weapon in a woman's hands and that had come straight from the gut! Clearly at some stage Carlo had got badly burned by a member of her sex and the memory rankled, kept him on his guard, made him cynical and suspicious... so, who's playing the therapy game now, Jess?
Why was she allowing him to wind her up like this? What did any of this matter to her? All that lay between her and Carlo was sex. A demeaning passion on her side, lust on his. Though maybe lust was too strong a word. Evidently, Carlo was more powered by a desire for revenge than by his sex drive. Sex was simply the channel through which he planned to trap her. Did he really think he could make her fall in love with him?
Dear heaven, all that intellectual wheeling and dealing seemed to fail him when it came to human emotions, and to actually have the supreme self-assurance to forewarn her of his expectations...! Jessica smothered a laugh and then her nostrils flared with renewed distaste.
'You stink of perfume, Carlo. I think you should have a shower.' The suggestion simply leapt right off her tongue and it was hard to say which of them was most taken aback by it.
'ScusiV Carlo lapsed into Italian, surveying her with cool enquiry.
Jessica wrinkled her nose. 'It's tacky, like lipstick on your collar.'
'What the hell are you talking about?'
'The lady left her signature, caro,' she dropped with dulcet sweetness. 'Her perfume. It's all over you.’
Carlo's eyes splintered into hers, alight with disturbing mockery. A slumbrous smile of staggering charisma glued her gaze to him. 'What a wonderful private eye you would make... I can see you sheltering from the rain in a doorway, watching out for the evidence of some poor bastard cheating on his wife! Unhappily for you, Jessica I am not a married man——'
'I haven't the slightest desire to know what you were doing last night!' she vented in disgust.
'It can't have been last night,’ Carlo drawled. 'I had a shower this morning.'
Jessica flew upright, infuriated by his mockery. 'Do you really think I gave a damn when or with whom?'
Carlo stretched out with positive indolence, his eyes
a mere glimmer of light below the luxuriant veil of his
ridiculously long lashes. 'One of my PAs from the New
York office. Five foot ten inches tall, Titian hair... my
/> besetting sin,’ he confided softly, reflectively, his elo
quent mouth taking on a sensual slant. 'She was as wild
and hot as I was. I got laid in my coffee break ‘
Frozen by appalled disbelief that he could actually be confessing to such behaviour, Jessica was welded to the spot. Her vocal cords were strangled.
'And at lunchtime. She was insatiable,' Carlo savoured. 'Sadly the lift on the way up to my suite was occupied... that's always been one of my fantasies, but unless I close off and empty some building it looks like going unfulfilled. I'm not into audience participation. Still, we made the best of the floor, the bed, the bath, the walls, the kitchen table... and then she called up a friend and that is really when the fun got started.. .you're lucky I made the flight...'
Functioning on automatic pilot, Jessica backed away. She felt butchered. He might as well have been wielding a knife without giving her an anaesthetic. She was in agony and scared of throwing up in front of him.
'You don't want to hear about the truly perverted things we did?' Carlo raised an ebony brow in apparent surprise and then sighed. 'Good, I'm afraid my imagination is fast running out of fuel. Here.. .catch!'
A gift-wrapped box landed at her feet but she barely saw it before she was forced to whirl into the washroom and lose her lunch in the most humiliating fashion possible. She heard Carlo mutter a startled imprecation in her wake and wished she had had time to close the door. Just about the last thing she expected from him was help. But Carlo took over, pressing a cold cloth to her perspiring brow and offering her a glass of water to
rinse out her mouth. Then he swept up her still shivering and weak body, kicked open a door and laid her down on a bed.
Her eyes skidded over him, haunted, bruised.
lMadre di Dio!' he launched down at her with a groan. 'It was a joke!'
She shut her eyes, too shattered to comprehend and then abruptly she rolled over, curling into a defensive foetal position as far away from him as she could get.