going to play along just until my deal is done, and then, let’s just say you’ll understand the meaning of regret.’
‘You can’t threaten me,’ Rosie objected weakly. ‘And that woman was my sister, not an accomplice!’
‘Can’t threaten you? No, you’ve got that wrong, I’m afraid. Here’s the thing, whoever the hell you are—whatever scheme you and your sister or whoever she was have concocted, you can bury it, because there’s no money at the end of this particular rainbow.’
‘Money?’
‘Did you really think that you would create a public scene to grab my attention, hurl baseless accusations against me to grab the public’s attention and then somehow manoeuvre me into a place where I would part with hard cash to shut the pair of you up?’
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t play games with me, miss!’
‘I’m not playing games! I honestly have no idea what you’re getting at! Are you saying that you think my sister and I are out to get money from you? Why would we want to do that?’
Matteo clicked his tongue with blatant incredulity, reached into his pocket and extracted a card from his wallet, which he tossed onto her lap. Then he sat back and crossed his legs.
‘How rude!’ Rosie exploded, her face bright red. ‘Is this how you treat women? How dare you just…just fling something at me?’
‘Spare me the self-righteous outrage,’ he returned smoothly. ‘Why don’t you have a look at the card?’
Still fuming, Rosie looked at the card, which had just a name on it and three telephone numbers. She politely reached forward to return it.
‘I’m sorry but this doesn’t mean anything to me. Well, I guess it’s your name. Matteo Moretti.’ She sighed. He’d taken the card back and was obviously waiting for her to expand. His expression was unreadable and she got the impression that this was a man who knew how to conceal what was in his head and that it was something he was accustomed to doing. He emanated a certain amount of menace but she wondered whether that hint of menace wasn’t amplified by the fact that she was just so conscious of him in a way she had never been conscious of any man in her life before.
Suddenly very much aware of her physical shortcomings, she fidgeted in the chair and tried to get herself into a suitably more elevated, commanding position.
‘I suppose you’re someone important, which is why you think I should recognise your name, but I don’t know who’s who in the world of business. You must be rich, because you think that I’m some kind of master criminal who wants your money, but you’re wrong.’
‘Your sister knew my name,’ Matteo said bluntly. ‘Care to explain?’
‘Her name is Candice.’
‘Irrelevant. Just answer my question. Time is money.’
Sinfully good-looking he might be but Rosie was beginning to think that he was the most odious guy she had ever encountered. Rude didn’t begin to cover it.
‘I teach skiing here,’ she said stiffly. ‘For the season. I happened to meet your…your friends on the slopes. Pierre was supposed to be giving them a lesson but he went out last night with his girlfriend and he didn’t show up for—’
‘Get to the point!’
‘I’m getting there! Bob and Margaret told me that they were here mixing business with pleasure. They told me your name—Matteo. They said you never left the hotel, then they laughed and said that if they didn’t get to grips with skiing then you were to blame because they were too busy feeling guilty about you being cooped up inside to concentrate on getting their feet in the right place. Obviously I didn’t know it was you at the time, but that’s how I happened to know your name. It was just coincidence that you happened to be where you were when…’
When all hell broke loose.
Matteo gritted his teeth. ‘How much more tortured can this explanation get? I feel as though I’m being made to sample a vision of hell. Are you ever going to get to the point or do I have to bring the police in to question you?’
‘Police? How dare you?’ She glared at him and he stared back at her without batting an eyelid.
‘Just. Get. To. The. Point.’
‘Okay, here’s the point!’ Rosie snapped, leaning forward and gripping the sides of her chair tightly. ‘I had to pretend that I had broken up with someone, because I didn’t want to be condemned to seeing Bertie over Christmas, and I spotted you down there in the foyer with Bob and Margaret and I… I…figured that you were the businessman called Matteo so I lied and told my sister that I’d been seeing you! Is that enough of an explanation for you? I’m really sorry but you were the fall guy!’
THEIR EYES MET. Matteo was beginning to feel a little unsteady. He had never before heard such a garbled non-explanation from anyone in response to any question he had ever posed in his life. Her mouth was parted and she was leaning forward, her body language speaking of an urgency for him to believe what she was saying.
The woman was distracting.
It wasn’t just the breathless, convoluted workings of her brain which he was finding extraordinarily difficult to deal with. It was her, the entire package. The second he had laid eyes on her, something inside him had kick-started and now…staring back into her impossibly turquoise eyes…
He shifted, frowning. There was enough on his plate without losing focus over this nonsense. His eyes roved over her flushed face, subliminally appreciating the satin smoothness of her skin and the juicy fullness of her lips. As he watched, her tongue flicked out, nervously licking her upper lip, and his whole body jack-knifed in sudden, heated response.
A libido which had been dormant for the past six months surged into life with shocking force. He gritted his teeth together but he had to shift position because his erection was rock-hard, pulsing against the zipper of his trousers.
Was she leaning forward like that on purpose? Making sure that those lush, heavy breasts were on tempting show, begging to be fondled?
Matteo had a very particular type of woman. Very tall, very slim and very brunette. He went for the career woman, the woman who challenged him intellectually. He liked the back and forth of informed conversation about politics and the economy. He liked them cool, confident and as driven as he was. He’d fought hard for his place in the world and he appreciated a woman who had battled against the odds as well. An ambitious woman with a career of her own was also not a needy woman, and he disliked needy women. He didn’t want anyone needing him. He operated solo and that was the way he liked it.
So why was he staring at this woman in front of him with the rapt attention of a horny teenager? She was breathy and ultra-feminine and didn’t strike him as the sort who would be winning awards for her thoughts on world finance. She was the antithesis of what he sought in any woman.
Furious
