Modern Romance Collection February 2025, #1-4

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE

V INCENZO G IANSANTE STOOD looking down at the woman in his bed. She was asleep still, and he did not wish to wake her.

But it needed to be done.

For a moment, though, he went on looking down at her, only half covered by the quilt, exposing her sculpted, naked back. She lay on her front, one hand near her slender throat, the other flung wide, across the empty side of the bed. Her long dark hair streamed over the pillow, and her face was turned towards where he had until recently lain.

His face was expressionless, but thoughts moved behind his eyes. Had he really done what he had the night before? The evidence was here in front of him, in the dim light seeping past the hotel room curtains, shafting from the lit en suite bathroom. She’d slept through his shower and getting himself dressed for the day ahead. But then, after all, there had been little enough sleep during the night...

He pulled his mind away. Best not to think back that far. Best not to think of how he’d slowly, sensually peeled from her the short, clinging dress that had so perfectly moulded her perfectly proportioned body...how he’d slipped the catch of her bra so that her ripe breasts spilled free for him to cup them with his palms, feel how they engorged and crested at his touch...how she’d leant back into him, her mouth reaching for his, her hand winding around his neck, lips opening to his...

Fatally, he felt memory impacting his body, making him want to reach down and stroke the silken mass of her tumbled hair, move down beside her, scoop her lissom, yielding body to his again, taste and take all that she had offered him last night...all that they had both so lushly indulged in...

But that was not possible—and would not be wise.

Why had he succumbed as he had the night before? Whatever had it been about her that had made him focus on her at that party in one of the hotel’s private function rooms, when his plan had only been to network with those who might prove useful to him in business here in London?

Whatever it had been, the allure of those wide-set, long-lashed, sea-blue eyes with their intriguing hint of green had made him want to look and look again at the face that somehow combined a fine-boned delicacy with dramatically contoured cheekbones and a lushly curving mouth. At the slender but oh-so-shapely body, and the clinging dress with its deep cleavage, its thigh-skimming hemline that exposed the length of her stockinged legs, their length emphasised by the five-inch heels that had brought her closer to his own six foot height.

Whatever it had been, and whyever he had made the decision to let himself indulge in her—and an indulgence it had been—he knew now that it was necessary to call time on it.

He reached out a hand, lightly touched her bare, exposed shoulder. She barely stirred, so he said her name.

‘Siena...’

Her name had been the means of extending their initial conversation, after he’d made his split-second decision not to rebuff her. To allow himself the indulgence of talking to her, looking her over. Just as she had been doing to him. He’d been aware of it immediately, in the widening of her eyes, in the tell-tale colour flaring briefly across those sculpted cheekbones, the slight but revealing parting of her lips, the even more revealing breathiness. All had told him that she was reacting to him as strongly as he was reacting to her.

Their subsequent conversation had merely been a means to an end. Her Italian name, given after the Tuscan city of the same name, had provided a link to his own nationality, leading her to ask where he came from in Italy, which had led on to why he was in London, which had led on to yet more anodyne exchanges that had allowed them both to continue with the actual purpose of their conversation—which was, after a suitably appropriate and not too unsubtle interval, to allow him to suggest that if she had no pressing reason to linger at the party they might remove themselves to dine at the hotel, in order to continue their acquaintance away from the noise of the party.

And that would lead to one place only—as both of them had known. The Falcone restaurant had been only across the lobby. She had come with him—why would she not?—and from then on the decision had been made.

And now...?

Now he must make another decision. Had already made it—must simply abide by it. Execute it. Without further hesitation. Without reconsidering. Without any second thoughts at all.

Without regret.

Regret was not something he could indulge in. He’d indulged in quite enough already. Time to be tough—including on himself.

No more prevarication.

‘Siena?’ He said her name again, his voice a little louder.

This time she stirred. She was waking, he could tell. She lifted her head, looking up at him. Her wanton hair tumbled around her bare shoulders as she raised herself on her elbow, eyes blinking as she focussed on him.

‘I have to leave now,’ he said. His voice was cool, matter-of-fact. ‘But for yourself there is no hurry. Please order breakfast when you will—it is all chargeable to the room.’

He did not wait for her to say anything—he did not want to hear it. What he wanted was to move on with his day. His schedule was full, and his first appointment—a breakfast meeting at a London club—imminent.

He walked from the room, his stride unhurried, picking up his briefcase as he went. He was booked to stay here tonight, but would not return till late. Then he would be flying back to Milan, where he was based.

And the night he had just spent would slip into the past.

He closed the room door behind him and headed for the elevator, his mind already going to the business meeting ahead of him. It was occupying all his thoughts. Putting the night that had passed behind him.

Siena lowered herself back down to the pillow, soft behind her head. She felt cold, suddenly, but did not pull the duvet higher.

She stared up at the ceiling.

Aware that her heart was thudding.

Aware that she was completely naked.

Aware that she had just spent the night with a man she had met only the previous evening. Aware of so much...

A sudden heat knifed through her.

Dear God, had she really done what she thought she had?

