Rival Attractions & Innocent Secretary
Yet Emma felt as if she’d been left at the starting post.
Too embarrassed by her brothers’ teasing, too scared of getting hurt, she’d hid her first innocent crushes, had said no to dates in her teenage years, envying how others found this dating game so easy and just dived in and said yes.
Dear Barbara, she penned the letter in her head.
I’m an attractive twenty-four-year-old, I have friends, a job, a busy life and I’m still a virgin.
Oh, and I just said no to a night in Paris with the sexiest man on earth.
She’d make letter of the week!
And though it was great to have come home to no messages from her father’s nursing home or new bills in the mail, all she felt was deflated. She flicked off the TV, and for just a second she faltered.
A tiny, wobbly second, where she wished she were stupid, wished for that impulse gene where men were concerned that had been so sorely denied her.
Wished she’d just said yes to Luca’s dazzling offer.
* * *
Luca flicked through the channels on the television.
Not that he was watching it. It was on all day for background noise for the dog, Pepper—not that the animal appreciated it.
The night stretched on endlessly and he stood there, rueing the fact that he had been yawning and bored at eleven p.m. in Paris, but thanks to the time difference was wide awake and thoroughly restless at five minutes to midnight in London.
He should be exhausted, he had been up since five—but his head was clicking like an abacus. Hemming’s, a large shopping chain, had called him in way too late to stop them from going under.
Except he could see a way to save them.
He grabbed a beer from the fridge and tried not to think about it, tried to wind down—just fed up with all the travel, with the demands. Why did everyone want an in-person—why couldn’t they just settle for a face-to-face on a screen in the meeting room?
Hell, an email would usually suffice.
Sex would be nice.
And there were plenty who would be willing.
But he couldn’t be bothered to talk.
Couldn’t be bothered tonight to even pretend to be interested.
His tie must have been soldered on, along with his cufflinks—because he had to put down his drink to deal with them.
And deal with Pepper.
He snarled at the ginger miniature poodle, who snarled back at him. He let him out on his vast balcony to do whatever dogs did.
His maid would see to it in the morning.
Martha, an ex-girlfriend, had, after a trip back to his home in Sicily, decided to move in uninvited, and had conveniently forgotten Pepper when Luca had asked her to move out—three years ago!
‘You,’ Luca said, wandering back to the fridge and selecting a few choice morsels, ‘are the most pathetic excuse for a dog I have ever seen.’
He ripped a chicken leg off and gnawed it as he stretched out on his sofa, with Pepper quivering on the floor beside him.
‘You’re on a diet.’ Luca reminded him. Half watching a detective show on the television, finally Luca relented and threw some titbits to the floor in reward for their new game—having recently found out that if he changed the word ‘Paw’ to ‘High five’ the outcome was the same, only much more satisfying.
It had been hellish breaking up with Martha—her tears and protests at the unexpected end had been unprecedented—as over and over she had asked how he could end something so good.
And she’d left Pepper—just hadn’t taken him, sure that Luca would crack and ring, would make contact—but what she hadn’t truly realised was that when Luca ended things, he ended them.
That Luca would rather deal with a senile, smelly old dog than face her again.
The detective show actually wasn’t that boring…
Three minutes from the end of the final episode of the season, Luca decided it was something he might actually get into.
And then the credits rolled.
And he knew this was what Emma had been talking about.
Knew she was watching it too.
He just knew it. And he wished she’d said yes to Paris.
CHAPTER TWO
IT WAS a quarter to five on a Thursday afternoon and the entire staff of D’Amato Financiers, excluding Emma, seemed to be abuzz with excitement. As Emma walked back from a meeting with the manager of HR she could see make-up, slyly in some cases and blatantly in others, being applied at desks, and the general office area reeked of a clash of newly sprayed perfume. Even the guys were at it—appearing from the men’s room with a generous dash of newly applied hair product and a glint in their eyes as the end of the workday approached.
Thursday night in London, and it seemed everyone had plans.
Everyone except Emma.
She remembered with a pang when Thursday nights had heralded the start of the weekend. When Friday morning had been spent huddled around the coffee machine, dissecting the previous night.