Czytaj książkę: «Bound By A One-Night Vow»

CHAPTER ONE

ISABELLA BYRNE PUT down her coffee cup in the crowded café with a sigh. Husband-hunting would be so much easier if she actually wanted to get married. She. Did. Not. The thought of marrying someone was enough to bring her out in hives. Anaphylactic shock. A stroke. She wasn’t the girl who’d been planning her wedding day since the age of five. She wasn’t a hankering-after-the-fairy-tale fanatic like most of her friends. And now that she’d put her ‘wild child’ days behind her, even the thought of dating made her want to vomit.

She was Over Men.

Izzy looked at all the couples sitting at the other tables. Was no one single any more in London? Everyone had a partner. She was the only person sitting by herself.

She could have tried online dating in her find-a-husband quest, but the thought of asking a stranger was too daunting. And the small handful of friends she might have considered asking to do the job were already in committed relationships.

Izzy folded her copy of her father’s will and stuffed it back in her tote bag. No matter how many times she read it, the words were exactly the same. She must be married in order to claim her inheritance. The inheritance would go to a distant relative if she didn’t claim it. To a relative who had a significant gambling problem.

How could she let all that money be frittered away down the greedy gobbling mouth of a slot machine?

Izzy needed that money to buy back her late mother’s ancestral home. If she failed to claim her inheritance, then the house would be lost for ever. The gorgeous Wiltshire house, where she had spent a precious few but wonderful holidays with her grandparents and her older brother before he got sick and passed away, would be sold to someone else. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing the one place where she had been happy. Where she and Hamish and her mother had been happy. Truly happy. She owed it to her mother and brother’s memory to get that house back.

There was twenty-four hours left before the deadline. One day to find a man willing to marry her and stay married for six months. One flipping day. Why hadn’t she looked a little harder this month? Last month? The month before? She’d had three months to fulfil the terms of her father’s will, but the thought of marrying anyone had made her procrastinate. As usual. She might have failed at school but she had First Class Honours in Procrastination.

Izzy was about to push back her chair to leave when a tall shadow fell over her. Her heart gave an extra beat...or maybe that was the double macchiato she’d had. She should never mix caffeine with despair.

‘Is this seat taken?’ The deep baritone with its rich and cultured Italian accent made her scalp prickle and a tingling pool of heat simmer at the base of her spine.

Izzy raised her eyes to meet the espresso-black gaze of hotel magnate, Andrea Vaccaro. Something shifted in her belly—a tumble, a tingle, a tightening.

It was impossible to look at his handsome features without her heart fluttering like rapidly shuffled cards.

Eyes that didn’t just look at you—they penetrated. Seeing things they had no business seeing.

His strong, don’t-mess-with-me jaw, with just the right amount of stubble, always made her think of the potent male hormones pushing those spikes of black hair out through his skin. A mouth that was firm but had a tendency to curve over a cynical smile. A mouth that made her think of long, sensual kisses and the sexy tangling of tongues...

Izzy had taught herself over the years not to show how he affected her. But while her expression was cool and composed on the outside, on the inside she was fighting a storm of unbidden, forbidden attraction. ‘I’m just leaving so—’

His broad tanned hand came down on the back of the chair opposite hers. She couldn’t stop staring at the ink-black hairs that ran from the back of his hand and over his strong wrist to disappear under the crisp white cuff of his shirt. How many times had she fantasised about those hands on her body? Stroking her. Caressing her. Making her feel things she shouldn’t be feeling. Not for him.

Never for him.

‘No time for a quick coffee with a friend?’ His mouth curved over the words, showing a flash of white, perfectly aligned teeth. An I’ve-got-you-where-I-want-you smile that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up and pirouette in panic.

Izzy suppressed a shiver and forced herself to hold his gaze. ‘Friend?’ She injected a double shot of scorn into her tone. ‘I don’t think so.’

