by Annie West
BOUND TO THE
ITALIAN BOSS
Annie West
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or to events, businesses, companies, institutions or locations is entirely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2017 by Annie West
Cover Design by The Killion Group
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means whatsoever, including information storage and or retrieval systems, without the express written permission from the author, Annie West, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Licence notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away. If you would like to share this book with someone else, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
Dedication
Thank you to Dr G, who braved marmots, mountains, snow and hairpin bends
so I could collect inspiration for this story.
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ABOUT ANNIE
CHAPTER ONE
* * *
Luca accelerated out of the hairpin curve, feeling the sports car’s big engine surge. The tarmac of the alpine pass streamed behind him as he headed south in a series of sweeping bends.
Ahead rose the familiar jagged-tooth mountains he knew from childhood.
His world had changed enormously from that rundown farmhouse in the high Italian Dolomite Mountains. His multinational hotel empire had taken hard work, long hours and a determination to accept nothing less than the best.
No wonder he’d had no time lately to indulge his love of speed.
Or for any other indulgence, he realised as the wind ruffled his hair, blowing away the last cobwebs from his meetings in Munich. His schedule had reached manic proportions. Even his long-suffering PA, the indomitable Allegra Davis, had begun to look strained.
Luca’s mouth quirked. If the iron maiden started complaining, he really was pushing it.
Allegra lived for her career. She worked long hours no lover would tolerate and knew almost as much about the business as Luca. She’d been indispensable as he closed deals on the Thai resort and the Venetian palazzo and she ran his office like a well-oiled machine. Behind her unflappable calm lurked a dry humour he enjoyed almost as much as her impressive organisational skills.
They made a formidable team, anticipating each other in the way long term partners did. Or lovers.
Not that there was anything between him and Allegra. He never mixed work and sex. Nor did she, thankfully! He’d had enough trouble with starry-eyed temps. Besides, he preferred his women less…buttoned up.
Yet he’d found himself perversely enticed by her strait-laced demeanour and hints of an alluring feminine body beneath those boxy trouser suits.
Last week a pretty blonde in a barely-there dress had cemented herself to him at a business gala. Yet Luca hadn’t been distracted by her, but by the memory of Allegra as he’d left the office half an hour before. For once her immaculate hair showed a hint of the long day they’d put in. Dark strands escaped to curl over her breast, drawing attention to the barest hint of shadowed cleavage. He’d paused, inhaling the delicate scent of vanilla and female flesh as he reached for a file.
Even now, driving down the side of the mountain, he felt the frisson of awareness that had blindsided him that evening.
Allegra had worked for him a year and it was the first time he realised she had curly hair! With her tightly scraped buns he’d had no idea. Now, at the oddest times he found himself wondering how his no-nonsense PA would look with her hair loose. Was it shoulder-length? Longer? No. Any woman who wore those trendy but severe thick-rimmed glasses wasn’t the sort to keep long, sexy hair.
He and Allegra had nothing in common except work.
His new year’s resolution had been to kick back and occasionally take time to enjoy his success. To find time for skiing and mountaineering and, yes, speed.
The idea of his staid PA enjoying anything more dangerous than a ringside seat at his next corporate acquisition was laughable.
Luca slowed, shifting down as he approached another series of hairpin bends. Over the low-throated growl of the engine he heard the buzz of an engine. In the mirror he saw a flash of black hurtle down towards the curve he’d just rounded.
Luca grinned. Last time he’d ridden this pass he’d been in bike leathers, not business clothes. There was nothing like the rush of adrenalin with a big beast of an engine between your thighs as you swooped down, testing your nerve, skimming the outer edge of the road.
He slowed for a blind curve and a tourist bus chugged up in the other direction, barely making the turn. Then he was down to another hairpin bend, this time with clear vision beyond. As he touched the brakes the motorcycle closed behind him then cut the corner, swinging out then away down the straight. It was deftly done, with neat judgement both for the road and the bike’s capabilities.
Luca was mentally applauding when he saw a blur of movement. A marmot ran right across the path of the bike. The rider braked, veered and just missed the animal. But the veer took the front wheel off the tarmac and onto the narrow gravel shoulder. The rear wheel followed.
There was a wobble, a skid and the bike began to right. Luca tapped his own brakes, willing the rider to succeed. But in that soft gravel it was almost impossible.
Seconds later, in what seemed slow motion, the bike and rider heeled over, sliding to a halt on the very edge of the sheer drop to the next curve of road.
Luca wrestled his own vehicle to an urgent stop just past the bike. He was out of the car in seconds, not bothering to reach for his phone. Reception here was patchy at best. He hoped for the rider’s sake he didn’t need an ambulance.
The acrid smell of rubber and gravel hit him, and sweet meadow grass where one tyre had dug a path on the extreme edge of the slope.
