Kitabı oku: «It Started With A Proposition: Blackmailed into the Italian's Bed / Contract with Consequences / The Passion Price»
IT STARTED WITH
COLLECTION
MIRANDA LEE is Australian, and lives near Sydney. Born and raised in the bush, she was boarding-school educated, and briefly pursued a career in classical music before moving to Sydney and embracing the world of computers. Happily married, with three daughters, she began writing when family commitments kept her at home. She likes to create stories that are believable, modern, fast-paced and sexy. Her interests include meaty sagas, doing word puzzles, gambling and going to the movies.
It Started with a Proposition
Blackmailed into the Italian’s Bed
Contract with Consequences
The Passion Price
Miranda Lee
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Table of Contents
Cover
About the Author
Title Page
Blackmailed into the Italian’s Bed
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
Contract with Consequences
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The Passion Price
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Endpage
Copyright
Blackmailed into the Italian’s Bed
CHAPTER ONE
GINO stood at the hotel room window, his hands shoved deep in his trouser pockets, his dark gaze fixed on the city streets below.
The snarled traffic moved along at snail’s pace, and the pavements were filled with office workers spilling from their buildings, all eager to get home for the weekend. Wherever home might be.
He wondered where her home was. And if she was married.
His heart missed a beat at this last thought. As perverse as it was, he didn’t want her to be married.
But of course she would be. A girl like that. So beautiful and so intelligent. Some smart man would have snapped her up by now. It had been ten years, for pity’s sake. She probably had a couple of kids as well.
His cellphone ringing sent him spinning away from the window. He glanced at his watch as he hurried over to where he’d left his phone, by the bed. Five-thirty. Hopefully it would be the detective agency and not Claudia. He didn’t want to talk to Claudia right now.
‘Gino Bortelli,’ he answered, with only the faintest of Italian accents.
‘Mr Bortelli?’
Gino almost sighed with relief at hearing a crisp male voice on the other end.
‘Cliff Hanson here, from Confidential Investigations.’
‘Glad to hear from you,’ Gino returned, just as crisply. ‘What do you have for me?’
‘We believe we’ve located the Ms Jordan Gray you’re looking for, Mr Bortelli, although it’s not as uncommon a name as we’d hoped. But there’s only one Ms Jordan Gray currently living in Sydney who matches the age and physical description you gave us.’
‘She’s not married, then?’ Gino asked, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice.
‘Nope. Still single. With no children. And you were right. She’s a lawyer. Works for Stedley & Parkinson. It’s an American-owned legal practice which has a branch here in the Sydney City Business District.’
‘I know it,’ Gino said, stunned by this news. He’d been in their offices this very afternoon, signing a contract. Hell, he might have walked right past her!
‘Word is she’s the up-and-coming star of their civil litigation section. Took on a big insurance company recently. And won.’
A wry smile spread over Gino’s face. ‘That’d be her.’
Jordan had absolutely hated insurance companies. Her parents had had an insurance claim rejected after their home had been virtually destroyed in a storm, with the insurance company hiding behind some loophole in the small print of their contract. Her father had tried to fight them through the legal system, and it had cost him every cent he had and some he didn’t. After he’d lost his final appeal he’d died of a coronary, brought on by stress, leaving behind a destitute wife and a daughter.
‘Do you have an address and home phone number for me?’ he asked.
‘An address. But no home phone number as yet. Lawyers like Ms Gray usually have unlisted numbers.’
‘Give me the address,’ Gino said, striding over to sit at the writing desk which contained everything a businessman away from home might require, including internet access.
He picked up the complimentary pen and jotted Jordan’s address down on the notepad. It was an apartment in Kirribilli, one of the swish harbourside suburbs on the north side of Sydney, not far from the bridge. He ripped off the page and slipped it into his wallet.
‘Does she live alone?’ came his next question, his throat tightening.
‘We don’t know that yet, Mr Bortelli. We’ve only been on the job a few hours. We need a little more time to fill in the details of the lady’s love-life. There’s only so much we can find out via the internet and phone calls.’
‘How much more time?’
‘Possibly only a few hours. I’m having one of my best field operatives tail Ms Gray when she leaves work this evening. We’ve been able to secure a recent photo, courtesy of her driver’s licence. He’s currently staking out the exit to her building.’
Gino winced at this invasion of Jordan’s privacy. ‘Is that really necessary?’
‘It is, if you want to know the lady’s personal status tonight. Which you said you did.’
Yes, he did. He was booked on an early morning flight to Melbourne.
When he’d flown in to Sydney yesterday Gino had had no intention of hiring a private eye to find Jordan. But during his taxi ride from the airport to the city the memories he’d been trying to bury for the last decade had resurfaced with a vengeance.
The need to know what had become of her had overridden common sense. He hadn’t been able to sleep last night with thinking about her.
By morning, his curiosity had become a compulsion. A call to a police friend in Melbourne had soon provided him with the number of a reputable Sydney investigative agency. By ten this morning he’d set in motion the search for the first-year law student he’d lived with for a few idyllic months, all those years ago.
And supposing you find out there’s no man in her life? What do you intend doing with that information?
Gino grimaced.
You were going to ask Claudia to marry you this weekend. You’ve even bought the ring. What in heaven’s name are you doing, chasing after an old flame who probably hasn’t given you a second thought in years?
He reassured himself. I just want to see her one more time. To make sure that she’s happy. Nothing more.
What could be the harm in that?
‘Keep me updated every hour,’ he said brusquely.
‘Will do, Mr Bortelli.’
CHAPTER TWO
JORDAN glanced up at the clock on the wall and willed the hands to get to ten to six, at which time she could reasonably excuse herself and go home.
She was attending the happy hour which the practice provided in the boardroom every Friday afternoon from five till six. It was a tradition at every branch of Stedley & Parkinson, introduced by the American partners when they’d begun their first practice in the United States forty years ago.
Employees who either didn’t come—or left early—were frowned upon by the powers-that-be.
Normally Jordan didn’t mind this end-of-week get-together.
But it had been a long and difficult week, both professionally and personally. Making small talk seemed beyond her today, which was why she’d taken her glass of white wine off into a corner by herself.
‘Hiding, are we?’
Jordan looked up as Kerry angled her way into the same corner, carrying a tray of finger-food.
Kerry was the big boss’s PA—the nicest girl in the place, and the closest Jordan had ever had to a best friend. A natural redhead, she had a pretty face, soft blue eyes, and fair skin which freckled in the Australian sun.
‘I didn’t feel like talking,’ Jordan said, and picked up a tiny quiche-style tart from the tray. ‘What’s in these?’
‘Spinach and mushroom. They’re very nice, and not too fattening.’
Jordan popped the tart into her mouth, devouring it within seconds. ‘Mmm, these are seriously yummy. I might have another.’
‘Feel free. So what’s the problem? Other than Loverboy having flown off home today, leaving you alone for two whole weeks?’
Jordan winced at Kerry calling Chad ‘Loverboy’. Yet it had been his office nickname from the first day he’d waltzed in, with his wide, all-American smile, film star looks and buckets of charm. There wasn’t a single girl in the place who wouldn’t have willingly gone out with Jack Stedley’s only son and heir—Kerry included. But it had been Jordan he’d zeroed in on, Jordan whom he’d been dating for the past few months.
‘Come on, you can tell me,’ Kerry added in a conspiratorial whisper. ‘I’m not a gossip like some of the other girls around here.’
Jordan knew this was true. One of Kerry’s many good qualities was her discretion.
She’d also been round the block a few times, with one marriage and several boyfriends behind her—the last having broken up with her only recently. Yet she maintained a sense of optimism about life which Jordan admired and often envied.
Jordan looked into her friend’s kind blue eyes and decided to do what she very rarely did. Confide.
