Chapter Four
ROCCO HAD LEARNED to be assertive from a young age.
Cynical, even. Being yanked from the home of the one person who had seemed to care about him had chipped edges into him.
They’d been sharpened into serrated peaks by the rest of life’s ups and downs—most especially by Otto Braun’s twisted determination to undercut Rocco’s hard-won success purely to strike at Silvio.
Rocco couldn’t help letting that get to him sometimes.
He ran a multinational company that took on huge projects.
He was constantly juggling priorities and was spread very thin.
Of course, he would have moments where he was terse and unyielding, especially when an underling brought him bad news.
Most especially when that news was once again a report that GPS had lost a bid to Vorstoben, the company he most hated to lose to.
And, yes, Rocco had been suffering acute sexual frustration for three years. He was very short on patience these days.
He wouldn’t have called himself grumpy, though. Grumpy was a word for old men who gathered outside cafés. The ones who had seen too much of the world and lost hope for a better future. Or, at least, had lost the ambition to fight for one.
Rocco still brimmed with drive and zest, so he took umbrage at the word when he overheard it, even if his employee wasn’t entirely wrong when he said, “Any boss who’s so grumpy he can’t even be polite should get himself laid, rather than take it out on us.”
Rocco paused outside the break-room door, then stepped into the open doorway and leaned his shoulder there. The twentysomethings holding coffee mugs all went slack-jawed with dread.
“Benedetto.” Rocco addressed the young buck who’d brought him the unpleasant news a few minutes ago and had taken the brunt of being the messenger of bad tidings, the one whose voice he had recognized remarking on his sex life and lack thereof.
“Prepare a proposal that shows you have something to offer this company beyond opinions on what I should do with my personal time. Bring it to me Friday or don’t come back on Monday. ”
“I—” Benedetto seemed to struggle to swallow. “I’m very sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. Impress me.” Then, because he wasn’t so grumpy he had lost all his manners, Rocco added facetiously, “Per favore.”
Twit.
Rocco walked away, not wondering when he’d last had sex because he recalled far too often the day he hadn’t.
Don’t, he reprimanded himself. He didn’t want to suffer an erection at his desk for hours and already knew he would if he let himself recall that day.
Dio, he wished he could forget it.
Maybe he would have, if he hadn’t seen Mira on a handful of occasions since.
Every single time, she’d looked through him rather than at him, always leaving the moment she spotted him.
While his entire body was eaten up by craving for her.
Why? Before he met her, he had never had a problem finding female company and enjoying it.
Now, he measured every woman by the standard Mira had set.
Were they bright-eyed with curiosity? Did they have a smile that felt like sunlight cracking through clouds?
Were they wearing a facade of polished beauty that hid their ability to surrender to incendiary passion?
Get over it, he ordered himself for the thousandth time, yet still his mind churned through their conversation, trying to find the way he could have handled things better.
He always came back to the bald truth that he couldn’t betray Silvio. Everything he had, he owed to Silvio’s belief in him. He could never betray his friend.
So he had to forget about Mira.
Had to.
As Rocco walked past his assistant, she reminded him he had a one-o’clock.
“Who?” he demanded, trying to recall.
“A high-profile client with the Salerno office.” She shrugged an apology. “They want to renovate a villa, but insist on meeting with you first. No name, but I ran it by you yesterday.”
“Right.” He’d forgotten. It would be some movie star or tech bro from America trying to keep from being recognized.
This happened occasionally. These spoiled celebrities didn’t appreciate that Rocco worked on developments far more complex than changing out taps and toilets, but a high-profile renovation was the bread and butter for local crews like the one in Salerno.
For them, he would rock this client to sleep and tuck them into bed so they would sign the check and move things along.
He placed a call he was due to return and sat down at his desk. Grumpily.
Something had to change. It would serve him right if that insolent Benedetto told him the most beneficial thing he could do for this company was set up Rocco’s profile on a hookup app.
Rocco had his chair turned to the window that looked across the rooftops of Rome and was discussing project details with one of his most important business partners, when his office door opened and a woman’s voice said stridently, “I’m telling you, I am that client. He definitely wants to speak to me.”
