‘It sounds like you are making excuses up as you go—and not even very good ones at that!’
Frustrated at her woeful inability to try and explain, and with her stomach cramping in distress, Kate shrugged disconsolately. ‘You’re obviously not going to forgive me, so perhaps it is best if you just ring the agency and get them to send somebody else in my place?’
‘No. I will give you one chance. What I propose to do is give you a one-day trial, and if you do not measure up to the high standards I expect then I will contact the agency for a replacement!’
‘I suppose I can’t argue with that.’
Even if she didn’t like the idea of failing Luca’s one-day trial, Kate breathed a silent prayer of thanks that he was at least going to give her a chance to prove herself, and not simply show her the door as she’d increasingly been expecting him to.
‘Now…I have already wasted enough time this morning and I must get on! We have a busy day ahead, and there are several things on the agenda that must be done. With your assistance I will try to accomplish as much as possible before I have to go to an important appointment at the Dorchester Hotel with a Saudi Arabian client who is also a good friend of mine. He is only in London for two days, and tonight I am throwing a small party for him and some colleagues he wants me to meet. In the meantime you can familiarise yourself with the notes my PA left for you. Her office is just through that door there, and unless I particularly have the need to be private the door between us stays open. Knowing your disconcerting habit for leaving without warning, Katherine, I think that is a sensible precaution under the circumstances—do you not agree?’
Staring at him, and realising that he clearly had very little respect for her because she’d left him the way she had that morning without explanation, Kate knew that she could not make matters even worse by walking out now. Something had happened between them that night they’d spent together in Italy—something that had had dramatic and far-reaching consequences—and Kate owed it to Luca to reveal it to him now that she’d been given the chance. No matter what his reaction to her news, there was simply no way she could or would duck out of telling him the truth. No matter how difficult the telling might be.
‘If that’s the way you want it, then that’s fine with me!’ Pushing to her feet and finding that her legs were still as insubstantial as tissue paper, Kate made her way towards the door Luca had indicated, into the office that would possibly be hers for the next fortnight. As she passed him, he struck out his hand and caught her by the elbow.
‘What?’ Her glance was alarmed.
For a moment the glittering intensity of his cerulean blue eyes seem to arrow right down into her soul, and the heat from his hand burned through her clothing, almost sapping her will and her strength with its power to unravel her.
‘Niente…nothing!’
He dropped her arm as though touching it somehow contaminated him and, feeling her stomach plummet like a stone, Kate moved through the opened door and into the stylish, perfectly neat office on the other side.
Driving his hands deep into his trouser pockets, Luca found he needed several moments to compose himself after the volatile encounter with the woman that it had been so hard for him to forget. Madre mia! He had thought he was seeing a ghost when she’d walked into his office! Such had been the dreamlike quality of their scorching but brief encounter in Milan that he could surely be forgiven for starting to believe he had conjured her up from his too-fevered imagination? Even now his heartbeat had still not resumed its regular normal cadence after he had seen her. His nostrils twitched at the evocative scent that lingered in her wake after he’d angrily let go of her arm. It called to mind a rain-washed English country garden, and was more provocative than any other sultry perfume he had ever encountered.
As if to echo his heated thoughts, a forceful, primal longing registered deep in his belly, and Luca pulled out the sumptuous leather chair behind his desk and dropped down into it, tunnelling his fingers with frustration through his thick, dark hair. Even his usually highly reliable photographic memory had not done Katherine justice, he concluded. She was even more bewitching than he recalled, with that soft mane of waving sable hair that no style could or should try to tame, and those glistening raven-dark eyes with their lustrous lashes that even the most artful make-up could not hope to enhance—for how did one enhance perfection? But along with her eyes and her alluring sexy body it was the memory of her passionate, sweetly giving mouth that had the power to keep Luca awake nights. Just one glance at close quarters—as he had experienced just now—was enough to make him want to crush it ravenously beneath his own and once again sample its ripe strawberry and vanilla sweetness with abandon.
Dio! What was he going to do now? Was he crazy even to entertain the idea of allowing Katherine to be his secretary for the next two weeks, given that his body still clearly desired her? And in spite of her casual treatment of their night together? Probably. But then he could be equally casual if he chose. He was certainly not looking for any kind of deep and meaningful relationship with the woman, so what had he to fear?
Sighing heavily, Luca recalled that night three months ago in Milan. There had been something about Katherine that had provoked the strongest reaction in him—and surprisingly it wasn’t all about sex. No…he had intuited an innate goodness about her that had made all his friends appear worryingly shallow in comparison. A man did not brush up against such innocence and goodness often, but when he did he never forgot it. Although right now Luca honestly could not attest to whether fate was on his side or not, delivering Katherine to his door as it apparently had. There was still her inexplicable departure the next morning to contend with, as well as the blow to his pride at hearing that she had not particularly wanted to get in touch with him again. Apart from his inconvenient desire, Luca was still too sceptical to believe unquestioningly that destiny was doing him a favour.
After losing Sophia three years ago in such a bitter and tragic way, he had all but relinquished any hope for future happiness anyway. When Katherine had left him that morning in Milan, after his initial confusion and frustration Luca had told himself to just put it down to experience and forget her. If he had wanted to locate her he could easily have asked friends at the party—the friends he had practically ignored all evening because he’d been so enthralled by her—for more information to help track her down. But at the time Luca had determinedly resisted the impulse. That night of the party he had found something of his wife’s that had stirred up some painful memories, and no doubt that was what had driven him into the arms of a woman he barely knew. Usually he was much more circumspect, and took time to get to know a woman before he took her to bed. It had certainly taught him a valuable lesson about the consequences of giving way to pure lust and emotion!
Once again Luca drove his restless hands through his tousled dark hair and shook his head at his remembered experience of a regrettable loss of control. Whatever reason Katherine had for showing up to work as his PA, from now on he would definitely be judging her on her professional acumen and not his attraction for her, he vowed!
CHAPTER TWO
THE door between her boss’s office and hers remained ominously open, and Kate deliberately didn’t glance towards it as often as her sometimes racing heart dictated. Even though—perversely, perhaps—she longed for a glimpse of the man occupying the adjoining room. The man who barked out instructions as though he cared little how she received them, and who clearly intended to treat her like someone well beneath him on the social strata while she was working for him.
She might well have despaired when she recalled the warmth Luca had exhibited towards her the night they had made love, but Kate refused to do so. Feeling sorry for herself would get her nowhere. But her already delicate stomach had churned many times that morning when she thought in distress about the secret she kept. A secret that she now likened to carrying smuggled contraband through a highly volatile