began to wane as her words took them effortlessly on to more familiar territory. One of funds and finance and supply and demand. Because when he stopped to think about it—didn’t they each have something the other wanted? He had the money to cushion her fall from grace—and she had…His eyes drifted over her face.
She had plenty. Violet eyes and soft petal lips and a tight, young body which had caused him to act with such uncharacteristic impulse. He felt the familiar arrowing of desire. Because if he was being honest—he hadn’t had enough of Cassandra Summers. And she certainly hadn’t had enough of him.
He leaned across the table and took her cold and unresisting hand in his, rubbing his thumb over the pulse, which instantly began to skitter beneath the delicate skin. ‘I have a much better idea, cara,’ he murmured. ‘Something which I think could be mutually beneficial to us both.’
Cassie stared at him uncomprehendingly. ‘What sort of idea?’ she whispered, her senses befuddled just by the way he was touching her.
‘Why don’t you come and live with me?’
Cassie’s heart missed a beat. ‘Live with you?’ she repeated dazedly.
‘Mmm.’ He saw the flare of hope in her eyes and hurried to make sure she didn’t read too much into his suggestion. ‘I don’t much like the holiday season—but you could provide a very welcome distraction. And in the meantime, you need somewhere to stay.’ Giancarlo’s lips curved into a sensual smile as he lifted her fingertips and warmed them with the brush of his lips. ‘So why don’t you come and stay until Christmas?’
‘WHAT do you mean, you’re going to go and live with some bloke you’ve only just met?’
Gavin’s outraged voice made Cassie slowly count to ten as she pulled a dress from the small wardrobe and laid it in her open suitcase. With a smile of confidence she was far from feeling, she turned round to face him.
‘For heaven’s sake, Gavin,’ she chided gently. ‘Living in your flat was only ever a temporary stay! I’m twenty-one and this is the twenty-first century—why, in some cultures I’d have been married off at the age of fourteen!’
Gavin’s blue eyes bored into hers. ‘So he’s offering to marry you, is he? This Giancarlo whatever-his-name is?’
‘Vellutini. His name’s Vellutini,’ she said, liking the way her lover’s name tasted like velvet on her lips—a soft and sensuous caress, just like his mouth. Until the rest of Gavin’s words broke into her daydream and tainted it with the stark edge of reality. ‘No, of course he isn’t offering to marry me! We’ve only just met.’
‘You’ve only just met and yet you’re moving in with him?’
‘So I’m being impulsive!’
‘You’re being ridiculous.’
‘That’s your opinion, Gavin—and I don’t happen to agree with it.’
‘You know he’s a billionaire?’
Cassie stared at Gavin, her heart missing a beat. ‘I knew he was wealthy—of course I did—but how the hell did you find out a detail like that?’
‘Oh, come on, Cassie—don’t be so naïve! You think someone like that doesn’t have a huge profile on the Internet? I looked him up. He’s thirty-five, for heaven’s sake—and he’s an international playboy! While you’re just a sweet, ordinary girl from Cornwall who’s batting way, way out of her league.’ He glowered. ‘A man like that will just chew you up and spit you out when he’s finished with you.’
Cassie bit back the indignant retort which flew to her lips, telling herself that Gavin only had her best interests at heart. He’d known her since they’d been at school together and she knew he had feelings for her himself. She’d never encouraged those feelings—but in a way that had only inflamed his protective interest in her. Good-looking himself, in a blond and even-featured kind of way, he had no trouble attracting women—but it was the one who eluded him who held the most allure. Maybe that was the case with all men, thought Cassie with a sudden dejection—remembering the almost indecent haste with which she had accepted Giancarlo’s offer to be his mistress. In which case, it didn’t hold out much hope for the future.
But she wasn’t holding out any hope for the future. She wasn’t completely stupid. She was simply being a modern woman and taking the relationship for what it was, like lots of women did. Surely that was enough.
‘He’s my lover,’ she told Gavin boldly, because it still sounded like a foreign word. ‘Women do have lovers, you know. And I’m going to live with him for a few weeks.’
‘And then what?’
‘Then nothing.’ Cassie shrugged with what she hoped was just the right amount of nonchalance. ‘I’ll be going back to Cornwall to carry on with my life while he carries on with his.’
‘You think it’ll be that easy, do you?’
‘Yes, Gavin,’ she said firmly—because deep down Cassie knew that she wanted this far too much to risk listening to the frightened little voice which made her wonder if he was right. ‘Actually I do.’
He scowled. ‘Well, you know where I am when you need all the pieces picking up.’
It wasn’t the blessing she would have chosen but Cassie was determined not to let anything dent her excitement. How could it, when Giancarlo’s unbelievable request over lunch had sent her senses into overdrive? And how could she possibly have resisted when he had made the arrangement sound like the perfect solution—and the only sensible option to take? He had leaned across the restaurant table and his ebony gaze had washed over hers, making her feel weak and warm inside and overwhelmed by an irresistible urge to have him kiss her again.
‘I am feeling a little guilty, mia bella,’ he had murmured. ‘As if I had sat you down for a sumptuous banquet and then whisked you away after the first course. If I’d known that you were inexperienced, I would have—’
He had paused at this point, leaving Cassie to peer at him anxiously. ‘Would have what?’
‘I made an assumption that there had been other lovers before me,’ he said, quickly skating over the question. ‘Why wouldn’t I have done? A woman of your age is usually experienced. And a man makes love differently if a woman is innocent. The pace is different—and so are his expectations. Your introduction to sex is not what I would have wished—despite the fact that I gave you much pleasure.’ Dark eyes had glittered with a message which had made her heart race. ‘So come and stay with me and I will show you even more. How does that sound?’
Cassie had blushed. It had sounded like heaven, even when he had said something else—something which would have had any sensible woman running for the hills.
‘You know that this—arrangement—is of a purely temporary nature, bella? That it ends when it ends—and that means it’s over. I need to be honest with you about that.’
Was that honesty or was it cruelty? Cassie didn’t care. She could handle it because
