At Her Boss's Pleasure. Cathy Williams

thoughts veered wildly into uncharted territory. He pictured her with a man. He pictured her with him. The face she chose to show the world was not the sum total of the person she was. In fact, scratch the surface and the cool, marble exterior gave way to swirling, unpredictable currents.

      He had a driving, crazy urge to test those waters.

      He had his own reasons, he knew, for the choices he had made and continued to make. His own parents and their all-consuming love had left little room for a kid and no room at all for common sense. Theirs had been a world with room only for each other, and their ridiculous choices had seen their joint family fortunes whittled away into nothing thanks to rash decisions, stupid blunders, irrational money-making ventures.

      Control? They had had none of that. He did. He controlled every aspect of his life, including his love life, but suddenly all those beautiful, vapid, utterly controllable women who had cluttered his life seemed like safe, dreary options.

      Insane. He had never mixed business with pleasure. Never. This woman was off limits.

      But she had kick-started his libido and he felt the thrust of a powerful erection pressing against the zipper of his trousers, bulging and uncomfortable.

      Kate detected something in his voice that sent the thrill of a shiver racing through her and desperately tried to squelch it.

      How the heck had this happened? How had the conversation swerved from George and his misdeeds to questions about her private life? What on earth had possessed her to start sharing her life story like an idiot?

      ‘I’ve been very busy getting my career up and going,’ she said briskly. ‘I haven’t had time to cultivate relationships.’

      ‘All work and no play...’ Alessandro murmured. ‘Personally, I’ve always found that a little bit of play makes the work go a helluva lot faster.’

      ‘That approach doesn’t work for me. It never has.’ She winced at the tenor of her voice—cold, prim, defensive. ‘And now I think we ought to get the bill. I...it’s later than I expected... I don’t think it would be fair on George if we shoved our discussion of his plight into a few minutes tacked on to the end of a meal. I realize you’ve written him off as a master criminal, but I feel he deserves better than that.’

      She automatically felt for the bun at the back of her head. Still firmly in place. Unlike the rest of her.

      Alessandro mentally waved aside the topic of hapless George and his unfortunate wrongdoings. Tomorrow was another day. He would deal with that later. They would deal with that later. Right now...

      ‘What approach doesn’t work for you?’

      Kate pretended to misunderstand his question.

      ‘Ah. You’ve decided to retreat behind your professional mask. Why?’

      ‘Because we didn’t come here to talk about me. We came to talk about George.’

      ‘But we didn’t,’ Alessandro pointed out with remorseless logic. ‘We didn’t end up talking about George, as it happens.’

      ‘And that was a mistake.’ She breathed a silent sigh of relief as the bill was brought to them, and then breathed an even bigger sigh of relief when the proprietor approached and began enthusiastically quizzing them on what they thought of their meal, his sharp black eyes dancing between the two of them.

      So she hadn’t answered his question. And he wasn’t sure why he wanted to find out anyway. But he did. What was it they said about wanting what you couldn’t get?

      He watched as she rose, terminating all personal conversation.

      ‘I shall get a taxi home,’ she told him firmly.

      He ignored her. ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

      He ushered her out into a much cooler evening—suitable weather finally for her starchy suit and jacket. He made a call on his cell phone and his car, complete with driver, appeared from nowhere. It pulled over and he opened the passenger door for her. When she was inside, he leant down so that he was looking at her on eye level.

      ‘You’ll be happy to know that you’ll be spared my company.’

      He grinned, and she had one of those intuitive moments of knowing that he knew exactly what had been going through her head.

      ‘I’ll get Jackson to drop you home and we can pick up where we left off at a later date.’

      ‘What later date?’ She worried at her lower lip. If she could stick a few definite meetings in her work diary then she would be able to get a handle on seeing him again. And over her dead body if it was going to be in another cosy little restaurant.

      ‘I’ll get back to you on that one.’

      ‘But don’t you want to get this mess sorted out as quickly as possible?’

      ‘You can keep an eye on all the business accounts for suspicious activity, but if there’s none then why not let George enjoy his last supper, so to speak?’ He stood up, slapped the hood of the sleek, black Maserati, and remained watching as it disappeared from view.

      He hadn’t felt so invigorated for a long time.

      And what, he wondered, was a guy to do about that?