Happy Mother's Day!

chapter FOUR


AISLING’S head pounded.

Unsteadily, she rose from her chair to close the blinds in her office, and the unanswerable question spun round and round in her head like dirty water whirling down the plug-hole.

Oh, what had she done?

Nearly a month had elapsed since she had woken up in Gianluca’s bed—or rather on Gianluca’s bed, she corrected herself, and flinched. There was no point in giving the incident an air of respectability which it certainly didn’t merit. Saying that they had been in bed might have implied that there’d been a little forethought about that wild bout of sex, instead of the stark and unpalatable truth.

That she’d had a one-night stand with a client!

Aisling’s palms felt clammy as she sat down at her desk once more.

What kind of a woman did that? Risking everything she’d worked so hard for. Especially a woman who had known real poverty when she was growing up—who had learnt the hard way that you couldn’t rely on anyone except yourself to earn a living.

Her mother had always put men before everything—even her daughter. Janie Armstrong had sacrificed everything in her futile search for love. Jobs had gone by the wayside and she and Aisling had moved around the country—relocating at the drop of a hat if there was some promise of emotional happiness, which had never seemed to materialise.

Time after time, Aisling had seen her mother let down by a man—and time after time she had repeated the same needy and dependent behaviour which had seemed to drive the men further away. As her beauty had faded, so had the opportunities—and that had bred a new desperation.

Aisling had vowed to be different. That was the reason she had slaved away to establish her business, why she had put her social life on hold, working long hours to build up her small but thriving firm which now employed three people. A firm she had been so proud of—but which must now surely be threatened by a single act of madness?

How terrifying it was to discover this dark and unknown side to her character. Maybe she carried more of her mother’s traits than she had previously imagined.

After leaving Gianluca’s vineyard, Aisling had caught the London-bound flight from Rome airport with minutes to spare. She’d left Gianluca’s car in the underground car park of the Palladio Corporation, deposited the car keys with his bemused secretary and walked out with a feeling of terrible remorse making her cheeks sting pink.

Next there had been Jason to face—and that had been Aisling’s first real test of mental determination. How much was it permissible to pretend when facing your young assistant, to whom you were supposed to be setting a good example? She didn’t want to lie—but how could she tell him the truth when, if the situation were reversed, she would have sacked him on the spot? There was nothing to be gained from showing her embarrassment and her guilt—she was just going to have to live with them. As it was, her former prim and proper image stood her in good stead.

‘Whatever happened to you?’ Jason asked curiously. ‘One minute you were there—and the next you were gone!’

‘Oh, Gianluca gave me a tour of the property—and we ended up talking about business,’ she answered quietly, her blue eyes just daring him to say any more on the subject, and to her relief he didn’t. Quite what Jason thought about it all only added to her discomfiture, but frankly she couldn’t allow herself the luxury of wallowing in self-pity.

For days, Aisling waited.

At first she wasn’t really sure what she was waiting for—until she woke up one morning after a night spent tossing and turning and realised that she was in fact waiting to hear from Gianluca. They still had a meeting scheduled to discuss his Miami project, didn’t they? Her guilty conscience had made her assume that he would want to pull out of it—and that he would take great delight in telling her exactly why. But she was wrong.

There was nothing. Not a word, a phone call or e-mail to cancel—and somehow this only compounded her silent sense of agony and self-recrimination. Was he planning to send someone else from the Palladio Corporation in his place? she wondered.

And it wasn’t until her period arrived that Aisling realised she had been waiting for something else, too—the reassurance that there weren’t to be any lasting repercussions from that night of passion. And thank God, there weren’t.

But her behaviour made her think—logically, rather than emotionally. It shocked her into making an appointment at the family planning clinic. Because, yes, Gianluca had used protection—but what if he hadn’t had any? She had been so caught up in mindless need for him that she’d been beyond caring—and, whether or not that was the Palladio effect, she didn’t dare risk it happening again. A one-night stand was bad enough—an unplanned pregnancy would be unforgivable. And then there was the troublesome question of their upcoming appointment and how she might react if Gianluca turned up and tried to seduce her. Would she honestly be able to resist him?

