She glanced across at him and shrugged slightly. Defensively?
Out of the corner of his eye he watched her stretch out her long legs and shift slightly in her seat, arching her back away from the hot leather upholstery with the lissom grace of a cat stretching.
Angelo Emiliani had slept with so many women—from cocktail waitresses to contessas. Novelty, the ruthless pursuit of the new, which was what drove him in his work, was something he no longer expected to experience in the bedroom.
But he’d never had an eco-warrior.
Idly he wondered what lay beneath that perfectly simple, perfectly demure black linen dress. There was something raw about her, something earthy. He had grown tired of the neat, waxed sterility that turned every woman he undressed into a conveyor-belt Barbie—perfect and plastic. This girl looked as if she was liberatingly, excitingly beyond all of that. He breathed in deeply, savouring the thought, and was suddenly aware of the scent of her.
She smelled of dark things—bitter chocolate, black coffee, overlaid with woodsmoke.
Strong. Exotic. Delicious.
Benedetto Gesù. The very things he didn’t trust about her were the things that turned him on.
He swung into the hotel’s VIP forecourt more recklessly than he had intended and brought the car to a halt in a screech of brakes. For a moment neither of them moved and the interior of the small car suddenly seemed thick with swirling undercurrents of meaning.
His hand, still on the handbrake, was inches from her bare thigh. He flexed his fingers around the brake, and then was instantly, uncomfortably aware of the phallic symbolism of the gesture.
And so was she.
Slowly her eyes travelled upwards, until she was looking at him from beneath her lashes as shaming colour rushed to her cheeks. He must have guessed what she was thinking, he must be mocking her, she thought in miserable humiliation. How amusingly predictable that she should end up falling under his spell like every other woman. Groping for the door handle, she mustered what she hoped was a cool smile, but her attempt at nonchalance was totally ruined by the fact that she couldn’t work out how to open the door.
He leaned across her and she flattened herself against the back of the seat to avoid coming into contact with the hard length of his body. But she could smell his cool, clean scent. He straightened up slowly and she scrambled out of the car.
‘Thanks for the lift, Signor Emiliani.’
He nodded curtly, suddenly finding that the acerbic retort he would usually have found eluded him. For a fraction of a second there he had been out of control—of the car and of his ruthlessly contained emotions—and the realisation had left a very bitter taste in his mouth.
He should follow her, he thought savagely as he watched her run lightly up the steps to the hotel, but the tell-tale evidence of her effect on him made movement temporarily inadvisable. Slamming his fist down on the steering wheel, he waited a moment, then got stiffly out of the low driving seat and leaned against the roof of the car, watching her all the time.
At the top of the steps she paused and turned her head towards the long rows of little metal tables that spilled out from the hotel’s ultra-fashionable bar on to a balcony overlooking the beach. At this hour of the early evening they were already crowded with those who were wealthy and well- connected enough to be able to afford to drink in one of the most exclusive watering holes on the Riviera, and beautiful enough to want to be seen there.
Angelo’s eyes narrowed as he watched her wave frantically before hurrying inside. He straightened up, searching the crowd on the outdoor terrace for the person she could have been greeting, but in the crush of lithe, designer-clad bodies perched at tables and standing in groups it was impossible to distinguish anyone in particular.
Which, he thought savagely, tossing the car keys to a uniformed concierge, was exactly what she had calculated. It was all part of the game she was playing to try to persuade him that she genuinely was some harmless, well-bred English girl, holidaying on the Riviera with a similarly respectable friend.
He didn’t intend to let her get away with it.
Ignoring the polite greeting of the doorman, he stalked angrily through the opulent lobby to the reception desk. While he waited his eyes roved restlessly over the shifting groups of people, but there was no sign of her.
The blonde receptionist batted thickly mascaraed eyelashes at him as he asked for Felicity Hanson-Brooks’s room number.
‘Well, monsieur, we’re really not supposed to … ‘
‘Please. She gave it to me last night and I arranged to pick her up, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten it.’ He gave her his most helpless smile and watched her melt. ‘I can’t stand her up.’
Blushing furiously under her heavy make-up, the girl gave it to him and was rewarded with a smile that would give her sleepless nights for the next month.
His face hardening as he turned away, Angelo took a seat on a Louis XIV-style sofa beneath a hideous golden palm tree and thoughtfully took out his phone. That hadn’t been the outcome he had expected. He checked his watch. It was too late now to catch any of his contacts in the London office of Arundel-Ducasse, and he was starting to get a nasty feeling that he might just be in for a surprise there too.
Was his instinct about this girl completely wrong?
With fresh determination he speed-dialled his PA and asked her to arrange for his chauffeur to bring his dinner suit down to the Paradis. He wasn’t leaving tonight until he’d got some answers. In the meantime, he had a deal to finalise.
‘OK, you have precisely thirty seconds to explain.’
Leaning over the little table, Anna gave Fliss a brief hug then sank down into one of the trendy aluminium chairs and took a long sip of the drink that was waiting for her.
‘’Splain wha'?’ she queried innocently around the ridiculous straw and cocktail olive with which the Hotel Paradis saw fit to furnish their Martinis. The ice in hers had melted long ago so it was warm and watery, but it still had a very welcome alcoholic kick.
Leaning back in her seat, Fliss tapped her foot and tried to look cross, but her eyes sparkled with excitement. ‘Let me think now … Who invented cellulite? Why men don’t have a shopping gene? Or maybe why you’ve turned up forty minutes late in the company of a gorgeous bloke?’
Sullenly Anna took a long suck of Martini. ‘Hmm, that’s actually quite interesting. You see “gorgeous bloke” and I see “ruthless, vulgar billionaire property developer.”’
Fliss’s eyes widened and she let out a long, low whistle.
‘That was Angelo Emiliani?’
As reactions went it was a pretty satisfying one, Anna reflected sulkily, so why did it irritate the life out of her?
Fliss’s eyes skimmed the terrace, as if hungry to see him again. ‘Now I understand why the girls in our office call him The Ice Prince and fight each other practically to the death to take his calls. He is quite amazingly lush …’
Anna affected extreme indifference and looked into the distance, to where the sun was dyeing the surface of the sea the same colour as her hair.
‘So the gossip was spot on,’ Fliss mused eagerly. ‘He’s the mystery buyer for the château.’
‘Correction,’ snapped Anna. ‘He’s the would-be mystery buyer for the château. The papers aren’t signed yet.’
Fliss glanced at her sharply. ‘But they will be, surely? As soon as his offer is made formally? I mean, the whole point is that you and your father need the money from the sale, isn’t it?’
Viciously Anna stabbed the olive with the cocktail stick. ‘Of course. But I don’t want