Kate Hewitt - The Italian's Unexpected Baby / Secrets Of His Forbidden Cinderella

‘Then why bother with them? Where is the profit?’

‘In the clients I keep.’ Although Alessandro suspected there would be little profit indeed. Profit was not why he did what he did, at least not in regard to companies such as Dillard’s.

‘And what about all the employees? Innocent people…don’t you care about them?’

More than she would ever know . ‘You’re sounding like a crusader, Mia,’ he warned her. He did not wish to discuss this any longer. ‘It’s quite dull.’

Her eyes flashed. ‘So sorry I’m boring you, but people’s lives are at stake. Besides… I would have thought you might understand how they felt.’

He tensed, the perception in her eyes like a needle burrowing into his skin. ‘Oh?’

‘The media said you came from a poor background…the slums of Naples.’ He angled his head away from her, not trusting the expression on his face. ‘Is that true?’

‘Slums is such a pejorative word, but I suppose, in essence, yes.’ He did his best to sound bored. He was bored.

The last thing he wanted to talk about was his pathetic past…the endless chaos of moving from grotty flat to grotty flat, the stints in foster care when his mother had lost custody of him, the endless jobs she’d taken cleaning office buildings, the countless boyfriends she’d had in a desperate bid to assuage the despairing sadness of her life. A childhood he’d done his best always to remember, to remind him of how he would be different, even as he pretended to forget.

‘Then if you know what it’s like to be poor, to live from pay check to pay check, how can you fire people like that?’

‘Because I know what it’s like to work hard,’ he said in a steely voice, ‘and to earn what I have. And anyone who does those things will have a position with Costa International, that much I guarantee.’

Her eyes widened. ‘They will?’

She sounded so hopeful it made him cringe. ‘Dillard Investments was dying on the vine. I just plucked it before it fell, withered, to the ground. If anything, I’ve saved people’s jobs in the long run.’

‘Do you really mean that?’

Impatient now, he shrugged. ‘Henry Dillard was charming, I’ll grant you that, but he was a terrible businessman. I did his employees a favour.’ Why had he stooped to justifying himself? ‘I’m not the monster you seem to think I am,’ he finished levelly. ‘Regardless of what you read online.’

She stared at him for a moment, and he felt as if she were seeing right inside him, that blue, blue gaze burrowing deep down inside his soul, reaching places he’d closed off for good. He looked away, shrugging as he took a sip of champagne, struggling to master his wayward emotions.

‘No,’ she said softly. ‘I don’t think you are.’

‘You’ve changed your mind?’ He’d meant to sound offhand and failed.

‘I think you like to present yourself as someone hardened and ruthless,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s the right image for someone who specialises in corporate takeovers, isn’t it?’

‘I suppose.’ What else could he say? She saw too much already.

‘I wonder who you really are,’ she murmured. ‘I wonder what you’re hiding.’ Alessandro stared at her, unable to look away. He felt a tug low in his belly, pulling him towards her. She wanted to know him. It was beguiling, alarming. Nobody knew him, not like that.

‘Let’s dance,’ he said, his voice roughened with emotion. When they danced, they wouldn’t talk. She wouldn’t say things or see inside him. He would make sure of it.

Wordlessly Mia nodded, and after depositing their empty champagne flutes on a nearby table, Alessandro took her by the hand and led her to the ballroom’s parquet dance floor. The music was a slow, sensuous piece, the sonorous wail of a saxophone wrapping its lonely notes around them as Alessandro took her into his arms.

Her hips bumped his gently and heat flared white-hot, making his hands tense on hers before he deliberately relaxed his grip and began to move her around the floor.

She was elegant in his arms, matching the rhythm of his movements, her hips swaying, her body lithe. Lithe and eager. He felt her tremble and knew, like him, she felt this most inconvenient and heady desire, growing stronger with every second they swayed together. The realisation only stoked his own.

Sex, for him, had always been a matter of expediency, a physical need to be met like any other—food, water, sleep, sex. That was how he’d viewed it. Something to be ticked off, the same as he would with a physical workout or a medical examination.

This felt different. More. This desire, twining through him like some dangerous vine, felt capable of overwhelming him. Overtaking the rational thought, common sense and, far worse, the self-control that were the touchstones of his life, the anchors of his soul. And the most alarming part was, in this moment he didn’t even think he cared.

The pressures of overseeing the takeover, the twenty-hour work days and the ceaseless striving, for years now, decades…in this moment he sloughed it all off like an old skin, let it slither about him in dead, dried peels, as desire birthed him anew.

The song ended and another started, and still they kept dancing. He pulled her closer, so her body nestled into his. She came willingly, twining her arms around his neck, her breasts brushing his chest. Her head was slightly bowed, so he could see the delicate, vulnerable curve of her neck and he had the nearly irresistible urge to press his lips there, against the skin he knew would be warm and soft and silky.

They twirled around again, and she shifted in his arms, the material of her dress rustling and sliding, pulling taut across her breasts, revealing the pure line of her collarbone. He could press his lips there too.

He could do it, and in the haze of his desire, as well as his exhaustion and the champagne he had drunk, he couldn’t remember a single reason not to.

The music swelled and the world around him fell away. There was nothing but this. Her. They turned again, her dress flaring out from her ankles, brushing his legs.

Some last, desperate part of him tried to claw back his sanity, his sense. This was a bad idea. A terrible, terrible idea. Mia James worked for him, and he never mixed business with pleasure. Ever. It was far too dangerous. The last thing he needed was a woman at work laying claim to any part of him, or, heaven forbid, accusing him of something.

But there was nothing accusatory in the way Mia was melting into him, her body pliant and willing in his arms. Then she lifted her head, tilting her face upwards, her gaze clashing and then tangling with his.

It felt as if they shared an entire conversation in that silent gaze, a shared yearning and a deeper need, a question and an answer, all encapsulated in a single, burning glance.

Neither of them said a word, but Alessandro felt a shudder run through her as he held her in his arms. The last part of his sanity trickled away. He didn’t care.

He didn’t care.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, his voice rough with need.

‘Where?’ Even with her in his arms, he strained to hear her breathy whisper.

‘Anywhere.’

Her eyes widened, her lips parting. She swallowed, and he waited for her answer, the one she’d already given in the silent yearning of her gaze. The song ended, and their bodies stilled. Still Alessandro waited, his breath held, his body taut.

Then wordlessly, her eyes wide, Mia nodded.

Alessandro didn’t wait for more. Taking her by the hand, he led her from the dance floor and out of the ballroom, out of the hotel, into the warm spring night.