‘Chad asked me to marry him last night.’
‘Wow!’ Kerry exclaimed, before shooting Jordan a speculative look. ‘So what’s the problem? You should be over the moon.’
‘I turned him down.’
‘You what? Wait here,’ Kerry said, and hurried off to give the food tray to one of the other girls to distribute, sweeping up a glass of champagne before rejoining Jordan, a stern look on her pretty face. ‘I don’t believe this. The Golden Boy asked you to marry him and you said no?’
‘I didn’t exactly say no,’ Jordan hedged. ‘But I didn’t say yes, either. I said I wanted some time to think. I said I’d give him my answer when he gets back from the States.’
‘But why? I thought you were mad about the man. Or as mad as a girl like you is ever going to get.’
‘And what does that mean?’
‘Oh…you know. You’re super-intelligent, Jordan, and very self-contained. You’re never going to lose your head over a man, like I do.’
Jordan sighed. Kerry was right. She wasn’t the sort to lose her head over a man.
But she had once. And she’d never forgotten him.
‘What is it that’s bothering you?’ Kerry persisted. ‘It can’t be the sex. You told me Chad was good in bed.’
‘He is. Yes, he is,’ she repeated, as though trying to convince herself that there wasn’t anything missing in that department.
In truth, she wouldn’t have thought anything was missing if it hadn’t been for her relationship with Gino. Chad knew all the right moves in bed. But he simply could not make her feel what Gino had once made her feel.
No man could, Jordan suspected.
‘What is it that you’re not telling me?’ Kerry asked gently.
Jordan sighed a resigned sigh. That was the trouble with confiding. It was like throwing a stone in a pond, causing ever-widening circles. Kerry was not going to rest now till Jordan had told her the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
Or at least a believable version.
‘There was this guy once,’ she began tentatively. ‘An Italian. Oh, it was years ago, during my first year at uni. We lived together for a few months.’
‘And?’
‘Well, he…he was a hard act to follow.’
‘I see. Obviously, you were madly in love with him?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what you feel for Chad doesn’t compare?’
‘No.’ Not Chad, or any other boyfriend she’d had since.
‘Was this Italian guy your first lover?’
‘Yes. He was.’ The first and by far the best.
‘That explains it, then,’ Kerry said, with satisfaction in her voice.
‘Explains what?’
‘It’s impossible for a girl to completely forget her first lover. Not if he was good in bed. Which I’m presuming he was.’
‘He was simply fantastic.’
‘You know, Jordan, he probably wasn’t as fantastic as you think he was. The memory can play tricks on us. For ages after my divorce I thought I was a fool for leaving my husband. But then I ran into him one night at a party and I realised he was nothing but a sleazebag and I was much better off without him. I’ll bet your Italian boyfriend dumped you, didn’t he?’
‘Not exactly. I came home from uni one day to find a note saying that his father was seriously ill. He said he was sorry, but he had to go home to his family, and he wished me well in the future.’
‘He didn’t promise to write or anything?’
‘No. And he didn’t leave me a forwarding address. I didn’t realise till he’d gone how little I knew about him. He never talked about his family. Or called them. At least not whilst I was around. I guessed later that he was probably out here from Italy on a temporary working visa and never meant to stay.’
‘That’s another reason why you find it hard to forget him,’ Kerry told her. ‘He’s unfinished business. Pity he had to return to Italy, otherwise you might have been able to look him up and see for yourself that he’s not nearly as fantastic as you thought. If truth be told, he’s probably fat and bald by now.’
‘It’s only been ten years, Kerry, not thirty. Besides, Italian men rarely go bald,’ Jordan pointed out, recalling Gino’s luxuriantly thick, wavy black hair. ‘And Gino would never let himself get fat. He was right into physical fitness. He worked on a construction site during the day, and went to the gym several nights a week. He’s the one who started me on the exercise kick.’ Jordan jogged a couple of kilometres most mornings, and did weights three times a week.
‘Worked as what on a construction site?’ Kerry asked.
‘A labourer.’
‘A labourer?’ Kerry repeated disbelievingly. ‘You prefer a labourer to Chad Stedley?’
‘Gino was very smart,’ Jordan defended, ‘and a darned good cook.’
‘Well, bully for him,’ Kerry said dismissively. ‘Marry Chad and you can go out to dinner every night. Or hire your own personal cordon bleu chef. Look, I don’t care if this Gino was Einstein and Casanova rolled into one! You have to move on, girl. You can’t let some old flame spoil your future. And your future is becoming Mrs Chad Stedley. If you want my advice, as soon as Chad rings you tell him you’ve thought about it and your answer is yes, yes and triple yes!’
Jordan scooped in a deep breath, then let it out very slowly. ‘I wish it were that easy.’
‘It is that easy.’
Was it?
Jordan could see the sense of Kerry’s arguments. Regardless of what she’d felt for Gino, he was past history. If you looked at things logically, to let her memory of him spoil what she could have with Chad was stupid.
Jordan was a lot of things. But stupid was not one of them.
‘Yes, you’re right,’ she said firmly. ‘I’m being silly. I’ll do exactly as you said,’ she decided, and felt instantly better.
Hadn’t she read somewhere that any decision was better than no decision at all?
That was right. It was.
Kerry rolled her eyes. ‘Thank goodness for small mercies. The girl has finally seen some sense. Look, everyone’s starting to leave now. It’s not my turn to help clean up, so how about we go have a celebratory drink together somewhere swanky? I don’t fancy going home to an empty place just yet.’
‘I’m not really dressed for swanky,’ Jordan said. Unlike Kerry, whose red woollen wrap-around dress would look just as good in a nightclub as it did in the office.
‘You can say that again,’ Kerry said drily, as she gave Jordan’s navy pin-striped trouser suit the once-over. ‘Next time we go clothes shopping together I’m not going to listen to any more of your “I’m a lawyer, I have to dress conservatively” excuses. Still, if you take down your hair and undo a couple of buttons of that schoolmarm blouse, you just might not stick out like a sore thumb. We’ll pop into the Ladies’ and fix you up when we get there.’
‘Get where?’
‘How about the Rendezvous Bar? That’s less swanky since they refurbished it.’
Jordan’s top lip curled. ‘It’s also gaining a reputation as a pick-up joint.’
Kerry grinned. ‘Yeah, I know.’
Jordan’s eyebrows lifted skywards. ‘You’re incorrigible, do you know that?’
‘Nah. More like desperate.’
‘Oh, go on with you,’ Jordan said. ‘A girl as pretty as you will never be desperate.’
Kerry beamed. ‘I do so love spending time with you, Jordan. You always make me feel good about myself. Want to go clothes shopping tomorrow?’
‘Sorry. No can do. I have to work.’
‘On a Saturday?’
‘More like all weekend.’ She still hadn’t finished her closing address for the Johnson case. Not to her satisfaction, anyway.
Kerry wagged a finger at her. ‘All work and no play makes Jordan a dull girl.’
‘Which is why I agreed to go for a drink with you,’ Jordan replied as she took her friend’s free arm. ‘So stop picking on me, woman, and let’s get the hell out of here.’
CHAPTER THREE
GINO clicked off the phone, amazed by what Cliff Hanson had just told him.
Apparently Jordan had left her office building at ten past six and walked with a female friend towards Wynyard Station. The man tailing her had presumed she was going to catch a train home. Instead, she and her companion had turned into the Regency Hotel and they were, at this very second, sitting in the bigger of the two hotel bars, having a drink.
The amazing part was that the Regency was where Gino himself was staying.
For the second time that day fate had placed Jordan on a path which could have crossed with his.
This time, however, he wasn’t in ignorance of the fact. Which was why he’d ordered Hanson to tell his operative to sit close to the door and keep an eye on Jordan till he could get down there.
