Chapter One #2
Gritting his teeth, he slammed the brakes on his brain, but still couldn’t help absorbing her beauty. With high heels she would look him almost straight in the eye, and he was tall. She was all curves and straights and fascinating. Sante could only stare.
Was he in a dream he couldn’t wake from?
He’d returned to Rome late last night, come straight to the office, gotten stuck in to a problem and worked through the night.
He thought he’d woken fifteen minutes ago with a minor headache and a dry throat, figured a quick shower would help, but here he was still asleep and—
‘Tell me who you are,’ he muttered in a strangled voice.
The only way to be sure she was real was to reach out and touch her. His muscles tensed in anticipation of pleasure. He gritted his teeth harder as she licked another scrap of pastry from her lower lip.
‘Would you mind turning away?’ she said.
Her tone was absolutely frigid.
Sante instinctively rebelled. He’d seen her looking at him with heat and hunger so what had caused the sea-change in her emotion? For a split second he stared longer, then reality jolted and he stalked out of the bathroom. He stood in the centre of his office and buttoned his shirt to the collar.
What had happened? What had she suddenly thought that made her turn to ice?
He stiffened as the old defensiveness swept over him.
He hadn’t been verbally disciplined in a decade but she’d spoken with the same cold tone of the English school principal of the boarding school he’d been sent to.
He remembered the day his hopes for a life-changing education had been destroyed.
Sante had rejected the sought-after university scholarship before the offer could be rescinded.
He’d been blamed for an accident. His innocence was irrelevant.
Sante had always been blamed. Guys who came from backgrounds like his always were, no matter the truth.
Which was why he’d built his own company.
Why he still operated alone as much as possible.
He had a few property and investment assistants for his portfolio and recently gathered a small group of techs to work through the ideas that wouldn’t let his brain rest. But none spoke to him the way this woman just had.
No one did. Not now. Not since he’d taken complete control of his life and expunged his past. So who was she and why was she taking off her blouse in his private restroom?
His brain didn’t actually care. His brain just wanted to go back in there and drink in her luscious curves.
He’d been caught off guard and he was stupid tired…
No excuses. He was at work. He would focus on her prim disapproval, not her succulent body.
Not that smear of cream on her shirt nor the appetite with which she’d demolished the pastry.
He would not think about the slide of her tongue across her full lips and not her radiant, smooth skin that his fingertips itched to touch.
He wouldn’t focus on any of that. He wouldn’t allow such a distraction to destroy his equilibrium or his reputation.
He planted himself in front of his desk, legs apart, arms folded, and glared at the door, waiting for her to emerge.
‘Who are you and what are you doing here?’ he demanded the second she walked out.
Her new shirt was buttoned to the base of her creamy neck but the copious material didn’t hide the curvaceous body beneath.
He made himself focus on her face, blinking as a vague thought stirred in the back of his still-distracted brain.
Yes, her mood had gone from hunger to hatred but there was something about the set of her eyes that made him pause. Not just their stunning clarity but—
‘Adele hired me to run the office while she attends to a personal matter,’ she said in that annoyingly precise and prim way. ‘She didn’t want to disturb you. Apparently, you don’t like that.’
‘What?’ He frowned. There’d been fewer emails from his office manager than usual but Adele knew his preferred method and frequency of communication. ‘I’ve been at a conference—’
‘That ended five days ago. Weekdays that is,’ the curvy brunette interrupted icily. ‘There’s been a weekend in the middle as well.’
He stiffened. Who was this woman to judge his routine?
Sante loathed judgement of all forms. He often was away for days at a stretch, and he relied on Adele to keep things ticking along as she had for nearly the past nine years.
This was normal for them and why he’d given her full oversight over the office.
But if there was a problem, Adele would’ve definitely made contact.
Admittedly, he’d gone deep into a contemplative hole this past week but the fact that his assistant hadn’t bothered him surely meant that whatever the problem was, it couldn’t be that bad. ‘How long does she need off?’
