Tori Carrington - Going Too Far

But Marie was so much more than that. She was 100-percent woman. A woman he’d already seduced. A woman he wanted to seduce again…

Without realizing it, Ian had backed Marie up until her bottom leaned against his glass desk. She held on to the blunted edge tightly with both hands and her small breasts moved with her sudden shortness of breath.

Ian realized he was having a little problem finding air himself. He eyed Marie’s mouth, but he didn’t kiss her. Instead he skimmed his hand down over her slender hip, lingering on the tender skin of her bare thigh, then slowly inched the material of her skirt up until her panties were revealed.

Oh, there was no thong for Marie Bertelli. Instead her underwear was cotton and white and sexier than any scrap of silk and lace known to man. It clung to her womanhood like only cotton could. And made his mouth water with the urge to lower himself to his knees and press his lips against the swollen flesh just underneath.

And one look in her eyes told him she wanted it just as much as he did….

Dear Reader,

We wholeheartedly believe that everyone has a bit of rebel in them. You know, that tiny voice that tells you to go ahead and eat that ice cream? Buy that piece of naughty lingerie? Makes you lust after a man you shouldn’t have? Well, that’s exactly what happens to our heroine Marie when she stumbles across fellow attorney Ian Kilborn, the last man on earth she should be tempting.

In Going Too Far, good-girl-to-the-bone Marie Bertelli wants a man to see her for who she truly is. It’s not enough that her friends have found sizzling soul mates or that her family chases off her dates, she’s delivered the ultimate professional blow when her father runs into a legal problem and hires Ian, Marie’s first lover, rather than coming to her. So Marie sets out to prove she’s the better person for the job. Only, once she crosses paths with Ian, she doesn’t just want to read his legal briefs, she wants to get into them….

We hope you enjoy the last installment in our LEGAL BRIEFS miniseries. We’d love to hear what you think. Write to us at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43613, or visit us online at www.toricarrington.com.

Here’s wishing you happy—and hot—reading!

Lori & Tony Karayianni

aka Tori Carrington

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For our Greek brothers and sisters Katina and Georgos,

Andreas and Lambrini, Victoria and Alfon,

Theonesis and Dina, and Thotheres and Georgia,

whose enduring love proves that happily ever after aren’t

merely words on a page. You inspire us.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Epilogue

MONDAYS HAD A WAY OF challenging even Marie Bertelli’s good-girl tendencies. The weekend always seemed to go by too quickly. All too often the first day of the workweek seemed more like an ugly three-eyed monster to conquer rather than a fresh start to finish what she hadn’t the week before.

She laid on the horn then shouted at the driver who had just cut her off, showing a tiny glimpse of the bad girl she had let out once and only once in her twenty-six years and didn’t dare let out again. She justified the brief transgression by pointing out the other driver couldn’t hear her through the windows of her ’67 ragtop Mustang, closed against the late January chill of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Of course, it didn’t help that she hadn’t had a man in her life for…well, much longer than she cared to think about. Especially when Valentine’s Day loomed around the corner and everywhere she turned red and pink hearts were popping out at her, reminding her of the pathetic state of her love life.

She glanced at her watch. What also didn’t help was that she’d been waylaid by an accident on I-40, and now grumpy and preoccupied Monday morning drivers threatened to send her careening over an emotional edge that she’d preferred not to be teetering on just then.

“Marie Antonia Bertelli, is that the mouth you use to talk to your mother?”

Marie sighed and moved her wireless phone from under her chin where she’d thought her mother couldn’t hear her. Ha. “I wasn’t talking to you, Mama.”

Although for all intents and purposes she should say exactly what she’d said to the driver to Francesca Bertelli. Her mother sometimes acted like she’d immigrated from Italy last week, with her old-world traditions and speech patterns, rather than the second generation Italian-American that she was, who’d placed first runner-up in the Miss New Mexico beauty pageant.

Francesca went on as if they hadn’t been interrupted. “About dinner tonight. I want you to wear the blue dress. You know the one I’m talking about? The one you wore to Anthony’s wedding. It makes you look like you have breasts. And, of course, it brings out the blue in your eyes.”

Marie’s mood worsened with each word her mother said. “I’m not coming to dinner tonight, Mama,” she told her for the third time in as many minutes. Her mother had a habit of only hearing those things she chose to hear. Which was very little of what Marie had to say.

“The blue dress,” her mother said again.

The blue dress was the most hideous of hideous bridesmaid’s dresses and was packed away in the bottom of a box somewhere, though Marie had seriously considered burning it. The poofy clown-like nightmare made her look like a blue elephant.

“I’m making your favorite. Farsumagru o briolone. You have to come to dinner,” her mother complained.

The Sicilian meat roll wasn’t her favorite. It was her older brother Frankie Jr.’s favorite. But to tell her mother that now would only encourage her to go on. In fact, the mix-up might be a trap altogether. Entice her into an argument of what they would have for dinner, and she would end up going to the dinner and forgetting that it was the last thing she wanted to do tonight…or ever.

Marie bit the inside of her cheek. She’d finally moved into her own apartment a week ago after living with her family for ten months upon her return from L.A. Since the move, every morning like clockwork her mother called to invite her to dinner. Marie had made the mistake of going last Sunday, thinking there was only so much her mother could do during a family meal. She’d been sorely mistaken. There, seated to her right, had been Benito Benini, a guy she’d gone to kindergarten with and twenty years was not enough time to erase the memory of him launching green Play-Doh out of his nose. A nose that had grown considerably since then.

“No,” Marie said. “Absolutely not.” She hesitated as she negotiated a right-hand turn into the Bernalillo County Courthouse parking lot. “I…I already have plans.”