Public Wife, Private Mistress

The last person in the world she'd expected to see.

Her heart lurched, the whole world tilted, and for a wild, ecstatic minute she thought he'd finally come after her. And then reality struck and she remembered that it had been a year and that he was in the process of di­vorcing her. Which could only mean that he was here

for an entirely different reason. And, whatever it was, she wasn't interested.

'No!' Her immediate impulse to slam the door in his face was thwarted by swift action on his part. Clearly he'd anticipated her response to his arrival and in a powerful movement he slammed a hand in the centre of the door, resisting her attempts to close it.

'You don't answer your mail and you don't have a phone,' he launched savagely, dark eyes connecting with hers with the lethal force of a missile, 'and you bury yourself in a place so remote that it is almost im­possible to find you.'

'And it didn't occur to you that maybe I didn't want you to find me? If I'd wanted you to find me then I would have left a forwarding address.' She glared at him, previous hostilities rising to the surface with such frightening force and speed that for a moment she strug­gled to breathe, swept away on a tide of emotion. 'And if I'd thought there was any chance at all that you'd even look for me then I would have buried myself even deeper,' she shot back hoarsely, suddenly wishing she'd done just that.

But it had never entered her head that he'd come after her. Not after those first miserable months where she'd done nothing but stare out of the window, desperately hoping to see one of his flashy sports cars pull up out­side wherever she was living. Gradually she'd grown accustomed to the knowledge that he wasn't coming after her.

That it was well and truly over. Ended with an ex­plosion of bitter emotion every bit as intense as the fiery relationship that had gone before. She'd walked out. He hadn't followed.

And that had said everything there was to say about their short, fragile marriage. To him it hadn't been worth saving. It had been an unmitigated disaster and she'd already promised herself that if she ever fell in love again it would be with a safe, mild-mannered, modern Englishman, not a blisteringly ruth­less, own-the-world Sicilian whose attitude to women was firmly embedded in the Stone Age. Who thought that the answer to everything was money.

She stared at him furiously, her gaze drawn by the power of his broad shoulders, the arrogant tilt of his handsome head and the dangerous glint in his cold, hard eyes. It was wrong for one man to be so indecently sexy, she thought numbly, trying valiantly to ignore the kick of her heart and the sudden quickening of her pulse. She didn't want to respond like this. It was this response that had involved her with him in the first place.

Against her better judgement.

But Rico Crisanti was not a man that women ignored. He was indecently good-looking and the aura of power that he wore with the ease of a designer suit attracted women like sharks to blood-infested water.

And she'd proved as vulnerable to his particular brand of macho Sicilian sex appeal as all the others.

Suddenly aware that he was staring over her shoulder into her cottage, she saw the flicker of surprise cross his handsome face and had a wild and totally inappro­priate impulse to laugh.

Rico Crisanti, Italian billionaire and business tycoon, owned six homes around the world and had probably never been anywhere remotely like her tiny cottage. At another time she would have teased him about it. but they were way beyond teasing.

The differences in their attitudes and approach to life were so far apart that nothing could bridge them. He believed that a woman's place was at home, waiting for her man, whereas she wanted to get out of the home, grab life by the throat and rattle it hard.

He was frowning, night-black eyes glittering with a mixture of incredulity and amazement.

'What is this place?'

The desire to laugh vanished. 'My home, Rico,' she said stiffly. 'And you're not welcome in it.' She didn't need the reminder that he'd never even seen the cottage that she loved so much. That despite their marriage he knew so little about her. Knew so little about the things that mattered to her —

She made another futile attempt to close the door, knowing that it was a waste of time. In a battle of strength she would be the loser. Rico Crisanti was six foot three and powerfully built. Even without looking, she knew that somewhere close by would be a car full of bodyguards. Their constant presence had always amused her because no one with reasonable vision could ever doubt that Rico could handle himself phys­ically if required to do so. He was an expert in martial arts, supremely fit, with the body and the stamina of an Olympic athlete. But the billionaire President of one of the most successful companies in the Western world was a prime target for corporate kidnapping and extor­tion and he had no intention of making access to him easy.

Stasia subdued a hysterical laugh.

If he was kidnapped then it would mean taking a day off work, and that would be more challenging for Rico Crisanti than any form of torture.

The man was driven.

He couldn't function without work and she'd loved to tease him about that fact. On one occasion she'd even hidden his mobile phone and he'd gone ballistic—until he'd discovered exactly where she'd hidden it.

She lifted her chin, trying not to remember those early ecstatic days of their relationship. Before reality had set in. Before they'd discovered that they had ab­solutely nothing in common. 'So how did you find me?'

'With considerable difficulty and much personal in­convenience,' he bit out harshly. 'And already I have wasted too much time. My pilot is refuelling as we speak. We need to be back in the air within the hour.'

Stasia gaped at him with the same blank astonishment with which he'd assessed her cottage. His pilot was re­fuelling? They needed to be in the air within an hour? What exactly was he saying?

'We?' She shook her head and gave a humourless laugh. 'I presume you're using the royal

"we." You can't possibly mean you and me.'

They hadn't even spoken for a year. Not since that night —