he asked.
‘No, you were right the first time,’ she answered.
Luc felt a slight stirring of memory as the woman spoke softly. Her voice possessed a husky quality that somehow seemed familiar.
He took in her medium height and slender body, clothed in a black business suit and white silk blouse. Her hair was a deep chestnut brown secured at her nape, her face heart shaped. It was an arrestingly beautiful face with a small, uptilted nose, and sensually full lips above a pointed and determined chin. A face dominated by eyes as deep a blue as Lake Garda itself.
Again Luc felt that slight stirring of familiarity. ‘Have we met before, signorina?’ he asked slowly.
She blinked before giving a brittle, dismissive laugh. ‘I don’t know, have we?’ she said, deflecting his question back at him.
Luc bit back his increasing impatience. ‘I believe I asked first?’ he pointed out coldly.
And he could go on asking, as far as Annie was concerned! All this time, all these years, Annie’s worst fear had been that she would somehow, somewhere, meet Luc again. A meeting that she knew would complicate her life in ways she didn’t even want to contemplate.
Now, by some terrible mischance, she had met him again, had met the man who had changed her own life forever—and he didn’t even remember her!
The relief Annie should have felt was overlaid by a deep resentment. This man had literally skied his way into her life and introduced the normally reserved Annie Balfour to an intensity of passion and excitement she had never known before or since, before disappearing again just as abruptly.
Only for her to now realise that their time together, all those wonderful memories that she had never quite been able to put from her mind, had meant so little to him that he didn’t even remember her.
Arrogant louse!
Her chin lifted in silent challenge. ‘I’m sure one of us would have remembered if that were the case, signore.’
Luc wasn’t so sure. The pallor of this woman’s face, the angry resentment he sensed beneath her tone, seemed to tell a completely different story. One in which he had patently not appeared in a good light.
As the only son and heir of a rich and powerful Italian business entrepreneur, Luc’s youth had been one of wealth and privilege, with his every wish being granted. As a consequence, Luc knew he had become arrogant, and possessed of an overconfidence in his own infallibility. A youthfully arrogant belief that had continued after he had proved to have his father’s flare for business, and at only eighteen had been placed in a position of power within his father’s business empire. Until the overconfident Luc had taken one risk too many and the whole of his father’s empire had come tumbling down about their ears…
Luc’s mouth tightened as he thought of that time. Of the past four and a half years when he had concentrated single-mindedly, often ruthlessly, on rebuilding that business empire until it was bigger and better than ever. Years when there had been very few women in his life, and even then only ones who had shared his bed for the night and been quickly forgotten afterwards.
Had the young woman who now stood before him in the crisp black business suit, with her chestnut-brown hair secured in that no-nonsense bun at her nape, the clear lines of her face bare of any make-up to enhance her natural beauty, been one of them?
Somehow Luc thought not. Unlike this woman, those women had invariably been tall and blonde, rich and vacuous socialites. Nevertheless, as he continued to look at her, that feeling of familiarity persisted…
His mouth quirked. ‘You appear to have forgotten your telephone call,’ he drawled.
Annie gave a startled glance down at the mobile she still held in her hand. The mobile from which a concerned voice could be heard squawking, if not the actual words being spoken.
Oliver.
In her utter shock at seeing Luc again, Annie had completely forgotten that she had been talking to Oliver when she had crashed into the tall Italian.
She swallowed hard. ‘If you will excuse me?’ She deliberately turned her back on the powerful effect of this man’s close proximity, intending to escape to somewhere more private to continue her call.
Although she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to talk to Oliver with any degree of normality after this chance, disturbing meeting. In fact, the sooner Annie was able to get away from Lake Garda—no, from Italy altogether—and the man she’d had a one-night stand with, who didn’t even remember her, the better she was going to like it.
Deeply aware that Italy was the place where she had met Luc and behaved so impulsively, Annie hadn’t wanted to attend this management course at the conference centre in a hotel on the shores of Lake Garda at all, and had only done so because her father had insisted.
A father who, still reeling from the death of Lillian, his beloved third wife and Annie’s stepmother, had become dictatorial with all of his daughters following the scandal that had rocked the family to its very core during the celebration of the centenary Balfour Charity Ball the previous month.
Annie froze as she felt strong fingers curl about her upper arm before she had chance to walk away. Luc’s fingers. Long, elegant fingers that nevertheless possessed a compelling strength.
Fingers that had once caressed and touched Annie more intimately than any other man ever had. And which still had the power to send an electrifying jolt of awareness down the length of her arm and up into the fullness of her breasts. Breasts that, to Annie’s embarrassment, instantly responded to the familiarity of that touch as they swelled inside her bra, the nipples pressing against the lacy material.
Annie’s eyes, the deep Balfour blue eyes, were flashing a warning as she turned back to face Luc. ‘Take your hand off me!’ She spoke between gritted teeth, her face having once again paled.
Luc lowered hooded lids at the vehemence he heard in her tone. No, he had not imagined it earlier; there was definitely some resentment being displayed here towards him, a resentment he wished to know more of.
He made no effort to release her. ‘Would you care to have dinner with me this evening?’
Her eyes widened as she stared up at him uncomprehendingly for several long seconds. ‘What?’ she finally snapped even as the colour rushed back into her cheeks.
Luc gave a brief humourless smile. ‘I asked if you would have dinner with me this evening. In apology for having almost knocked you over just now,’ he added, both of them fully aware that it was her lack of attention to where she was going that had caused the collision.
She gave him a speaking glance. ‘Thank you for the invitation,’ she answered drily. ‘But no.’
Luc narrowed dark eyes, unaccustomed to being turned down by any woman. ‘Why not?’ he asked bluntly.
Eyes the colour of cornflowers, and surrounded by thick dark lashes, glared at him fiercely. ‘Because I don’t allow myself to be picked up by men I don’t know in hotel hallways, that’s why! Now would you please let go of my arm or do I have to call a member of the management and have them throw you off the premises for harassing one of their guests?’
That