‘Adele hired me to act as office manager for the next three months.’
He reeled. That wasn’t happening. He couldn’t have this walking distraction near him for that long. ‘And I’m supposed to just take your word for that?’
‘If you’d bothered to come into the office, or even, I don’t know, picked up your phone to personally talk to any one of your staff, then you’d already know.’
Her chastening tone irritated him. He had missed a call from Adele a few days ago and he’d not had a chance to return it.
He’d emailed through various instructions as normal, though.
And gotten a reply. But now he wondered who the reply had been from.
He swallowed uncomfortably. Why hadn’t Adele emailed about this?
Or tried calling again? The older woman had been his first hire and still was his most reliable, loyal employee, so much so he’d given her leeway in the office set-up.
She’d directly hired half those young techs and her instincts were usually good.
The last thing he wanted was to lose her.
She sorted any office issues before they were even brought to his attention.
But maybe that was what she’d tried to do here.
‘Adele was almost as worried about inconveniencing you as she was worried about Bruno,’ the brunette beauty added in his silence.
Any last lingering haze of sexual arousal still enveloping Sante evaporated in a blink. ‘What’s wrong with Bruno?’ he snapped.
‘He’s had a stroke.’
‘What?’ Sante leaned back on the edge of his desk, his legs emptying of strength in the shock. Why hadn’t Adele been in touch when it had been this serious? ‘When?’
‘Adele can’t have any more stress or she’ll become unwell,’ she added. ‘If you knew her, you’d know that.’
Of course he knew that! ‘She should have come to me. I would have given her—’
‘And if you really knew her, you’d know she wouldn’t ever ask for or accept your charity.’
But he did know that, too, because he did know his very efficient executive.
Okay, perhaps not all that well personally because that was how both he and Adele preferred it.
She was efficient, discreet, reliable. She worked exact hours—she never would have turned up as early as this—yet she got absolutely everything done.
Always. Adele was the perfect employee. Or she had been until hiring this woman as her temporary replacement in the office. He was not the bad guy here.
‘Or is leaving people to suffer alone your forte?’
Sante went very still as his pulse suddenly roared in his ears. The creamy-skinned brunette was unnaturally still, too. He mentally repeated her soft accusation several times until it sank in. Then he stepped forward and grabbed her arm because he still needed to be sure. ‘What did you just say?’
* * *
Mia shouldn’t have said it but her tongue had run away before her brain could catch it.
She hated this man. With her heart and soul she hated him.
Sante Trovato had ruined years of her brother’s life.
Because of him her brother Dario had suffered so much.
He’d endured physical pain, emotional betrayal and he’d lost so much time.
And now Sante was her temporary boss and looking every inch the ruthless billionaire that he was.
His presence was shocking enough, but that she’d felt an appallingly intense moment of sexual attraction to him was horrifying.
‘Who are you?’ His voice was still barely above a whisper, yet every menacing word reverberated to her bones.
Except it wasn’t only her bones that responded.
She was so weakened by him she didn’t even try to jerk her upper arm free of his grip—and he wasn’t even holding her that tightly.
His strength was leashed and he still held back from giving her the oddly disconcerting feeling of being too close yet distanced.
The insane thing was for a split second she wanted him closer.
He was unbelievably handsome—no wonder it had taken her a moment to recognise him.
Sante had gone from a lanky teen with close-cropped hair to a tall, muscular man whose tousled hair had an untameable life to it.
Mia cleared her throat, trying to rationalise that her attraction was merely from the surprise—she’d not expected to see a bare-chested man in the office, definitely not such a built one, and as she’d not seen let alone touched a guy in a long, long while, that moment had simply been a basic physiological response to masculine beauty.
Animal instinct. She was over it already.
Except she needed him to release her and step back.
He didn’t. He just stepped closer still.
‘Who are you?’ He ground the question, a muscle jumping in his jaw.