it happened, Mia had barely sat down and clicked on her computer mouse before the lift doors opened and Alessandro strode onto the floor, emanating power and authority in a navy blue suit, looking freshly showered and shaven, reminding Mia of how he’d smelled. Felt.
She tensed where she sat, memories assaulting her senses, and then his steel-grey gaze clashed with hers before he nodded towards the office doors.
‘Miss James…?’
Wordlessly Mia rose on rubbery legs and followed him into the office. Her heart was thudding unpleasantly as she closed the door behind her, trying to avoid looking at the desk. Last night when he’d hoisted her up on it, she remembered papers falling, the phone skittering across the polished surface with a clatter. Now, at least, everything had been neatly replaced and there was no way to tell or even guess what had happened there last night.
But Mia remembered. As much as she was trying to forget, she remembered… Alessandro’s hands on her hips, her mouth pressed against his shoulder. The way she’d cried out…
Resolutely she looked away from the desk and fixed her gaze on an innocuous spot on the wall. She wasn’t ready to look at Alessandro’s face and see what expression resided there, derision, desire, or just remembrance. She couldn’t handle any of it.
Alessandro cleared his throat. ‘Last night…’ he began, and then stopped.
Mia reluctantly forced herself to look at him, even though everything in her resisted. His face was bland and closed. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but she shivered just from the coolness in his eyes.
Last night. The two words did not bode well.
Somehow she forced herself to speak, even though her lips were dry, her voice a papery thread. ‘Last night didn’t happen.’
‘While I’d like to agree with you, I can’t.’ Alessandro met her gaze unflinchingly. ‘We didn’t use birth control.’
Shock jolted through Mia at the stark realisation but she kept her gaze and voice steady as she answered. ‘I’m on the pill.’
Alessandro raised his eyebrows, seeming sceptical. ‘You are? Even though you were a—?’
‘Yes.’ She cut him off. ‘It was to regulate my periods, if you must know.’ Except she had, in the welter of her own emotions, forgotten to taken it that morning. And now that she thought about it, with the news of the takeover, she hadn’t taken one yesterday either. It had hardly seemed important, considering her lack of a sex life, and yet now…
Mia swallowed hard. Surely skipping just two didn’t matter so much? She’d take one later today, in any case. The amount of risk wasn’t worth telling Alessandro about. She could not possibly handle his reaction to a potential pregnancy right now. She couldn’t get her head around it herself.
‘Fine,’ Alessandro said. ‘It’s good to know a pregnancy will not be a concern.’
A pregnancy.
No, she really could not handle thinking about that now. And it was surely so very unlikely. ‘No, it is not a concern,’ she managed.
‘And you do not need to worry about any possible disease,’ Alessandro continued steadily, starkly. Something else Mia hadn’t even considered, not remotely, although if she’d been thinking straight, she surely would have.
‘That’s good to know. Thank you.’
They stared at each other, the tension in the room ratcheting up with every second until it felt unbearable. ‘Then there’s nothing more to say,’ Mia said finally, desperate to have this over, to move beyond this moment, and more importantly, beyond last night’s moment. ‘So, as far as both of us are concerned, last night didn’t happen. We can move on as if it didn’t. We need to, for the sake of…everything.’ She drew herself up, determined to do just that. ‘Is there anything you need from me today?’
Alessandro stared at her for a long, hard moment, a muscle ticking in his jaw. ‘I’m going to write a letter to all of Dillard’s clients,’ he said at last. ‘You can take it down and then show me a draft copy.’
Mia’s heart tumbled in her chest as she felt a weird mix of relief and disappointment that she didn’t want to understand. Alessandro was doing what she wanted…trying to act normal. ‘Very good,’ she said, and turned from the room to get her laptop.
A few minutes later Alessandro was sitting behind his desk and Mia was in front of it, the laptop opened on her knees, her fingers poised on the keyboard, as professional a look as she could manage on her face. This was going to work. She was going to make this work.
She was not going to think about how Alessandro had felt or smelled or tasted, how she’d come apart in his arms and was still desperately trying to put herself together. She wasn’t. She absolutely wasn’t.
And yet the memories still bombarded her as Alessandro began dictating the letter. It took all her mental power, all her energy and willpower, to focus on the words forming on the screen in front of her instead of what had happened between them last night.
It will get better, Mia told herself. The memory will fade.
This was going to work.
This wasn’t working.
Alessandro couldn’t keep from the glaringly obvious fact as he dictated his letter to Mia. Twice he had to start over, correcting himself, because he was hopelessly distracted by the sight of her, looking as prim and proper as you please, yet still, amazingly, seeming sexy to him.
That tight topknot made him long to pluck the pins from it and run his fingers through the spill of straight, wheat-gold hair. The crisp grey blouse with the mother-of-pearl buttons seemed to be begging to be undone, button by tiny button. The crisp navy suit would look far better crumpled on the floor.
‘Mr Costa?’ Her voice, crisp and precise, broke into his scattered thoughts. ‘You were saying…?’
‘I think, considering the circumstances, you should call me Alessandro.’
Something sparked in her eyes. ‘I do not wish to consider the circumstances, and I didn’t think you did, either.’
‘I meant,’ Alessandro clarified, ‘as your employer.’ But he hadn’t been thinking of her as his employee. Not at all.
A faint pink touched Mia’s cheeks, making her look all the more delectable. Making him want her all the more. ‘Of course,’ she murmured, and turned towards back to her laptop, her gaze focused determinedly on the screen.
Alessandro went back to dictating the letter, but again he lost his train of thought, which infuriated him. This was not who he was. This was not who he could be.
‘Mr… Alessandro?’ Mia prompted. Again. Her eyebrows were raised, her eyes so very blue.
‘Type up what you have,’ Alessandro said abruptly. ‘And I’ll look at it then. Thank you.’
Wordlessly Mia nodded,
