a shock he would get when he found out he had singled out the wrong target for his disgusting vilification.
She tilted her hip in a provocative fashion and batted her eyelashes at him. ‘So what do you think I have on offer, Mr Vassallo?’ she asked.
She watched as his dark and disconcertingly penetrating gaze roved her form from head to foot, slowly, deliberately lingering over the baby blue top that snugly outlined the curves of her breasts, going down over her trim waist and slim jean-clad thighs before returning to her face, all without saying a single word.
Ally had never felt more acutely aware of her body. She felt as if he had reached out and touched her all over with his long tanned fingers. Every curve, every pleasure point and every secret place felt invaded by his commanding physical presence. Every fine hair on her body lifted, and her skin crawled with a prickly sensation. Her stomach began to dip and dive erratically as her senses were set alight by the slow burn of his dark gaze as it drifted over her in that annoyingly indolent fashion. Her breasts started to swell and tingle beneath the light cotton of her top, and her breathing was choppy, her chest rising and falling like a damaged set of bellows, making her feel lightheaded and terrifyingly out of her depth.
She suddenly realised there was a photograph on the wall unit behind him. If he turned around he would see how he was being played for a fool. It was one she had given her sister after their twenty-fourth birthday last year, just before Alex had flown to London. Ally had set the camera on remote control and captured them smiling, with their arms wrapped around each other. She remembered Alex had commented at the time how they must have done exactly that in their mother’s womb, curled up like little angels waiting to be summoned to earth. It had been such a happy night of celebrating, just the two of them. Ally had thought back then—was it only a few months ago?—that her sister was finally on the road to recovery.
Her upper lip broke out in tiny beads of perspiration; she could feel nervous moisture trickling down between her shoulderblades as the silence stretched and stretched like a crevasse being prised apart with giant mechanical jaws.
‘Um… would you like a drink?’ She said the first thing that popped into her mind.
His brows moved together and he cocked his head at a suspicious angle. ‘A drink?’
‘Yes,’ she said over-brightly, carefully back-stepping towards the kitchen, hoping he would take the hint and follow her. ‘I was just about to get one myself. It’s very hot for September, don’t you think?’
‘It is usually still quite hot at this time of year,’ he answered, still watching her closely. ‘It will not cool down for another week or two at the very least.’
Ally went to the meagre pantry and took out a container of long-life orange juice, trying to control the slight tremble of her hands as she did so. ‘I’m sorry I don’t have any ice,’ she said, turning to face him again. ‘I’ve just been cleaning out the fridge.’
His dark eyes were like twin drills as they bored into hers. ‘Are you going away somewhere?’
She pasted a tight smile on her face. ‘I’m just doing a bit of a spring clean—out with the old and in with the new, that sort of thing.’
Ally watched as his eyes swept over the small galley kitchen with its tired appliances. ‘Have you lived in this apartment long?’ he asked, bringing his gaze back to hers.
‘Er… a few weeks,’ she said, shifting her gaze to pour two glasses of juice. Some of it, in spite of her efforts to control the tremble of her hands, splashed onto the bench. ‘I’d like to move to something a little more convenient, but rents are high in the nicer areas.’ She handed him a glass of juice. ‘Would you excuse me for a moment? I think I can hear one of the taps dripping in the bathroom. It does that now and again.’
‘Would you like me to fix it for you?’
Ally stared at him in thinly disguised horror. Of all the things he could have said, that was the last she had expected. He was a billionaire. He probably wouldn’t recognise a spanner or a wrench if he was hit over the head with one. But then he wasn’t a plumber any more than she had a leaky tap, she reminded herself wryly. ‘Er… no, there’s really nothing wrong with it,’ she said, trying not to sound as flustered as she felt. ‘It’s just that I didn’t turn if off hard enough when I heard the doorbell. I won’t be a minute.’
Vittorio took a sip of the room-temperature reconstituted orange juice and grimaced. He thought longingly of his own orange groves on the hills behind his Positano holiday villa, where his housekeeper squeezed fresh fruit daily when he was in residence.
He put the glass down on the chipped counter and cast his gaze around once more. It was no wonder Alex Sharpe was looking for a meal ticket. Her flat was tiny and in desperate need of a makeover. The curtains at the kitchen window were faded and grease-splattered, and the linoleum on the floor was buckled and cracked in places. From what he had seen of the small sitting room the carpet was an out-of-date swirly pattern that would have been at home in the seventies. The furniture too was of a similar design and vintage.
But it was no wonder his weak and womanising brother-in-law had fallen under her spell, he thought. She was lethally attractive. Even dressed as she was in faded jeans, and with her silver-blonde hair in a haphazard knot on top of her head and no make-up on, she was temptation personified. She oozed sensuality. It was in every curve of her body: the long elegant limbs, the delightfully ripe globes of her breasts, the tiny waist and the sexy flare of her hips. Her mouth was blood-red, not from lipstick but from the inbuilt passion she exuded from every fragrant pore of her body. He had smelt the seductive musk and heady fragrance of jasmine clinging to her golden skin as soon as she had opened the door. It had not only filled his nostrils, it had filled his head, and upended his thoughts until he’d had trouble recalling his mission.
He smiled to himself as he thought of his plan to divert the press’s attention from Rocco in order to protect his sister Chiara. It was going to be much easier than he had expected. Mrs Alex Sharpe was just the sort of woman who would jump at the chance to improve her circumstances.
Besides, he wasn’t going to give her a choice.
Ally rushed through the rest of the flat and grabbed the few photos her sister had displayed and hid them in her suitcase under the bed. She took a couple of steadying breaths and made her way back out to the kitchen. Vittorio Vassallo turned when she came in, his dark gaze meshing with hers.
‘Mrs Sharpe—’ he began.
‘Ally,’ she said, mentally cringing at the thought of being addressed by the name of her sister’s violent ex-husband. ‘I prefer to be called Ally, if you don’t mind.’
‘My brother-in-law always referred to you as Alexandra or Alex,’ he said, his eyes narrowing slightly.
Ally wrestled with herself to hold his penetrating gaze. ‘You said your name is Vittorio,’ she countered. ‘That seems rather a mouthful. What do your friends and family call you?’
‘Vito,’ he answered. ‘But only very close friends and immediate family members call me that.’
‘So, Mr Vassallo,’ she said giving him a cool little smile, ‘how can I be of assistance to you?’
His expression was imperious, condescending almost, which infuriated Ally even further. ‘I am here about my car,’ he said.
Ally looked at him blankly, her heart starting to
