there was nothing brutish about this man. Not with eyes like that. Glinting with sharp intelligence.
And blue—piercing blue—which is really weird, because the tan of his skin tone and the sable of his hair indicates Hispanic, probably...
Yet even as she made that reasonable assumption she realised she needed to do something other than just gaze dumbstruck at him. Should she acknowledge his remark? Without vanity, she knew from experience that her blonde looks drew male eyes—and more—and if she was chatted up she normally kept her reaction vague to the point of evasive until she could get away or the man gave up. If absolutely necessary she froze them out.
For the moment, though, she went for option one, and gave a brief, impersonal flicker of a smile and a demurring shake of her head.
‘Not my thing...gambling,’ she replied, glad to accept the leather-bound drinks bill, and jot her room number on it.
‘You’re part of the conference?’
Again, the deep, slightly gravelled voice made her glance up as she pushed the folder back to the barman.
‘Yes,’ she acknowledged.
She moved to slip off the high stool, and immediately the man’s hand was there, guiding her. She glanced at him, murmuring her thanks, but wished that she could retain the air of impersonal indifference that she knew she should be displaying at this time.
Only it was impossible to do so. Impossible to do anything but feel the extraordinary visceral impact on her that he was having.
An impact that suddenly increased exponentially.
He was smiling—and the smile was like the smile of a desert wolf.
Fran felt her lungs squeeze, her breath catch. The smile was swift—a sudden indentation of the firm mouth, a brief flash of teeth, a lightening of his tough features as if the sun had just come out and then disappeared again.
‘Forgive me for sounding clichéd, but you don’t look the least like an astrophysicist!’
Amusement played around his firm mouth, as if he knew perfectly well that it was, indeed, a clichéd observation, but didn’t give a damn. Because the light in those blue, blue eyes of his was telling her just why he’d said what he had.
He wanted to do anything to keep the conversation going.
Fran lifted an eyebrow. Whatever was going on here, it was unlikely to be anything to do with the man’s role as a member of the hotel’s security team, if that was who he was, given the air of toughness radiating from him. And if he wasn’t—if he was just another guest—then that made it no better. He was still chatting her up. So maybe she should just call time and walk.
Except that she didn’t want to. The sudden fizzing in her veins, the catch in her heart rate, was telling her that she was reacting to this man as she had never reacted to any man before—that something was happening to her that had never happened to her before.
So, instead of whatever she might have been planning to reply to him with, she could hear her own voice, with a clear hint of answering amusement in it, saying, ‘And you’ve encountered many astrophysicists in your time, have you?’
She was conscious that her eyebrow had lifted, just as her mouth had twitched in amusement, conscious too of how that flashing smile had come again. Her sense was that here was a man totally at ease with himself. Even if he was a security guy, chatting up one of the guests in the hotel he worked in, he didn’t care—and he was inviting her not to care either. He was a man who knew he was blatantly accosting a woman who had caught his eye...
She was conscious that long, dark lashes had swept down over those brilliant blue eyes as he answered her in turn.
‘Enough,’ he said laconically.
Fran’s eyes narrowed deliberately. ‘Name three,’ she challenged.
He laughed—a low, attractive sound that went with the flashing smile, and the brilliant blue eyes and the tough face and the tougher body. All of which were doing incredible things to her.
She felt herself reel inwardly.
What is happening to me? I get chatted up by some guy strolling up to me in a bar at a casino hotel and suddenly I feel like I’m eighteen again. Not a sober-minded post-doc on the far side of twenty-five, who writes abstruse scientific papers on cosmology at a prestigious West Coast university.
Hard-working research academics didn’t go doolally because some muscled hunk smiled at them. And nor, came the even more sobering thought, did the woman who was her identity as well as Dr Fran Ristori.
Donna Francesca di Ristori. Offspring of two noble houses—one Italian, one English—both centuries old, with bloodlines that could be traced back to the Middle Ages, and estates and lands, castles and palazzos. She was the daughter of Il Marchese d’Arromento, and granddaughter of one of the peers of the British realm, the Duke of Revinscourt.
Not that anyone here in the USA knew that—or cared. In academia only the quality of your research counted, nothing else. It was something that her mother—born Lady Emma, now Marchesa d’Arromento—had never really understood. But then her mother had never really understood why Fran had turned away from the life she’d been born to in order to follow her deep love of learning to the halls of academia.
It had caused, Fran knew, something of a rift between them, and it was only because Fran had agreed to marry into the Italian aristocracy that her mother had been reconciled to her research career.
But last year Fran had broken up with Cesare, Il Conte di Mantegna, whom she had long been expected to marry, and now her mother was barely speaking to her.
‘But he was perfect for you!’ her mother had cried protestingly. ‘You’ve known each other all your lives and he would have let you continue with all this star-gazing you insist on as well as being his Contessa!’
‘I got a better offer,’ was all Fran had been able to say.
It had been an offer her mother could never have appreciated—the exciting invitation to join the research team of a Nobel Laureate out in California.
Fran had been relieved to take the offer, and not just for herself. Cesare was a friend—a good friend—and he would always be a friend, but it had turned out that he was actually in love with someone else and had since married her.
Fran was glad for Cesare, and for Carla, his new bride, and the baby that had been born to them, and wished them every happiness.
She had moved out to the West Coast, rented an apartment, and was revelling in the heady atmosphere of one of the world’s most advanced cosmology research centres. Although it was strange not to have Cesare in her life any longer—even long-distance, across the Atlantic—she had joyfully immersed herself in her work, thrilled to be assisting the famous Nobel Laureate.
Except that this last semester her revered professor had suffered a heart attack and retired prematurely, and his successor wasn’t a patch on him. Already Fran had resolved to seek another post, another university. She would see out this conference and then start actively looking.
‘OK—I
