She was a desirable woman. Even a fool would see that, but so what? He didn’t like her.
He liked his women soft, comforting and accommodating. This woman would never be that. She would always be a challenge and why would a man want a challenge in his bed? Challenges were for boardrooms.
Still, she would be interesting. For an hour. A night. Not more than that—she would surely become an irritant fairly quickly—but for a little while, she would be…
Interesting.
She had turned away from him; she stood in profile as she looked at the house and all his logic fled.
What a sight she was!
Eyes narrowed in concentration, hands on her hips, feet apart, head tilted back. Every part of her, all her intensity, was focused on that ruin of a house.
Was she that focused when she was with a man?
She would be, if he were that man.
He knew things that would make her universe contract until he, and what he was doing to her, were all that mattered…
Dio. He was going to embarrass himself if he kept this up.
Luca shifted his weight, frowned and cleared his throat.
“This place,” he said brusquely, “is a mess. Did you actually see it before you bought it?”
She looked at him as if he were an idiot. What did it matter how she’d bought it? The property was hers. It had nothing to do with him.
The problem was that he just couldn’t seem to keep quiet.
“Or did you purchase it, sight unseen, after finding it advertised in the back of a magazine published by the rich for the rich?”
She folded her arms.
“Published by the rich for the foolish,” she said with sugar-sweet sarcasm. “Isn’t that what you mean?”
“What I mean,” he said, “is that you wasted your money. Aside from the one barn, there are no sound structures.”
“I already knew that.”
“Then, why…?”
“I don’t see that as any of your concern.”
No sarcasm this time. Her tone was frigid. She had put him in his place, and she had every right to do so.
Still, it angered him.
He wasn’t accustomed to being talked to this way, as if he were a peasant and she a queen. It angered him, too, that even though he liked her less and less, he wanted her more and more. There was something about her that demanded conquering in the most basic, most primitive way.
Hell.
What did that say about him?
He had been raised on his father’s tales of warriors who had raided their way across Europe; his mother had done her fair share, telling stories of Roman legionnaires whose blood flowed in their Sicilian veins.
As boys, he and Matteo had played soldiers, using branches in place of swords.
As men, they played on a different kind of battlefield, wielding power and money rather than swords.
Luca knew the adrenaline rush that went with facing down a business opponent and bringing him to heel. It was the same kind of rush that went with finally bedding a woman he wanted, but he’d never felt this, the desire to take a woman, this woman, in his arms, bear her down into the grass, ignore her protests as he undressed her, as he touched her everywhere until, at last, she wound her arms around his neck, pleaded for him to finish what he had started, to make her his, make her want only him, cry out only for him….
Shocked, appalled at the ferocity of the primitive images, at the sudden rush of blood to his groin, he turned away from her, grabbed his jacket, jammed his tie in a pocket and got back in the truck. She did, too, and they headed for the road.
She drove the way she’d driven before, fast but with complete control. He suspected she was someone for whom control was a necessity.
He was the same.
She was stubborn. Or determined, depending on your point of view.
So was he.
They were more alike than different, and yet she had seized command of the situation. Of him. Of their relationship. A business relationship, certainly; still, she was dominating it.
He was, literally and figuratively, simply along for the ride.
There had to be a way to turn things around. He was not a male chauvinist—not really—but a man was a man and a woman was a woman. It was the normal course of things. He needed to reestablish that.
Luca cleared his throat.
“We passed a café on our way here, just where we got off the main road. If you take the turnoff ahead…”
She zoomed past the turnoff.
His jaw tightened.
Minutes went by. They were nearing another turnoff. A billboard loomed ahead. Fancy’s Home Cookin’. Biscuits ‘n Grits Like Mama Made. Not much of a recommendation. Biscuits were all right. Grits were an alien food product. And his own mama had been among the world’s worst cooks, but what did any of that matter?
“How about this place?” he said. “Fancy’s Home…”
Zip. They flew past the sign and the turn-off.
Luca folded his arms over his chest.
“Exactly where are we going? Because I have to get back to El Sueño. My brother, my sisters and I are flying to—”
“You’re related to the Wildes.”
A statement, not a question. He frowned. No way was he ready to discuss the ugly intricacies of the Wildes’ connection to the Bellinis and the Bellinis’ connection to the Wildes.
“You all resemble each other.”
“Do you recall what you said when I asked why you’d bought that ranch we just left?”
She looked at him.
“I said it was none of your concern.”
“An excellent answer to an unnecessary question.”
“Actually, you didn’t ask why I’d bought it, you asked if I’d been stupid enough to buy it out of an ad.”
“I didn’t say you were stupid.”
“You didn’t have to. And you haven’t answered my question. Are you and the Wildes cousins or what?”
“Or what,” Luca said. “And I repeat, it is none of your concern.”
“Why are you so uptight?”
“Why am I so what?”
“Upright. Tense. You look as if you’re about to explode.”
Enough, he decided. A quick check in the side view mirror confirmed that theirs was the only vehicle in sight. No chance of an accident—and, after this, no chance that he might explode.
He reached across the console, wrapped his hand around the steering wheel and wrenched it to the right.
The pickup swerved toward the shoulder, and she gasped.
“What are you doing? Are you crazy? We’ll roll over!”
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“We will unless you stop fighting, let go of the wheel, and slow down.”
“The hell I will! This is my tr—”
“Do it or regret the consequences!”
She called him a name. Under other circumstances, it would have made him laugh. Then she lifted her hands from the steering wheel and took her foot from the gas pedal.
The truck bounded onto the gravel shoulder.
“Slow down,” Luca ordered.
She braked.
The pickup rolled to a stop.
Silence, unbroken except for the tick-tick-tick of the cooling engine, filled the cab.
Luca undid his seat belt and turned to her.
“You want my advice? Here it is. Unload that property as quickly as you can. Sell it at a loss if you have to, but that’s better than paying taxes on something that should be left to die on its own.”
She undid her seat belt, too, turned toward him and folded her arms over her breasts. Not ‘over.’ Not exactly. The angle at which she’d crossed her arms lifted her breasts, made them an offering, and his damnable body wanted to respond to it.
Determinedly, he locked his gaze to hers.
“I have no wish to sell, Mr. Bellini. Get that through your head.”
“In that case, be prepared to spend…” He went through a list of repairs mentally, years of experience coming to his assistance, added a handsome amount to cover what undoubtedly would be problems as yet unknown, reached into his jacket pocket for the small notebook and pen he always had with him, and scribbled a number. “Be prepared to spend at least this, Ms. McKenna, and quite possibly a lot more.”
He held the out the notepad.
She took it from him.
Their fingers brushed and sexual awareness became almost a palpable presence. He knew that she’d felt it, knew it by the way her eyes widened, by the way she caught her breath.
His heart thudded.
Hers had to be thudding, too. He could see the sudden leap of her pulse in the hollow of her throat.
Their eyes met. Held. Then she took another breath and looked at the seven figures he’d scribbled.
“I’ve done a little Googling,” she said. “This is probably accurate.”
“Yes. It probably is.” Her hand was still holding one edge of the notebook. His hand held the other. Once again, the tips of their fingers brushed. This time, he could damn near feel the sizzle. “Cheyenne.” She looked up. Her eyes were more than blue. They were almost midnight black. “This is not about facts or figures or numbers,” he said, in a voice so raw and low he barely recognized it as his own.