Adrenaline coursed through Gino’s veins as he swept up his wallet from the bedside table and slipped it into the breast pocket of his leather jacket. For a split second he hesitated, worried over what would happen when he confronted her after all these years.
Would she be pleased to see him? Or not?
Impossible to gauge how she might react. She’d loved him and he’d hurt her, no doubt about that.
Jordan was not a girl to easily forgive and forget. That he did know.
At the same time, their love affair had been ten years ago—a long time to nurse a broken heart or bitterness.
Gino scowled as he whirled and headed for the hotel room door. He’d cross those bridges when he came to them, because nothing short of death was going to stop him from going down there right now and talking to her.
Still, he was glad he’d had time to shower and change from the sleek Italian business suit he’d been wearing earlier today. Casual clothes were more in keeping with the Gino Jordan had once known, not the Gino he had become.
Which is what, exactly? he asked himself during the lift ride down to the ground floor.
A man who’s forgotten what it’s like to have fun, that’s what.
A man weighed down by responsibility towards his family.
A man about to ask a girl he doesn’t love to marry him.
An Italian girl.
If only he hadn’t made that rash promise to his father on his deathbed.
But he had, and there was no going back.
Those last words echoed in Gino’s head as he stepped from the lift and headed for the bar in question.
No going back
What he’d once shared with Jordan was gone. If he was strictly honest, it had never been real. He’d been living a fantasy. A sexy Shangri-la which had disappeared the moment he’d received that call about his father’s illness.
All that was left was a guilty memory, plus the ghost of pleasures past.
Tonight he would face that guilty memory and hopefully lay its ghost to rest.
A bouncer stood at the door to the bar, giving Gino a sharp look as he approached, but not barring his way inside.
The room was huge, with a dark blue carpet underfoot, disco-style lighting overhead, and a glitzy central bar. There were several different sitting areas, but most of the bar’s patrons were clustered near the far left corner, where a three-piece combo was playing soul music.
Only a smattering of people were sitting at the tables in the area nearest the entrance, which was currently designated a no-smoking section.
Gino located the operative without any trouble—an innocuous-looking guy of around thirty, who’d blend into most crowds.
‘She’s over there,’ he said, as soon as Gino sat down, nodding towards a table located on the edge of the dance floor.
As Gino stared through the faint smoke haze at the girl who’d once captured his heart he realised he probably wouldn’t have recognised her if he’d walked right past her! Not with her glorious blonde hair scraped back up in that severe style, and certainly not dressed in that mannish trouser suit.
What had happened to the feminine girl he’d known?
She was thinner too, her face all angles.
Yet she was still beautiful. Beautiful and sad.
Both moved him: her beauty and her sadness.
‘I’ll take it from here,’ he said gruffly to the operative. ‘You can go home.’
‘Are you absolutely sure?’
‘Absolutely.’
The man shrugged, swallowed the rest of his beer, and left.
Gino sat there for some time, watching Jordan. She glanced repeatedly at a redhead in a red dress, who was dancing cheek to cheek with a tall, good-looking guy. Clearly this was the female colleague she had come here with. Also clearly, Jordan wasn’t happy with being left to sit alone.
As soon as the band stopped playing the redhead returned to the table, accompanied by her dancing partner. After a brief conversation with Jordan, the redhead and the man headed for the exit, arm in arm.
When Jordan started downing her almost full glass of wine with considerable speed, obviously intending to leave also, Gino decided it was time to make his presence known.
The distance from his table to hers seemed endless, his chest growing tighter with each step. Just before he reached the table Jordan put down her empty wine glass then bent to her left, to retrieve her bag from the adjoining chair.
She actually had her back to him when he said, ‘Hello, Jordan,’ the words feeling thick on his tongue.
She twisted back to face him, her chin jerking upwards, her lovely blue eyes widening with surprise.
No…not surprise. Shock.
‘Oh, my God!’ she exclaimed. ‘Gino!’
Shock, but not bitterness, he noted. Nor hatred.
Relief flooded through him.
‘Yes,’ he said with a warm smile. ‘It’s me. Gino. May I join you? Or are you here with someone?’
‘Yes. No. No, not any more. I—’ Jordan broke off, a puzzled frown forming on her small forehead. ‘You’ve almost lost your Italian accent!’
Trust her to notice something like that, Gino thought ruefully, as he sat down at her table. She’d always been an observant girl, with a mind like a steel trap.
When he’d first met her he’d not long been back from a four-year stint at the university in Rome, his Italian accent having thickened during his extended stay.
This reunion was going to be more awkward than he’d ever imagined. For how could he explain her observation without revealing just how much he’d deceived her all those years ago?
He had no option but to lie.
‘I’ve been back in Australia for quite a while.’
‘And you didn’t think to look me up?’ she threw at him.
‘I couldn’t imagine you’d want that,’ he said carefully. ‘I thought you’d have moved on.’
‘I have,’ she said, and tossed her head at him.
A very Jordan-like gesture, but it didn’t have the same effect as it had when her hair was down.
‘You became a lawyer, then?’ he asked, pretending he didn’t already know.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘Your mum must be very proud of you.’
‘Mum passed away a few years back. Cancer.’
Another reason for her to look sad and lonely. ‘I’m so sorry, Jordan. She was a nice woman.’
‘She liked you, too.’ She sighed, looking away for a moment, before looking back at him. ‘So what are you doing nowadays?’
‘I’m still working in the construction business,’ he replied, hating himself for keeping up with the deception. But what else could he do? This wasn’t going to go anywhere. It couldn’t. This was just…closure.
Yet as he looked deep into her eyes—such lovely, expressive blue eyes—it didn’t feel like closure. It felt as it had felt the first day he’d met her.
The temptation to try to resurrect something here was intense. So was his escalating curiosity about her love-life. Okay, so she wasn’t married. That didn’t mean she didn’t have a lover, or a live-in boyfriend.
‘You’re not married, I notice,’ he remarked, nodding towards her left hand, which was empty of rings.
‘No,’ she returned, after a slight hesitation.
Gino wondered what that meant. Had she been married and was now divorced?
‘And you?’ she countered, her eyes guarded.
‘I might get around to it one day,’he said with a shrug.
‘You always vowed you wouldn’t marry till you were at least forty.’
‘Did I?’
‘You very definitely did.’
Gino decided to stop the small talk about himself and cut to the chase.
‘What are you doing here alone, Jordan?’
‘I wasn’t alone,’ she returned sharply. ‘I was with a work colleague, but she ran into an old boyfriend of hers and he asked her out to dinner. They’ve just left.’
‘You didn’t mind?’
‘Why should I mind? We only came in for a drink. It’s high time I went home, anyway.’
‘Why? It’s only early. Is there someone special waiting for you at home? Boyfriend? Partner?’
Anger flared into her eyes. ‘That’s a very personal question, Gino. One which I don’t feel inclined to answer.’
‘Why not?’
Her eyes carried exasperation as she shook her head at him. ‘You run into me by accident after ten years and think you have the right to question me over my personal life? If you were so interested in me, then why didn’t you look me up when you came back to Australia?’
‘I’ve been living in Melbourne,’ he said, by way of an excuse.
‘So? That’s only a short plane trip away.’
‘Would you have really wanted me to look you up, Jordan? Be honest now.’
Her face betrayed her. She had wanted him to. But no more than he’d wanted to himself.
‘You could have written,’ she said angrily. ‘You knew my address. Whereas I had no idea where you were, other than in Italy.’
‘I thought it better to make a clean break—leave you free to find someone more…suitable.’
She laughed. ‘You were being cruel to be kind, then?’
‘Something like that.’
She stared at him, her eyes still furious.
Gino had forgotten how worked up she could get when she thought someone wasn’t being straight with her. Jordan had no tolerance of lies—or liars.
