The Heat Of Passion

Jessica shivered. The red blood in her veins was chilling fast. Carlo was so cold. Although he betrayed nothing visually, she could feel that. And for some reason she couldn't understand that made her feel physically cold and threatened.

Suddenly the silence was something she might drown in and she leapt into speech. 'Why did you invite me here?'

'Take off your coat.'

Her tongue crept out and moistened her dry lower lip.

'I'm not staying '

'Go, then,' he murmured with a dismissive flick of

one lean hand. 'You waste my time '

Her teeth clenched. She undid her sash, dropped the coat off her shoulders and cast it aside. 'I asked you why you invited me here.'

'I wanted to look at you.' Burnished golden eyes skimmed over her slender figure, resting on the surprisingly full thrust of her breasts above her tiny waist and sliding with insulting cool down over the feminine swell of her hips.

Jessica had never been at ease with her own body

. Her voluptuous curves and her silver-blonde hair drew male eyes like beacons. Both attracted the wrong kind of male attention. She looked like her mother and she despised that awareness. If she hadn't possessed a distressingly opulent shape and unnaturally bright hair which ironically was entirely natural, she would never have caught Carlo Saracini's attention six years ago.

Her eyes glittered like brilliant amethysts as she withstood his inspection with her chin as high as she could hold it.

'Would you like a drink?' he drawled. 'No, thank you.'

He poured himself a glass of champagne. '1 hate to celebrate alone but I understand that you're afraid of

touching alcohol around me. I'm surprised you're still that naive,' he remarked softly.

'What are you celebrating?' She ignored the dig about alcohol, drawing on every scrap of icy dignity she

'You're a widow,' he delivered with smooth emphasis.

Jessica was shattered by his candour, brutally reminded that Carlo had no inhibitions and, similarly, little respect for ordinary standards of decent behaviour.

‘My father '

Carlo straightened to his full six feet three inches and shifted a silencing hand, dark golden eyes gleaming over her pallor. 'He stole from me and from his employees. We know that. Do we really need to discuss it?'

'Do you have to be so callous?' Jessica demanded,

abruptly unfreezing from the spot to move forward in

unconscious appeal. ‘He made a huge error of judge

ment -'

'The prisons are full of people who make huge errors,'

Carlo incised, his nostrils flaring. "Theft? Such a sordid

crime and yet so personal '

'P-personal?1 Involuntarily, she stammered.

'It was for your sake alone that I bought Amory

Engineering at an inflated price. What you might call a