First his easy capitulation, then the thing with the guest—she hadn’t really registered the man’s face, just Cesare’s obvious reluctance to introduce them. Now that she thought about it he had virtually thrown her out of the room. What did he think she was going to do?
She had nothing but the wall to vent her anger on and the twelve inches of solid stone absorbed her angry glare much the way her intended target would have. The man had the thickest skin... Skin... She shook her head to clear the tactile sensations that made her fingers curl as she thought of Cesare’s satiny dark gold-toned skin.
Was he even now recounting details of her imagined sleazy past to his friend? Hating the fact that the possibility had the power to hurt her, she walked across to the table and picked up a book she had started reading earlier that week. She had flopped down into a high-backed easy chair when without warning the door opened.
She had stopped pretending even to herself that the sight of him didn’t turn her into a drooling idiot. In her defence there was good reason: Cesare was a beautiful sexy predator, the sort that didn’t have to lift a finger to capture his victims—they were lining up to be eaten.
And to her intense shame, she was no different.
She laid her book down and sat forward, her spine straight as she levelled a condemnatory glare up at his face. ‘I thought this was meant to be a private wing?’
He was still wearing what she privately called his professional uniform, one of the slickly tailored designer suits that he must have dozens of, minus the usual silk tie and plus a heavy shadow of stubble on his angular jaw.
‘You expect me to knock in my own house?’
Her husky little laugh sent a flash of heat down his body.
‘I expect you to do exactly what you want,’ she admitted bitterly.
‘If that were true you’d be naked and under me.’
The glitter in his deep-set hooded eyes as much as the raw pronouncement drew a gasp from Anna, who, despite the heart-racing excitement swirling like champagne bubbles through her veins, adopted a stiff expression and demanded, ‘Am I meant to find that statement a turn-on?’ Because if so it worked, oh, big time it worked!
‘Not my intention, just a fringe benefit, but leaving that to one side—’
He made it sound the easiest thing in the world, which for him it probably was, while his comment had left her shaking with lust. Her nervous system was in meltdown but Anna, by some superhuman effort, managed to hide it behind a rigid mask of composure as she focused her eyes on a point over his left shoulder.
‘I’m puzzled.’
Anna’s gaze swung back to his face as she widened her eyes in an attitude of mock wonder. ‘I’m amazed. I thought you knew everything.’
He responded to the bitter jibe with a tight smile. ‘If you had an affair with Paul Dane why didn’t you recognise him when you walked into the library and saw him sitting there?’
He watched as a look of blank astonishment washed over Anna’s face. In a matter of seconds the colour leeched from her face and then rushed back, staining her skin pink.
‘That man was Paul Dane?’
She had smiled at him.
Her hands balled into fists. Smiled! She should have punched his lights out. Her blue-eyed fury switched to the person delivering the information.
‘You invited him here?’ she choked. ‘You thought that was funny?’ Rising from the sofa, she was forced back down by the large hands on her shoulders.
Cesare sank down with her. Lifting his hands from her shoulders, he took her hands in his, drawing them onto the hard contours of his muscular thighs.
‘Let me go.’ She had the opportunity to tell that slimy rat exactly what she thought of him and nothing and nobody was going to stop her.
‘Certainly, when you have told me what the hell this is about,’ he retorted calmly.
‘I’m not staying a night, not a second, under the same roof as that man,’ she declared in a shaking voice.
Cesare had been trying to break through her defensive rigidity, but success was not sweet. The pain shimmering in her beautiful eyes was painful to witness. ‘He isn’t.’
She lifted eyes that glowed with angry contempt to his face. ‘Isn’t what, a total scumbag?’ She loosed a wild laugh tinged with bitterness. ‘Well, your definition is clearly different from mine.’
‘Under this roof.’
It took a few seconds before her brow puckered and she responded with a subdued, ‘Oh.’ Before adding, ‘But the principle is the same.’