Luca hunkered beside the prone figure, heart hammering, adrenalin pumping. He couldn’t see blood despite the tear in the leg of the rider’s leathers. But the guy lay unmoving.
Dread rose. Had he hit his head?
‘Where does it hurt?’ He fought the instinct to reach out and investigate. Better to let the rider tell him, if he could.
‘Everywhere.’ The voice was soft and husky and somehow familiar. It must be a trick of imagination, fired by relief at discovering the rider was conscious.
‘Can you move your legs?’
‘Just give me a second.’
The second stretched out till finally the rider moved. First one arm then the other, slowly closing each hand. Then a ripple of motion—
‘Don’t sit up!’
Too late. The black clad figure rose on one elbow then lurched sideways. Luca grabbed one skinny upper arm, holding him steady. Was it a kid, rather than a man? That would explain the voice. And make his control of the bike even more remarkable. Only an experienced rider could have come so close to saving himself in the circumstances.
‘I feel a bit woozy.’
‘I’m not surprised. You bit the dirt with a l
ot of force.’ His gaze strayed to the drop beside them and the next stretch of tarmac well below. Luca’s belly lurched. If the rider had been less experienced, or less lucky, he’d be dead now.
But the guy had grit. Slowly, with only a hitch of breath betraying any pain, he sat higher, legs stretched out before him. Surely he couldn’t have done that if he’d damaged his spine? As if in response to his silent thoughts the rider rotated first one foot then the other, then bent first one then the second knee.
Luca released a pent up breath. Years ago he’d been first on the scene when a novice had tried a black ski run and barely survived. The kid had never walked again.
‘You’re lucky to be alive.’ The words burst out from the dam of half-buried memories.
‘I know. I swear I saw my life flash before my eyes.’ Again that strange sense of recognition as he heard that voice. But as it was muffled by the bike helmet that meant nothing.
‘Let me help with the helmet.’ Luca wouldn’t be happy till he’d checked for injuries. The fact the rider was talking was excellent but—
‘I can do it.’
Was it imagination or was the guy slow to move? If Luca didn’t know better he’d say he read reluctance in the rider’s movements, though logic told him it was more likely pain.
The black helmet rose and a froth of long, dark waves cascaded down past the rider’s shoulders. Luca blinked, his brain scrambling to catch up with the evidence of his own eyes. The rider twisted away, putting the helmet on the ground, and the sun gleamed on an unexpected curve beneath the black biker’s jacket. The curve of a female breast.
Slowly the woman turned her head. Eyes that were familiar yet unexpected met his. Unexpected because the woman he knew had plain brown eyes, not grey-blue the colour of the sky at dusk.
Yet the face was the same. Clear, pale skin, straight nose and a neat jaw. A familiar face, yet…different. Without thick-rimmed glasses there was nothing to distract him from those surprisingly lush lips. Or the stunning beauty of that bright gaze.
Luca frowned. Either he was going crazy or this woman was the almost-twin of his redoubtable PA. The woman he’d last seen in a charcoal trouser suit, high buttoned shirt and flat shoes. The woman whose idea of living dangerously was allowing one of the junior secretaries to order dinner when they worked late.
He blinked. It couldn’t be. Allegra Davis was even now driving up from Milan to meet him at the alpine resort his brother Gennaro had just completed building. Unless she was already there, briskly beginning the site visit in anticipation of his arrival.
One thick leather glove rose and the woman pushed the hair back from her face. Hair that gleamed richly in the sunlight and smelled of vanilla.
‘Hello, boss. Fancy meeting you here.’
CHAPTER TWO
* * *
Allegra’s leg burned where she’d hit the ground. But that was all. She’d been incredibly lucky. Right now any potential bruises seemed the least of her worries.
Hell! The look on his face…
She was as used to Luca’s frowns as she was to his rare, blinding smiles that left her weak-kneed and reeling. That is, she was used to not showing her reaction to them. But this wasn’t just any frown. This was something else – a scowl of disbelief and horror.
‘Allegra?’ His face paled. His deep voice sounded stretched.
He was in shock. And who could blame him?
The one thing he’d never expected to see, the one thing she’d guarded so carefully against revealing for the last twelve months, was the real Allegra Davis.
Her heart dipped as it had in the moments when she’d wrestled to keep the bike on track. When she’d been sure that in another second she’d be flying off the edge of the mountain to an early death.
Her eyes squeezed shut. This wasn’t just an accident. It was disaster on a monumental scale.
‘Allegra? Are you okay?’ His deep, velvet over gravel voice plumbed new depths and suddenly he was around her, supporting her, his broad chest propping her back, his long legs stretched out on either side of hers, his arms gently enfolding her.
Allegra bit her bottom lip and commanded her stupid heart to stop that too-quick, too-unsteady rhythm. She was no fainting damsel in need of support. Even if her whole body quivered with the effects of shock and there was a burning throb down one leg.
