Lynne Graham's Brides of L'Amour Bundle

‘You still haven’t explained how you discovered I was here—’

‘I had your background investigated—’

Pippa stared back at him in disbelief. ‘You did…what?’

‘You have strong connections to France through your own family tree. Your friendship with Tabby and Christien Laroche made this an obvious port of call—’

‘I can’t believe that you dared to come here—’

‘I dare…believe it, amore,’ Andreo incised.

‘Nor can I imagine what crazy stories you told to talk your way through the door—’

Andreo dealt her a look of hauteur. ‘What need had I to tell stories? Your friend seemed unsurprised to see me,’ he stated grimly. ‘Santo Cielo…I had only to say who I was and she offered to take me up to your room!’

Severe embarrassment claimed Pippa. Her own little white lie about Andreo having phoned the night before to heal their differences had come back to haunt her. Naturally Tabby had assumed that Andreo’s arrival would be a wonderful surprise for Pippa and that she herself was helping along a lovers’ reconciliation.

Brilliant golden eyes clung to her fast-reddening face. ‘Care to explain that? Or am I supposed to assume that every guy who calls here asking for you is shown straight up to your bedroom, no questions asked?’

Infuriated by that dig, which pie

rced right to the heart of her belief that she had already made an enormous fool of herself over him, Pippa lost her temper and swung up her hand.

‘Don’t…’ Closing lean fingers round her wrist before she could deliver that potential slap, Andreo sent her a hard look of censure and voiced that single word with icy restraint.

Pippa retrieved her arm from his hold, rage and mortification united inside her now. She was so mad with him that she could hardly catch her breath to speak. ‘Get out of here, then!’

‘No…’ His refusal was cool and level.

‘Then I’ll move to another room…’

‘If you like…I’ll fish my bedtime reading out of my case and settle down for the night,’ Andreo murmured soft and smooth.

Temper had taken Pippa to the door, but at those words that seemed to offer an unknown threat she stilled, her brow indenting. ‘What are you talking about?’

Reaching past her, Andreo opened the door, swept up the leather case and garment bags draped over it and lifted them into the room.

‘Andreo?’ Pippa queried in bewilderment, unable to comprehend why he should suddenly remove the pressure on her and behave as if what she did was immaterial to him.

‘You don’t appear to grasp how angry I am with you,’ he breathed in sudden warning. ‘You owe me an explanation and a grovelling apology—’

Pippa folded her arms with a jerk. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘And in the absence of said grovelling apology, I am likely to sink as low as a guy can sink—’

‘Tell me something I don’t know! I’ve already seen you swarming all over your blonde girlfriend!’ Pippa suddenly slung at him with such feeling rage and pain that her voice had a crack in it.

Andreo studied her with fixed attention, eyes a shimmering gold below spiky black lashes. ‘Correction. She was swarming over me. So you did see me with Lili. I wondered about that—’

‘You said you couldn’t go out for lunch with me because you had business to take care of…some business!’ Pippa bawled at him full throttle.

‘Lili was with me when I phoned you. Within her hearing I could hardly tell you that I was taking her out to lunch to dump her.’

To dump her? To dump her? Those magical words echoed in ringing decibels through Pippa’s brain and made it quite impossible for her to think of anything else. He had been planning to end his relationship with Lili Richards?

Andreo sent her a grim glance. ‘Of course, had you stayed in the same building, not to mention the same country you would have found that fact out for yourself because I would have brought you up to speed on events when I saw you that night.’

Momentarily, Pippa had been silenced. She had to angle back against the high bed for support because her legs felt shaky. Andreo had chosen her in preference to that gorgeous blonde fantasy woman? As a statement of intent, it was almost more than she could credit and then a little native wit crept back in to remind her that he had sworn that he was free of involvement with any other woman.