Her gaze went around the room. Luxuriously appointed. But then this was the Mayfair Falcone, so of course it was luxurious. As elegant and upmarket as the restaurant where she’d dined, with its famous chef and famous reputation and sky-high prices. As elegant as that swish party in one of the hotel’s opulent function rooms which her old school-friend Megan, whom she was staying with in London, had dragged her to, insisting she needed something fun and carefree and hedonistic after all she’d been through, and insisting, too, that she look the part for so glamorous and fashionable a venue.

So Megan had loaned her one of her own designer cocktail frocks, in mauve shot silk. It was a size too small, but Megan had said she’d looked a knockout in it, and then sat her down and done her hair and nails and make-up—far more extravagantly and glamorously than Siena was used to. Then she’d handed her a pair of strappy evening shoes with sky-high heels, thrust a satin evening bag at her and, looking a knockout herself, had piled them both into a taxi to whisk them from Megan’s flat in Notting Hill to Mayfair, to disgorge them at the Falcone.

‘It’s part work, part social,’ Megan, who was a high-flyer at a fancy PR company, had told her of the party she was taking her to. ‘And it’s just what you need after all these tough years. You put your life on hold—and, yes, I know why you did it, and applaud you for it—but now you’re starting your life again. Off to art school in the autumn—finally! Just like you always dreamt. And a flash bash like tonight’s will get you back into the swing of things. You haven’t had a social life for years!’

She’d squeezed Siena’s hand in the taxi, her voice sympathetic.

‘So let your hair down tonight! Be someone different—go crazy...indulge yourself. Who knows? Meet someone!’

As Siena sat back against the pillows, alone in the bed, alone in the room, a hollow opened up inside her and found a chill was replacing that flush of heat.

Meet someone...

Megan’s words echoed in her head, and the hollow inside her gaped wider.

Instantly he was in her vision. Just as he had been last night when, gingerly taking a glass of champagne from a passing server, she had been inadvertently jostled by someone, making her reverse sharply and step against another guest. She’d turned to apologise—and the apology had died on her lips.

She’d felt her eyes widen, her mouth open, colour flare.

The most lethal-looking male she had ever seen in her life...

He was tall, wearing black tie like every other male there, and as her eyes had gazed helplessly she’d registered dark hair, a narrow face, bladed nose, sculpted mouth and eyes...oh, eyes that were dark, and deep and—

‘I’m... I’m so sorry!’ Her voice had been breathless, because all the air had been sucked from her lungs.

For a second he had not responded. Then: ‘Not at all,’ he’d said politely.

It had been perfect English, but with a trace of an accent in it...something that had only added to her breathlessness.

She’d wanted to move away—there had been no reason not to. But she’d seemed quite paralysed.

He’d given a slight nod. ‘It’s quite a crush, isn’t it?’ he’d said.

Again, she’d heard an accent in his voice—an accent, she’d realised, that went with his Mediterranean skin tone. And there had been something about him—maybe the cut of his tuxedo, or the groomed style of his hair, or just that cosmopolitan air... She’d given a silent gulp. Or maybe it had been the fact that he had openly let those dark, deep eyes rest on her in a way that drove yet more air from her lungs.

‘Yes, it is,’ she’d heard herself reply.

‘There’s more space over by the French windows,’ he’d said.

He’d gestured with his hand—an elegant, effortless movement which had let Siena see that he was also holding a glass of champagne.

She’d moved in that direction, and realised he was moving as well.

‘Definitely better,’ he’d said. And smiled at her.

And the air which had just begun to creep back into her lungs had vanished again...

After that it was almost a blur—and yet every moment was crystal-clear.

He’d asked her name, and told her his own, and then asked if she’d ever been to the city she’d been named after. She’d said she’d never been to Italy, and asked where he came from...

And then, at some point—and she didn’t really know why, or when, or how—she had been walking into the Falcone restaurant with him, trying to move gracefully on her towering high heels. And then, when he’d wined her and dined her, she’d found—though she didn’t really know how—that he was ushering her into one of the elevators and she was going up to his room...

How, she might not have known...but why , she burningly did...

She felt her face flare now, even as the rest of her body, naked and bare, grew cold.

Because she had never, in all her six and twenty years, met anyone like him before...anyone who had had the slightest measure of his impact on her—raw, visceral...sensual...

Making her pulse throb, her pupils dilate, her breath catch with an overpowering awareness of his physical appeal—an irresistible appeal...

So she had not.

She had not resisted him.

Because I could not resist him. Because he only had to look at me the way he did, with those heavy-lidded eyes that seemed to be turning me inside out and outside in, melting me down to the core...

Desire—that was what it had been. A sensual white-out...

She felt her cheeks flare again with the memory of it. Never in her life had she done what she had done last night—but then never in her life had she ever encountered a man like that. A man she had been completely, totally enthralled by. Helpless to resist...

Resistance had been the very last thing she’d wanted to impose on herself. Instead, she had given herself, all-consumingly, urgently, to all that he skilfully, seductively, meltingly aroused in her, from his first sensuous kiss to the moment of hungry, almost unbearable pleasure that had flooded her body as it had fused with his, pulsing through her, wave after incredible wave, as her body had arched beneath his, her head thrown back, crying out aloud...

Again, and again, and again...

All night long.

And now...

Now there was no more heat—only a chill spreading through her that was not just physical...

He was gone.

After their night together—after that night together—he was just...gone.

The chill turned to cold. Filled her veins.