“Here you are, Mr. Skouras. I hope the assortment is what you wanted.”
Damian nodded. “I’m sure it is.”
“And shall I send the usual roses to Miss Boldini?”
He looked up and she saw in his eyes a flash of the Arctic coldness that was faced by those who were foolish enough to oppose him in business.
“That won’t be necessary.”
“Oh. I’m sorry, sir. I just thought...”
“In fact, if Miss Boldini calls, tell her I’m not in.”
“Yes, sir. Will that be all?”
Damian’s dark head was already bent over the stack of magazines.
“That’s all. Hold my calls until I ring you, please.”
Jean nodded and shut the door behind her.
So, she thought with some satisfaction, Gabriella Boldini, she of the catlike smile and claws to match, had reached the end of her stay. Not a minute too soon, as far as she was concerned. Jean had seen a lot of women flounce through her employer’s life, all of them beautiful and most of them charming or at least clever enough to show a pleasant face to her. But Gabriella Boldini had set her teeth on edge from day one.
Jean settled herself at her desk and turned on her computer. Perhaps that was why Mr. Skouras had wanted all those magazines. He’d be living like a monk for the next couple of months; he always did, after an affair ended. What better time to research a new business venture? Soon enough, though, another stunning female would step into his life, knowing she was just a temporary diversion but still hoping to snare a prize catch like him.
They always hoped, even though he never seemed to know it.
Jean gave a motherly sigh. As for herself, she’d given up hoping. There’d been a time she’d clung to the belief that her boss would find himself a good woman to love. Not anymore. He’d had one disastrous marriage that he never talked about and it had left him a confirmed loner.
Amazing, how a man so willing to risk everything making millions could refuse to take any risks at all, in matters of the heart.
Damian frowned as he looked over the magazines spilling across his desk.
Headlines screamed at him.
Are You Sexy Enough to Keep Your Man Interested?
Ten Ways to Turn Him On
Sexy Styles for Summer
The Perfect Tan Starts Now
Was there really a market for such drivel? He’d seen Gabriella curled up in a chair, leafing through magazines like these, but he’d never paid any attention to the print on the covers.
Or to the models, he thought, his frown deepening as he leafed through the glossy pages. Why did so many of them look as if they hadn’t eaten in weeks? Surely, no real man could find women like these attractive, with their bones almost protruding through their skin.
And those pouting faces. He paused, staring at an emaciated-looking waif with a heavily made-up face who looked up from the page with an expression that made her appear to have sucked on one lemon too many.
Who would find such a face attractive?
After a moment, he sighed, closed the magazine and reached for another. Laurel’s photograph wasn’t where Gabriella had said it would be. Not that it mattered. There’d been no good reason to want to see the picture; he’d directed his secretary to buy these silly things on a whim.
Come on, man, who are you kidding?
It hadn’t been a whim at all. The truth was that he’d slept poorly, awakening just after dawn from a fragmented dream filled with the kinds of images he hadn’t had in years, his loins heavy and aching with need...
And there it was. The photograph of Laurel Bennett.
Gabriella had been wrong. Laurel wasn’t nude, and he tried to ignore the sense of relief that welled so fiercely inside him at the realization.
She’d been posed with her back to the camera, her head turned, angled so that she was looking over her shoulder at the viewer. Her back and shoulders were bare; a long length of ivory silk was draped from her hips, dipping low enough to expose the delicate tracery of her spine almost to its base. Her hair, that incredible mane of sun-streaked mahogany, tumbled over her creamy skin like tongues of dark flame.
Damian stared at the picture. All right, he told himself coldly, there she is. A woman, nothing more and nothing less. Beautiful, yes, and very desirable, but hardly worth the heated dreams that had disturbed his night.
He closed the magazine, tossed it on top of the others and carried the entire stack to a low table that was part of a conversational grouping at the other end of his office. Jean could dispose of them later, either toss them out or give them to one of the clerks. He certainly had no need for them, nor had he any further interest in Laurel Bennett.
That was settled, then. Damian relaxed, basking in the satisfaction that came of closure.
His morning was filled with opportunities for that same feeling, but it never came again.
There was a problem with a small investment firm Skouras International had recently acquired. Damian’s CPAs had defined it but they hadn’t been able to solve it. He did, during a two-hour brainstorming session. A short while later, he held a teleconference with his bankers in Paris and Hamburg, and firmed up a multimillion dollar deal that had been languishing for months.
At twenty of twelve, he began going through the notes Jean had placed on a corner of his desk in preparation for his one o’clock business luncheon, but he couldn’t concentrate. Words kept repeating themselves, and entire sentences.
He gave up, pushed back his chair and frowned.
Suddenly he felt restless.
He rose and paced across the spacious room. There was always a carafe of freshly brewed coffee waiting for him on a corner shelf near the sofas that flanked the low table where he’d dumped the magazines.
He paused, frowning as he looked down at the stack. The magazine containing Laurel’s photo was on top and he picked it up, opened it to that page and stared at the picture. Her hair looked like silk. Would it feel that way, or would it be stiff with hair spray when he touched it, the way Gabriella’s had always been? How would her skin smell, when he put his face to that graceful curve where her shoulder and her neck joined? How would it taste?
Hell, what was the matter with him? He wasn’t going to smell this woman, or taste her, or touch her.
His eyes fastened on her face. There was a hands-off coolness in her eyes that seemed at odds with her mouth, which looked soft, sexy, and heart-stoppingly vulnerable. It had felt that way, too, beneath his own, after she’d stopped fighting the passion that suddenly had gripped them both and given herself up to him. and to the kiss.
His belly knotted as he remembered the heat and hardness that had curled through his body. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so caught up in a kiss or in the memory of what had been, after all, a simple encounter.
So caught up, and out of control.
Damian’s jaw knotted. This was ridiculous. He was never out of control.
What he had, he thought coldly, was an itch, and it needed scratching.
One night, and that would be the end of it.
He could call Laurel, ask her to have drinks or dinner. It wouldn’t be hard;