The phone on her desk rang and Aisling picked it up.

‘Aisling Armstrong here,’ she said.

It was Ginger Jones, her secretary, who had taken to looking at her with frowning concern ever since she’d returned from Rome, even if she hadn’t quite had the nerve to ask her if anything was wrong. Unlike Suzy, who had been fishing like mad—but Aisling had deflected all her questions without blushing.

‘There’s someone here to see you,’ Ginger announced.

Aisling frowned as she scanned the appointments page of her diary. ‘But I don’t have anything scheduled.’ And it was almost seven o’clock. It had been a long day, which had started with a breakfast meeting, and she wanted nothing more than a bath and to pick at some food and then go to bed and pray for the oblivion of sleep.

‘I know that,’ said Ginger rather dramatically, and something in the tone of her voice made the small hairs on the back of Aisling’s neck prickle with apprehension.

‘Who is it?’ she questioned hoarsely.

‘Signor Palladio.’

Aisling gripped the phone so hard that her knuckles turned the colour of milk. ‘But his appointment isn’t until next week,’ she said hoarsely. An appointment she had been expecting and praying that he would cancel. And praying that he wouldn’t.

‘So I believe,’ said Ginger smoothly.

‘Can’t you tell him to go?’ Aisling whispered, and to Ginger’s huge credit and diplomacy she didn’t seem to find anything wrong in a question which Aisling would never have asked under normal circumstances.

‘I’ve tried,’ Ginger said, in a smoothly unfamiliar tone which suggested that the Italian billionaire might be standing right by the telephone.

Aisling thought quickly.

If she wanted to play French farce, she could always slip out of her office by the back way, but that would only postpone the inevitable. Gianluca obviously wanted to see her and he wouldn’t be deterred—not by anyone. So hadn’t she better listen to what he wanted to say?

Aisling chewed the end of her fountain pen. ‘Won’t you send him in?’ she asked.

She put the receiver down and sat with the tension building up inside her. There wasn’t even enough time to look in the mirror she carried in her handbag, nor to put on some lipstick—and, besides, it was only a short journey from Ginger’s office to her own.

What if he caught her prettifying herself and thought she was trying to lure him into another sexual encounter? Aisling shuddered as—like someone caught in a bad horror film—she watched the door open and her heart sank.

For this was the man they called Il Tigre at his most threatening, looking just as she imagined his animal namesake might look the moment before it pounced.

Gianluca closed the door behind him, but he didn’t move. Just stood there, looking at her with a hostile black gaze—which was making her feel like some helpless innocent who had strayed into his path.

So don’t let him make you feel that way.

But it wasn’t easy under the circumstances—not when her heart was leaping against her ribcage in reaction to the muscular body and the shadowed beauty of his face—which was so still that it might have been carved from some dark stone. How could someone look so different? she wondered. It seemed a lifetime ago that those hard lips had been soft and responsive as they kissed her—yet it was only a few short weeks.

She tried to compose her face into some appropriate expression—but what was appropriate, in the circumstances?

‘Hello, Gianluca,’ she said as calmly as she could manage.

He didn’t return the greeting, just leaned back against the door, his hands moving down to rest on his hips, a movement Aisling tried not to react to, which wasn’t easy since, not only was it vaguely intimidating—it also meant that he thrust his hips forward in a way that was completely provocative as well as evocative. And, oh, the memories came flooding back in all their glorious, golden beauty.

She swallowed, remembering images that she had been trying to block—of his eyes, tight-closed with pleasure. The way he had breathed something exultant at the moment of his climax and the warm feel of his naked body next to hers. ‘This is a … surprise.’

‘Really?’ he clipped out. He was angry. Correction. He was furious—with a strength of feeling he was neither used to, nor liked—and he hadn’t quite worked out what was causing it. Was it because she had taken control of the situation by her sudden and totally unexpected disappearance? Or because he had been shocked to find she had gone, leaving his bed without a single word—leaving him lying alone amid the rumpled sheets as if he were just some kind of stud!