She had a horrible suspicion that it wasn’t the aftermath of the accident making her tremble so much as the reality of being in Luca De Laurentis’s arms for the first and only time.
She swallowed hard, searching for her voice.
‘I’m okay.’
As if that wisp of sound would convince anyone! She needed to do better. Especially when his response was to wrap himself more closely around her, as if afraid she was about to keel over.
When that animal had raced in front of her and the world had slowed to a series of freeze frame images, she’d turned ice cold. But now, safe against the blazing furnace of Luca’s athletic frame, heat enveloped her. It numbed the ache in her leg and trickled into her bones, filling the empty places that she’d kept locked against any man. Or tried to. For months now she’d known she fought a losing battle, pretending all she felt for Luca was respect and admiration.
‘You don’t feel okay. You’re shaking like a leaf.’ The growl came from just behind her ear, stirring her hair, sending a shaft of longing right through her core. It felt so…intimate.
‘I just came off a bike on the edge of a mountain. What do you expect?’ The words were supposed to come out clipped, even snarky. Instead she heard the tell-tale roughness and swallowed. She hoped he put it down to reaction to the fall. Surely he couldn’t hear the longing she’d tried to suppress so long. Or the fear that suddenly, in one unguarded moment, she’d put at risk everything she’d worked for.
Luca’s arms tightened, drawing her back till he took her weight. In thick motorcycle leathers she shouldn’t be able to feel the dip and rise of his muscled chest, should she? It had to be imagination working overtime. But there was no mistaking the solid strength of the biceps encompassing her, or of those powerful thighs bracketing hers.
A tingling, burgeoning sensation began deep inside. An inexorable awakening of parts of her body Allegra usually had no reason to notice.
‘What were you doing on that bike?’
She shrugged, but froze mid-movement as it emphasised the contact between their bodies. ‘Same as you. Travelling to the new hotel.’
‘From the north?’
That had been her mistake. She’d travelled up from Milan early, enjoying some long overdue downtime. She’d got to the empty hotel, still smelling of fresh timber and new-laid carpet, and found a place to park the bike out of sight. Luca wouldn’t question how she’d travelled. Then, tomorrow, after he left for the city, she’d treat herself to another ride down through the mountains to the autostrada and Milan. Except once in the Dolomites, heady with joy from the freedom of the ride, she’d dumped her luggage and headed out for an extra hour’s riding.
Stupid of her to be so self-indulgent. Her whole life was about control. Without that she’d never have landed the plum job she had now.
Control and deception.
Allegra shivered again. It wasn’t deceit, precisely, to camouflage herself. Not when the alternative was no job or worse, being hit on and judged on her looks rather than her ability.
‘I arrived early and thought I’d explore a little.’
‘On a motorcycle?’ Was that disapproval in his tone, or disbelief?
‘If that was a question, then the answer is yes.’ Allegra stirred, hard as it was to pull away from the comfort of that big body. ‘It’s not a crime to ride a bike, you know.’
Luca’s arms tightened around her middle and part of her, the part that foolishly yearned for things that could never be, silently sighed.
‘Not so fast.’
‘Why, because you want to give me the third degree?’ Anger whipped in her veins. What business
was it of his to disapprove? ‘What I do outside work is my business alone!’
Silence. The sort of silence where you’d hear a pin drop across a room. Or the easy working relationship they’d built crack right down the middle.
In the office they worked almost as partners and the key to that was mutual respect. Allegra had a sick feeling in her stomach that was about to change. She was overreacting. She knew it, but the guard she kept on her emotions when Luca was around had deserted her.
‘I was going to say you shouldn’t move too fast. You don’t yet know how badly you’re injured.’
She turned her head and met his gleaming dark gaze.
Too close! So close she felt his breath warm on her face. She dragged in air through open lips and saw his gaze drop to her mouth.
Her pulse pounded hard and fast, faster than before, and at her back the rhythm of his heart quickened too.
That…thing was back again. The thing that more than once had made them both stop in their tracks in the middle of a totally ordinary day.
The sensation of something drawing them inexorably together, blocking out their surroundings and cocooning them in intimacy.
The thing that scared her witless.
‘Then let me go and I’ll be able to find out if I’m hurt.’ She wriggled, pulling forward out of his hold, aware that she was only able to do so because he let her. Lying back against Luca De Laurentis confirmed in spades what she’d always suspected – that beneath the perfect Italian tailoring, his body was all hard-packed muscle.
She was stiff now the initial shock wore off, a little achy. But that was all so far.
Moments later she was kneeling and relieved to discover she seemed uninjured. Even the pain in her leg had receded to a dull ache, though she’d have a bruise there later. She shook her head. She’d been unbelievably lucky.