Gino conceded he’d dug a real hole for himself all those years ago. Not that it mattered what she thought of him. What mattered was whether she was happy or not.
The evidence of his eyes was troubling. She looked tired, and stressed, and frustrated. If she did have a live-in lover—or a boyfriend—he wasn’t making her very happy.
‘So there’s no special man in your life right now?’ he asked.
She glanced away for a second, then looked back at him. ‘Not right now. Look, I—’
‘Would you dance with me?’ he asked, before she could bolt for the door.
The band had started up again, a bluesy number with a slow, sensual rhythm.
Jordan stared at him. But not so much with anger now. With a type of fear, as if he’d just asked someone scared of heights to step with him to the edge of a cliff.
Maybe she thought he was coming on to her.
He wasn’t. He just wanted to find some way to get past her defences, to have her open up to him about her life.
She was a good dancer, he knew, but so was he. They’d loved going dancing together.
‘For old times’ sake,’ he added, standing up and holding his hand out to her.
She stared at it for a long moment, as if it was a viper about to strike.
Finally she rose, taking off her jacket and draping it over her bag on the chair before placing her hand in his.
How soft it was, he thought as he drew her onto the polished wooden dance floor. Soft and pale, with long, elegant fingers and exquisitely kept nails.
She’d always had a thing for painted nails, he recalled. Both fingers and toes. Her favourite colour had been scarlet, but she’d had bottles and bottles of nail polish, of every imaginable shade.
Tonight her fingernails were painted a deep cream, matching her blouse.
Now that her jacket was off, he could see she still had a lovely figure, despite being thinner: her breasts were still pert, her waist was tinier than ever, and her stomach athletically flat.
His mother would have said she didn’t have good childbearing hips—the way Italian girls did—but Gino had always found Jordan’s slender shape extremely attractive. He loved her tight little butt and her long slim legs, loved her blonde hair and her pale soft skin.
Naked, she looked like an angel.
‘Put your arms up around my neck,’ he suggested, after he swung her round to face him.
‘You always were a bossy man,’ she replied, but did as he wanted, her fingertips like velvet as they slid under the collar of his leather jacket and settled on the sensitive skin at the nape of his neck.
Gino swallowed when he started to respond. This was not what he’d intended when he’d asked her to dance. But he seemed powerless to stop himself from becoming excited.
Planting his hands on her hips, he kept his lower half a decent distance from hers—not an easy thing to do once she started swaying to the slow, thudding beat of the music.
His good intentions, Gino suspected, were doomed to failure.
‘You are real, aren’t you?’ she said suddenly. ‘Not some figment of my imagination.’
‘I’m very real,’ he said drily. Just as his arousal was.
Her head tipped charmingly to one side as she looked up at him.
‘Amazing,’ she murmured. ‘And you’re not fat at all.’
He tried not to laugh. If only she knew…
‘Why would I be fat?’ he asked.
‘Lots of men gain weight after they turn thirty. What are you now? Thirty-five?’
‘Thirty-six. You’ve lost weight.’
‘A little.’
‘You’re still very beautiful.’
Her eyes stabbed his with reproach. ‘Don’t, Gino.’
‘Don’t what?’
‘Don’t sweet-talk me.’
‘You used to like me sweet-talking you.’
‘I used to like you doing a lot of things.’
He wished she hadn’t said that. Her words were sparking memories which would have been better kept buried.
And they in turn sparked something he’d been trying to deny all day, struggled to control ever since he’d asked her to dance. Which was that he still wanted her—despite the years which had passed, despite everything. He wanted to take her upstairs to his hotel room right now and strip her of those sexless clothes, wanted to take down her hair and just take her, as he had ten years ago.
She’d been a virgin back then, a fact he hadn’t realised till it was too late. Her innocence had shocked him at the time, but her passion had quickly banished any qualms.
That passion was still there: he could see it in her blazing blue eyes and flushed cheeks.
And it was still overriding his conscience.
‘Some things don’t change,’ he growled.
‘Everything changes, Gino. Nothing stays the same.’
‘Is that so?’
His hands shifted, one sliding up her spine, the other downward to her tailbone, giving him the leverage to press her close.
As their bodies made more intimate contact a wave of dark desire ripped through Gino, obliterating what little was left of his conscience.
‘This hasn’t changed, beautiful,’ he whispered huskily.
CHAPTER FOUR
JORDAN stiffened, then tried to stop dancing altogether. But he would have none of it, keeping her body jammed tight against his as he moved his hips from side to side.
Impossible to ignore his arousal.
Gino was impressively built. Her mind flashed back to the first time he’d made love to her. Or tried to. She’d never forgotten the shocked look on his face when he’d realised she was a virgin. She’d begged him not to stop, and he hadn’t, his initial penetration punching a pained cry from her lips.
She’d gloried in the experience, impatient to do it again as soon as possible. Afterwards he’d run them both a bath and lain her on top of him in the warm water, caressing her body. Then he’d dried her and carried her back to her bed, where he’d made love to her again, not stopping till she’d fallen into a deep sleep.
He’d given her tender body time to recover from his initial onslaught. Next morning, when he’d entered her, she’d welcomed him with a wild, wanton need. She’d climaxed swiftly and noisily.
After that, she’d always come whenever he was inside her.
Feeling his rock-hard flesh pressing into her stomach reminded her of how that felt: Gino being inside her.
Jordan suppressed a groan, burying her head under his chin to hide her flushed face from his eyes.
‘I’m up here for the weekend,’ he murmured, his lips in her hair. ‘I’m staying here at this hotel.’
Jordan’s head jerked back, her eyes disbelieving as she stared up into his darkly handsome face. ‘You’re staying here? At the Regency?’
‘It is fate, is it not?’
Jordan shook her head. ‘I don’t believe in fate. Things are not predestined, Gino. People have free will. And choices.’
‘And what would you choose, Jordan, if I asked you to come up to my room with me?’
Jordan’s lips fell open. The arrogance of him! And the presumption!
But, oh…the passion. It blazed down at her from his beautiful black eyes, reminding her of his extraordinary virility and amazing sexual stamina. When they’d lived together it had been nothing for Gino to make love to her for hours on end, with only the shortest of breaks in between. He’d claimed he couldn’t get enough of her, and his actions had backed up his words.
Gino had never been the first one to go to sleep. She’d been the one who usually pegged out, exhausted but happy.
‘What for, exactly?’ she snapped, even as she quivered inside at the thought of going up to his room with him. ‘An old-times’-sake shag? Sorry, but I don’t do one-night stands, Gino. I never did. You must remember that.’
‘I remember everything about you,’ he said, his voice vibrating with the most seductive emotion. ‘And I’m not after a one-night stand. I want you to stay the whole weekend with me. I also want the opportunity to talk to you. To explain why I didn’t come back for you all those years ago.’
Jordan’s wildly galloping heart skittered to an unsteady halt. ‘You…you wanted to come back for me?’
‘Of course. I loved you, Jordan. Never doubt that.’
The last of Jordan’s resistance began to crumble right then and there.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he added. ‘I don’t want to talk tonight. Tonight is for us, Jordan. You and me together again, as we once were. Don’t say no. Say si. Si, Gino. As I taught you all those years ago.’
Jordan’s head whirled. That was another way she’d been different with Gino than with any other man since. The way he’d been able to make her submit to his will. Not like some whipped slave, but willingly and wantonly. She had wallowed in the role of being his woman. Wallowed in his possessiveness and his protectiveness. With him she’d always felt safe and secure, and totally, totally loved.
She’d been devastated when he left, devastated and despairing. That year she’d failed her exams and had to resit.
