him into a black hole of sleep.
He awoke just after seven, feeling as if he’d been hit broadside across the head with a two-by-four, and with a restless dissatisfaction clouding his mind. Not exactly prime condition for a man who prided himself on always being in charge—of himself and of his company.
But the truth was, he hadn’t been on top of things since that first night when she’d stepped out onto the terrace and stolen his... what? Heart—or sanity? Because the way he’d been acting was hotheaded to put it mildly, and atypical to say the least.
The only time he’d known anything remotely like this had been during his senior year in high school when he’d dated Jane Perry.
“I love you,” he’d foolishly told her, the steamed-up windows of his father’s old Chev and his own rampant hormones driving him to indiscretion.
And for a few days, maybe even a week, he’d believed that he did. Certainly, it had been the right thing to say. Jane had become amazingly compliant and he’d been no different from any other boy his age when it came to experimenting with sex.
But the blush had worn off pretty damn fast when he’d cornered her at her locker between classes and said, “Hey, look, I can’t make it to the movie on Friday.”
“Why not?” She’d pouted, standing just close enough that the tips of her nipples had brushed against his chest.
“I’ve got a late basketball practice,” he’d choked out, doggedly ignoring that part of him eagerly rising to the bait she’d so knowingly cast
“Basketball?” Her indignation had bounced off the school walls. “Baskerball?”
“Well, yeah. There’s a big game coming up and the coach wants the team in top form.”
“Oh, fine thing!” she’d snapped. “If you think I’m going to play second banana to basketball, Dante Rossi, you can think again.”
“It’s only for one night, for Pete’s sake! This is important, Jane.”
“And I’m not?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Her baby-blue eyes had welled with tears. “Prove it.”
“Huh?” He’d been genuinely puzzled. Prove what?
“Prove that you really love me.” She’d planted her fists on her hips and glared at him. “Make up your mind what you want—me or basketball.”
Well, nice nipples or not, it had been no contest! “Okay,” he’d said. “Basketball. So long, Jane. It was a blast while it lasted.”
That had been it as far as he was concerned. Girls came and went but in those days, basketball was forever. End of love affair—or so he’d thought until Mrs. Perry showed up on his family’s doorstep, weeping daughter in tow, and read the riot act at the callous way he’d behaved.
“You’ve broken my little girl’s heart, Dante Rossi,” she’d informed him and half the neighborhood, “not to mention sullied her good name.”
Because he knew he hadn’t behaved well, he’d refrained from pointing out that he wasn’t the first to sample everything Jane was so willing to share, nor was he likely to be the last. Instead, he’d learned from the experience and never again made the mistake of confusing lust with love or indulged in a spur-of-the-moment declaration that he wasn’t prepared to honor.
Instead he kept his feelings on a tight rein and if his hormones weren’t always as firmly controlled, at least he made sure a woman understood the ground rules before she entered into a liaison with him.
After that, there’d been no room in his life for long-term commitment. His father and grandfather had earned a living making the best pasta in town for a company owned by other men. But good Italian son though he’d been, Dante had known he’d never follow in such mundane footsteps.
His priorities had followed a different blueprint, one in which success and personal fulfillment were built upon a foundation of pride and a determination not just to be as good as other successful men, but to be better, stronger, smarter and—ugly though some might find the word—richer. Because another lesson he’d learned well and early in life was that honest labor and pride in a job well done didn’t, by themselves, guarantee the sort of success he was looking for.
It took more to inspire respect in a man’s peers. It took power. Authority. And money.
Without money, a man never amounted to anything but someone else’s patsy.
Until Leila, he’d found satisfaction enough in such a creed. Until Leila, he had scoffed at the kind of consuming romantic passion that afflicted other people and turned their ambitions toward suburbia and babies. Not that he didn’t value family; it was probably his most sacred asset, the motivation that drove him to success. He just hadn’t expected he was as susceptible as all those others. He was Dante Rossi, after all—king of his own corporate empire, too focused and too sophisticated to be blindsided by love.
He’d spent the better part of the last three days trying to convince himself of that—three days of covert glances, accidental touches that really were no accident at all, and flimsy excuses to strike up conversations with Leila in which the subtext of the words exchanged were charged with a powerful sexual innuendo.
And the result? Far from burning itself out, the attraction, the fascination—hell, the emotional involvement—had culminated in yesterday afternoon’s interlude in which body and heart had come together to bend his mind in an entirely new direction.
As they made their way back down the trail to the plantation house after their lovemaking, he’d said, “I want you to meet my family,” and waited for the familiar surge of caution to rise up. He never took women home; they seemed too inclined to view the move as the preface to a marriage proposal. He seldom even took them to his apartment.
“I’d like that,” Leila had replied, and once again he’d waited. But all he’d felt was a wave of relief that she hadn’t squashed the suggestion flat, then heard himself making plans for a future that went beyond the next few weeks.
For a guy who professed not to believe in it, he was showing classic symptoms of a severe case of love at first sight
In his present frame of mind, he’d have been happy idling away the day under a palm tree, with Leila beside him and nothing but an occasional swim to distract him from the pleasure of her company. Jeez! If any one of his employees had come to him with such a lame excuse for not putting in a full day’s work, he’d have kicked butt from here to Canada without a second thought!
Shoving aside the mosquito netting draped over the bed, he staggered to the louvered doors, flung them fully open and stepped out on the veranda, hoping a breath of fresh morning air would restore his sanity.
From his vantage point, the reef protecting Poinciana from the worst of the surf was clearly visible. Greenish brown and shaped like a boomerang, it separated the indigo blue of the open sea from the pale aquamarine of the shallower water in the lagoon.
But that bright light glinting off the waves...!
He winced at the arrows of pain shooting behind his eyes. The last time he’d suffered a headache
