Mad, Bad and Blonde - Cathie Linz [14]
Before she could make that decision, the door to her room opened. Because the door had a habit of not latching all the way, she usually made sure it was shut after she entered her room, but today she’d been too upset.
Caine stood there, wearing a towel and a scowl.
“Get out of my room!” She still held her cell phone in her hand, and while a part of her wanted to throw her BlackBerry at him, she needed it to get help. Wait; dialing 911 wouldn’t do a thing for her in Italy.
“I can explain—” he began.
She cut him off. “I’m sure you can come up with some additional lies to add to the pile you’ve already told me. Don’t bother. My father already told me all about you.”
Caine’s face darkened. “You father wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him in the ass.”
“That sounds like a more accurate description of you. I know that you work for Vince King. You’re not going to try to deny that, are you?” Was some small part of her hoping he’d say there had been some terrible mix-up? Yeah right. That was like hoping that Alan would show up at the church last week.
“No. I don’t deny that,” Caine said. “Vince had me follow you because he was suspicious of you going to Italy on your own. Come on, you have to admit it doesn’t fit your pattern of behavior. You’ve never traveled on your own in your entire life.”
“And because I haven’t taken a solo trip before, your boss sends you all the way to Italy to spy on me? Talk about paranoid. That’s sick.”
“I was already here in Italy. On personal business.”
Faith wasn’t buying one word Caine said. That brief flicker of hope had died, stomped out completely. “Why don’t you admit what your real job was?”
“I already told you—”
“Lies. You’ve already told me a bucketful of lies. The truth is that Vince sent you here to seduce me in order to get even with my father. Because Vince hates my father. He and my father have been bitter rivals for years, just like the Montagues and Capulets.” And with the same tragic outcome. At least she hadn’t guzzled a load of poison. No, she was sooo over having her heart broken by a man.
“Having sex with you was not part of the plan,” Caine angrily denied. “I’m not some gigolo for hire.”
“A gigolo would have done a better job,” she retorted.
“I didn’t hear any complaints last night.”
“Well, you’re hearing them now.”
“I didn’t come here for a postcoital postmortem.”
“Why did you come here? Did you really think that I’d buy your lame excuses and fall into bed with you?”
“Why not?” he drawled. “It worked before.”
She slapped him. Hard. Her palm stung and turned red. Had Jane Austen ever slapped anyone? Damn, it hurt. She wiggled her hand to shake the pain off.
Caine apparently thought she was going to hit him again, because he grabbed her wrist to prevent her from repeating her attack.
“Get your hands off me!” she yelled.
“Gladly. Once you calm down.”
“People need to stop telling me to calm down,” she growled.
She was considering kicking his shins when he tugged her against his body, which was now naked, the towel having fallen to the floor.
She froze. How dare he be aroused at a time like this? Did the man have no shame? Clearly not, or he wouldn’t have barged into her room practically nude.
Well, she wasn’t going to respond. She refused to be impressed or aroused or anything but furious—coldly, logically furious.
“Listen to me, because I’m only going to tell you this once.” His voice was as hard as the rest of his body. “No one told me to have sex with you. That wasn’t planned. It was a mistake. There’s no way I’m telling Vince or anyone else about what happened last night. No one has to know. Unless you blabbed to your father?”
She refused to acknowledge Caine or the question he’d asked. Instead, she was reciting the titles of Jane Austen’s books in her head, in chronological order.
Sense and Sensibility—1811.
Pride and Prejudice—1813.
Mansfield Park—1814.
Emma—1816.
Northanger Abbey—1817 posthumous.
Persuasion—1817 posthumous.
Clearly frustrated by her silence, Caine tightened his hold on her. “Did you tell your father?