James.’
The deep, masculine voice addressed her formally from across the room but she ignored it, tearing over the high-polished floor to the door through which she had come with such high hopes only half an hour earlier.
‘Magenta!’
He didn’t seem bothered by what the others might make of him calling her by her first name, and images of a young man swam before her eyes. A young man who was determined, high-spirited and unrestrained—a young Andreas who refused to be dominated by his father’s will....
His softer command—and it had been a command, though infused with a persuasive familiarity—stopped her in her tracks.
Standing there, with her heart banging against her ribcage, she brought her head up, breathing deeply to control her humiliating emotion, squaring her back beneath the silver-grey jacket before she steeled herself to turn around.
‘There is another vacancy,’ Andreas said.
The distance she had put between them had given him a greater vantage point from which to study her, and he was doing just that, allowing his cool gaze to travel over the slender lines of her body in a way that made Magenta almost forget that there were other people in the room.
She looked at him questioningly but he was addressing the other three, who appeared to be silently querying his declaration.
‘It’s all right. I’ll handle this,’ Andreas told them, and one by one they filed out—the younger woman seeming to shoot daggers in Magenta’s direction, the elder sending her a surprisingly knowing smile.
‘So what is the vacancy?’ Magenta’s mouth felt dry as the door closed behind them. The air seemed charged with something sensual, stiflingly intimate even in the spacious modern office. ‘Or is this all a clever ploy to try and keep me here?’
Andreas moved around the desk and leaned back against it, his hands clutching his elbows, one foot crossed over the other.
‘I think we should talk first,’ he said.
‘What about? Why you just ruined my chances of getting a job I was counting on?’ Tremblingly, because she was almost afraid of knowing the answer, she tagged on, ‘What did I ever do to you that you should dislike me so much?’
He laughed very softly, but there was no humour in his eyes. ‘Come and sit down,’ he ordered with a jerk of his chin towards her vacated chair.
‘I prefer to stand, if you don’t mind.’
She did, however, move closer to him—close enough to bring her hands down on the back of the chair for some much-needed support.
‘As you wish.’ This was accompanied by a gesture of one long, lean hand.
‘Tell me what I did. I told you—I’m having difficulty remembering.’
‘That’s convenient.’
‘It’s the truth.’
‘And from experience we both know that you can be remarkably sparing with that.’
His tone flayed, bringing Magenta’s lashes down like lustrous ebony against the pale translucency of her skin.
‘We dated...’ She came around the chair and like an automaton, despite what she had said, sat down upon it, starkly aware of the cynical sound her comment produced.
‘Well, that’s one up on what you claimed to know last Friday,’ he remarked. ‘But if my memory serves me correctly we did a whole lot more than that.’
Images invaded of ripping clothes and devouring kisses. Of tangled limbs and naked bodies. Of herself spread-eagled on a bed in glorious abandon to this man’s driving passion.
She shook her head and realised that he had relinquished his position on the desk.
‘You’re crying,’ he observed, coming towards her and noting the emotion still moistening her eyes after losing the job she’d struggled so long and hard for. ‘It always heightened my pleasure to kiss you after you had been crying. It made your mouth so inviting. So unbelievably soft...’
His voice had grown quieter, Magenta realised, tormented again by sensual images of the two of them together, by the arousing sensations that were invading every erogenous zone in her body.
‘I’m not crying,’ she bluffed, in rejection of everything he was saying—and then caught a sudden, startling glimpse of herself from somewhere in her past, crying bitterly. She was sobbing because she had to leave him. She’d known she had to get away from him. But why? ‘I’m annoyed—angry—humiliated. But I’m certainly not crying. If you want to hurt me then that’s your problem—not mine. But, just for the record, was that rather uncalled-for remark a roundabout way of saying that you were always upsetting me?’
Within the hard framework of his features his devastating mouth turned uncompromisingly grim. ‘I wasn’t the one responsible for causing you pain in the past, and I certainly did nothing to make you weep. Except in bed.’
His continual references to the passion they had shared were unsettling her beyond belief. As he probably intended them to, she realised, catching a different sound now from the darkest corners of her mind. The sound of herself sobbing with desire at the enslaving, unparalleled pleasure he was giving her. But there were other things too. Things she didn’t want to remember, which his disturbing presence alone was bringing back to her.
‘Your family hated me.’
‘That was my family.’
‘Especially your father.’
His face took on the cast of an impregnable steel mask. ‘And with good cause, I think. In the end.’
She wanted to ask him why. What it was she had done to make him despise her so much. But he was still too cold, too distant and far too unapproachable. And anyway she was afraid of what hearing the truth might do to her.
‘How is he? Your father?’ she enquired tentatively.
‘My father’s dead.’
From the way he said it he might easily be implying that she had had something to do with it. Oh, no! She couldn’t have, surely? she thought, shuddering at the hard, cold emotion she saw in his eyes which seemed to be piercing her like shards of ice.
‘He’s dead,’ he reiterated. ‘As you would have known if you hadn’t been so tied up with making a name for yourself.’
‘Oh, I had a name, Andreas.’ It rushed back at her, hurtful and destructive. ‘And it wasn’t very complimentary. But I suppose you think I deserved what your grandmother called me?’
Her voice was low and controlled. She was determined not to let him see her trembling. And it wasn’t just the remembered pain of that time that was ripping through her memory banks and slashing at her now with such wounding cruelty, but the cold way she had just been informed that Giuseppe Visconti had died.
She wanted to ask Andreas what had happened but was even too cowardly to do that. Instead she dropped her head