She hadn’t had another boyfriend during her remaining years at university. Then, when she had eventually started dating again, she’d gone out with sweet, gentle men who were, perhaps, just a little weak. Men she could dominate and dump, once things got too serious.
Because she wasn’t going to marry any of them. How could she, when she didn’t love them?
Then Chad had come into her life. Smiling, charming, successful Chad, who’d impressed her with his intelligence and sophistication.
Sex with him was quite good.
She’d thought she loved him—till he’d proposed and she had suddenly been faced with a lifetime of sleeping with him.
If she were brutally honest, there was something irritatingly clinical about Chad’s lovemaking—as if he was following a textbook on sex. Sometimes she faked her orgasm, so that he wouldn’t ask her if she’d had one.
Gino had never asked her. He’d known she had.
Jordan trembled at the thought of how many times she would climax if she went up to his hotel room with him.
‘Come on,’ he decided for her. ‘Let’s go.’
Taking her arms from around his neck, he grabbed her left hand and began pulling her towards the exit.
‘My things!’ she protested, and indicated the table where, hopefully, her bag and jacket would still be on that chair.
They were.
He scowled as he watched her draw her jacket on. ‘Why do you wear such unflattering clothes?’
Her eyes flicked over his outfit. Tight black jeans, a white T-shirt and a black leather jacket. He’d always been a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. They suited Gino’s tall, macho body.
‘Female lawyers wear clothes like this to work,’ she said. She didn’t add, Especially ones who looked like her. The law was still a man’s world, no matter what feminists liked to think. Even women clients preferred a male lawyer.
‘You look better in a dress,’ he returned, taking her elbow and steering her towards the exit. ‘Or at least a skirt. You should never wear trousers, Jordan.’
Heat flooded her body as she recalled how, after Gino had been living with her for a while, he’d forbidden her to wear underwear. She’d fought him over that. At first. But he’d managed to convince her, and she’d started going round with nothing on under her clothes. Which was why she’d worn dresses and skirts back then, and not jeans or trousers.
Oh, heavens, she felt hot, so hot.
Thankfully, the air outside the bar was much cooler. Jordan scooped in some calming breaths as Gino urged her along the marble-floored arcade which led to the hotel foyer proper. If she was going to do this she would rather do it with a clear head, not because she was mindlessly turned on.
But it was no use. She was mindlessly turned on.
She tried warning herself that he might have become a heartless womaniser, was just spinning her a line to get her into bed for the night.
But she wasn’t convinced. He’d seemed so sincere just now. Sincere and very passionate.
At the same time Jordan was desperate to find the answers to all those questions about Gino which had plagued her for the last ten years.
He’d promised to explain everything in the morning.
Meanwhile…
It was the meanwhile which was sending her into a spin.
Was she really going to do this? Go to bed with Gino within ten minutes of running into him again?
Her heart fluttered wildly as her eyes raked over him. He was everything she remembered. And more…more handsome, more mature…and even more masterful.
She would not have believed herself capable of being seduced so quickly these days, even by Gino.
But seduce her he had, in no time flat.
Jordan knew that if she spent the night with her wickedly sexy former lover then it would be Chad who’d be history. She’d had a slim chance of forgetting Gino when he’d been safely consigned to the past. No way could she forget him now.
Still, maybe she wouldn’t have to forget him this time. Maybe they really could take up where they left off.
Oh, she hoped so.
‘What are you doing up here in Sydney?’ she asked, almost running to keep up with him. ‘And why are you staying here? This is a very expensive hotel.’
‘Don’t ask questions, Jordan,’ he returned, his tone impatient. ‘Not right now. Leave it till the morning.’
She opened her mouth, then closed it again. In truth, she didn’t want to talk. But she didn’t want to think, either. And silence encouraged thinking.
Thinking brought doubts and worries. She could imagine what Kerry would think if she saw her now. She’s say she was insane!
When they reached the bank of lifts, one of them was empty and waiting. Gino took no time steering her inside, inserting his key card and pressing the tenth floor. The moment the doors closed he pulled her forcefully into his arms.
‘I can’t wait another second,’ he growled, his mouth already descending.
What was it that made one man’s kiss different from another?
Jordan had once tried to analyse this when other men’s kisses never did for her what Gino’s had done.
Now she knew: it was not just a matter of technique, or the sensual shape of his mouth. It was the passion behind those kisses, that all-encompassing hunger which came not just from his lips and tongue, but from his whole body.
Jordan was panting by the time he wrenched his mouth away.
His black eyes blazed down at her. ‘I should never have left you,’ he said. ‘Never!’
The lift had stopped by then, and the doors slid open. Two couples were waiting there to get in, all glammed up for a Friday night on the town. The women glanced at Gino as they exited, the men at Jordan.
She cringed a little when she saw her reflection in the mirror on the wall opposite. She looked dishevelled—some strands of hair falling down, her mouth devoid of lipstick, her eyes dilated and glittering with desires as yet unsatisfied.
Gino enfolded her hand in his and drew her along a carpeted hallway, stopping in front of room number 107.
As he bent his head to insert his key card again, Jordan noticed that his hair was shorter than he’d once worn it. She wondered if he was still a construction labourer. Maybe he was a foreman by now.
Another thought popped into her mind as he opened the door and waved her inside. Surely he must have a girlfriend back in Melbourne. Men like Gino didn’t live celibate lives.
As jealous as this idea made her, Jordan held her tongue, not wanting to spoil the moment with any upsetting truths. All she needed to know for now was that he wasn’t married and that he still desired her. As she still desired him.
But do you still love him? came the intriguing question as Gino followed her into the hotel room, kicking the door shut behind them.
Jordan was no longer a romantic teenager. She’d learned in the decade post-Gino that falling in love did not come as easily when you’d seen more of life. And of men.
When Gino curled his hands over her shoulders and leant her back against him Jordan realised she didn’t care if she still loved him or not. Her desires had moved past the point of no return. She was Gino’s woman again. At least for tonight. No, for the whole weekend.
An erotic shiver rippled down her spine as he eased her jacket off her shoulders.
‘Do you wish to go to the bathroom first?’ he whispered.
‘No,’ she choked out.
Her jacket gone, he turned her round and began unbuttoning her blouse. When her nipples tightened within her bra, she closed her eyes.
‘Open your eyes,’ he commanded.
She obeyed him, if a little reluctantly.
‘Now keep them open. I want you to see that it is Gino making love to you.’
‘You think I wouldn’t know it was you, even with my eyes closed?’
His smile was almost smug. ‘You have not forgotten me?’
‘I remember everything about you, Gino,’ she said, echoing his words down in the bar.
His eyes smouldered as he stripped the blouse from her body, then her bra.
‘Then you will remember I am not always a patient lover.’
Jordan’s mouth went dry.
Sometimes, when he’d come home from work, he’d lifted her skirt and taken her swiftly, standing up. No foreplay. Just his flesh filling hers whilst he told her how he’d thought about doing this to her all day.
His impassioned words had excited her as much as his actions, sending her over the edge within a shockingly short space of time.
She shuddered at the thought that this was what he was going to do to her now. Though he couldn’t, could he? Not with what she was still wearing.
‘You should not cover your beautiful body with clothes such as these,’ he told her, as he unzipped her pin-striped trousers and pushed them down over her hips. When they pooled onto the floor she stepped out of them, leaving her standing there in nothing but cream cotton panties, beige knee-high stockings and sensible black pumps.
‘Ridiculous,’ he growled, his top lip curling at the sight of her. ‘Get them off. Get everything off!’
She might have done as he ordered if he hadn’t started undressing himself, tossing aside his black leather jacket and reefing the white T-shirt over his head in a flash.
The sudden baring of his chest kept her rooted to the spot, her heart thudding as her eyes washed over him. He was leaner than he had been ten years ago—leaner, yet still utterly gorgeous.
