A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [10]
She had wanted him to kiss her a moment ago. It had shown in her face. But a kiss was not what he had in mind. At least not a kiss on the mouth. The only woman he had kissed on the lips since Lucia had been Megan. Gio let a brief, fleeting smile cross his lips at the thought of his new and hugely pregnant sister-in-law. She had brought some much-needed warmth into his half-brother’s life and, he admitted, into his own. Megan he would kiss and hug willingly. And his mother. No one else.
And certainly not this woman. Not some passing stranger he had picked up in a bar purely at the prompting of his most basic masculine urgings. A one-night stand was all it was. All it could ever be. And Teresa understood that. For a moment there he had had his doubts, but the way she had accepted his invitation to dinner, the carefully staged stumble so that he would be forced to take her in his arms, had reassured him of the facts. She knew exactly what was going on; how to play this game.
It should be plain sailing from now on. A meal. Some social chat. A touch of flattery, some light flirtation across a candlelit table. A shared bottle of wine—a nightcap…
And they would share that nightcap in her room. Her room, not his. Taking her to his room implied more than he meant her to take away from this encounter. And, after the nightcap, they would share a bed.
For tonight. And for tonight only.
And tomorrow he would go on his way—alone.
CHAPTER THREE
‘SO WHAT are you doing in England? You don’t look like a tourist and you said you’d planned on meeting someone from work. A business meeting?’
Gio nodded slowly, dark eyes shadowed in the candlelight.
‘I’m a lawyer—and we were to discuss how the case went in court today. A post-mortem if you like.’
‘And how did the case go?’
‘We won.’ It was said with total calm; no hint of any false modesty.
Of course he’d won. Gio didn’t look as if he had ever known failure or defeat in his life.
A faint touch of wary apprehension slid coldly down her spine just at the thought. She wouldn’t like to come up against Giovanni Cardella in court. He would have to be counsel for the prosecution, and she just knew that his approach would be deadly, his questions swift and lethal as a cobra’s strike. In fact she wouldn’t want to come up against Gio in any situation. He would be a formidable opponent, whatever the circumstances.
‘Was it an—an important case?’
She stumbled over the question because her treacherous mind chose just that moment to throw at her the image of another, totally different way she could possibly be against Gio. For a few, feverish seconds, her imagination ran riot at the thought of how it might feel to be held close to that lean, hard body, crushed against the wall of his chest in the grip of those powerful arms that the sleek tailoring of his jacket did nothing to disguise.
‘Important enough. International fraud—a man who’s been making millions… What are you smiling at?’
‘Nothing—I mean—I didn’t know I was…’
The pictures her wayward thoughts had been conjuring up of the way the devastating man opposite her might look with the sophisticated elegance of the jacket and shirt stripped away vanished in a second as the bubble of her fantasy was popped by his probing question. For a moment her hands wavered uncertainly in front of her face while she struggled with the temptation to cover her burning cheeks and hide behind them, away from his searching gaze. But then she forced them down again, reaching instead for her wine glass and taking a much-needed restorative sip.
‘If you must know I was feeling like Cinderella at the ball. I mean—all this…’
The hand that held her glass waved rather wildly as she used it to indicate her luxurious surroundings, the heavy linen tablecloths, the silverware and crystal glasses, the immaculately uniformed waiters,