Scarlett felt every pore of her skin and every hair on her body stand to attention as that imposing, darkly handsome figure stooped as he came in through the door. Her heart started going like a jackhammer, the pressure building in her chest so overwhelming she wondered if the heavy thumping would be visible through the lightweight white linen of her blouse.
His hazel eyes met hers, the brown-and-green flecks reminding her all over again of the myriad colours of a rainforest. But this time she felt as if there were mysterious shadows lurking in the depths of his gaze, as he stood looking at her in a watchful silence for what seemed like endless seconds.
‘Hello, Scarlett,’ he finally said in that stomach-tilting velvet drawl that had been her downfall close to four years ago.
Scarlett lifted her chin and turned to Roxanne, who was standing with her mouth opening and closing like a recently landed fish. ‘Roxanne, would you please inform Mr…er…’ She glanced down at her diary as if to remind herself of his name, before looking back up and continuing in the same haughty tone, ‘…Mr Marciano that I am not taking on any new clients as I am booked up until the end of the year.’
‘But—’ Roxanne spluttered, but was cut off by Alessandro who had stepped forward to smile at her with lethal charm.
‘Miss Hartley, would you be so kind as to leave Miss Fitzpatrick and I to conduct out meeting in private?’ he asked.
‘No! Don’t you dare leave,’ Scarlett bit out hastily. Please, oh please, don’t leave me with him; she silently begged the rest of the sentence with her eyes.
Roxanne pursed her mouth, and after a moment’s hesitation scooped up her bag and half-finished latte. ‘Sure, I can do that,’ she said, smiling girlishly at Alessandro. ‘I have to see a man about some tiles anyway. I’ll be back at eleven.’
Scarlett sent her an ‘I’m going to kill you for this’ glare, before taking her place behind her desk in case her legs followed through on their current threat to fold beneath her.
The studio door opened and closed with another tinkle on Roxanne’s exit, but to Scarlett it felt more like the sound of a vault locking down for good.
The silence thrummed in her ears, the air becoming so thick with it she felt as if a pair of hands was around the slim column of her throat, gradually increasing the pressure until she was sure she was going to choke.
‘So you are not interested in doing business with me, Scarlett?’ Alessandro asked with a coolly impersonal smile.
‘No.’ Her one-word response came out of her mouth like a hard pellet.
‘Why ever not?’ he asked with an ironic arch of one dark brow. ‘I thought you would be jumping at this chance to get your hands on my money.’
She tightened her mouth even further, and forced her gaze to meet his. ‘I am surprised you are interested in engaging the services of a filthy little slut—those were your words for me back then, were they not?’
There was no sign of anger in his expression, but Scarlett could sense it all the same. She had known and loved that face so well in the three months they had been together. Every nuance of it was imprinted indelibly on her brain. The smile that could melt stone, the gaze that could heat blood, the mouth that could kiss like a teasing feather, or with such hungry passion her lips had tingled and been swollen for hours afterwards. Even now, after all this time, she could still taste the salt and musk of his lips and tongue, and her lower body began to pulse with the memory of how if had felt with him plunging between her legs.
She crossed her legs under her desk, fighting the sensations brewing there. But it was almost impossible to control the hit-and-miss beat of her heart every time she encountered that brown-and-green flecked gaze.
‘Your sexual proclivities, I would imagine, have no bearing on your talent at interior design,’ he said with an enigmatic look. ‘You have a good reputation professionally. That is why I am keen to have you wholly responsible for the project I am about to commence.’
Her chin went even higher. ‘I told you, I’m not available.’
His mouth tilted slightly. ‘Perhaps before you throw away this chance, Scarlett, you should at least look at what I am offering.’
‘No amount of money you could dangle in front of me will induce me to conduct any sort of relationship with you again, business or otherwise,’ she stated implacably.
A flicker of male interest darkened the brown in his eyes as they moved over her appraisingly. ‘I was not going to suggest anything other than a business agreement between us, however…’ He left the sentence suspended between them in the pulsing silence.
‘Forget it, Alessandro,’ she said. ‘In any case, I’m already seeing someone.’
‘Is it the same man you were involved with in Italy?’ he asked, piercing her gaze with his. ‘Dylan Kirby was his name, was it not?’
Scarlett felt her blood begin to simmer in her veins. ‘I was travelling with him, not sleeping with him.’
Cynicism burned in his gaze. ‘Ah, yes, that old story. I remember it well.’
‘It’s not a story, it’s the truth,’ she insisted. ‘I met Dylan, Joe and Jessica on a bus tour. I told you all this four years ago. How many times do I have to repeat myself?’
‘I am not interested in your lies, but I am interested in what you can do for me,’ he said. ‘Your business is in need of a contract as big as this, Scarlett. You would be a fool to throw it away as if it was worth nothing.’
She clenched her jaw. ‘I hate to be the one to point out the irony in all this, but isn’t that what you did to me?’
‘I am prepared to be generous,’ he said, ignoring her comment as if she meant nothing to him.
That was because she did mean nothing to him, she reminded herself. He had never spoken to her of love; he had simply enjoyed the delights of their affair while she had fallen in love with him, fallen hard.
Before she had met him she had been a little scathing at the notion of falling in love at first sight, or even of falling in love over a period of days. She had always thought the sort of love that was deep and abiding would build up over a period of time, as trust and respect grew between two people. But meeting Alessandro Marciano that hot summer morning in Milan had tipped her world upside down. Within three hours she had been kissed by him, within three days she had been sleeping with him, and within three months she had been pregnant by him.
Scarlett blinked herself back to the present when Alessandro handed her a document. She took it from him, her shaking fingers not quite able to avoid the fine-sandpaper brush of his against hers. Her whole body jolted in reaction and heat coursed through her, the thud of her pulse going at breakneck speed.
‘If you are not happy with that amount, I will double it,’ he said.
Scarlett looked down at the contract, her eyes almost popping out of her head at the amount printed there. It was an astonishing amount of money, although she would have to work very hard for it, she imagined. She knew enough about Alessandro Marciano to know he had exacting standards. His reputation as a hotelier was global. Guests staying at a Marciano hotel were treated to the utmost in luxury, and this one in Sydney would be no different, if the drawings his team of highly skilled architects had prepared were anything to go by.
But accepting this contract, as lucrative and career-enhancing as it was, would mean close contact with him, maybe even on a daily basis. There would be meetings with him to discuss her designs, fabrics to look over, light fittings, soft furnishings, plumbing fixtures—the list went on and on in her head. How could she get through it without damaging herself irreparably?
And more to the point how could she keep