‘Do you want me to do it? Is that it?’ he asked as he unzipped his jeans and shoved them down, taking his underpants with them.
Jordan swallowed. ‘What?’
Gino shot her a frustrated glance before sitting down on the edge of the bed and yanking off his shoes and socks.
Once totally naked, he remained sitting there, his dark eyes narrowing as they travelled up and down her tautly held body.
‘You are thinner,’ he said.
‘So are you,’ she countered, desperate to find some strength to fight the wave of weakness which was washing through her. ‘And your hair’s shorter.’
‘Is yours?’
‘No.’
‘Then take it down.’
She just stood there, willing herself not to blindly obey him, as she once had.
His dark eyes glittered. ‘If you don’t, then I will.’
Jordan’s hands lifted to pull out the pins which anchored her French pleat, her hair spilling down over her shoulders.
‘Now come here,’ he said, and moved his knees apart, drawing her gaze to those parts of his body which she’d been trying not to stare at.
Jordan stiffened. What did he want her to do?
‘Put your right foot up here,’ he said, patting a small area of the bed in front of him.
Relief loosened her frozen muscles, and she moved forward to do as he suggested.
He slipped off her shoe and tossed it aside, then peeled the short stocking down her leg, his fingers caressing her calf as he did so. Then her ankle, and then the sensitive sole of her foot.
‘Mmm,’ he said, once her leg was bare. ‘Cream nail polish on your fingers, scarlet red on your toes. I wonder if your work colleagues know the real you, Jordan? The other foot, please.’
‘And who is the real me?’ she said, struggling to keep her voice steady whilst he gave the other foot the same erotic treatment.
‘You’re a closet exhibitionist. And a sensualist.’
Jordan grimaced when he pulled her foot towards him, pressing her toes into him.
‘Rub your foot up and down on me,’ he said.
When she did, a raw groan broke from his lips.
‘You see?’ he said, grabbing her ankle and depositing her by then unsteady foot back on the floor.
She saw nothing, her mind having tipped from reality into that wildly erotic, heart-pounding world where desire ruled and pleasure beckoned.
‘Come closer,’ he commanded.
When she did, he dragged her panties down to her ankles, then bent forward to kiss her stomach.
Jordan’s belly tightened under his lips, her hands lifting to rake through his hair. She groaned when he swirled his tongue in her navel, gasped when his hands slid between her legs, whimpered when his fingers slipped inside her…
His head suddenly lifted from her stomach. ‘Don’t let go yet,’ he warned her, even whilst he continued the most intimate exploration of her body.
‘Oh, God, Gino. I can’t. I…Please…Please…’
‘Now you are the impatient one. I like that. Would you like me inside you now? Tell me how much. Tell me,’ he urged, his eyes like shining black coals as they gazed up at her.
‘Stop tormenting me,’ she cried.
‘But I find I am enjoying it. It makes me feel good to see you this desperate for me.’
‘Just do it, for pity’s sake!’
She was on the bed and under him before she could utter another word. He hooked her ankles over his shoulders, then drove into her. Deep.
‘Is this what you wanted?’ he muttered as he pounded into her.
‘Yes,’ she panted. ‘Yes.’
‘You can come now,’ he growled, just as she splintered apart in an orgasm which blew her mind even further than it was already.
Dimly, she heard him cry out, her senses no longer her own. She was lost, drowning in the heady sensation of his hot seed flooding her womb, exulting in the feel of his flesh pulsating in a rapturous tandem with her own.
It wasn’t till some time afterwards, when their bodies had finally become as quiet as the room, that Jordan’s brain kicked back into gear, her stomach somersaulting at the realisation that Gino hadn’t used any protection.
Not that this was a total disaster. She was on the pill. But her own lack of thought in that regard—and, more to the point, his—was a real worry.
‘Gino,’ she said, her hands pushing at his shoulders.
‘Yes, yes, I know. I’m heavy.’
‘It’s not that. I was just thinking…you…you didn’t use a condom.’
He levered himself up onto his elbows and stared down at her.
‘Are you saying I could have made you pregnant just now?’
‘No. Pregnancy’s not my concern. I’m on the pill.’
‘I promise you I’m no risk to your health,’ Gino reassured her. ‘Look, are you hungry? I am.’
‘I’m starving,’ she confessed.
‘The Room Service menu’s over there, on that desk. In a leather folder. Check it out while I go run us both a bath.’
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘I need to go to the loo first.’
‘I’m not stopping you.’
‘But I don’t—’ She broke off, thinking how she would have died rather than go to the bathroom in front of Chad. Yet when she’d lived with Gino they’d hidden nothing from each other.
But she wasn’t living with Gino any more, came the timely reminder. She was living by herself. An independent, grown-up woman who liked her privacy.
‘I’m sorry, Gino, but I’d prefer to use the bathroom alone.’
He stared at her in surprise, then shrugged. ‘Whatever.’
Jordan hurried, feeling slightly silly at her stance. She’d just let him touch her in very private places, let him strip her and have sex with her. Let him see her come.
Now she had suddenly gone all shy and precious with him. It seemed they couldn’t exactly take up where they’d left off after all. Ten years had gone by. She’d changed, even if he hadn’t.
Gino was waiting outside the bathroom door, totally naked, whilst she’d drawn on one of the hotel’s bathrobes.
‘All yours,’ she said, and bolted past him, not wanting to start staring again.
The Room Service menu was where he’d said it was.
And so was a plane ticket, lying next to it on the desk.
Jordan stared at it for a long moment.
Then she picked it up.
CHAPTER FIVE
GINO found himself humming as he watched the tub fill, the bath gel having turned the water a pale green as well as providing some fragrant bubbles.
For the first time in years he felt light-hearted. And happy.
All because he’d found Jordan again.
It was as if the last ten years had been wiped away. He felt young again, and invincible. Jordan was still his woman—had been since the first day he’d set eyes on her.
She’d been working as a waitress back then, at an Italian restaurant not far from Sydney University, just across the road from the building site where Gino had been employed.
Although he’d been trying to opt out of everything Italian at that particular time in his life, the mouthwatering smell of his favourite pasta dishes had kept beckoning, and he’d finally given in to temptation and gone there for an evening meal.
Fate had sat him down at one of Jordan’s tables.
The sexual chemistry between them had been instant and electric. He’d stayed on, eating more than he needed, just so he could keep talking to the beautiful blonde waitress who hadn’t been able to take her eyes off him any more than he could her. He’d openly flirted with her, and she’d served him with a degree of attention which Gino had found both telling and seductive.
When she’d confided over his third cup of coffee that her flatmate had decided to drop out of university and go back home to live, leaving her to find the rent alone, Gino had grabbed the opportunity, saying he’d been looking for a place to live and asking would she consider having him as her flatmate?
His eyes must have told her that he wanted to be more than just her flatmate. So when she’d agreed to his moving in the next day, Gino had been a serious state of arousal even before he’d set foot in the place. He hadn’t lasted more than half an hour before he had kissed her. One thing had quickly led to another, with Gino thanking his lucky stars that he’d come into that restaurant.
His discovering that Jordan was only nineteen—and a virgin—had been a huge shock. But subsequently a huge delight.
She’d become his perfect fantasy lover—her youth and inexperience allowing him to live out his own fantasy role as the masterful older male. He’d been thrilled by her falling for him despite thinking he was just a labourer, wallowing in her acceptance of him as a man in his own right. He’d revelled in the sexual power he’d held over her. What man wouldn’t have? She was an incredibly beautiful girl, with a brilliant mind and a strength of character which was formidable.
Yet, in his arms, she was all sensual submission.
Not passive, though; Jordan was too passionate for passive.
