broadened with maturity, his chest deepened, but not an ounce of fat clung to his frame. The clean, hard line of his jaw, the firm contours of his mouth, spoke of singleminded purpose. There was dignity and strength in his bearing. Authority in his somber, dark brown gaze.
He had a full head of hair. Thick, black, silky hair that begged a woman to run her fingers through it. And only the faintest trace of laugh lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes.
Stunned, she stared at him, all hope that he’d prove himself as susceptible to the passage of time as any other man, evaporating in a rush of molten awareness that battered her with the force of a tornado.
It wasn’t fair. He’d shown a flagrant disregard for the frailty of human life, driving too fast, living on the edge, and daring death to slow him down. At the very least, he might have had the good grace to look a little worn around the edges. Instead he stood there, splendidly tall and confident—and still dangerously attractive, despite the tragic reason for his coming into her life again.
Woefully conscious of her own disarray, both physical and mental, and unable to do anything about either, she stammered, “Why are you here?”
He smiled just enough for her to see that he still had all his teeth, too, and that they were every bit as white and even as she remembered. Amazing, really. She’d have thought some irate husband would have knocked a few of them out by now. Paolo had had quite a taste for other men’s wives, when he wasn’t seducing virgins.
“Why else would I be here, but to meet you, Caroline?”
She wanted to smack him for the way he seemed to suck the oxygen out of the atmosphere and leave her fighting to breathe. “Well, in case you’ve forgotten, you booked me all the way through to Rome, and we’re not even in Italy yet.”
“There’s been a slight change of itinerary,” he said, rolling his R’s in melodic cadence. “You will be traveling the rest of the way with me, in the Rainero corporate jet.”
“Why?”
He lifted his impeccably clad shoulders in a shrug. “Why not?”
“Because there’s no need. I have a ticket on a regular flight. All other considerations apart, what about my luggage? The inconvenience of my not showing up—”
“Do not concern yourself, Caroline,” he purred. “I have seen to it. By standing here throwing up obstacles, you inconvenience no one but me.”
Another thing about him remained unchanged. He was as arrogant as ever, and it was still all about him! “Well, heaven forbid you should be put out in any way, Paolo!”
He regarded her with benign tolerance, the way she might have regarded a fractious two-year-old trying to bite her ankle. “You are exhausted and sad, cara, and it’s making you a little capricciosa,” he decided, relieving her of her carry-on bag with one hand, and cupping her elbow with the other.
“That shouldn’t come as any surprise, all things considered!”
“Nor does it, which is why I thought to spare you the tedium of spending time waiting here in a crowded airport, when it is within my power to have you already safely arrived in Rome before your originally scheduled flight leaves Paris.”
“I don’t mind the wait.” She tried ineffectually to squirm free of his hold. “I’m actually looking forward to the chance to freshen up after being cooped up in an aircraft for ten hours.”
“Be assured, the company jet has excellent facilities, all of which are at your disposal,” he countered. “Come, now, Caroline. Allow me to spoil you a little, especially now when you have all you can do to hold yourself together.”
Supremely confident that he’d overcome her objections, he swept her out of the terminal and into the back of a waiting limousine. After a brief exchange with the uniformed driver, Paolo joined her, settling himself beside her close enough that his body warmth crept out to touch her.
Unnerved, she inched farther into the corner as the car joined the traffic heading out of the airport toward the city center. Noticing, he smiled and said, “Try to relax, cara. I am not abducting you and I intend you no harm. You’re perfectly safe with me.”
Safe with him? Not if he was anything like the man he’d been nine years ago! Yet his concern seemed genuine. He appeared more tuned in to her feelings, and less focused on his own. Could she have misjudged him, and he had changed, after all?
Callie supposed anything was possible. Heaven knew, she was nothing like the girl he’d seduced, then cast aside so callously. Perhaps they’d both grown up.
“Ah!” His shoulder brushed hers as he leaned past her to look out of the window. “We’ll soon be there.”
Huddling even farther into the corner, she said, “Where’s ‘there’ exactly?”
“Le Bourget. It’s the airport most commonly used by private jets.”
Soon—much too soon for Callie’s peace of mind—they arrived, and in short order had cleared security, passed through the departure gate and were crossing the open tarmac to where a Lear jet waited, its engines idling. Buffeted by the wind, she mounted the steps to the interior, and barely had time to fasten her seat belt before the aircraft was cleared for takeoff.
Was she crazy to have allowed Paolo to coerce her into changing her travel plans? she wondered, as Paris fell away below, and the jet turned its nose to the southeast. Did he have an ulterior motive? Or was she looking for trouble where none existed?
“You’re very silent, Caroline,” he observed, some half hour later. “Very withdrawn.”
“I just lost my sister,” she said. “I’m not exactly in a party mood.”
“Nor am I suggesting you should be, but it occurs to me you might wish to discuss the funeral arrangements…” He paused fractionally, his long fingers idly caressing a glass of sparkling water. “Or the children.”
“No,” she said, turning to stare at the great expanse of blue sky beyond the porthole to her left. “Not right now. It’s all I can do to come to terms with the fact that I’ll never see Vanessa again. I keep hoping to wake up and find it’s all a horrible dream. Perhaps once I’ve seen the children, and your parents…How are they coping with this terrible tragedy, by the way? Your parents, I mean?”
“They’re even more devastated than you claim to be.”
Sure she must not have heard him correctly, she swung back to face him and found him watching her with chilling intensity. “Are you suggesting I’m faking how I feel, Paolo?”
Raising his glass, he rotated it so that its cut crystal facets caught the light and flung it at her in a blur of dazzling reflections. “Well, if you are,” he said silkily, “it wouldn’t be the first time, would it, cara?”
There was nothing kindly in his regard now, nothing compassionate, nor did he pretend otherwise. In that instant, she knew that she should have listened to her instincts. Because, in stepping aboard the Rainero corporate jet, she’d made a fatal mistake.
She’d put herself at the mercy of a man who, whatever his stated reasons for meeting her in Paris, no more cared
