Her heart rate picking up speed, her throat dry, Pippa focused on Andreo’s lean, dark, devastating profile. She remembered begging for that beautiful, tormenting mouth of his. It had taken him only moments to reduce her to the level of a wanton again. She made herself recall how she had clung and sobbed in the frantic clutches of the sweet agony of ecstasy he had given her the night before and her palms grew damp and her face burned hot as the heart of a fire. All of a sudden she knew why she had hurled that crazy lie at Tabby’s husband. Why had she said she was having a passionate affair with an Italian? Her subconscious mind had spoken out loud what she did not have the courage to admit even to herself: she wanted to have that affair with Andreo!
‘Is there someone else in your life?’ Andreo demanded with shocking abruptness.
Taken aback, Pippa breathed, ‘Why are you asking me that?’
Andreo settled veiled dark eyes on hers and the strangest little frisson of incipient threat feathered down her taut spinal cord. ‘Is there someone?’
‘No…of course there isn’t…I don’t even know why you would ask me again,’ she muttered, almost smiling at the realisation that he saw her as rather more irresistible than she saw herself.
Andreo’s lean brown fingers clenched into a fist and thrust into the pocket of his well-cut chinos. After what he had overheard, she had to be lying to him. Yet she looked so innocent! He gazed steadily back at her until she had the grace to blush and drop her head. It infuriated him that he should still be as hungry as hell to feel her slim white body under his again.
Pippa tried to be really brave. ‘I’m…I’m very drawn to you…’
Andreo shrugged a powerful shoulder, stubborn jawline at a punitive angle, eyes bright with hard gold challenge. ‘You said it was just sex, amore. That’s good enough for me.’
Pippa paled. It wasn’t good enough for her. She wanted more. She wanted an open ticket, a proper relationship, the chance of a future with him? Maybe even wedding bells? Did dinosaurs still walk the earth? Or had he stolen her every brain cell? Furious with him for forcing her to face how deep his hold on her already went, she pulled open her front door. ‘You’re my boss. Let’s leave it at that,’ she told him woodenly.
Dark fury claimed Andreo for a long, timeless moment. She blew hot, she blew cold. How dared she do that to him? How dared she try to play him at his own game? In that instant, in proud, angry denial of his own fierce, flaring reaction to yet another rejection from her, Andreo was tempted to snatch her up into his arms and carry her into the bedroom and put the ‘you’re my boss’ embargo to the ultimate test. It was his belief that she would crumble. She was his woman. Didn’t she know that? His every aggressive instinct assured him that he could prove that to her. As soon as he got the chance, however, he intended to check out the identity of the married French guy.
When Andreo had gone, Pippa slumped. She felt horribly let down. Somehow she had lost the plot, for the instant she’d advanced he had seemed to change tack and cool off instead of responding to her greater honesty. Now she could only feel embarrassed that she had harboured naive girlish dreams about a male whose interest in her was unashamedly sexual. She had heard some women say that it was perfectly possible to enjoy sleeping with a guy without emotion getting involved. But she had only shared a bed with Andreo once and already her emotions were in absolute turmoil and he seemed to be occupying her every waking thought. There was a lesson to be learned there, she reflected unhappily.
‘I need time to bone up on the latest projects.’ The following morning, Cheryl angled a bright, determined smile at Pippa. ‘You’ll have to stand in for me at today’s meeting.’
Secure in the knowledge that she had no intention of remaining at Venstar, Pippa was able to tolerate Cheryl’s barefaced cheek in demanding that she take her place in the hot seat.
Ricky Brownlow accompanied Pippa into the lift, clearing his throat to say, ‘The directors asked for you specifically. Miss Long was nervous yesterday and Mr D’Alessio became quite impatient with her.’
In the act of wondering why Ricky now seemed to take it upon
himself to make excuses for Cheryl, Pippa drew in a short sharp breath at the more challenging news that Andreo would be present at the meeting.
She saw him the minute she entered the room. He looked spectacular and she found it almost impossible to drag her eyes from his lean, powerful face. In a navy business suit, silver-grey shirt and silk tie, he stood more than half a head taller than the men around him. The high heels she had selected from the back of her wardrobe that morning clicked on the polished wood floor. He swung round and watched her progress towards the circular conference table: a tall, slender woman with a tumbling mane of cinnamon curls and blue eyes concealed behind large spectacles with dark frames that only accentuated the delicacy of her fine bone structure and the purity of her skin.