Yet the sight of her was making him ache, even though in theory it should have done the very opposite—because the woman who had writhed beneath him and slid all over him had disappeared, making him half wonder whether he had imagined the whole episode. Like a shooting star viewed in the night sky—brilliant yet so dazzlingly brief.

Gone was the floaty hairstyle and the foxy jeans—and back in place was one of her mannish suits with her dark hair so tightly pinned back that she might as well have had it shaved off.

‘Is this how you always behave?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you usually hang around to say goodbye to your lovers, Aisling—or do you consider orgasm as a kind of farewell as well as the little death which the French always use to describe it?’

‘Shh! Please—keep your voice down!’ The words were out before she could stop them andAisling’s gaze darted nervously towards the closed door, praying that Ginger didn’t have her ear pressed to it. ‘I don’t want anyone to hear.’

‘You don’t want anyone to hear?’ He gave a mocking laugh of derision, but also a mental note of her vulnerability, and what had provoked it. ‘You mean you haven’t told your secretary you’ve been sleeping with one of the clients?’

‘Of course I haven’t!’ she retorted, until she realised that she was playing this all wrong. Calm it down, she told herself. Calm it down. Surely her disappearance should have set his mind at rest—made him realise that she wasn’t going to make a big deal out of it?

She tried the kind of smile that she imagined a sophisticated woman-of-the-world might turn onto one of her many lovers. ‘Anyway, there’s nothing to tell, is there?’ she finished brightly.

‘Nothing to tell?’ he echoed incredulously. ‘You let me take your clothes off and to enter your body and move inside you and bring you to orgasm and yet you describe this as nothing?’

‘Gianluca!’ Her cheeks flared with heat, and with the first heavy beat of desire. ‘Please!’

‘Sì? Che cosa hai? What is the matter with you?’ His mouth twisted with fury and with something else too—something which felt bizarrely close to jealousy. ‘Do you do this all the time, with different men? Different clients?’ he finished insultingly.

The accusation was like a knife-wound and Aisling gripped at the desk. ‘I don’t—of course I don’t! You can’t think that!’

‘Why not? Why should I believe you?’

Accusation blazed from his black eyes and Aisling felt weak. He really did think she was some kind of unprincipled pleasure-seeker! ‘Believe me if you want, or don’t!’ she said. ‘I don’t have to pass some kind of a morality test—especially with a man like you!’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘And what exactly is that supposed to mean?’ he questioned softly.

‘Oh, come on, Gianluca—don’t try to play the innocent with me. You’re an intelligent man!’ Her words were tumbling out thick and fast and Aisling could feel the threatening break of tears at the edge of them and wondered what had happened to her determination to stay calm.

Think of everything you’ve worked for, Aisling—don’t throw it away in a crazy moment of turbulent emotion.

Yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself, and maybe it was the cold, hurtful expression in his eyes—as if she had done something unspeakably wrong, instead of simply opting for damage limitation to avoid an awkward scene the following morning.

She swallowed away the threat of tears and drew a deep breath to steady herself. ‘Maybe you make love to lots of different women like that?’

‘Make love?’ His laugh was scornful. ‘Cara, please! I implore you not to dress it up into something it wasn’t. That had nothing to do with love, and everything to do with raw sex.’

Aisling recoiled, twisting her fingers together in her lap and digging the nails sharply into the fleshy part of her palm. She had known that all along and yet to hear him say so was oddly and profoundly wounding. And this was what she had feared, what she had warned herself she must never do—to read more into what had happened than he intended her to. Thank heaven she had left when she did—taken the upper hand instead of being shown the door and made to feel like some fallen woman.

‘Why are you here?’ she whispered.

Why indeed? Because he had woken up alone in bed the next morning, aching to possess her once more—only to discover the space where she had lain was empty? She had gone.

