‘You will not call anyone,’ that ruthlessly calm voice instructed. ‘At this precise moment I have control of this situation and I mean to hold onto it. Bringing someone else into it will risk that control.’
‘Control over what?’ Lizzy swung around to stare at him.
‘You,’ he provided. ‘Until you brought me Bianca’s letter I was still puzzling as to why your father had successfully negotiated the loan he needed to save his company only to instantly remove all the money and put it somewhere else.’
Lizzy suddenly needed to sit down somewhere. The only chair handy was the one placed several feet away from the desk. She sank into it. Her head was swimming, the complicated puzzle of what was really going on here beyond her stunned capabilities right now.
‘Your brother is the only other person besides your father authorised to access this account. Put it all together, Elizabeth,’ he encouraged. ‘It does not take much effort to calculate that your brother has taken the money to fund his romantic elopement with Bianca. If you did play a part in their disappearance then I hope you have taken into account that you have been left here to carry the can.’
At that precise moment Lizzy didn’t care what position she was sitting here in. She was worried about her father. If—when—he found out what Matthew had done he was going to—
‘Of course, I must also point out that if you are genuinely innocent of any role in this, then you are still about to carry the can,’ that oh, so hateful voice injected, ‘because I want reparation for being taken for an idiot, and if that means putting you into Bianca’s wedding dress and marrying you in her place, then that is what is going to happen.’
‘For goodness’ sake!’ She jumped to her feet. ‘Don’t you think this situation is bad enough without you trying to fly to the moon?’
He laughed! Lizzy couldn’t believe she was hearing it! ‘You have a quaint way of expressing yourself.’
If the desk hadn’t been between them she would have thrown herself at him in fury! ‘I am not marrying you!’ she had to make do with shouting out.
‘Why not?’ Throwing himself into the chair behind the desk, he arched her a challenging look. ‘Is there something wrong with me?’
‘Don’t ask me to make a list,’ Lizzy muttered, wrapping her arms around her body and glaring at him while her mind shot off in all directions trying to find the sense in this mad situation. ‘You’ve got the eyes of a lion,’ she then heard herself murmur out of absolutely nowhere!
‘Lions mark their territory, jealously protect their women, but they do not hunt,’ he responded lazily.
‘Is that supposed to mean something?’ Lizzy snapped, wishing she’d kept her silly mouth shut about his eyes.
He offered a shrug. ‘I am ready to mate. I want—cubs. I did not have to hunt for Bianca because she’s always been there in the background of my life ready to claim once she’d grown up. Now here you are.’ Those damned golden eyes fixed on her face. ‘You don’t need hunting either because I have you caught and shackled by your brother’s stealing tendencies and an attraction for me you find impossible to hide.’
‘I am not attracted to you in any way, shape or form,’ she denied stiffly.
‘Then why the sweet, tender kiss?’
‘Oh, for goodness’ sake.’ He was like a dog with a particularly juicy bone to gnaw on. ‘It wasn’t a kiss! I accidentally brushed my mouth against your throat! And I was drunk!’ she added for good measure.
‘Tipsy on months of guilty lusting,’ he taunted. ‘Your attraction for me has been right there in your body language from the first time we met in London and you couldn’t stop yourself from hungrily drinking me in,’ he declared arrogantly. ‘It was there when we met in the lift in Milan. It was definitely there last night when we danced together and I gave in to temptation and waltzed you out onto the terrace. And it was absolutely there in that dizzily irresistible brush you allowed your lips and the tender moist tip of your tongue to make against my throat.’
Feeling as if she were drowning in the hot steam of her own embarrassment, Lizzy struck back. ‘You are more than ten years older than me, and that makes you really old in my eyes, signor.’
‘Thirty-four to twenty-two is a good difference, cara.’ It was the first time he had used that endearment to her and it quivered down her spine like a terrible sin. ‘It means I can offer you experience and fidelity, having worked out my studding period when I was your age. Whereas you will give me your youth, your beauty, your wonderful smooth, tight, creamy white body—and your loyalty when you switch it from your friend and your brother to protect your father from the worst scandal you can possibly imagine if his name gets dragged into this.’
‘How cold you are.’ Arms tightening across her body, she shivered.
‘Not between the sheets.’
‘And that’s it?’ Lizzy flashed. ‘Between the sheets I get your warmer side and your fabulous experience while out of them I get to play the role of your very rich, very pampered, young trophy wife and face—saver? No affection offered, no love?’
‘Love is an overrated fantasy.’
‘Coming from you I expect that it is.’
‘Are you digging at my dysfunctional family again?’
‘I’m digging at the fact that I don’t like you very much.’
‘But you desire me like crazy,’ he confided silkily.
Lizzy made a tense movement of her body, a frown like a dusky cloud settling across her face.
‘You’re turned on just by looking at me,’ he continued relentlessly. ‘You have this instinctive knowledge that the sex is going to be so good between us and it nags at you like a persistent ache. If I stepped round this desk right now and drew you into my arms you would go up like a Roman candle.’
‘Without the bed and the sheets?’ The sarcasm was out before she could stop it. If she’d meant it as a slap at his horrible self-confidence all it did was to make him laugh—softly, deeply, a seriously disturbing, huskily attractive sound that came from somewhere low down in his chest. ‘I can be adaptable, bella mia, if encouraged.’
Hating his lazy, laid-back superior poise and self-assurance, she was riled into taking him on. ‘So if I decided one day to, say, stroll into your office and demand sex with you while you’re busy on the phone making more millions?’ she challenged.
‘Is that one of your fantasies?’ he quizzed, bringing a flush crawling up her throat. ‘Then, of course, I would do my best to accommodate you—just make sure you arrive wearing no tights.’ He ran his eyes down over her. ‘Panties can be dealt with, tights demand a distinct lack of finesse, and if your fantasy forces me to make millions while I accommodate you then, the easier you make it for me, the more pleasure you will get out of it.’
‘God, you’re insufferable.’ Lizzy spun her back to him, barely able to believe the calm insolence with which he’d said all of that and despising herself for giving him the chance.
‘Just more experienced at this game than you are,’ he told her. ‘Though sex across my desk while I talk on the telephone is novel,’ he admitted. ‘Maybe we will try it.’
Her slender shoulders hunched and she lifted up her hands to grab at them as if doing so would keep his outrageous suggestion out. It didn’t matter that she knew she had started it. He was right and he was so much more experienced at this game so all she’d managed to do by taking him on was to walk herself right into his tormenting trap.
‘Do you know where the runaway lovers