For a split second, when Andreo studied her without any hint of familiarity, Pippa believed she was about to succumb to an attack of stage fright, and then a director voiced an enquiry, helpfully prompting her into her usual working efficiency. She delivered a detailed breakdown of the figures that had caused Cheryl such grief a day earlier. Nobody was left in any doubt that she knew her field inside out and backwards.
On that same score, Andreo suffered a rare attack of conscience for he could not disprove Pippa’s belief that his criticism of her appearance had led to the promotion of an unsuitable candidate over her head. Yet he could barely credit that a single censorious comment from him could be responsible for the downright stupid decision to appoint Cheryl Long to a position for which she was demonstrably unfit.
As silence fell in the wake of the question-and-answer session Pippa studied Andreo, wanting him to look at her, needing him to notice her, shaken by how fierce that craving was. His intent dark golden scrutiny rested on her for only the briefest moment. But for Pippa, while that moment lasted it was as though their companions just faded out from her awareness. Butterflies broke loose in her tummy and an irresistible urge to smile almost overcame her self-discipline.
‘You have an exceptional grasp of financial planning,’ Andreo acknowledged with approval.
An unearthly silence fell round the table.
At the compliment, Pippa turned pink with pleasure. Andreo sprang upright and shifted a lean staying hand in an indication that he would like her to remain behind. Almost unbearably conscious of the veiled curiosity of her companions, she hovered until he finally turned back to her. ‘I’d like to discuss your future with Venstar over dinner this evening. We’ll go straight from the office and eat early…if that suits you?’
‘Er…yes, of course,’ Pippa muttered hastily, wondering under what terms she was being invited. Strictly business as she herself had requested? She could not fault his present attitude to her. His attention had not lingered on her once and now, in receipt of her agreement, he swung away to deal with someone else. He was driving her out of her mind, she conceded wretchedly. He was behaving like her boss and she couldn’t bear it! Yet wasn’t that how she had asked him to behave? But she couldn’t handle being treated as though she were merely another anonymous employee. She felt absolutely gutted when he no longer looked or smiled at her.
‘You want me too…’ Andreo had told her and he had been much more on target than she had been prepared to admit. Was she guilty of being a closet romantic who needed to dress up sex with more lasting feelings? For a deeper relationship was not on offer, was it? How could it be? Andreo had been upfront about the fact that his time at Venstar would be brief. He wanted to go to bed with her again. He had been outstandingly frank on that score and why should he not have been? He was a notorious womaniser and the last guy alive on whom a sane woman would focus romantic expectations. Why couldn’t she meet him on the same ground and accept that all she would ever share with Andreo would be a physical relationship? In ten days she would be packing to leave London for France and embarking on a new phase of her life. Why didn’t she just reach out and take what she wanted for the next week and a half?
An affair limited by time boundaries that would ensure that she did not get too involved and as a result…hurt. An affair on her terms. She would be in control. It wouldn’t, it couldn’t get messy within the space of a few days. In such a truncated time frame there was surely no room for complications or pain. Her chin came up, eyes alight with hope and pure bubbling happiness. She could have him for a little while, enjoy him the way one enjoyed luxurious chocolates and then go back on a normal healthy and sensible diet.
‘U were right. I want u 2,’ she texted Andreo before she could lose her nerve.
Travelling in his limo across the city Andreo read that message with pleated dark brows and wondered why she had changed her mind. Had his suspicion that she was hooked on her friend’s husband been way off target? It seemed it might well have been and he winced, wondering why he had been so unusually fanciful. Undoubtedly there was a more reasonable explanation than that which had appealed to his more cynical streak. Was he becoming overly distrustful of women? Almost simultaneously, the grim mood that had settled over Andreo and that he had refused to acknowledge evaporated. He pictured Pippa as she had looked in the conference room that morning: sunshine firing her vibrant hair, eyes bright as gemstones against her fine porcelain skin. Even the most fleeting thought of her stirred a dulled ache of arousal in his groin.
‘Wise woman. C u l8r,’ he responded by text.
His PA called Pippa to tell her what time she would be picked up at the rear entrance. The afternoon drifted past Pippa while she lost herself in a daydream. By the time she emerged from the building, having spent an inordinate amount of time fussing with her hair, she was on a nervous high of anticipation. A chauffeur swung out of the long silver limousine waiting by the kerb and opened the passenger door for her. Endeavouring to act as though limos were two a penny in her world, she climbed in.