The Heat Of Passion

‘My father—’

Carlo straightened to his full six feet three inches and shifted a silencing hand, dark golden eyes gleaming over her pallor. ‘He stole from me and from his employees. We know that. Do we really need to discuss it?’

‘Do you have to be so callous?’ Jessica demanded, abruptly unfreezing from the spot to move forward in unconscious appeal. ‘He made a huge error of judgement—’

‘The prisons are full of people who make huge errors,’ Carlo incised, his nostrils flaring. ‘Theft? Such a sordid crime and yet so personal—’

‘P-personal?’ Involuntarily, she stammered.

‘It was for your sake alone that I bought Amory Engineering at an inflated price. What you might call a gesture of good faith towards your family—’

‘Good faith?’ A choked laugh fell from her lips as she studied him with unhidden loathing and disbelief. ‘You don’t know what good faith is. It was blackmail. You tried to put pressure on me by playing on my family’s financial position—’

‘I was demonstrating that I look after my own,’ Carlo cut in with ruthless precision.

‘Your own?’ she repeated with revulsion. ‘I was never yours!’

A winged ebony brow was elevated. ‘You were mine the first moment our eyes met but you were too stupid and craven to face that reality—’

‘How dare you!’

‘How dare you enter this room where you lay with me and try to deny what happened here between us?’ Carlo demanded with blistering contempt.

She wanted to hit him. She wanted to scream back from the depths of her humiliation. But she wouldn’t allow herself to be drawn. ‘My father—’ she said very deliberately.

‘Was the most cosseted employee I have ever had,’ Carlo interrupted. ‘I allowed him complete autonomy over a company which was no longer his and in return I expected loyalty, not common theft.’

‘He can sell his house and pay back every penny!’ Jessica swore furiously. ‘Isn’t that enough for you?’

‘Your family home carries two mortgages. Why do you think he stole?’ Carlo returned drily. ‘I wish to hear no more on the subject.’

‘He’s desperately ashamed of himself.’ Jessica hadn’t known that the house was mortgaged. She concealed her dismay with difficulty.

‘This subject bores me.’ Carlo sent her a grim glance.

‘I have no interest in your father except as a means to an end. You can’t influence my judgement with sentimental pleas. There is no sentiment in business—’

‘So you simply brought me here to gloat?’ she gathered with flashing eyes and a look of glowing scorn. ‘You make me sick, Carlo. I will stand by my father through whatever you throw at him—’

‘You like weak men, don’t you?’ he said silkily ‘Men who need mothering and support, men who make you feel that you’re the one in the driver’s seat. Maybe if I’d wept and plucked violin strings instead of demanded, you would -have come to me instead...’

‘Don’t be crass.’ Jessica was trembling with a rage that was becoming increasingly hard to control. ‘I would never have come to you. I hated you for your primitive macho outlook and—’

‘I am not primitive.’ The insertion was immensely quiet but the temperature had shot up. ‘I have Greek blood.’

For a split-second she was tempted to laugh. So vast an amount of blatant pride and arrogance dwelt in that assurance. But then she clashed with golden eyes that burned with the ferocity of a tiger about to pounce and all desire to laugh was stolen from her. Instantly the alarm bells rang in a frantic peal inside her head. That ferocious, utterly terrifying temper... She found herself instinctively glancing round to measure the distance to the door.

‘And you are not my equal. You proved that six years ago!’ he shot at her. ‘Most conclusively did you prove your stupidity—’

Her small hands clenched into fists. ‘If you call me stupid just one more time, Carlo, I won’t be responsible for what I do!’

‘Per Dio,’ he murmured with a brilliant, slashing smile. ‘If I push a little more, will you rip off my shirt and beg me to take you the way you did the last time?’

‘Dear God, how can you talk to me like that?’

‘Easily. Then,’ Carlo spread two very expressive hands, ‘I have no respect for you. What did you expect?’

The rage was beginning to gain on her self-control. She was having a very tough time holding it in.

‘You behaved like a whore—’

‘You swine!’ she positively spat at him, powered by a tremendous wave of aggression.

‘You were true neither to me nor to Turner,’ Carlo drawled with caustic bite. ‘He offered marriage. I offered something less secure. You went for the wedding-ring. And you lost.’

‘I married the man I loved ... I didn’t lose anything!’ Jessica slung back hotly, her adrenalin pumping madly through her veins.

Carlo threw his darkly handsome head back and laughed uproariously. ‘Are you telling me that you didn’t think of me in the dark of night? That you didn’t crave the passion I alone could give you? If you’d responded to him the way you responded to me, he’d have run away from you in terror!’

Jessica launched herself at him like a lioness. Two incredibly powerful hands snapped round her wrists and held her back. An insolent smile curved his hard mouth. ‘You dress like a fifty-year-old spinster but you’re a little animal at heart, aren’t you, cara? I scratch the surface of that ladylike exterior and I find teeth and claws. I like that. It excites me—’

‘You filthy swine...shut up!’ she screamed.

‘And it excites the hell out of you too!’ Long fingers hauled her closer as she attempted to kick him. He caught both flailing hands in one large male hand and pinned them behind her back, forcing her closer, staring with sardonic amusement down into her blazing violet eyes and pressing a long muscular thigh against her stomach as she twisted and tried to apply a well-aimed knee. ‘All that howling sexual frustration just begging to be released. I could take you now here ... up against the wall, on the floor, anywhere and you’d love it!’ he asserted with rawly offensive confidence. ‘Is that what you want?’

CHAPTER TWO

‘NEVER!’ Jessica gasped breathlessly, searing his dark, savage visage with all the tortured fury of her ignominious and powerless position. ‘The very idea of you touching me again makes me feel physically sick!’

‘One lesson wasn’t enough for you, was it?’ Carlo murmured huskily, narrowed eyes raking over her outraged features. ‘Don’t you remember what it was like when I made love to you?’

‘That wasn’t love,’ Jessica vented fiercely. ‘That was lust!’

‘And you have a problem with that... I don’t,’ Carlo confided in a black velvet purr. And then, with a sardonic laugh, he released her when she was least expecting the gesture and thrust her carelessly back from him.

Jessica was trembling and in considerable distress. She had lost control. Physical and mental control. And that terrified her. Six years ago, she had been twenty, barely out of the teen years and considerably more naive and foolish than she considered herself to be now. The last few minutes were like a blackout inside her mind. She didn’t want to examine them. He had made her so angry she had become violent and that knowledge literally filled her with shame and horror.

Her body felt peculiar. Her heartbeat was still madly accelerated. Her breasts were suddenly extraordinarily sensitive. She was maddeningly aware that the lace cup of her bra was chafing her nipples and that her skin felt stretched and tight. Horrified by what had happened to her body, she studied the floor, fighting to relocate her composure.

‘Let’s get down to business,’ Carlo suggested drily. ‘We’ve wasted enough time.’

‘Business?’ Her brow furrowed.

‘I invited you here for one reason only. You could be of use to me. I need a woman to play a role. A woman I can trust to play that role to the best of her ability and do exactly as she’s told. And I think that that woman could be you—’

Her lashes fluttered in bemusement. ‘I don’t think I follow.’

‘If you are prepared to place yourself without question in my hands for a period, not exceeding three months, I will consider treating your father’s offence with sympathy, understanding and forgiveness...’ Carlo stated quietly.