tense silence stretched, thickened. Now she really couldn’t breathe. Fumbling at the car door, she pushed it wide.
Constantine leaned across and hauled the door shut, pinning Sienna in place before she could scramble out. The uncharacteristic surge of temper that flowed through him at the deliberate taunt was fueled by the physical frustration that had been eating at him ever since he had decided he had to see her again.
The question of just why he had taken one look at Sienna two years ago and fallen in instant lust, he decided, no longer existed. It had ceased to be the instant he had glimpsed her silky blond head at the funeral. Even wet and bedraggled, her eyes red-rimmed from crying, Sienna was gorgeous in a fragile, exotic way that hooked into every male instinct he possessed.
The combination of delicacy paired with sensuality, in Anglo-Saxon terms, was crazy-making. He was at once caught between the desire to protect and cushion her from the slightest upset and the desire to take her to bed and make love to her until she surrendered utterly.
It was an unsettling fact that he would rather argue with Sienna than spend time with any other woman, no matter how gorgeous or focused on pleasing him she might be.
“Now that’s interesting. I assumed that the reason you stayed quiet about the loan was that your father needed the money too badly to wait.”
Her face went bone-white and he knew in that instant that he had gone too far.
Then, hot color burned along her cheekbones and the aura of haunted fragility evaporated. “Or maybe I was simply following orders?”
His gaze shifted to her pale mouth, the line of her throat as she swallowed. “No,” he said flatly.
Sienna had been Roberto’s precocious second-in-command for the past four years. She had run the family’s pearl house with consummate skill and focused ambition while her father had steadily gambled the profits away at various casinos. The last time she had taken an order from Roberto, she had been in the cradle. If she had a weakness, it was that she needed money.
His money.
And she still did.
She pulled in a jerky breath. He felt the rise and fall of her breasts against his arm, the feathery warmth along his jaw as she exhaled. The light, evocative scent she wore teased his nostrils as flash after flash of memory turned the air molten.
A tap on the passenger-side window broke the tension. One of his security guards.
Constantine released his hold on the door handle, his temper tightly controlled as he watched Sienna climb out and collect her car keys.
Levering himself out of the Audi into the now blistering heat of early afternoon, Constantine gave the guard his instructions. For the past four days he had seldom been without an escort but for the next hour he required absolute privacy.
Peeling out of his damp jacket, he tossed it behind the driver’s seat. He frowned as he noticed Lucas speaking with Sienna. From the brevity of the exchange he was aware that his brother had simply offered his condolences, but Sienna’s smile evoked an unsettling response.
The fact that Lucas was every inch a dangerous Atraeus male shouldn’t register, but after the charged few moments in the Audi, the knowledge of just how successful his brother was with women was distinctly unpalatable.
Constantine strolled toward Sienna as she slid her cell phone out of her purse and answered a call.
Lucas waylaid him with a brief jerk of his chin. “Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“Positive.”
“It didn’t look like a business discussion back at the cemetery, and it sure as hell didn’t look like a business discussion just then.”
Constantine knew his gaze was cold enough to freeze. “Just as long as you remember that Sienna Ambrosi is my business.”
Lucas lifted a brow. “Message received.”
Jaw tight, Constantine watched as Lucas climbed into the passenger-side seat of the dark sedan. He lifted a hand as the car cruised out of the parking lot. Maybe he hadn’t needed to warn Lucas off, but the instinct to do so had been knee-jerk and primitive. In that moment he had acknowledged one clear fact: for the foreseeable future, until he had gotten her out of his system, Sienna Ambrosi was his.
While he waited for Sienna to terminate her call, he grimly considered that fact, sifting through every nuance of the past hour. The tension that had gripped him from the moment he had laid eyes on Sienna at the funeral tightened another notch.
Constantine knew his own nature. He was focused, single-minded. When he fixed on a goal he achieved it. His absolute commitment to running the family business was both a necessity and a passion and he had never flinched from making hard choices. Two years ago, severing all connection with Sienna and the once pampered and aristocratic Ambrosi family had been one of those choices.
Sliding dark glasses onto the bridge of his nose, Constantine crossed his arms over his chest and studied the pure line of Sienna’s profile, the luscious combination of creamy skin and dark eyes, her soft pale mouth.
Until he had been handed an investigative report he had commissioned on Ambrosi Pearls and had discovered that Sienna had been linked on at least three occasions with Alex Panopoulos, a wealthy retailer.
He still remembered the moment of disorientation, the grim fury when he’d considered that Panopoulos could be Sienna’s lover.
He had soon eliminated that scenario.
According to the very efficient private eye employed by the security firm, Panopoulos was actively hunting but the Greek hadn’t yet managed to snare either of the Ambrosi girls.
Sienna registered Constantine’s impatience as she ended her conversation with Carla, who had been concerned that she had been caught up in the media frenzy in the parking lot.
Constantine lifted a brow. “Where do we talk? Your place or mine?”
Sienna dropped her phone back into her purse. After the tense moments in the car and the sensual shock of Constantine invading her space, she couldn’t hide her dismay at the thought of Constantine’s apartment. Two years ago they had spent a lot of time there. It had also been the scene of their breakup.
The thought of Constantine in the sanctuary of her own small place was equally unacceptable. “Not the apartments.”
“I don’t have the apartment anymore. I own a house along the coast.”
“I thought you liked living in town.”
“I changed my mind.”
Just like he had about her. Instantly and unequivocally.
He opened the door of her small soft-top convertible. Feeling as edgy as a cat, her stomach tight with nerves, she slipped into the driver’s seat, carefully avoiding any physical contact. “Carla’s taken Mom to a family lunch at Aunt Via’s apartment, so they’ll be occupied for the next couple of hours. I can meet you at my parent’s beach house at Pier Point. That’s where I’ve been staying since Dad died.”
Constantine
