‘I know I’m not well.’ It was an effort to get the words out. ‘I feel like death warmed up, but I left my laptop behind and needed to get that report to you. You’ll have to get Chloe to sit in on the meeting.’
His jaw clenched and his lips twisted into something that could be either a snarl or a smirk. ‘Is this a new tactic?’
Was her hearing now playing up along with the rest of her? One of the things she liked about working for Stefano was that he was a straight talker, regularly taking his more earnest employees to task for their corporate speak. ‘I taught myself English,’ he would say to them with disdain, ‘but if I’d tried learning it from you I would be speaking self-indulgent codswallop.’
She always hid a grin when he said that. ‘Self-indulgent codswallop’ was a term she’d taught him in her first week working for him. His thick Italian accent made it sound even funnier. She’d taught him a whole heap of insults since; most of which she’d initially directed at him.
Which made his riddle all the more confusing.
‘What are you talking about?’
He stepped away from the closed door, nearer to her. ‘Have you been taking acting lessons, Mrs Moretti?’
‘Mrs…?’ She closed her eyes and gave her head a gentle shake, but even that made the hammers trapped in it pound harder. ‘Have I woken in the twilight zone?’ It didn’t sound completely mad when she said it. Quite credible in fact. She’d felt disjointed from the moment she’d woken, Melissa’s letter stating that she was flying to Australia only adding to the incoherence.
When she opened her eyes again, she found Stefano by her desk, his large frame swimming before her eyes.
‘You’re playing an excellent game. Tell me the rules so I know what my next move should be.’ His tone was gentle but the menace behind it was unmistakable, his smooth voice decreasing in volume but increasing in danger.
Anna’s pretty hazel eyes widened. She had clearly been practising her innocent face in the month since he’d last seen her, Stefano thought scathingly.
It had been a whole month since she’d humiliated him in his own boardroom and walked out of his life.
He placed his hands palm down on her desk and gazed at her, taking in the beautiful face that had captivated him from the start.
‘I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Anna got slowly to her feet. ‘I’m going home. One of us is confused about something and I don’t know which of us I hope it is.’
He laughed. Oh, she was something else.
‘You should go home too,’ she said, eying him in much the same manner as a person cornered by a dangerous dog. ‘If I didn’t know better I’d think you were drunk.’
For a moment he wondered if she’d been drinking. Her words had a slurred edge and she seemed unsteady.
But those luscious lips were taunting him. She was taunting him, playing a game he hadn’t been given the rules to, trying to catch him on the back foot. Well he wouldn’t fall for her games any more. He wrote the rules, not this witch who had spellbound him with lust.
She’d planned it all from the start. She’d deliberately held off his advances for eighteen months so he’d become so desperate to possess her he would agree to marry her just so he could sleep with her.
He’d admit it had been a bit more involved than that but that had been the crux of it. He’d thought he’d known her. He’d thought he could trust her—him, Stefano Moretti, the man who had learned at a young age not to trust anyone.
She’d set him up to marry her so she could divorce him for adultery, humiliating him in front of his staff for good measure, and gain herself a hefty slice of his fortune.
He couldn’t believe he’d been stupid enough to fall for it.
When he’d received the call from his lawyer telling him his estranged wife was going to sue him for a fortune, he’d quelled his instinct to race to her home and confront her. He’d forced himself to sit tight.
Sitting tight did not come easily to him. He was not a man to wait for a problem to be solved; he was a man to take a problem by the scruff of the neck and sort it. He reacted. He always had. It was what had got him into so much trouble when he’d been a kid, never knowing when to keep his mouth shut or his fists to himself.
He’d spent nearly two weeks biding his time, refusing to acknowledge her lawyer’s letter. In ten days they would have been married for a year and legally able to divorce. Then, and only then, would Anna learn what he was prepared to give her, which was nothing. And he was prepared to make her jump through hoops to reach that knowledge.
He would make her pay for all her lies and deceit. He would only stop when she experienced the equivalent humiliation that he’d been through at her hands.
One hundred million pounds and various assets for barely a year of marriage? Her nerve was beyond incredible.
But despite everything she’d done, seeing her now, his desire for her remained undiminished. Anna was still the sexiest woman in the world. Classically beautiful, she had shoulder-length silky dark chestnut hair that framed high cheekbones, bee-stung lips that could sting of their own accord and skin as creamy to the touch as to the eye. She should be as narcissistic as an old-fashioned film star but she was disdainful of her looks. That wasn’t to say she didn’t make an effort with her appearance—she loved clothes, for example—but rarely did anything to enhance what she’d already been blessed with.
Anna Moretti née Robson, the woman with the face and body of a goddess and the tongue of a viper. Clever and conniving, sweet and lovable; an enigma wrapped in a layer of mystery.
He despised her.
He missed having her in his bed.
Since his release from prison all those long years ago he’d become an expert at masking the worst of his temper and channelling it into other areas, but Anna could tap into him like no one else and make him want to punch walls while also making him ache with need to touch her.
She wasn’t a meek woman. He’d understood that at their very first meeting. All the same, he’d never have believed she would have the audacity to walk back into this building after the stunt she’d pulled.
‘I’m not drunk.’ He leaned closer and inhaled. There it was, that scent that had lingered on his bedsheets even after copious washes, enough so that he’d thrown out all his linen and bought new sets. ‘But if you’re having memory problems, I know something that will help refresh it.’
Alarm flashed in her widened eyes. He didn’t give her the chance to reply, sliding an arm around her waist and pulling her to him so he could crush her mouth with his own.
He felt her go rigid with shock and smiled as he moulded his lips to hers. If Anna wanted to play games she had to understand that he was the rule maker, not her. He could make them and break them, just as he intended to eventually break her.
The feel of her lips against his, her breasts pressed against his chest, her scent… Heat coiled in his veins, punishment turning into desire as quickly as the flick of a switch…
All at once, she jerked her face to the side, breaking the kiss, and at the same moment her open hand smacked him across the cheek.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her tone half shocked, half furious. ‘You’re…’ Her voice tailed off.
‘I’m what?’ he drawled, fighting to control his own tone. The potency of the chemistry between them had become diluted in his memories. He’d forgotten how a single kiss could drive him as wild as an inexperienced teenager.
She blinked and when she looked at him again the fury had gone. Fear now resonated from her gaze. The little colour she’d had in her cheeks had gone too. ‘Stef…’
She swayed, her fingers extending as if reaching for him.
‘Anna?’
Then, right before his eyes, she crumpled. He only just caught her before she fell onto the floor.
Copyright © 2017 by Michelle Smart
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DARKNESS INTO LIGHT
Copyright © 1985 by Carole Mortimer
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