He pulled the chair out and settled his lean athletic form into it, his long legs bumping hers under the table. She jerked her legs back as far as they would go but it wasn’t fast enough to avoid the electrifying zap of contact.

Hard. Virile. Male flesh.

Izzy began to push back her chair in order to leave but one of his hands came down on hers, anchoring her to the table. Anchoring her to him. She snatched in a breath, the warm tensile strength of his hand making every female hormone in her body get all giggly and excited. Every cell of her body vibrated like the plucked string of a cello. She looked at his hand trapping hers and disguised a swallow. Heat travelled from her hand, along her arm and all the way to her core like a racing river of fire.

She gave him a glare so cold it could have frozen the glass of water on the table. ‘Is this how you usually ask a woman to have coffee with you? By brute force?’

His thumb began a lazy stroking of the back of her hand that sent little shockwaves through her body as if a tiny firecracker had entered her bloodstream. Pippity pop. Pippity pop. Pippity pop. ‘There was a time when you wanted more than a quick coffee with me. Remember?’ The glint in his eyes intensified the searing heat travelling through her body.

Izzy wished she could forget. She wished she had temporary amnesia. Permanent amnesia. It would be worth acquiring a brain injury if she could eradicate the memory of her seduction attempt of Andrea seven years ago at one of her father’s legendary boozy Christmas parties. She had been eighteen and tipsy—deliberately, dangerously, defiantly tipsy. Just like she had been at every other party of her father’s. It had been the only way she could get through the nauseating performance he gave of Devoted Dad. She’d been intent on embarrassing her father because of all the behind-closed-doors torment he put her through. All the insults, the put-downs, the biting criticisms that made her feel so utterly worthless and useless.

So unloved.

So unwanted.

She’d foolishly thought: How better to embarrass her overbearing father than to sleep with his favourite protégé?

Izzy pulled her hand out from under Andrea’s and rose from her seat with a screech of her chair along the floorboards. ‘I have to get back to work.’

‘I heard about your new job. How’s that going for you?’

Izzy searched his expression for any sign of mockery. Was he teasing her about her job? Or was he just showing mild interest? There was no note of cynicism in his tone, no curl of his top lip and no mocking glint in his eyes, but even so she wondered if he, like everyone else, thought she couldn’t get through a week in a new job without being fired.

But, whatever he was thinking behind that unfathomable expression, Izzy was determined not to lose her temper with Andrea in a crowded café. In the past she’d created more scenes than a Hollywood screenplay writer. But how she wanted to shove the table against his rock-hard chest. She wanted to throw the dregs of her coffee cup in his too-handsome, too-confident face. She wanted to grab the front of his snow-white business shirt until every button popped off.

How like him to doubt her when she was trying so hard to make her way in the world. To her shame, it was one of many jobs she had won and lost over the years. Her reputation always got in the way. Always. Everyone expected her to fail and so what did she do?

She failed.

She had found it hard to settle on a career because of her lack of academic qualifications. She had bombed out during her exams, unable to cope with the pressure of trying to measure up to the academic standard of her older brother, Hamish. She hadn’t been one of those people who always knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. Instead she’d drifted and dreamed and dawdled.

But now she was clawing her way back, studying for a degree in Social Work online and with her job at the antiques store. Which made her all the more furious at Andrea for assuming she was lazy and lacking in motivation.

Izzy kept her chin high and her eyes hard. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t come in to the shop by now and bought some hideously expensive relic to prove what a filthy-rich man you are.’

His lazy smile tilted a little further. ‘I have my eye on something far more priceless.’

She snatched up her tote bag from the floor and hoisted it over her shoulder, sending him another glare that threatened to wilt the single red rose on the table. ‘Nice seeing you, Andrea.’ Sarcasm was her second language and she was fluent in it.

Izzy wove her way through the sea of chairs to pay for her coffee at the counter but, before she could take out her purse, Andrea came up behind her and handed the assistant a note. ‘Keep the change.’