Gianluca was used to ending it where affairs were concerned … and then only when his appetite had been fully sated. And this time it had not. It had not just left him wanting her—it had left him wanting her more. For once, he felt at some kind of disadvantage and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all. His mouth flattened into an implacable line—he wanted to lash out at her for the frustration he still felt.

‘You took my car,’ he said coldly.

Aisling’s heart kicked against her ribcage, hating herself for the terrible wave of disappointment which washed over her. What had she been expecting him to say? That he’d wanted to carry on holding her? That she was the kind of woman he’d spent his life waiting for? Oh, you idiot, Aisling. ‘How like a man,’ she lashed back. ‘To worry about his precious car.’

‘It’s not about the damned car!’ he gritted. ‘You made me look a fool! I woke in the morning and thought that you must have gone for awalk before breakfast.’ He shook his head as he remembered. ‘I went downstairs to find you but none of the maids had seen you. They looked at me in confusion, and then with embarrassment when they showed me your note.’

‘So you were worried about your reputation?’ Aisling queried acidly.

‘A concept which clearly does not concern you.’ He enjoyed seeing her wince—damn it, she could wince some more!

‘I left the car at your office,’ she defended. ‘I only borrowed it.’

‘You shouldn’t have taken it in the first place!’

‘Maybe I shouldn’t—but what was I supposed to do? I had a flight to catch.’

He raised haughty black eyebrows in a gesture of disbelief. ‘You don’t think that I would have driven you back to Rome—or got you onto another flight? Or even chartered a plane to take you back to London?’

Aisling stared unseeingly at the neat, uncluttered expanse of her desk. How incongruous it would sound if she told him that she’d awoken with a feeling of shame that she could have so compromised their professional relationship. And she had panicked, wanting to keep what little was left of the tatters of her pride. Running away had seemed the only way out at the time.

Deep down she had known that she’d behaved badly—but now she could see that she had thrown a poor light on more than her reputation. Because a woman who so bitterly regretted having taken a lover would look like a very indiscriminate woman indeed …

‘I’m sorry I ran out like that. I’m sorry I took the car,’ she said baldly and looked up into the cold black eyes. ‘There. You have your apology. What else do you want me to do about it?’

Conflicting thoughts began to spin around in his head and for once in his life, Gianluca wasn’t sure.

He wanted to tell her to go to hell!

But he also wanted her to lift her hand and unclip her hair and let it fall all around her shoulders and … and …

He stifled a groan. Ultimately, what did he really want?

Yet he knew the answer to this. It had been eating away at him for weeks—ever since he had realised that she had no intention of contacting him again. A woman he had bedded not begging for more!

At first, he hadn’t believed it—he had thought that she was playing a game of cat and mouse, as women tended to. But no. The expected, slightly awkward phone call had not come—nor the e-mail purporting to be about business, but with a tell-tale ending like: It was great to see your vineyard … and if ever you’re over in London …

Nothing! And like all men who had always had their every whim and hunger indulged—to be denied something was uniquely appealing. Did she know that? Was she playing some kind of elaborate game with him—knowing all the right buttons to press? Thinking that if she gave him just a taster and then retreated, he would be prowling round her like an alley-cat?

She was the best head-hunter he had ever employed, but this had nothing to do with her skill at that. He wanted to possess her one last time—enough to let her go without a backward glance—but he recognised that he was going about it the wrong way. The woman who sat behind the desk was now on her own territory and it wasn’t quite so easy to call the shots.

But she still worked for him, didn’t she?

For the first time since he’d walked into her office, he moved away from the door towards her, seeing her pupils dilate at the same time as her fingers flew up to her throat in an instinctive gesture of sexual awareness, and his mouth twisted into a hard smile.

Did she think he was just going to go over to her and take her in his arms? With a certainty which had never failed him, he knew that if he began to kiss her then he would soon have her parting her legs and pleading with him to take her there and then.

