Lynne Graham: The Disobedient Mistress

‘It’s not that simple,’ Leone drawled. ‘You’re over-extended and it would be very unwise to take the risk that your business will stay afloat for the duration of a year long agreement.’

Her silvery grey eyes were now widened to their fullest extent. For the first time she ditched her caution and connected direct with his brilliant dark golden eyes. ‘May I ask you where you received that information?’

‘My sources are private.’

Meeting that steady, fathomless gaze, she could feel her head beginning to swim and the breath catching in her throat. ‘It’s quite untrue.’

‘Don’t lie to me. I have no time for lies,’ Leone told her smoothly. ‘My information is always accurate. I know that the only way your bank will extend your loan is if you bring them the contract for the next year’s catering here signed, sealed and delivered.’

‘If someone at the bank has been making allegations about the viability of my business, I will be sure to make an official complaint.’ Misty threw her head back, silver eyes blazing challenge. ‘I assure you that were you to give me that contract I would deliver the service required for the period specified and I would not have any problems in doing so.’

‘I’m impressed by your optimism,’ Leone countered levelly, ‘but let’s cut to the chase. You have talent and you’re great at organisation but you fell down when it came to the bid for the first contract. Your price was ludicrously low. Yet you’re in a labour-intensive industry, saddled with high staff turnover, crippling insurance costs and public health regulations that are very expensive for a small business to meet. As a result, you have barely recouped your costs.’

‘I wanted the job. I priced that bid to win in the obvious hope of recouping costs over the next year,’ Misty informed him. ‘You said you liked to support new local businesses—’

‘Not when the captain at the helm is a woman who refuses to acknowledge when she’s in over her head. How you can sit there and argue with me when I know for a fact that you’re behind with the rent on your business premises, behind with your bank loan and up to your pretty throat in debt—’

‘Leave my throat…pretty or otherwise…out of this, please.’ Misty rose to her feet, no longer able to tolerate being looked down on by him. How dared he speak to her in such a way? How dared he? It was bad enough learning that the contract on which she had placed all her hopes was to be awarded elsewhere, but that he should add insult to injury by enumerating what he deemed to be her mistakes was more than flesh and blood could bear.

‘And losing your temper with me will impress me even less,’ Leone informed her with a derisive look at her aggressive stance. She might be around five feet ten tall, but she was as slender as a willow wand. What on earth was the matter with her? She was useless at bluffing. Her eyes gave her away every time. Did she really expect him to waste time listening to her trying to convince him that she wasn’t on the edge of a financial abyss?

In the space of a second, rage almost ate Misty alive. The temper that she had long since mastered threatened to overflow like lava. She wanted to take a swing at him. She wanted to wipe that derisive slant off his lean, strong face with a well-placed fist and that simple awareness disconcerted her enough to put a brake on her anger.

‘You’ve brought me in here, given me the bad news, but you didn’t need to personalise the issue,’ Misty stated with curt dignity. ‘So why would you think I want to impress you now?’

An ebony brow elevated. ‘I could be thinking of throwing you a lifeline.’

A shaken and involuntary laugh escaped Misty. She was grateful that he had not given her an opening in which to beg. She was even grateful that he had made her furious. For if she were forced to stop and consider the appalling consequences of losing that contract, she might well come apart at the seams and embarrass herself. He liked playing games with people, she decided. Or maybe it was only women he liked toying with.

‘Is that really a possibility?’ The tip of her tongue came out to moisten her dry lower lip as she wondered if it was remotely likely that, in spite of what he had so far said about her business acumen, he might have some other job to offer her.

The silence hummed like a circular saw on her straining nerves. His attention had dropped to her lips, the too wide, too full mouth she hated. No doubt he was noticing that it was out of proportion to her face. Men were supposed to think about sex, what was it…at least once every five minutes? She reckoned he would be challenged to keep his mind clean for sixty seconds. He had an aura of potent virility that no woman could avoid noticing. She studied him, the lush black lashes screening his gleaming scrutiny, and her lips actually tingled with her awareness of him, her rebellious body stirring with the sensations she had grown to fiercely resent experiencing in his vicinity. The sudden tense, full sensation lifting her breasts inside her cotton bra cups, the utterly demeaning throb of her nipples tightening.

Never had Misty been so grateful for the concealment of her jacket. Imagine him seeing that physical evidence, imagine him knowing that he could make her stupid body react like that with one charged glance! Ever since she had met him, she had recognised that cruel Old Mother nature was reminding her that she had hormones, but it meant nothing. She had been hurt too much to risk herself again with any man and she need hardly worry that this particular male was likely to make a pass, for Leone Andracchi was just doing what came naturally to a sexual animal of his appetites: considering every passing woman of a certain age on her merits. And she knew her merits to be few and far between.

‘Anything’s possible. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?’ Leone murmured, smooth as velvet.

Flash had told her that when he’d been trying to talk her into his bed. Try it, you might find you like it. Not the seduction line of the century, but another week or two of his determined siege and she might have succumbed out of gratitude and love, for she did love him, would always love him, only not the way he had wanted her to love him. But sometimes in low moments she would think that she should have snatched at his offer and made the best of it.

‘It’s my motto.’ Misty was careful to keep Leone Andracchi out of focus, determined to blank him out as a man, get her foolish physical self back under control and let those taunting sensations subside.

‘Sit down,’ Leone Andracchi told her.

Obviously something was in the offing. She dropped back down into the seat, thought that maybe, after all, it had been worth staying up half the night to produce those wretched Sicilian recipes for his benefit. Major egos liked being stroked. Honey went far further than vinegar, she reminded herself doggedly. What had happened to her belief that she could make herself beg? Why did the prospect of speaking even one humble word to Leone Andracchi clog up her throat like a threatened dose of poison?

‘I have a role that I would like you to fulfil for me over the next two months.’ Leone surveyed her steadily. ‘In return I would rescue your business, and at the end of our agreement I would ensure that you had sufficient work to survive. What do you think?’

‘The last time I looked there wasn’t two blue moons hanging out there in that sky,’ Misty quipped with helpless bluntness.

LEONE ANDRACCHI dealt Misty a look of hauteur, his wide mouth tightening with perceptible exasperation.

Having immediately recognised her mistake in making such a facetious response, Misty had turned hot pink with discomfiture. She could not work out where those inappropriate words of doubt had emerged from. It was the effect of him again, she decided. He spooked her, put her on edge, knocked her out of the cautious business mode which she had no problem maintaining around other clients.