Kate Walker - A Sicilian Husband

But the truth was that she really didn’t want to go. Even before she had come into the bar with her friends she had determined that the last session of the sales conference was more trouble than it was worth.

‘Are you sure?’

Terrie nodded emphatically, shaking loose some of the blonde locks that she had forced into a hopefully disciplined chignon at the start of the day so that they fell in disordered tendrils around her oval face.

‘Absolutely. I’ve been bored out of my skull from the start, and I really can’t take any more. Before I came here, I was beginning to suspect that a career in selling baby clothes just wasn’t for me—and now I’m absolutely positive that it’s not. As soon as I get back to Netherton, I’m handing in my notice and looking for something else. So there’s no point at all in my going back to hear the MD spouting about quotas and new lines.’

It sounded totally rational, clearly thought through. Nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that her sense of reality had just been severely rocked as a result of being confronted by the most devastating specimen of manhood she had ever seen. It had nothing to do with that, she told herself fiercely. Nothing at all.

‘Well, if you’ve made up your mind.’

Claire still looked uncertain, but Anna was pulling at her sleeve, tugging her away towards the door through which the other conference delegates were already streaming, heading back to the ballroom.

‘Definitely. I’m going to finish this drink and then go to my room and pack, ready for an early getaway tomorrow.’

‘Then we’ll see you at dinner?’

Terrie nodded abstractedly, her attention elsewhere. Until she had heard herself speak the words aloud, she hadn’t really been aware that she planned to say them. But now that she had, she knew that she meant everything she’d said.

She was bored. If the truth was told, she hated her job. Hated the long hours and the travelling involved in it. Hated trying to persuade people to buy overpriced, second-rate items. She didn’t know how she’d stuck it this long.

Well, from now on everything was going to change!

And for a start she wasn’t going up to her room to pack after all. She was going to stay here and have another drink and relax. Recover from the endurance test that had been the sales conference.

And she wasn’t even going to so much as glance in the direction of the wretched man on the other side of the room, she told herself as she got slowly to her feet. There was no way on earth that she wanted to risk another of those glares. She was still smarting from the scorching effect of the one she had already received.

Despite his determination not even to look in her direction again, Gio found that the woman’s movement drew his attention once more. She uncoiled her slim body like a cat, he couldn’t help reflecting, fascinated in spite of himself. Her movements were slow and sensual, the short stroll from her table to the bar making her slender hips sway underneath the deep red suit with its fitted jacket and narrow pencil skirt. The blonde hair was clearly fighting against the restraints of the too-severe knot she had twisted it up into, and feathery strands of it were blowing about her face, wafting onto her neck.

With a sigh of impatience that he caught even where he sat, she paused, reached up, pulled out a couple of strategically placed pins, and shook her head determinedly. The result caught Gio totally by surprise.

As the pale blonde swathe of hair came loose and tumbled down her back, flowing over her shoulders like a golden wave, he found himself suddenly a prey to an urgent, twisting pull of sensual demand low down in his body.

It had the force of a kick in his gut, hitting with the sort of intensity that he had thought that he would never experience again in his life.

‘Inferno!’ he swore under his breath, struggling to force his attention away and onto the narrow gold watch that encircled one wrist. Though even as he concentrated fiercely on its square face, he knew that every male instinct he possessed was still in a state of heightened awareness of the woman at the bar.

Where the devil was Chris Macdonald?

Drinks and a meal, and a chance to discuss how the day’s events had gone in court, he had suggested, and the prospect had seemed like a lifesaver to Gio, who had been dreading spending the time on his own. Once he’d talked to Paolo on the phone and wished his little son sweet dreams, the evening had stretched ahead empty and dark, filled with bad memories. He had snatched at the opportunity to have company on this, the anniversary of the worst night ever in his life.

But Chris showed no sign at all of putting in an appearance. Their meeting had been arranged for six, and it was now half past.

The realisation had barely crossed his mind when his mobile phone rang sharply. As if summoned by his thoughts, there was Chris Macdonald’s number on the screen.

Flicking the case open with an impatient hand, Gio lifted it to his mouth.

‘Sì?’

A few seconds later he snapped the phone off again and tossed it down onto the table, glaring at it as if the inoffensive gadget were in fact Macdonald himself.

Chris was not coming. He had to stay at home, he had said. His young daughter was ill and they had just called the doctor.

‘Non c’e problema!’ he had assured him. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

But he had been lying through his teeth. There was a problem. The problem of the long, lonely night that lay ahead of him.

He should be used to long, lonely nights. He’d lived through enough of them since he had lost Lucia. Lying awake, staring blank-eyed into the darkness, in the big, empty bed that had suddenly seemed so cold and uncomfortable without the warmth of her softly curvaceous body beside him.

And if he managed to fall asleep then it was even worse. Because then he woke to a moment of forgetfulness, a brief, merciful spell of believing that it had never happened. That she was still there, with him. Until he reached out and felt the coldness of the empty space beside him, and the reality all came flooding back.

‘Dio—no!’ he muttered savagely, both hands clenching into fists as he tried to push away the black thoughts that flooded his mind.

Tonight he had thought that he would escape them. That with friendly company, a meal, and perhaps a glass or two too many of a fine wine, he might find some relief from the emptiness that was always there, like a dark, dangerous chasm in his mind, just waiting for him to fall into it. But Chris’s phone call had just shattered that hope.

‘And what can I get for you, Miss Hayden?’

‘Dry white wine, please.’

Behind him, Gio heard the bartender’s question, the soft, feminine tones of the reply, and knew without a moment’s hesitation that it was the blonde who had spoken. The blonde who had been eyeing him up so blatantly.

‘Your friends not with you tonight, then?’ The bartender almost echoed Gio’s own thoughts.

‘No, they’ve gone into the final session of the conference. I’ll be joining them later for dinner, I suppose.’

‘You didn’t fancy going with them?’

‘No.’

He could almost hear the shudder in her voice.

‘I’ve had more than enough of sales figures and targets. I’ve been bored stupid the past two days; I couldn’t take any more. In fact, I’ve decided to chuck the job in.’

Bored, huh?

The word seemed to echo inside Gio’s head. She was bored, and she had been eyeing him—and she had deliberately stayed behind when her friends had left.

Coincidence or invitation?

The clamour in his body wasn’t easing. If anything, the sound of her voice had made it worse. It was soft, musical, and faintly husky. The sort of voice that made him think of murmurs in the darkness of the night, the heat of a sensual bed, the whisper of her breath across his skin as she spoke.