The heavy beat of desire throbbed deep in his groin and briefly he contemplated taking such an action, but decided against it. Such a victory would be meaningless. The submission of her body too easy. She would submit with her mind and she would submit willingly! She wanted him, no matter what she protested to the contrary—and wouldn’t the triumph of such a conquest quell his anger as well as his desire?

‘Actually I wanted to talk to you about work,’ he said softly.

The taut sexual tension in the air shattered like a bubble being pierced by a needle and Aisling’s mouth opened and then closed again, his words taking her completely by surprise. ‘Work?’ she echoed dully.

Black eyes seared around her office like a laser-gun. ‘Sì, cara,’ he drawled sarcastically. ‘Work—that well-known four-letter word.’ His black gaze lanced into her and taunted her. ‘Shame on you, Aisling—has all your ambition deserted you? Sapped by a night of sex? I mean, I know I’m good—but that good? You are still in business, I suppose? I take it you still have staff wages to pay?’

‘Well, yes—of course I do. It’s just that I didn’t …’ Her voice trailed off, in a way which wasn’t her usual style at all.

‘Didn’t what, Aisling?’ he probed softly, wondering what had made those ice-blue eyes suddenly grow darker—or could he guess?

She swallowed. ‘I wasn’t sure whether you’d still be wanting my services—’ She flinched. Of all the explanations she could have chosen, that must have been the worst—and, judging from his slow smile, he was enjoying every second of her discomfiture.

So pull yourself together. Stop letting him control the show.

For the first time since he’d walked into her office, she fixed him with a defiant look. ‘I wasn’t sure whether we would continue to be working together, in view of what happened.’

But even as she said the words Aisling realised how much the world must have turned upside down for her to even consider losing him.

If she lost Gianluca’s account, then she couldn’t afford to employ young Jason—and how would it make her feel to think that a promising young graduate could be thrown on the scrap heap simply because she’d allowed sexual hunger to sway her judgement?

Aisling’s business meant pretty much everything to her, and rightly so. It was her baby—and, the way things were panning out in her life, it was probably the only baby she was ever going to have. If she carried on the way she was doing, it would eventually provide her with the security she’d always yearned for. That was her target, anyway.

Was she really prepared to throw her most prestigious contract away, simply because she had allowed an ill-considered passion to take root? Especially if he seemed prepared to forget what had happened.

He was watching her closely—could see the indecision criss-crossing her pale face. ‘Oh, come on, Aisling. You said yourself, it’s nothing. And if it’s nothing, then it shouldn’t affect our professional relationship, should it?’

Aisling bit her lip. Could she go through with it—working with him again under this startling new set of circumstances? ‘You want to discuss the Miami project?’ she questioned.

‘No, cara. I do not. There is a hold-up with the planning application and so for the moment it’s not moving.’

So why was he here? ‘You mean there’s another job in the offing?’ she asked, her professional interest aroused in spite of the bizarre circumstances.

Gianluca gave a slow smile. So the lure had worked, just as he had known it would. The ice-queen would be unable to resist business, wouldn’t she? ‘Of course—and it’s an even bigger project. I’ve been in London all week on business. Why else did you think I was here?’ He glittered her a questioning look. ‘Surely you didn’t think I’d flown over especially to see you?’

‘No, of course not.’ Now she felt stupid. And hurt, too. Had she thought that? And he’d been in the same city for a whole week without contacting her. She tried to keep her voice steady, but it wasn’t easy. ‘What kind of project?’ she asked.

He had thought about taking her out to dinner and then to bed, but now thought better of it. Let her wait and let her wonder. Let her drive herself crazy all night long remembering how it had felt to have Gianluca Palladio make love to her—and let her body ache for him until he was ready to make his move once more!

Deliberately, he glanced at his watch. ‘It’s getting late, and I’m tired. We’ll talk about it tomorrow.’

Their eyes met in a clash of wills. ‘And if I refuse?’

His smile was as cold as marble. ‘Then I will take your professional reputation and I will destroy it,’ he said, in a soft voice. ‘Be very sure of that, cara.’