A Sicilian Husband - Kate Walker [4]
She was probably in trouble with her job, for one. James Richmond, her immediate manager, would have noticed her absence from the MD’s speech and she had no doubt that he would haul her into his office as a result. He was that sort of man. And people just did not skip what he considered to be vital parts of this conference—at least, not with impunity. The last time that had happened, the offending person had been shown the door pretty fast.
So even if she didn’t resign herself, she was almost certainly unemployed. And, as a result, in financial difficulties, owing rent on her flat, and with no way to keep up payments on her car. OK, so her job had been a bore and a grind. But it had been a job. One that paid her way at least. And she had put it at risk on some foolish, impossible impulse that she couldn’t even explain to herself.
That man. The thought rushed into her mind, driving everything else before it.
It had been the sight of the beautiful man at the other side of the bar that had somehow pushed her into this crazily impulsive mood. The sort of stupid, irrational mood in which she threw up a perfectly decent job and behaved in a way that meant she just didn’t recognise herself.
For example—just what was she doing standing here, propping up this bar, when everyone else was completing the schedule of the conference before the final dinner and going home? What was she waiting for? Hoping for?
Did she really think—was she actually hoping that the stunning and exotic-looking stranger was going to come up to her and change her life?
Fat chance!
Terrie actually snorted cynically at the idiotic path of her own thoughts. She really couldn’t believe that!
Picking up her glass, she twisted on her heel, turning so that she was half facing the rest of the bar, but at an angle so that if the intriguing stranger was looking again she wouldn’t risk being seen by him. Just one experience of that furiously cold-eyed glare was bad enough. She didn’t want to go through a repeat performance.
The wretched man had actually gone!
‘Well, thanks a bunch!’ Terrie muttered against the rim of her glass as she lifted it to sip at her wine. ‘Thank you so very much!’
Foolishly, she felt as if he was responsible for the pickle she was in. She had made this crazy, impulsive gesture of throwing in her job in some non-typical response to his presence. Had stayed in the bar when she would have been far better to stick with her friends and go to the final session, however boring. Had even…
Admit it! she declared to herself. She had even hung around in the bar in the hope of meeting up with and discovering more about this man who had had such an impact on her.
And the so-and-so had got up and made his way out of the bar while her back was turned, without so much as a second look. He must have walked within inches of her and she hadn’t even noticed!
So much for changing her life at a stroke!
Scowling as much at her own foolishness as at the absent stranger, Terrie lifted her drink in a bleak parody of a toast, inclining it in the direction of the stranger’s now empty seat.
‘To ships that pass in the night,’ she muttered.
And froze as, from her right-hand side, another hand reached out, deliberately clinking the glass it held against hers in acknowledgement of the toast.
‘Salute, signorina!’ a deep, lyrically accented voice murmured in her ear.
CHAPTER TWO
‘WHAT?’
The shaken exclamation was pushed from her lips as her nerveless fingers lost their grip on her glass. Slipping from her grasp, it tumbled downwards, spilling its contents on the way, and crashed onto the floor, splintering into a thousand tiny pieces.
‘Oh, look what you’ve done now!’
Even as the words escaped her, she was acknowledging how irrational they were. It was her own disturbed feelings that had twisted