and infuriatingly—he had yet to see. ‘I think you were pretty close to it, Jessica. Sì.’
‘You think that all you have to do is to whisk me off to a fancy dinner in a chauffeur driven car and I’ll be so … so … grateful that I’ll capitulate to you!’
Salvatore was beginning to grow bored now. ‘I hadn’t actually given it that much thought,’ he told her damningly. ‘It wasn’t a situation I’d anticipated.’
Stupidly enough, this only added to her anger. So now he was saying that he hadn’t even considered he might find her attractive enough to make a pass at her! Was that why he had chosen her—because she was too plain to provide any temptation? Well, thank heavens she had seen sense before it was too late.
Imagine if she’d gone back with him—let him make love to her, and then what? Would he have sent her on her way in the middle of the night—to be taken home by his driver, like a toy he had grown bored with playing with? Or, even worse, being given money for a taxi to conveniently disappear from his bed?
‘We are just a man and a woman,’ he mused, when still she said nothing. ‘And sometimes passion comes along when you are least expecting it. It is the way of these things.’
As he spoke he reached out to brush a stray strand of the thick, shiny hair which had fallen over her face and that one innocent, almost tender gesture was almost Jessica’s undoing. Because that was the kind of thing that a real lover might do—especially if he was trying hard to seduce you. Not that Jessica was the world’s biggest expert on lovers, but she knew what was considered acceptable by most women with a degree of self-respect and what was not.
If she allowed Salvatore to make love to her now, then it would be tantamount to telling him to treat her like a disposable cloth—to be thrown away when he’d finished with her!
And by tomorrow, his desire would have died. Why, he might even thank her for having been level-headed enough to put a stop to things before they got out of hand. True, facing him again in the workplace wasn’t going to be the most comfortable option, but there were ways of dealing with that.
She pulled her head back from the enticement of that touch. ‘Maybe it’s the way of things in the world you live in,’ she said pointedly. ‘But not in mine.’
He searched her face for a teasing look, the telltale expression on her face which would indicate that this was merely female playfulness, but to Salvatore’s disbelief there was none. Just the kind of jutting-chinned certainty which women often assumed when they meant something, and which made his heart sink.
This was worse than being back in Sicily! Did she really imagine that he was going to start courting her? That she would allow him certain privileges each night? One night the kiss, the next the breasts—until she breathlessly allowed him to take her whole body, as she would have been hungering for from the very beginning?
Did she really think he had the time or the inclination to waste on a leisurely pursuit of a woman for whom his desire was already waning—someone who should have been thanking her lucky stars to be here with him in the first place? His mouth twisted. What a little fool she was—to have called time on what would have been the best experience of her life!
‘If you think that such resistance will elevate you to a truly irresistible status in my eyes, then I am afraid you are sadly mistaken, cara. Do you not think that I have been privy to every devious game played by women? I know them all—and it won’t work, for I am immune to them all.’
Jessica sat bolt upright. She hadn’t been so angry since … well, actually, she couldn’t ever remember being as angry as this!
‘Oh, don’t worry, Signor Cardini,’ she retorted, trying to match his withering tone with one of her own and in that hot moment of fury not caring that she might be jeopardising her job. ‘I really hadn’t given any thought to game-playing—why would I? I thought I was coming out to act as some kind of decoy—not to be leapt on in the back of your car! And now, if you don’t mind—I’d like to be taken home.’
There was a moment of brief, stunned silence as the impact of her words sank in, until in the shadowed gloom Salvatore’s mouth curved into a cruel and mocking smile. ‘I think you forget yourself, cara mia,’ he drawled damningly. ‘You will certainly be dropped off—but only after the car has taken me home.’
He pressed a button by his seat, tersely issued the instruction to his driver and drew a sheaf of documents from one of the side-pockets. And then, clicking on a reading light, he leaned back in his seat and began to flick through them, as if he had simply forgotten she was there.
CHAPTER FIVE
BUT the craziest thing of all was that Salvatore couldn’t get Jessica out of his mind—and the irony of this didn’t escape him. How could one short, bogus date have resulted in him thinking almost non-stop about his damned cleaner? Unable to shake from his mind the memory of her grey eyes, that pure skin and the decadent delight of those luscious breasts.
The light glinted on his razor as he stared in the mirror, his dark jaw half shaved and his blue eyes narrowed. Intellectually he recognised that her improbable attraction was because she had turned him down. He was used to women fawning. Plotting. Enticing and scheming. Why, it was not unknown for a woman to beg him to make love to her!
Jessica intrigued him because in a world where one thing was predictable—his effect on the opposite sex—the unexpected would always have the power to tantalise him.
So had she been playing games with him? Knowing that precisely the right button to press was not to let him press any buttons at all? To let him touch a little, but not too much. To give him a taste to whet his appetite but leave him hungering for more?
He went to his club and swam for an hour, had a breakfast meeting in a chandelier-lit room overlooking Hyde Park and took a conference call from an Australian banker before most of the world was awake. Yet still he was restless.
How could some plain and mousy little cleaner know how to handle any kind of man—but especially a man like him?
All day long he was distracted, though he was astute enough not to make any major decisions until her infernal perfume had left his senses. Some scent he was unfamiliar with—which had reminded him of springtime and softness and clung to his skin last night until he had viciously washed it off beneath the jets of a cold shower.
‘Maledizione!’ Damn her!
Giovanni Amato—an old friend from Sicily—was flying in from New York and Salvatore had arranged to meet him for dinner. Yet he found himself strangely relieved when Giovanni’s secretary rang to say his flight had been delayed, and that he was running late.
‘Get him to call me,’ Salvatore said to her. ‘We’ll change it to another night.’
As he slowly put the phone down Salvatore felt the stealthy beat of excitement combined with the strong tang of self-contempt. Surely you aren’t hanging around the office waiting to see whether that pale little nobody will dare show her face here tonight? he asked himself furiously.
But as he cleared his desk of paperwork he recognised that maybe he was. He glanced at his watch. That was if she was going to bother to turn up.
He had signed the last of a pile of letters and was just putting his gold pen
