Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

‘Dio mio, what is done is done…’ Andreo entrapped and held the distressed blue of her gaze with smouldering golden eyes.

‘It should never have happened,’ Pippa mumbled chokily, striving with all her might to disconnect from the heated charge of his magnetic appraisal. ‘And slovenly means grubby…and I have never been less than clean in my whole life—’

‘I never said that you were…just a little untidy. I was not aware that the word had any other connotation.’ Andreo could not credit the effort he was making to placate her. He was annoyed with her. He had every reason to be annoyed with her but he still found himself closing his arms round the general space she occupied as slowly and sneakily as if he were about to try and hug dynamite.

‘I am not untidy…what are you doing?’ It shook Pippa that even in the wake of all her proud words of rejection little miniature fireworks of wild anticipation started fizzing low in her tummy the minute he put his arms round her.

‘Tell me you don’t want this,’ Andreo growled sexily.

Her body was all hot and quivery and eager and shamed colour warmed her cheeks at that awareness. Her breasts felt heavy and tender, the straining peaks tautening into hard little points of betrayal below her jacket. ‘Stop looking at me like that,’ she pleaded.

With a husky laugh, Andreo bent his handsome dark head and teased her soft lips open with shattering carnal expertise. ‘We need to talk. We could have lunch instead of dinner, cara—’

‘No…’

‘Dinner is such a long way away…why should we be that patient?’ Andreo’s breath fanned her cheek as he came back for a more intimate sortie, letting his tongue delve an erotic path between her lips and making her vent an involuntary moan.

‘Back off…my career and my reputation are important to me and this is a mug’s game,’ Pippa muttered shakily, desperate for another kiss but fighting the lure of him with all her might, knowing all too well just how much she was likely to hate herself if she let him come between her and her wits a second time.

She could smell the evocative male scent of his skin, awesomely familiar to her, shockingly exciting. She felt dizzy and emotional and she wanted to throw herself the last six inches that separated them. She could feel him willing her to do it too. He had an attitude problem. She knew that now. A big backlog of her misguided predecessors had flattered his ego and taught him that he could talk and laugh and seduce his way out of awkward moments. He was manipulative, utterly without conscience, ruthless enough to go to any length to win. He was not Mr Wonderful, Mr Perfect, that one very special guy she had believed he was.

But even though she knew all that, resisting Andreo was tearing her apart at the seams. He had taught her to want him and she had been bitten deep by her own yearning. She felt achingly vulnerable and furious with herself for not having sufficient will-power to put him in his place.

‘Amore…let’s not make heavy weather of this,’ Andreo drawled, his glorious Italian accent skimming down her sensitive backbone and just tying her up in pathetic shivering knots of responsiveness. ‘In your heart, you know very well that you’re going to forgive me for all my supposed sins.’

Fury with him and her own weakness made the tears she had held back for well over an hour surge free in a dismaying flood. Without thinking, she wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and dislodged one of her contact lenses. ‘Oh, no!’ she groaned and dropped down onto her knees. ‘Don’t move…I’ve lost a lens!’

Andreo dropped down into an athletic crouch and picked up the tiny lens from the polished wood floor. ‘I have it,’ he murmured, removing a sheet of paper from the desk and folding the lens into the pocket he had fashioned for it. ‘So you wear contacts…’

Pippa wondered if he had ever made a pass at a woman who wore spectacles before and then sucked in a stark breath of despair, wishing that she had the power to regain control of her own brain. ‘I’m not about to forgive you,’ she stated between gritted teeth. ‘I don’t want to see you again. I just want to forget that last night happened—’

‘Go ahead…we can have a hell of a time rediscovering the joys and reliving the highlights tonight, bella mia.’

‘Why won’t you listen to what I’m saying?’ Pippa demanded in fierce frustration, still down on her knees as she tucked the folded paper into her jacket.

‘Whether you knew it or not, you signed up for more than one night when you shared my bed.’ Andreo rested brilliant dark golden eyes on her in challenge. ‘I still want you. You still want me. While I can’t understand how your colleagues could have failed to recognise you at the hotel last night, I’m willing to be discreet if that’s what you prefer—’

‘Stop trying to tempt me,’ Pippa cut in a fierce accusing tone even while she leant almost imperceptibly closer to him. ‘I wouldn’t waste ten minutes of my time on a guy who gives women sex toys for his amusement!’

His black brows drew together, lashes dropping low over his amazing eyes. He gave her a slashing grin that made her want to hit him and pin him horizontal to the floor at one and the same time. ‘Sex…toys?’

‘The diamond-studded handcuffs…I read about them in a newspaper,’ she informed him thinly.

‘Shame on you, cara mia. You’ve been reading real trash,’ Andreo murmured in unembarrassed silken reproof. ‘And I hate to be the one to disappoint you but you’re about as ready for sex toys as I am for celibacy!’

Vaulting upright, he stretched down a hand to help her up too. But in almost the same moment Pippa heard the door open and a male voice address Andreo in his own language. She almost died on the spot and shot right under his desk to curl up into a remarkably small ball.

Sal Rissone made a praiseworthy effort not to let his attention touch on the woman hiding under Andreo’s trendy glass desk.

‘Just pretend that she’s as invisible as she thinks she is,’ Andreo told him in Italian.

‘Am I allowed to ask what she’s doing there?’ his childhood friend enquired, deadpan.

‘Protecting herself from the embarrassment of being seen in

my office. She…she gets hyper about crazy things,’ Andreo murmured almost defensively, shrugging a broad shoulder. ‘She’s a sensitive woman.’

Sixth sense warned Sal not to crack the rather coarse joke brimming on his lips. Self-evidently, Andreo had decided that hyper was cute and sensitive and worthy of respect. Andreo, who thought women were interchangeable commodities pretty much put on earth for his sole enjoyment, was making excuses for one so off-the-wall she was hiding under his desk. Andreo, who had such very pronounced ideas of what he liked and what he disliked. Sal could not wait to call his wife and share the news that Andreo was acting as strangely today as he had the night before.