The Heat Of Passion

‘I will give him another position, then.’

Startled by that most unexpectedly generous offer, she stared at him. ‘Where?’

‘Not here. He needs a fresh start for this second chance. Leave it with me,’ he drawled. ‘I will find him something.’

‘And the money?’ she prompted.

‘He repays,’ Carlo repeated grimly. ‘If he is as sorry and as ashamed as you protest, he will want to repay it. He will not wish to be further in my debt.’

‘But—?’

‘In addition,’ Carlo cut across her interruption drily, ‘the offer of continuing employment will be conditional on his agreement to seek help for his addiction—’

‘He’s not addicted!’ Jessica jumped to her father’s defence.

‘Any man capable of gambling so far above his own income is an addict. He requires therapy to ensure he can withstand future temptation. Now, are you satisfied?’ he demanded shortly, dismissively, making her suspect that he had conceded more than he had planned to concede.

Yet Jessica had hoped for more. She had wanted the debt wiped out as she had promised Dr Guthrie. Whether it was unreasonable or not, she wanted every practical cause of stress removed from her father’s path. ‘You’re getting me pretty cheap, aren’t you?’ she said shakily and then, the instant she saw the dark fury leap into his set features, she wished she had bitten her tongue and stayed silent.

‘You want to go on the payroll for three months for sharing my bed?’ Carlo threw back at her with a flash of even white teeth. ‘A contract maybe, complete with severance pay and an assurance that you retain any jewellery or clothes that I buy you? OK, that is fine by me.’ He moved an expressive brown hand in a gesture that made it very clear that it was anything but fine with him. ‘I have heard of such contracts in America. But do tell me now up-front, what price do you put on that perfect body of yours?’

She wondered sickly whether, if someone handcuffed his talkative hands behind his back, he would still be able to articulate. ‘You know that’s not what I meant.’

‘Do I?’ Nostrils flaring, he surveyed her with derisive dark eyes.

She rested her brow down on the heel of one unsteady hand. It was almost one in the morning. That wouldn’t bother Carlo. He had reserves of energy unknown to less advantaged mortals. She wanted to go to bed but the prospect of bed was fraught with far more alarming possibilities than she could face. ‘At this moment,’ she whispered., ‘all I need to know is what you expect from me over the next three months.’

Silence fell. Since silence was rare from Carlo’s corner, she looked up.

Carlo cleared his throat, tension thrumming from his poised stance by the window. ‘I want you to pretend to be my fiancée—’

She couldn’t hide her astonishment. ‘Why?’

‘I have my reasons,’ he parried, the anger gone and replaced by a set gravity which disturbed her.

‘I don’t see why you can’t tell me—’

‘I will tell you only this,’ he breathed shortly, his golden eyes grim and distant as he studied her. ‘I have been estranged from my father for some years and now hie is dying. I wish to spend some time with him and, to facilitate this wish, I require a fiancee to accompany me to his home.’

Shaken by the unemotional explanation, Jessica studied him in turn, helplessly, maddeningly curious about why a pretend fiancee should be a necessary requirement of such a visit. She presumed he was intending a reconciliation with his father. Why muddy the water with the presence of a fake fiancee, for goodness’ sake? Especially when his father was dying ... a stranger would surely be even less welcome in those circumstances?

Her smooth brow furrowed. ‘Once you told me that you had no family.’

‘In the sense of the true meaning of the word “family”,’ he stressed, ‘that was the truth. My mother died when I was fourteen. I was sent off to school. My father remarried and after a while he chose to forget my existence. He had his life and I my own until, some years ago, we met again at his instigation...’ His strong features shadowed, his eyes night-dark and impassive. ‘And what happened between us then severed all familial ties,’ he completed harshly.

There were so many questions she wanted answered that she was on the edge of her seat. ‘What happened?’ she finally prompted in frustration when it was clear that he had no intention of continuing.

Carlo cast her a sardonic smile. ‘Like all women, you are incurably inquisitive. Knowledge is a weapon in a calculating woman’s hands. Do you think I don’t know that?’ he gibed, scanning her sudden pallor with derision. ‘I don’t spill my guts to anyone, cora... I never have and I never will.’