He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off her back then, quickly becoming addicted to the primal feelings she’d evoked in him. It seemed that hadn’t changed. He could not wait to carry her into this bath and for their lovemaking to begin again.
A loud rapping on the bathroom door had Gino whirling round, his heart lurching with instant worry.
He snapped off the taps, then wrenched open the door. There she stood, the object of his desire, her lovely face coldly furious, her hands jammed into the pockets of the white towelling robe.
‘I know I agreed that explanations could wait till the morning,’ she snapped. ‘But that was before I saw this.’
Gino’s stomach rolled over when she pulled her right hand from the robe pocket and held out his slightly crumpled plane ticket.
He’d forgotten that he’d left it on that damned desk, having emptied his suit pockets before changing clothes late this afternoon.
‘This ticket is for tomorrow morning,’ she swept on before he could say a word. ‘Very early tomorrow morning. Which rather puts paid to your claim that you’re up here for the weekend.’
‘I wasn’t going to take that flight, Jordan. Not after I ran into you. I was going to ring up and change it to Sunday.’
‘You still lied to me, Gino.’
‘I just twisted the truth a little.’
‘Twisted the truth?’ she repeated, with a caustic gleam in her eyes. ‘And how would you describe giving someone a false name? Because this ticket is made out to a Mr Gino Bortelli.’
‘Jordan, I—’
‘I take it that’s your real name?’ she interrupted savagely. ‘Bortelli? Not Salieri, like you told me ten years ago?’
Gino tried to keep calm, but a very true panic hovered in the wings of his mind. ‘Salieri is my mother’s maiden name. I took it temporarily when I came to Sydney for reasons of privacy.’
‘Reasons of privacy?’ she repeated scathingly. ‘Like, people might recognise you as what, exactly? A rock star in hiding?’
‘No, as Gino Bortelli.’
‘Sorry, Gino. But I’m none the wiser.’
‘My family are rather big in the construction business. I didn’t want any special favours when I first came to Sydney. I’d not long finished an engineering degree at university in Rome, and I—’
‘Excuse me?’ she snapped. ‘Are you telling me you’re a qualified engineer? I thought you were a labourer.’
‘That’s what I was working as when I first met you.’
Jordan looked totally bewildered. ‘But why? That would be like me still working as a waitress instead of a lawyer.’
Gino sighed, then reached for the other bathrobe hanging on the back of the door. There seemed little point in staying naked. The erotic night he’d been planning was well and truly over.
‘Could we go out into the other room?’ he suggested, after he drew the robe on and tied the sash around his waist. ‘I could do with a drink.’
He strode past her out into the hotel room proper, heading for the mini-bar.
‘Do you want a glass of wine?’ he asked, glancing over his shoulder at Jordan as she reluctantly followed him. ‘There’s a half-bottle of red here which isn’t too bad.’
‘No, thanks,’ she returned crisply. ‘What I want to know is why you lied to me about so many things.’
‘Perhaps you should sit down?’ he suggested, indicating the sofa opposite the television.
She didn’t sit down, moving past the sofa to stand in front of the window, with her arms crossed and her eyes still sceptical.
Gino poured himself a full glass of wine, taking a decent swallow before turning to face her across the room.
‘I was tired after studying for years. Tired of being pushed by my parents to be an over-achiever. It’s a common enough phenomenon in Italian families. I demanded a year off, to just be myself and not my father’s only son. I wanted to earn my own money. Be totally independent. Live a simpler, less stressful life. That was why I decided to work with my hands, and why I changed my name. Because I didn’t want my employer recognising the Bortelli name and treating me differently.’
Jordan frowned. ‘People would recognise the Bortelli name even out here in Australia?’
This was the moment Gino had been dreading. But the truth had to come out—especially if he wanted to continue seeing Jordan. And he did, very much.
‘I think you might have misunderstood something about me all those years ago,’ he began carefully. ‘I didn’t exactly come to Sydney straight from Rome. After I finished my degree I went home to my family first.’
‘So where in Italy does your family live?’
‘My family doesn’t live in Italy, Jordan. They migrated to Melbourne not long after I was born. That’s where they live. Melbourne.’
She stared at him with stunned blue eyes. ‘You’re saying you’re Australian?’
‘I hold dual citizenship. Both Italian and Australian.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me any of this ten years ago?’
‘I wish now that I had. But back then I was also tired of being Italian. I needed a change. I needed to find myself. Then, after I met you, Jordan, I just needed you.’
She stared at him, her eyes going cold again. ‘Only till your family needed you, Gino. Then you dropped me like a hot cake.’
Gino sighed. She didn’t understand. She could never understand what it was like to be the only son in an Italian household.
‘If anything happens to me, Gino,’ his father used to say all the time, ‘then it is your job to look after the family. Your mother and your sisters. And the business, of course.’
‘And what about this weekend, Gino?’ Jordan threw at him. ‘Was it to be more of the same? You needed a change so you came to Sydney? Because Sydney is full of silly girls only too willing to give you sex?’
‘I came to Sydney on business,’ Gino pointed out, his sense of honour totally offended by her accusations. ‘I was going to fly back to Melbourne tomorrow, remember?’
‘Sorry,’ she quipped sarcastically. ‘I momentarily forgot under the pressure of all these amazing revelations. So you ran into me, and you thought, Wow, there’s good old Jordan—the dumb bird who let me screw her every which way. I’ll bet she’s good for another go. I’ll just give her a line of bull. She’d believe anything I tell her. And presto—you were right. I fell for it, hook, line and sinker.’
‘Jordan, stop it!’ Gino said, appalled at the way things were going.
‘Stop what?’ she snapped, her blue eyes blazing at him. ‘Stop telling you how it really is? Don’t the ladies do that to you down in Melbourne? No, of course they don’t. You’re a bigshot down there. They probably crawl to you on their hands and knees. Do you have a girlfriend, Gino? Do you make her go without panties? Do you do it to her all the time, the way you used to do it to me?’
Gino felt his own temper begin to rise. He’d tried to be patient with her. Tried to explain. But she seemed determined to twist everything in her mind, to make everything they’d once shared sound ugly and sordid.
‘What in hell’s wrong with you?’ he snarled. ‘Why are you trying to spoil everything? Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth back then. But I did have my reasons. And I’m sorry I left you the way I did. But I had my reasons for that as well. My father was dying, damn it. I had to go home.’
‘Then why didn’t you come back? After your father died? Tell me that. You obviously had the resources to. Yet you chose not to. What kind of love was that, Gino?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Yes. I really want to know.’
Gino could see that all was lost. So what did it matter if he told her that last unpalatable truth?
‘I didn’t come back because you weren’t Italian.’
Her mouth fell open. But no words came out.
‘I promised my father on his deathbed that when I married I would marry an Italian girl.’
‘You have to be kidding,’ she blurted out.
‘Unfortunately, no.’ He knew only too well that he had been afraid that if he came back to Jordan he would forget his promise and marry her.
She shook her head at him, her eyes dropping limply to her sides. ‘And have you?’ she asked in a dull, flat voice. ‘Married an Italian girl?’
‘You think I would lie about something like that?’
‘I have no idea what you would lie about, Gino. I don’t know you. I never did. The man I lived with—and fell in love with—wasn’t real. He was a pretend man. A fantasy lover. The real Gino is a stranger to me. So I’m asking you again. Are you married?’
‘I told you. I’m not married.’
‘But you do have a girlfriend, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ he bit out. ‘I do.’
‘So you’re a cheat as well as a liar!’
Gino sucked in sharply. No one had spoken to him like this in his whole life.
His shock deepened when she suddenly unsashed her robe and pushed it back off her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. For a long moment she stood there, totally naked, her chin tipped up as she watched him devour every beautiful inch of her.
When his flesh automatically responded, Gino’s fingers tightened defensively around his wine glass. He didn’t know what she was up to, but he suspected that if he made any move to touch her she would scream the place down.
