or even of falling in love over a period of days. She had always thought the sort of love that was deep and abiding would build up over a period of time, as trust and respect grew between two people. But meeting Alessandro Marciano that hot summer morning in Milan had tipped her world upside down. Within three hours she had been kissed by him, within three days she had been sleeping with him, and within three months she had been pregnant by him.
Scarlett blinked herself back to the present when Alessandro handed her a document. She took it from him, her shaking fingers not quite able to avoid the fine-sandpaper brush of his against hers. Her whole body jolted in reaction and heat coursed through her, the thud of her pulse going at breakneck speed.
‘If you are not happy with that amount, I will double it,’ he said.
Scarlett looked down at the contract, her eyes almost popping out of her head at the amount printed there. It was an astonishing amount of money, although she would have to work very hard for it, she imagined. She knew enough about Alessandro Marciano to know he had exacting standards. His reputation as a hotelier was global. Guests staying at a Marciano hotel were treated to the utmost in luxury, and this one in Sydney would be no different, if the drawings his team of highly skilled architects had prepared were anything to go by.
But accepting this contract, as lucrative and career-enhancing as it was, would mean close contact with him, maybe even on a daily basis. There would be meetings with him to discuss her designs, fabrics to look over, light fittings, soft furnishings, plumbing fixtures—the list went on and on in her head. How could she get through it without damaging herself irreparably?
And more to the point how could she keep Matthew safe from knowing his father had refused to accept him as his? Although she couldn’t help thinking one look at that child would remove all doubt, even in someone as cynical as Alessandro. They had the same hazel eyes, the same ink-black hair and olive skin, the same-shaped mouth—although Matthew’s was still soft with the innocence of childhood.
‘I will give you a day or two to think it over.’ His deep voice invaded the private torture of her tangled thoughts.
She got to her feet in one abrupt movement. ‘I don’t need two—’
He held up one and then two long fingers against her mouth. ‘Two days, Scarlett,’ he said, holding her gaze. ‘Think about it.’
Scarlett swallowed as her body remembered how intimately those fingers had known every pleasure spot she possessed. How she had felt that first frisson of passionate response when he had stroked the silken folds of her femininity for the first time—how she had quivered inside and out when he had explored her so thoroughly and so devastatingly with his fingers, his mouth, his tongue, and the hot, pulsing hard length of him.
He lifted his fingers, and she ran her tongue over where he had been, her stomach doing a sudden free-fall when she saw his eyes flick to her mouth.
And stay there.
The air tightened around them, as if an invisible clinging vine had silently insinuated itself into the room and was now pulling them closer and closer together.
Scarlett couldn’t breathe; she wasn’t game enough to draw in a breath in case he heard the betraying flutter of her pulse beneath her skin.
She stood very still as he reached out again, this time with just the index finger of his right hand, brushing it against the softness of her bottom lip, his eyes still locked on her mouth. The temptation to sweep her tongue over and around his finger was suddenly overwhelming. She had to clamp her teeth together to stop herself taking him in her mouth and sucking on him, as she had done so many times before.
And not just his finger…
His eyes came back to hers, a tiny frown pulling at the dark slashes of his eyebrows, the line of his mouth losing its inherent cynicism for just a brief moment.
‘I had forgotten how very soft your mouth is,’ he said in an even deeper, more gravelly tone than he’d used before.
Scarlett rolled her lips together, more to stop them buzzing with sensation than to draw his attention back to her mouth—but his eyes dipped again, and this time she felt the heat of his gaze like a brand on her lips.
‘I-I think it might be time for you to leave,’ she scratched out through her too-tight throat. ‘I have nothing further to say to you. I don’t want the work. You’ll have to find someone else.’
He looked down at her for a long moment. ‘I am not quite ready to leave, Scarlett. There are still some things I would like to discuss with you.’
Panic prickled at her insides as she stood stock-still in front of him. She couldn’t step back because her desk was in the way, and stepping forward was out of the question, with the possibility of brushing against him to get past.
She was trapped.
‘Four years ago you told me you were pregnant,’ he said into the silence.
Scarlett felt her throat tighten even further, but somehow she managed to maintain eye contact with him. ‘Yes…yes I did.’
‘You also told me the child was mine.’
A glitter of anger lit her unblinking gaze. ‘Yes, I did.’
‘Did you go through with the pregnancy?’ he asked after an infinitesimal pause.
She kept her gaze locked on his. ‘At the risk of repeating myself—yes, I did.’
His expression remained as unreadable as a book with the pages glued together. ‘Does your child have contact with its father?’ he asked.
She frowned at him, angry at the way he was crossexamining her. ‘What’s with all these questions, Alessandro? You were the one who insisted the child couldn’t possibly be yours. Why the sudden interest now? Have you suddenly changed your mind and decided I wasn’t lying to you after all?’
He gave a little shrug of insouciance. ‘No, of course I have not changed my mind. There is no way I could be the father of your child.’
Scarlett sent him a caustic glare. ‘So you think.’
‘I do not think, Scarlett,’ he said with a granite-hard stare. ‘I know it for a fact.’
She stood before him, silently fuming at his arrogance, her simmering hatred for him threatening to spill over.
His mouth tilted into a sardonic smile as his eyes roved over her lazily. ‘Anyway, you do not look as if you have had a child. You are as slim and attractive as you were four years ago.’
She gave him a withering look. ‘Thanks for insulting every mother out there who’s put on a bit of weight after childbirth.’
‘I did not mean to insult other mothers.’
‘No, you’re here to insult me,’ she shot back. ‘You can keep your contract, Alessandro Marciano. I don’t want anything to do with a man who thinks I am a liar and a cheat and a whore.’
‘So even after all this time you are still determined to have me nominated as the sire of your offspring, are you?’ he asked with a curl of his lip. ‘Why is that, Scarlett—because the other possible candidates would
