Emily: Sex and Sensibility (The Wilde Sisters 1)

One had sleeves. One didn’t. Not that it mattered. Both would leave her shoulders bare and her cleavage displayed.

And they were expensive.

Incredibly expensive. She’d have known that just by looking at them, even if they hadn’t hung in garment bags that carried the name of a shop any woman who’d ever read Vogue would recognize.

How ironic.

She had a closet full of expensive things at El Sueño. Not as expensive as this but expensive enough. She’d deliberately walked away from that life of extravagance, a life her father had insisted on and funded.

Now she was immersed in it again.

Yes, but this was different.

This wasn’t the general demanding that everything about his daughters be a positive reflection of him, his wealth and his status.

This was her employer requiring that his employee be properly dressed for a business function. He hadn’t been involved in choosing the gowns or the shoes, the evening purses or the two elegant little jackets, one of soft silver leather, the other of gold satin, hanging beside the gowns.

He’d made a phone call to the hotel concierge and she’d taken it from there.

There was nothing personal in any of this.

Only the underwear made that conclusion questionable.

The lingerie. No way could you call such tiny bits of lace and silk underwear. The bras, the thongs, the sheer hose were the stuff of dreams. Hot dreams.

Emily swallowed dryly.

Trust a French concierge to make choices like these. Because it surely could not have been her employer. He wouldn’t have asked for bras and thongs that made a woman think about a man slowly taking them off her.

A rap sounded at the bedroom door.

“Fifteen minutes,” Marco called.

That brusque tone did it. If she’d had any doubts as to who had chosen the lingerie, she didn’t any more.

Five minutes later, he knocked again. Pounded, was more like it.

Emily was ready.

Her suitcase had still not arrived, but the gorgeous marble vanity offered shampoos, soaps, body lotions, perfume, every possible little luxury, and she’d had lip gloss, mascara and a tiny sample thingy of eyeliner in her handbag. What she didn’t have was a hair clip.

When she opened the door, she was holding her hair back from her face with one hand.

“You don’t have to break it door down,” she said, “See? I’m—”

She never got to the “ready” part.

She was too busy staring at her boss.

His hair, still shower-damp, curled silkily against his head. His face was freshly-shaven. He was wearing a black tux, and if ever a man was made to wear a tux, this was the man.

He stared at her.

It was impossible to read his expression.

“You look,” he said, his eyes focusing on hers, “you look…”

What? Awful? Dreadful? Good? Bad?