Izzy mentally rolled her eyes at the way the young female assistant was practically swooning behind the counter. Not at the size of Andrea’s tip—although it had been more than generous—but from the mega-charming smile he gave the young woman.

Was there a woman on the planet who could resist that bone-melting smile?

Izzy was conscious of him standing just behind her. He was so close she could feel the warmth of his body. Too close. So close she could feel electric energy fizzing along every knob of her backbone.

His energy.

His sexual energy.

She could smell his aftershave—a subtle blend of lemon and lime and something fresh and woodsy that made her think of a sun-warmed citrus orchard fringed by a dark, dangerously dense forest. She allowed herself a little moment of wondering what it would be like to lean back against him. To feel his muscled arms go around her, to feel his pelvis brush against the cheeks of her bottom. She imagined how it would feel to have his large hands settle on her hips and draw her nearer...to feel the surge of his hard, virile male flesh between her legs...

Oh, God. She had to stop this fantasy stuff or she would be doing a When Harry Met Sally scene right here and now. Meg Ryan would have nothing on her.

Andrea took Izzy by the elbow and ushered her out of the café into the watery spring sunshine. She decided to go with him without a fuss because people were already starting to point and stare. She didn’t want to be photographed with him. Associated with him. Linked to him. To be seen as yet another of his sexual conquests.

Andrea Vaccaro wasn’t just a press magnet—he was press superglue. Triple-strength superglue. He was an international playboy with a turnstile on his penthouse instead of a door—the protégé of the late high-flying businessman Benedict Byrne. An Italian kid from the wrong side of the tracks who had made good due to the largesse of his well-to-do English benefactor.

Izzy wasn’t so much a press magnet but a press target with a big red circle on her back marked Spoilt Trust Fund Kid. But while there was a time when she had deliberately courted their attention, and even found perverse enjoyment in its negativity, these days she preferred to be left alone. Gone were the days of stumbling out of nightclubs pretending to be drunk in order to shame her father. But unfortunately the paparazzi hadn’t got that particular memo. She was still seen as a wild child whose main goal in life was to party. She only had to walk past a balloon or a streamer these days and someone would post a shot with a crude caption about her.

Andrea slid his hand down from her elbow to brush his fingers against her ringless left hand. ‘Found yourself a husband yet?’

Izzy knew he was aware of every word and punctuation mark on her father’s will. He had probably helped her father write it. It galled her to think of Andrea being party to such personal information. He didn’t know the true context of her relationship with her father. Benedict Byrne had been too clever to reveal the darker side of his personality to those he championed or wanted to impress. Only Izzy’s mother knew and she was long dead, finally resting in peace beside Izzy’s older brother, Hamish. The adored son. The perfect son Izzy had been expected to emulate—but she had never quite managed to meet her father’s expectations. ‘I have no intention of discussing my personal life with you. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to—’

‘I have a proposition for you.’ His expression was as inscrutable as a blank computer screen but she could sense the secret operating system of his thoughts. Wicked thoughts. Dangerous thoughts. Gulp. Sexual thoughts.

Izzy opened and closed her hand, trying to rid herself of the sensual energy he had evoked in her flesh. She tightened her stomach muscles, hoping it would quell the restless feeling deep in her pelvis, but all it did was make her even more aware of how he made her feel. ‘The answer is an emphatic I’m-only-going-to say-this-once no.’

He gave her a sleepy-eyed smile as if he found her refusal motivating. A stimulating challenge he couldn’t wait to overcome. ‘Don’t you want to know what I’m proposing before you say no?’

Izzy gritted her teeth, mentally apologising to her orthodontist. ‘I have no interest in anything you might say to me.’ Especially if it involves the word marriage. But would he offer to marry her? For what possible reason?