He made her feel like a peeping tom with a door slammed shut on her prying fingers. It hurt, humiliated.

‘I only require one thing from you. A good act. My father is not a stupid man. He will not be easily deceived.’

‘I don’t want to deceive anyone.’

‘That’s why we really will be lovers by the time we arrive. Intimacy, like sexual chemistry, is something that can be felt,’ Carlo asserted with husky conviction. ‘The sole deception will be the pretence of love and of course...my intention to marry you:

Lovers...She stiffened helplessly at the threat of what was yet to come. Arrive where? she might have asked, had not her nervous tension been too heightened for her to care at that moment. But still she longed to know why he was prepared to put on such an elaborate deception for his father’s benefit. And then cynicism suggested his motive. His father was dying, presumably a wealthy man. Was Saracini Senior attaching conditions to his heir’s inheritance? Was he demanding that Carlo settle down and marry? Could anyone be that old-fashioned these days? And was cold, hard cash at the foot of Carlo’s deception?

‘I think it’s time we went to bed.’

Jessica froze. Carlo reached down for her hands and drew her up slowly, almost tauntingly. ‘You’re trembling... why? You’ve been married for years; you are not without experience.’ Predictably, the reference to her marital status darkened his glittering eyes, hardened his mouth and roughened his syllables.

‘That doesn’t make any difference!’

‘Dio...’ he swore, running a familiar forefinger down the buttons lining her silk blouse and then pausing to flick up to the top one and slide it loose, allowing himself access to the shadowed valley between her breasts. ‘Of course it makes a difference. Were you a faithful wife?’

He towered over her. His broad shoulders blocked out the light. She felt trapped and cornered and told herself that that was why she could barely get air into her lungs. A blunt fingertip, very dark against her pale skin, hovered and she stopped breathing altogether. ‘Of c-course I was—’

‘Really? I find that hard to believe,’ Carlo murmured softly as his fingers hit on the next button.

‘Why?’ she gasped half an octave higher.

‘You weren’t faithful before the wedding ... why afterwards?’ he prompted. ‘If you had been my bride, I would have killed you. I certainly wouldn’t have gone ahead and still married you.’

I would have killed you. Said softly, conversationally but with incredible certainty. A buzzing sound filled her eardrums as a hand brushed across the swell of her breast. All of a sudden she felt light-headed and dizzy but her breasts felt full and heavy.

‘Did you tell him about what happened between us?’ Carlo asked.

‘Yes!’

‘So you told him the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I bet you didn’t,’ Carlo guessed with cruel and merciless amusement. ‘I doubt if you gave him a blow-by-blow account... he’d never have recovered from it.’

‘I don’t want to talk about this!’ Jessica slung at him tremulously and then, belatedly registering that her blouse was now hanging open, she backed away from him so fast, the side table behind her dug painfully into her hipbone. ‘Carlo... I met you again less than five hours ago—’

‘Who’s counting? I’m not. I would have been at this stage four and a half hours ago if you hadn’t been so stubborn—’

‘That’s disgusting!’ she threw back in raw outrage.

‘But truthful...don’t you know yet how the male mind works?’

She was starting to find out. Carlo was surveying her with smouldering golden eyes, hot with unhidden desire. And the sexual charge her mother had once mentioned was like fireworks in the heavy atmosphere. She edged round the table beneath that tracking, utterly ruthless gaze. ‘Carlo...please...not tonight... I mean—’ the tip of her pink tongue snaked out to moisten her lower lip ‘—I mean, you can’t really want to do this—’

‘I do.’ He bent down and shattered what remained of her fast-fleeing composure by letting his own tongue follow the path her own had taken along the full curve of her sultry lower lip, and heat surged between her thighs in a sensation long buried but never forgotten. She leapt back as though he had struck her and sent a lamp flying, her heart thumping like a jack-hammer against her breastbone.

He ignored the crash and caught her arm before she could busy herself reaching down for the broken pieces.

‘I want a bath!’ she exclaimed in desperation.