The voice in his ear faded as a ring of disbelief replaced it. Rocco turned and watched Mira Braun push into his office.
She wore no jacket, just a long-sleeved knitted peacock-blue dress that hugged her figure.
The shoulders were cut out, revealing her honey-gold skin.
The zipper ran the length of the front. It was the kind of dress that opened on both ends.
The tab at the top had been pulled low down her chest, showcasing the round inner swells of her modest breasts and offering a glimpse of dark blue lace.
The bottom tab was high between thighs that were already well exposed by the short skirt.
Her long legs were anchored into six-inch heels, popping her calf muscles.
The shoes gave her a sensual swagger as she walked toward him.
“I need to speak with you,” she said, giving her loose hair a shake.
He would have sworn he hadn’t forgotten a thing about her, but he hadn’t remembered what a pretty shade of caramel her hair was, naturally picking up glints of gold.
The long waves softened her square jawline, framing her hazel eyes and skeptically angled eyebrows.
Her mouth was wide, neither too thin nor very full.
It was painted scarlet and he had not forgotten at all how well it fit under his own.
He wondered if someone had slipped him drugs. This must be a hallucination. How was she here when he had just been thinking of her?
Of course, she was in his thoughts daily, so this was no real coincidence.
“I don’t know how she got up to this floor,” his assistant said.
Look at her, Rocco thought ironically. He couldn’t be angry with his security team for believing whatever lie Mira might have spouted to them, not when his own brain was short-circuiting.
“Leave us,” he said crisply. Into the phone, he said, “I have to call you back, Gio. Something’s come up.”
He’d never said anything more literal in his life. He was instantly straining the zip on his trouser fly. What the hell?
He ended his call and casually picked up the remote on the corner of his desk. As his assistant left, he touched the button that turned his office windows opaque and locked the door with an audible snick.
Mira glanced behind her at the sound. When she looked back at him, there was a hint of wariness in her otherwise confrontational demeanor.
“Yes?” He leaned back in his chair.
Her chest was heaving as though she’d run up all forty flights of stairs. Her lashes fluttered as she met his stare. She pushed her shoulders back and her chin up, but her hands were in fists at her sides.
It struck him that she had come here for a fight, but she didn’t know how to have one. She was a cat who had scrambled her way up a tree, not expecting any other creatures to be here. She was in a fix and didn’t know how to get down.
She hadn’t come prepared for the chemistry that charged the air between them, either.
He was barely prepared for it himself. It had exploded from the first moment he’d seen her in London, when it had doubled and redoubled as they talked, building to a fever pitch by the time she had fallen apart in his lap.
Every time he’d seen her since, this simmering heat had hit full boil the second she entered the room. With his office door locked, the pressure built, but it was tempered by the enmity in her expression.
She had never forgiven him.
And yet, here she was.
Her gaze flickered across his chest in a way he found very gratifying, then followed his arm to the hand that still held the remote.
“Can I help you?” He lifted one eyebrow and set the remote aside, vividly recalling what button he’d pressed that day in London.
Her blush deepened. Thinking of it, too? She stepped forward as though prodded by a knife in her back. She rubbed her lips together and tangled her hands at her middle, twisting a nonexistent ring.
Wait. He narrowed his eyes, experienced a woofing sensation as the doors in his mind were blown open.
“You broke off your engagement.”
“Is it online?” Her lashes flared wide with dread.
“You’re not wearing a ring.” His pulse was a drumbeat in his ears. “When?”
“Three days ago.” She looked at her bare hand as though she didn’t recognize it.
Ah. Now he knew why she was here: rebound sex.
The knowledge burned out anything close to rational thought. This same haze of lust had happened once before, when he’d drawn her onto his lap next to a pool in London.
His memory of that day had locked him into some kind of medieval torture device, one that had kept him caged and in pain, incapable of finding relief with anyone else.
Today, the door sprang open.
“You’re here for revenge.” He set his elbows on the arms of the chair and steepled his fingers beneath his jaw. “I’m listening.”
“How did you know?” Mira asked with shock.
“Why else?” His mouth twisted in cynicism as he rose and came around the desk.