‘You like what you see, Gino?’ she said at last, in a challenging fashion.
Gino’s teeth clenched down hard in his jaw. The Jordan he’d known ten years ago had never been a bitch. The Jordan standing before him now was doing a very good imitation of one.
Perversely, it made him want her all the more.
‘Take a good long look, because you’re never going to see me like this again. Not that you’d overly care,’ she went on savagely, as she moved over to snatch up her clothes. ‘You’ll fly home to your girlfriend and you won’t give this little interlude a second thought. You won’t even feel guilty.’
She couldn’t have been more wrong. He’d never be able to put tonight—or her—out of his mind. And guilt was going to be his constant companion from now on.
As for Claudia…Gino could see that he would have to break off their relationship. She was a very nice girl, but she wanted to get married.
After this, marriage was permanently off Gino’s agenda. If he couldn’t marry Jordan, then he wouldn’t marry anyone.
In an amazingly short period of time Jordan was fully dressed, looking exactly as she had when he’d first seen her tonight. Except for her hair. As she hooked her bag over her shoulder she tossed her head at him, flicking her hair back from her face.
‘I never forgot you, you know,’ she threw at him. ‘Never. A girlfriend of mine said it was because you were unfinished business. She said it was a pity I couldn’t look you up, so that I could see you weren’t as fantastic as I thought you were. And she was right. You’re not. Oh, you’re still great at sex—I’ll give you that. You know exactly how to turn a girl on. But that’s a small talent in the wider scheme of things. I want a man who knows what he wants and goes after it. Who doesn’t let anything stand in his way. You’re obviously not that kind of man.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I know,’ she said, with a curl of her top lip. ‘Actions speak a lot louder than words, Gino.’
‘You’re making a big mistake,’ he said as she headed for the door.
She reached for the doorknob, then stopped to cast a cold glance over her shoulder. ‘No, I’m ending a big mistake. You’re finished business now,’ she said, then wrenched open the door. ‘Ciao.’
CHAPTER SIX
JORDAN managed to make it home without shedding a tear. Pride prevented her from breaking down in the hotel, or during the taxi ride home. But the moment she was alone, with her door safely locked behind her, everything came crashing in around her.
Her legs suddenly buckled and she sank to the floor where she stood. Her knees hit the tiled foyer first, and her cry was not one of physical pain but of emotional distress.
‘Oh, Gino,’ she sobbed as her head tipped forward into her hands.
And there she stayed, as if she was in prayer.
But she wasn’t praying, she was weeping. And despairing.
For there were no illusions left for her now.
All these years she’d thought that her memory of Gino had been spoiling her relationships with men. And maybe that was true. But it had been a bittersweet memory, because she’d always believed Gino had loved her.
But he hadn’t loved her. He’d merely wanted her, the way he’d wanted her tonight. Not for anything lasting, just for sex.
That discovery had been bad enough. Finding out that his whole persona had been an illusion was even worse. He wasn’t some struggling Italian immigrant, trying to make a good life for himself through hard work. He was a silver-tail, slumming it for a while up here in Sydney. Roughing it—with her.
Tonight had just been a shorter version of what he’d done ten years ago.
Okay, so he probably had been going to change his flight till Sunday. But his motive had still been totally selfish. After all, why look a gift-horse in the mouth?
And, brother, what a gift-horse she was where he was concerned. Fifteen miserable minutes and she’d been up there in his room, ready and willing to take her clothes off. Ready for just about anything.
If she hadn’t found that plane ticket he would have had his wicked way with her for the whole weekend, then flown off back to Melbourne, to his real life and his real girlfriend.
Thinking about that had Jordan sitting back on her heels and wiping the tears from the cheeks. What on earth was she doing, crying over such a man? He was a bastard through and through.
Scooping in a gathering breath, Jordan got to her feet and walked quickly to her bedroom. No more was she going to let Gino Betolli spoil things for her. No more. When Chad rang her in the morning she would accept his proposal of marriage, and she would do her level best not to think of Gino ever again.
But such resolves were easy to make, Jordan came to realise, once she’d stripped off and stepped into the shower. Living them was not so easy.
Her body—especially her naked body—kept reminding her of Gino, the after-effects of his torrid lovemaking conspiring to keep him in her mind. Just moving the soapy sponge lightly between her legs made her belly tighten and her breath catch.
This was what had happened to her when she’d lived with Gino. She’d been in a perpetual state of arousal. Her flesh had craved his constantly, craved release from the sexual tension he created in her.
It craved release now…
Jordan dropped the sponge, then slowly slid her back down the wet tiles till she was sitting on the shower floor. Her arms lifted to wrap around her drawn-up knees, her head dropping forward as she surrendered once more to tears.
‘Oh, Gino,’ she cried. ‘Gino…’
The phone woke her, its persistent ringing getting through the blissful oblivion which had finally descended on Jordan last night, courtesy of the painkillers she’d taken—strong ones she used when she had a migraine. Unfortunately, they had to tendency to leave her a little groggy the next day.
Rolling over with a groan, she picked up the extension near her bed and shoved it between her ear and the pillow.
‘Yes?’ Not exactly a breezy hello.
‘Jordan? Is that you?’
The sound of Chad’s voice had her sitting up and pushing her tangled hair out of her eyes. A glance at the bedside clock shocked her. It was nearly ten.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ she said more brightly. ‘Have you arrived yet?’
‘Just. Thought I’d ring you before I got out in the New York traffic. You sounded sleepy just now. Did I wake you?’
‘Sort of. I…um…I had a late night.’
‘A late night doing what?’
A rush of guilt had Jordan being grateful Chad couldn’t see her. Not that he was all that intuitive. Chad was the sort of man who only saw what he wanted to see. He honestly thought her turning down his proposal was just her playing hard to get. He clearly had no doubts that she would say yes, even leaving the engagement ring with her—a family heirloom which had belonged to his grandmother.
‘Working,’ she lied. ‘I have to wrap up the Johnson case on Monday, remember?’
‘You’ve become a bit obsessed by that case, don’t you think?’
‘No.’ Her client was a young woman whose husband had been killed in a train derailment. Shock and grief had sent her into early labour, with their premature baby boy not making it. When the government had finally offered her compensation, several years later, they hadn’t included anything for the pain and loss of her child. They’d called her son a foetus, not worthy of consideration as a human being. She’d come to Jordan wanting not a fortune, but justice.
Jordan aimed to get justice for her. Which she would—if she could get her head into gear and prepare a killer of a closing argument this weekend.
‘You work too hard, Jordan.’
‘I enjoy my work, Chad.’ More than enjoyed. She’d feel totally empty without it.
‘Have you thought about what I asked you the other night?’
Jordan’s chest tightened. She’d known he’d get round to this sooner or later.
‘Yes,’ she said.
‘And?’
This was it: the moment of truth. Did she have the courage of her convictions? Or was she going to weaken and let Gino keep spoiling things for her?
She had a choice. She could pine over a relationship which had been doomed from the start. Or she could choose a new relationship which had everything going for it.
Okay, not quite everything. But everything that mattered. Great sex was not the be all and end all, she reasoned. Besides, it wasn’t that Chad was a hopeless lover. He certainly wasn’t. The problem—if there was one—lay in her own responses. Gino had somehow programmed her not to respond totally to any other man. He, and he alone, could make her lose her head and lose control. Last night had proved that.
But this phenomenon only occurred when he was around. He wasn’t around now. He would never be around again.
The time had come to stop hiding behind her illogical passion for a man who, by his own admission, would never marry her. Next year she would be thirty. In ten years she’d be forty.
Time to make a decision.
‘Yes, Chad,’ she said firmly. ‘I will marry you.’
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