The Billionaire's Virgin Temptation

‘I’m cautious,’ Ruby countered. ‘I don’t feel the need to leap into something before I’ve had a chance to study it from all angles.’

‘You’re not supposed to study love,’ Molly laughed. ‘You feel it. You experience it. You live it.’

Ruby shuddered. ‘You might. I don’t.’ And what would Molly say, she wondered, if she knew Ruby hadn’t even gone all the way with a man yet? That she was still a virgin like an old maid from the Victorian era!

Suddenly a loud honking sound drew her attention. Molly giggled as an irate swan cut a swathe through the glittering crowd and started pecking at the golden tassels hanging from an unsuspecting woman’s gown. The woman reeled back and would have slipped if the man standing beside her hadn’t put his hands out and swiftly caught her.

Ruby felt the breath back up in her lungs as she took in the man’s height and the breadth of his shoulders, the angle of his leonine head and dark hair styled in loose layers that could only have come from an upmarket salon.

‘Oh, my,’ Molly murmured. ‘Would you get a load of that?’

Ruby watched as the man wearing a masculine bronze mask competently corralled the indignant bird outside and returned to check if the woman was okay.

‘He’s gorgeous,’ her sister added on a sigh.

‘You can’t possibly know that,’ Ruby scoffed. ‘He’s wearing a mask that covers half his face.’

‘He carries himself like a man who doesn’t need to be handsome but is. Look at those shoulders—’

‘Padding.’

‘And the way his thighs fill out his dark suit trousers. No padding there, I’m guessing.’

Despite Ruby’s protestations, Molly was right—the man exuded power and confidence and his square-cut jaw, smooth olive complexion and sensual mouth conveyed that he was likely very good-looking behind the bronzed mask. He was also very familiar...

It’s not him, she assured herself, her eyes taking in the way his lips twisted into a half-cynical, half-sexy grin as the grateful woman gripped his arm and whispered something into his ear.

It couldn’t be him. Sam Ventura lived in LA and, even if he was visiting Sydney, what would he be doing at a fancy-dress ball thrown by theatre people?

Well, he wouldn’t be here, she reasoned. It was her imagination running overtime. Again. ‘Men like that only want one thing from a woman,’ she told Molly with lofty finality.

‘I know.’ Molly sighed. ‘Do you think he would want it from me?’

‘Molly!’

Ruby was saved from reminding her sister that she’d just ended a relationship with one feckless boyfriend and hardly needed another when one of Molly’s friends approached her. Perturbed by how very much the dark-haired man reminded her of Sam Ventura, Ruby offered to go to the bar, where they were serving on-demand cocktails.

‘Cosmopolitan,’ Molly requested.

‘Same,’ her friend added.

Leaving them to their excited chatter, Ruby headed for the gilt-edged bar that looked as if it was a permanent fixture but was most likely shipped in from Italy especially for the night.

She sighed as she joined the queue at the bar. Molly truly believed that love awaited her around every corner, while Ruby was of the view that danger awaited her. She wasn’t looking for romance and happy-ever-after. Her independence had been too hard-won to hand over to some man who would want her to compromise everything she had and then most likely walk away without a backward glance anyway. A man like her father. And like Sam Ventura.

No, that wasn’t fair. She might not like Sam very much but she didn’t know him well enough to tar him with her father’s particular brush. Still, why give a man who had heartbreaker written all over his too handsome face the chance to prove that he was? And why was he still on her mind? she wondered grouchily.

Love turned thinking women into veritable psych-ward patients, she knew that. Just look at how she had been after only kissing the man that one foolhardy night. He’d pulled her into his arms and she’d nearly lost her dignity and her panties in one fell swoop! Not that she’d been in love with him, but she’d certainly been in lust with him and that had been more than enough to keep her up late some nights.