But Chris showed no sign at all of putting in an appearance. Their meeting had been arranged for six, and it was now half past.
The realisation had barely crossed his mind when his mobile phone rang sharply. As if summoned by his thoughts, there was Chris Macdonald’s number on the screen.
Flicking the case open with an impatient hand, Gio lifted it to his mouth.
‘Sì?’
A few seconds later he snapped the phone off again and tossed it down onto the table, glaring at it as if the inoffensive gadget were in fact Macdonald himself.
Chris was not coming. He had to stay at home, he had said. His young daughter was ill and they had just called the doctor.
‘Non c’e problema!’ he had assured him. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
But he had been lying through his teeth. There was a problem. The problem of the long, lonely night that lay ahead of him.
He should be used to long, lonely nights. He’d lived through enough of them since he had lost Lucia. Lying awake, staring blank-eyed into the darkness, in the big, empty bed that had suddenly seemed so cold and uncomfortable without the warmth of her softly curvaceous body beside him.
And if he managed to fall asleep then it was even worse. Because then he woke to a moment of forgetfulness, a brief, merciful spell of believing that it had never happened. That she was still there, with him. Until he reached out and felt the coldness of the empty space beside him, and the reality all came flooding back.
‘Dio—no!’ he muttered savagely, both hands clenching into fists as he tried to push away the black thoughts that flooded his mind.
Tonight he had thought that he would escape them. That with friendly company, a meal, and perhaps a glass or two too many of a fine wine, he might find some relief from the emptiness that was always there, like a dark, dangerous chasm in his mind, just waiting for him to fall into it. But Chris’s phone call had just shattered that hope.
‘And what can I get for you, Miss Hayden?’
‘Dry white wine, please.’
Behind him, Gio heard the bartender’s question, the soft, feminine tones of the reply, and knew without a moment’s hesitation that it was the blonde who had spoken. The blonde who had been eyeing him up so blatantly.
‘Your friends not with you tonight, then?’ The bartender almost echoed Gio’s own thoughts.
‘No, they’ve gone into the final session of the conference. I’ll be joining them later for dinner, I suppose.’
‘You didn’t fancy going with them?’
‘No.’
He could almost hear the shudder in her voice.
‘I’ve had more than enough of sales figures and targets. I’ve been bored stupid the past two days; I couldn’t take any more. In fact, I’ve decided to chuck the job in.’
Bored, huh?
The word seemed to echo inside Gio’s head. She was bored, and she had been eyeing him—and she had deliberately stayed behind when her friends had left.
Coincidence or invitation?
The clamour in his body wasn’t easing. If anything, the sound of her voice had made it worse. It was soft, musical, and faintly husky. The sort of voice that made him think of murmurs in the darkness of the night, the heat of a sensual bed, the whisper of her breath across his skin as she spoke.
And it had been so long. Too long for any red-blooded male.
‘This conference has been no fun at all. I’ve decided I need some other way of making a living. So I think I’ll just hang around here for a while and see what happens.’
The thread of laughter through the words was the last straw. It seemed to carry an electrical charge with it, sparking off hot little arrows of hunger that ran along every nerve, bringing them so stingingly awake that he had to bite his lip to keep back the groan of reaction.
So she wanted fun, did she? And he…he wanted anything, anything other than to be alone for another long, dark night. He wanted a warm, living, breathing, responding body in his bed after far, far too long.
He hadn’t felt this interested, this alert, this alive in years. And he wasn’t going to turn his back on the chance to let this feeling continue for as long as he could.
He was on his feet before he had actually finished the thought, turning and heading for the tall, slender figure at the bar.
Terrie rested her elbows on the polished wood, stared down into the cool, clear liquid in her glass and wondered just what she had done.
Burned her boats, the answer came back from the sensible, rational part of her mind. She had well and truly burned her boats, or her bridges, cut off her nose to spite her face… Insert whatever other clichéd sayings described her uncharacteristically rash and unthinking gesture.
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!