He held her gaze in a silent lock that made her heart skip a beat. Two beats. The air seemed to be tightening as if all the oxygen was being sucked out of the atmosphere, atom by atom. He was looking good. More than good. But then, he always did. Tanned and toned, with the sort of classic features you mostly only saw in men’s expensive aftershave ads. The bad boy made good. His not long, not short wavy black hair was styled in a casual manner that highlighted his intelligent forehead and the strong blade of his nose. The dark slash of his eyebrows—one of them interrupted by a zigzag scar—over eyes so dense and deep a brown it was hard to tell what was pupil and what was iris. Knowing, assessing eyes fringed by thick lashes that every now and again would lower just enough for her to think...

No. No. No.

She must not think about sex and Andrea in the same sentence.

Izzy could outstare most men. She could put them in their place with a cutting look or a sharp word.

But not Andrea Vaccaro.

He was her nemesis. And, damn him to hell, he knew it.

‘Have dinner with me.’ It wasn’t an invitation. It was a command.

Izzy raised her eyebrows like a haughty schoolmarm. ‘I’d rather eat a fistful of fur balls.’

His gaze moved over every inch of her face, from her eyes to her mouth, lingering there for so long she became aware of her lips in a way she had never been before. They started tingling as if his mouth had brushed them. Heated them. Tempted them. Whenever he looked at her she thought of sex. Hot bed-wrecking, pulse-racing sex. The sort of sex she hadn’t been having.

Had never had.

Izzy wasn’t a virgin but neither had she had as much sex as the press had made out. She didn’t even like sex. She was hopeless at it. Embarrassingly, pathetically hopeless. And the only way she could tolerate it was to get tipsy so she didn’t have to think about how much she wasn’t enjoying it.

Andrea’s obsidian-black gaze came back to hers. ‘We can discuss this out here on the street where anyone can hear or we can do it in private.’

Do it in private.

The double entendre of his words sent a shiver rolling down her spine. Images popped into her head of him doing it with her. His hands on her breasts, his mouth on hers, his body pumping and rocking and—

Izzy pulled away from her thoughts like someone springing back from a sudden flame. She hoped she wasn’t showing any sign of how flustered she felt, but she suspected there was little Andrea Vaccaro missed. It was why he was so successful in business. He could read people. He could read situations. He was clever and calculating and tactical.

She hated how he made her feel. Hated how easily he could trigger anger or desire in her. Or both. She had no interest in repeating her foolish behaviour of the past. She was no longer that brash attention-seeking flirt. She was no longer the spoilt little rich girl acting out her inner pain and shame.

She had reinvented herself.

‘I’m not doing anything with you in private, Andrea.’ Izzy only realised her vocal slip when she saw the way his dark eyes gleamed. Got you.

‘Scared of what I might say?’

Scared of what I might do. Izzy raised her chin and eyeballed him. ‘Nothing you say is of the remotest interest to me.’

Something moved at the back of his eyes. A camera shutter movement before the screen came back up. ‘Just dinner, Isabella.’ His Italian accent caressed the four syllables of her name. He was the only person who called her by her full name. She wasn’t sure if she liked it or not.

Just dinner. Could she go and see what he had to say? He had intrigued her interest, and with the clock ticking like a nuclear bomb on the deadline she would be crazy not to hear him out. But being anywhere near him unsettled her. His energy collided with hers and created something in her she wasn’t sure she could control.

Wasn’t sure she wanted to control, which was even more disturbing.

Izzy folded her arms and sent him one of her trademark bored teenager looks. ‘Tell me the time and the place and I’ll meet you there.’

He gave a sudden laugh that made something at the back of her knees fizz. ‘Nice try.’

‘I mean it, Andrea. I will only have dinner with you if I come by myself.’

The satirical gleam was back in his eyes. ‘Do you usually prefer to come by yourself?’

