She leaned forward, but he reared back. “Please don’t. If you put your mouth on me, my good intentions are going to take a vacation and not come back until I’m buried deeply inside you.”
She nodded her understanding and stood. She let her dress slide from her body completely.
His eyes glowed his appreciation.
She smiled. “I want you to take off your shirt, too.”
“Hot?”
“You don’t know how much.”
She choked on a laugh before joining him on the carpet, this time with him on his back and her snuggled up beside him.
“That feels good.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“You don’t have to. Just having your body beside mine is a turn-on.”
No beautiful Italian speech there, but she appreciated the sentiment and curled her fingers around him in reward. “Amazing. You’re so soft.”
“Soft?” he choked out.
“I mean your skin…like silky velvet. Can there be such a thing?”
“If you say it is, I believe you. Right now, I would believe anything you want me to.”
She laughed. “I doubt it, but you just keep saying stuff like that.”
He didn’t laugh. He moaned as she started stroking him. She listened to the hitches in his breathing pattern to determine how he liked to be touched. It was the most incredible experience she’d ever had, having this powerful man put himself at her mercy.
“Tara…”
“Yes, cara, yes! Don’t stop.”
She didn’t and he erupted with a masculine shout that rang in her ears. Her body went stiff against him as if sharing an echo of his ecstasy. She’d never felt anything like it and collapsed against his side as if she’d found her own completion.
Eventually, they snuggled in front of the fire for a long time before he got up and carried her into the bedroom. As she had suspected, they ended up sharing a bed.
Tara saw Angelo off at the airport with the promise to have an answer to his proposal by the following weekend.
She couldn’t believe she was making him wait, even harder to believe he was letting her.
He’d made it clear he wanted her decision now, but he hadn’t pushed for it. It had to be obvious she wanted him enough to risk pretty much anything…even marriage. But he had agreed to wait for her decision and that made her feel really good.
Baron had always insisted on having his own way, so had most of the men her mother had lived with.
Angelo wasn’t like that. He wanted her compliance sure, but not at the cost of her self-respect and that meant the world.
Not wanting to make the same mistake with Angelo, she had with Baron, she spent a good portion of her off-hours that week researching him. Everything she found, which wasn’t much…the man was very private, pointed to him being the opposite of Baron.
He was absolutely ruthless when taking over a company and making it profitable, but he was also known for his ability to turn all a company’s assets to a profit, including its current workforce. He gave regularly to charities, was honest as far as she could tell, and as Ray had told Danette, Angelo was not a playboy.
In fact, there was almost nothing that she could find about him in the social columns. He didn’t have much of a personal reputation at all.
Everything she could find on him was related to his almost supernatural ability to make money and turn a dying company into something great.
She’d searched for information on his father’s company, but without knowing its name, she’d had no luck. And its loss was never referred to in the articles written about him now. Except for what he’d told her, his past was shrouded in mystery.
His present was filled with business, but his life was not littered with people he’d used and discarded once he’d gotten what he wanted from them.
The turnover rate in his corporate headquarters was very low. Another good sign, if she needed one. He was a trustworthy man.
Thursday evening, she stood in the grocery checkout line, tiredly waiting for her turn. It had been a long day, an even longer week. She’d missed Angelo more than she’d thought possible. How could someone become so necessary in such a short time? She’d lain awake every night wrestling with her inexplicable desire to acquiesce to his marriage proposal. It made no sense and yet, her heart told her she needed the man.
She didn’t trust that organ, but found its promptings impossible to ignore…thus her sleep deprived exhaustion.
She yawned behind her hand while the checkout clerk argued with the man in front of her over the sale price on a can of chili. Someone had to be sent to verify the price listed on the shelf.
Knowing that nothing was going to happen until the matter had been resolved, she let her gaze roam over the magazines and weeklies displayed at the check stand. Her eyes skimmed the headlines, noticing two Elvis sightings and one alien baby claim before she was arrested by a picture that looked like…no it couldn’t be.
But it was.
A full color image of Angelo kissing her in an obviously heated embrace in Danette’s pool filled the front of one of the weekly tabloids. The headline read, Tempting Tara Takes Another Rich Lover…
Would she never be rid of that awful nickname? Darn it, she wasn’t the one who had done the tempting in her relationship with Baron, or the one with Angelo for that matter.
The tag line under the photo was worse. Will going to bed with the boss put this former model on the fast track to success in corporate America?
She grabbed the tabloid with a jerk that almost tore its front cover and yanked it open. She flipped the pages with angry flicks until she found the article. It was a two page spread with more pictures. Lots of them. Every one insinuated sexual intimacy between her and Angelo.
One showed them coming out of their hotel room at the coast. Angelo’s arm was around her, his body language and expression possessive. The implication was unmistakable, but the editorial copy spelled it out anyway.
Like two years before, she was painted as a money-grubbing whore, only this time with her eye to the main chance at Primo Tech. An unnamed source in the management training department was quoted as saying it looked like Tara was hoping to gain her promotions via an avenue even older than hard work and perseverance.
It was all there…her affair with Baron, further speculation on her being the other woman when he courted his oil heiress. There was even some nonsense about how he’d been keeping her under surveillance since the breakup and innuendo that she might be at fault for the rumored possibility of imminent divorce.
Tara’s stomach somersaulted and it took a full minute of shallow breathing before she was sure she wouldn’t lose what little she’d eaten that day. She’d skipped lunch, trying to get ahead at work so she could take a half day off on Friday and keep her weekend free. Angelo was due in early the following afternoon.
Had he seen the article? She had no way of knowing. Surprisingly he had not called her all week. She had expected him to at least attempt to sway her decision with frequent phone calls, but he hadn’t. She only knew when he was due back because he’d told her before leaving when to expect him.
Her gaze re-focused on the article. How many people had seen it?
The weekly didn’t have the highest circulation in the country, but it was a national publication.
She couldn’t believe this was happening all over