to reveal Valentino, his jacket slung over his shoulder, his bow-tie undone, leaning against the back wall.
They stared at each other for what seemed an eternity. ‘Going up?’ he murmured.
Damn, damn, damn. Paige entered the lift after a brief hesitation during which an errant brain cell urged her to run. But she was damned if she was going to show this man he had any power over her. She turned her back on him, keeping to the front of the spacious lift, and searched the buttons for floor twelve.
Of course, it was already lit. Great! Same floor. Next they’d have adjoining rooms! The doors shut and she clutched her bag, reaching for patience.
Valentino, afforded an unfettered view of her spine, looked his fill. He couldn’t deny he wanted to see more of her back. And her front. He wanted to see her become passionate and animated again. And not about a nearly seventy-year-old surgeon who was old enough to be her grandfather. But about him. And what he was doing to her.
But she’d made it perfectly clear that any attraction was not going to be acted on. Valentino Lombardi had never had to beg in his life—he wasn’t about to start.
The lift arrived at their floor and Val smiled as Paige practically sprinted from it. He followed at a more sedate pace, not really wanting to know where her room was. What if they happened to be neighbours? Would knowing she was in the next room be any good for his equilibrium? Wondering if she slept naked? Wondering if she was as sexually frustrated as he that she might help herself to ease the ache?
He shook his head. Dio!
Except it seemed they were to be neighbours and if her cursing and muttering was anything to go by as she rammed the keycard in her door, he was going to have to lend a neighbourly hand.
He hung his jacket over his doorknob and strolled towards her, resigned to his fate. ‘Can I help with that?’
Paige slotted the card in and out several more times, wanting to scream as she twisted uselessly at the handle. She turned to him, glaring like it was all his fault. ‘I hate these things.’
Val smiled. She was animated when she was angry too. Her cheeks flushed pink, her chest rising and falling enticingly, grey eyes sparkling like headlights in fog. He reached for it. ‘Allow me.’
Paige didn’t protest. She couldn’t as his scent infused her senses. She’d done it all back at the wedding. There was no more resistance left. His fingers were sure as they slowly inserted the card into the slot and slowly pulled it out again.
Would he be that slow with her? That thorough? The light turned green and she shut her eyes as he turned the doorknob and opened her door.
‘Entri.’
Paige looked into her room. Her big empty room. She flicked her gaze to Valentino’s big hands with his sure fingers.
Val was surprised by her hesitation and although he couldn’t see her eyes he sensed the battle from earlier had returned with gusto. ‘Maybe I could join you?’
Paige felt absurdly shaky inside. She wanted to cry, burst into tears. She hadn’t realised how lonely the last couple of years had been until an attractive man had propositioned her.
She looked at him instead. Saw the naked desire heat his gaze. This was crazy. ‘I don’t…’ What? Have sex? Make love to? What could she say without sounding gauche or desperate or like a sixteen-year-old who’d never been kissed? ‘Sleep with men I’ve just met.’
After all, it had taken her three weeks and a handful of dates to succumb to her attraction to Arnie.
‘I promise you, there will be no sleeping.’
Paige swallowed hard. Both at the gravel in his voice and the sincerity in his gaze. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. Her throat was parched as she fought a little longer, hoping the sexual malaise invading her bones would lift. ‘Any woman in that room tonight would have accompanied you here in a flash—why the hell do you want me?’
Val gave her a lazy smile as anticipation built in his gut, his loins. ‘Because you’re the only woman who wouldn’t have.’
So she was a challenge? She supposed she should have been insulted but funnily enough they were precisely the right words for him to use. It told her she was something to be conquered and discarded, like all the others. Which, contrarily, right now, suited her just fine. She didn’t have time or room in her life for the distraction of a love affair. But she did have tonight.
Obviously the only thing he was interested in.
It was win-win.
Paige pushed off the wall and without saying a word brushed past him and entered her room. She hoped it looked confident and sexy and that he couldn’t hear the boom of her heart or the knocking of her knees.
She stopped in front of her bed, opened her bag, took her mobile out, checked it for messages then placed it on the bedside table before tossing the bag aside. She heard the click of the door behind her in the muted light and didn’t have to turn to know that he was walking towards her. And in seconds his heat was behind her, his breath at her neck.
He said nothing as his fingers stroked up her arms. Neither did she. Nor did she say anything when his hands peeled the dress off her shoulders, baring her to her waist.
But she did cry out when his thumbs swept across her bare nipples, already hard and eager for his touch.
And when he kissed her neck.
And when he whispered her name.
Paige woke disorientated to a warm hand laid possessively low on her abdomen and a strange buzzing as a pale dawn broke through the gaps in the heavy curtains. She glanced at the clock—five-thirty. They’d been asleep for thirty minutes—Valentino had been true to his word.
The buzzing came again and movement caught her eye as her mobile vibrated and moved slightly across the surface of the bedside table. It must be a text message.
It took another couple of seconds for the import to set in. A text message.
McKenzie.
Instantly frantic, she grabbed her phone and accessed the message, her hands shaking, her heart pounding.
McKenzie woken with a slight temp. Don’t worry. Everything under control.
Paige read the message three times, feeling progressively more ill. Oh, God. Her daughter was sick again and where was she? In the arms of some Italian Lothario thinking only about herself.
She leapt out of bed, ignoring the pull of internal muscles, grabbing for her clothes, furious at herself and Valentino for last night. She should have followed her instincts and gone home. Not stayed. Not let herself be seduced into a one-night stand, no matter how amazing it had been. Seduced into forgetting about the one person who meant more to her than anything else on the entire planet.
Her baby was ill. She had to get to her.
She didn’t even look at Valentino as she threw her things together in record time. Or as she fled the room.
As far as she was concerned,