Izzy could feel her cheeks pulsating with heat. But they weren’t the only part of her body pulsating. Her feminine core gave off little pulses of lust that reverberated through her entire body. She put on her game face—the face she’d perfected during her wilful teens, the wild child seductress face. The I-don’t-give-a-fig-what-you-think-about-me face. Driven by an urge she couldn’t quite explain, she moistened her lips with a slow sweep of her tongue, secretly delighted by the way his eyes followed the movement.

He wasn’t immune to her.

The realisation was strangely thrilling. He might not like her. He might not respect her. But he sure as hell wanted her. He had resisted her seven years ago. Resisted her easily. Made her feel foolish for trying to seduce him. He’d called her a silly spoilt child playing at grown-ups.

But now he wanted her.

Izzy tucked that knowledge away and gave herself a mental high five. It gave her an edge, a bit of power in a relationship that had always been tipped in his favour in the power stakes. She gave him a look through her half-lowered lashes. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

His eyes darkened until they were black bottomless pools of male mystery. ‘I’ll make it my business to find out.’ His voice was smooth with a base note so deep every nerve in her body trembled like a shivering leaf.

Izzy knew she was being reckless in flirting with him. Reckless and foolish. But something about the way he interacted with her always made her feel like challenging him. Pushing him. Needling him. Peeling back the carefully constructed layers of civilised man-about-town to reveal the primal man she sensed was simmering just under the surface. ‘Where shall we have dinner?’

‘I’ve booked a table at Henri’s. Eight thirty tonight.’

Izzy was annoyed she hadn’t put up more of a fight. She didn’t like thinking of herself as predictable. She had made a lifetime’s work of being anything but. How had he known she would give in? Had he been so sure of her?

Maybe because there’s less than twenty-four hours left on the deadline?

Argh. Don’t remind me.

‘Your arrogance never ceases to amaze me,’ Izzy said. ‘Does anyone ever say no to you and mean it?’

A smile flirted with the edges of his mouth. ‘Not often.’

Izzy could well believe it. She had to get her willpower back into shape. Send it to boot camp. Pump it full of steroids or something. She couldn’t allow him to manipulate her into doing what he wanted. She had to stand up to him. To show him she wasn’t like the droves of women who paraded in and out of his life. She might have slipped once, but she was older and wiser now. Older and wiser and wary of allowing him any hold over her. Of allowing any man any hold over her. She adjusted the strap of her tote bag over her shoulder and turned to leave. ‘See you later, then.’

‘Isabella?’

Izzy turned back to face him, carefully keeping her features in neutral. ‘Yes?’

His gaze drifted to her mouth and back to her eyes, holding them like a steely vice. ‘Don’t even think about not showing up.’

Izzy wondered how he could read her mind. She’d planned to leave him waiting in that restaurant to show him she wasn’t going to play whatever game he had in mind. He had probably never been stood up before. It was time he was taught a lesson and she would enjoy every second of teaching him it.

But now she had to think of another plan. She couldn’t show up at that restaurant and meekly agree to his ‘proposal’. Couldn’t. Couldn’t. Couldn’t. He was the last man she would ever consider marrying. For it was marriage he wanted, of that she was sure. She could see the ruthless determination in his eyes.

She was desperate, but not that desperate.

‘Oh, I’ll show up.’ She gave him a smile so sugar-sweet it would have made any decent dentist reach for fluoride. ‘I quite fancy a free dinner. You did say just dinner, right?’

His eyes smouldered with incendiary heat, making her insides coil and twist and tighten with need. A need she didn’t want to feel. A need she had strictly forbidden herself to feel. ‘Just dinner.’

Izzy turned and walked back along the street towards the antiques shop where she worked. She was conscious of Andrea’s gaze following her but didn’t turn back to look at him. She was quite proud of her willpower—it had made a remarkable recovery, although it had been touch and go there for a minute. But when she got to the front door of her workplace and glanced back, Andrea’s tall figure had disappeared into the crowd. Why she should be feeling disappointed she didn’t know. And nor should she care.

But somehow—annoyingly—she did.