Breathe.
She pushed out a breath. Gulped in another.
She’d never had a panic attack before, but seeing Nick Delisantro again was exactly the sort of extreme-stress situation that could trigger one. She sucked in several more painfully shallow breaths, exhaled slowly.
Focus. Because quite apart from the humiliation factor, you don’t have time to pass out.
Nick’s plane from San Francisco was already half an hour late. Their flight to Italy was due to take off in two hours. She had to get them to Terminal One, and ensure they checked in at least an hour prior to take-off. And then…
She swallowed down the lump of treacle cutting off her air supply as heat seeped into her cheeks.
And then she would be spending the next two weeks at Nick Delisantro’s beck and call.
She still wasn’t quite sure how she’d got into this fix. Everything had happened so fast and so unexpectedly. She’d been scouring the job ads last Tuesday morning, trying to figure out a way to make her meagre savings last while she reinvented her shattered career, her confrontation with Mr Crenshawe not making her feel quite as courageous as she would have hoped, when she’d received a frantic call from her ex-boss—begging her to return to work and claiming that her sacking had all been a terrible misunderstanding. When she’d hesitated momentarily, from shock rather than reluctance, he’d immediately doubled her salary as an incentive.
It was only when she’d arrived at work that afternoon, trying to ignore the inquisitive stares from her co-workers, that she’d discovered the enormous catch in her sudden change of fortunes.
First there had been the astonishing news that she was back on the Alegria account, promptly followed by the heart-stopping information that Nick Delisantro had not only consented to travel to the Duca D’Alegria’s estate in Lake Garda, but that he was insisting she accompany him as Roots Registry’s representative.
She’d left her boss’s office in a daze, her fingers whitening on the printouts of the Alegria client presentation Bob had already started work on, as the whole terrifying scenario had slotted into place.
Nick Delisantro was the only reason she’d got her job back. Mr Crenshawe hadn’t had a sudden change of heart, and if she refused to make the trip he would kick her right back out of the door again.
So she’d agreed to go to Italy.
And then endured seven whole days of extreme agitation while she tried to figure out Nick Delisantro’s motives. Why had he insisted she go with him? When he couldn’t stand the sight of her?
The only possible scenario that had made any sense was that he had devised this trip as some new way of punishing her. As if shouting at her, humiliating her and kicking her out of his apartment weren’t enough.
At first she’d panicked. Horrified at the thought of not only having to deal with his anger all over again, but having to spend two whole weeks with him using her as his whipping boy. But after a long phone conversation with Tess, during which she’d given her friend a pared-down version of her one-night stand, Tess had made her realise that she had every right to be mad at Nick and not the other way around.
Unfortunately, despite her show of bravado in finally standing up to Mr Crenshawe, Eva wasn’t sure she had enough courage to stand up to someone as dominating as Nick.
The truth was she had even less experience of confrontational situations than she did of sexual ones. As a child she’d always been a champion conciliator, had hardly ever even uttered a cross word at the dinner table—because she’d always been far too aware of the weight of her parents’ disapproval if she did. Not that her parents had been bad parents—they hadn’t. They’d never been aggressive or unkind towards her, and they hadn’t even been particularly strict, except about her schoolwork. But they had never been very affectionate either. They simply hadn’t been demonstrative people—and unfortunately she was. She’d longed for the spontaneous hugs and kisses, the casual praise and all those other unconscious signs that demonstrated you were loved and cherished, which she saw her school friends receiving from their mums and dads, but her own parents had never been capable of. And as a consequence of that childhood yearning, she’d become pathetically eager to please. Nick had accused her of always apologising. And he’d been right.
But as Tess had pointed out rather forcefully on the phone yesterday afternoon from San Francisco, he hadn’t been right to turn on her the way he had after they’d slept together. He’d accused her of things she hadn’t done. Things that, once she’d had a chance to think about it, didn’t even make sense. Why on earth would she have needed to sleep with him to tell him he was in line to inherit millions? Surely most people would have been overjoyed to receive that news? The fact that he hadn’t been must have something to do with his past.
When had he discovered he was illegitimate? she wondered. Had it been a particularly traumatic experience for him?
Eva frowned at the dwindling line of passengers coming out of the arrival gates, and swallowed down the wave of sympathy.
Don’t even go there.
She needed to nurture her indignation and work on her confrontation skills—or Nick Delisantro was going to walk all over her a second time, and the little shards that he’d somehow inserted in her heart would never go away. She definitely did not need to feel sorry for him. So making assumptions about what might have happened to him as a child was out.
She peered towards the gate and smoothed damp palms down the lower half of the power suit she’d chosen that morning, after trying on six other outfits. With its knee-length steel-grey pencil skirt, matching tailored jacket and demure white cotton blouse, it made her look one-hundred-per-cent professional.
She was calm now, she noted. Or calm enough. She gripped the handle of her wheel-around suitcase. Her hands had stopped quivering and she was breathing, if not evenly, at least fairly regularly. Once she’d got over this first meeting, established how she was going to play things—calm, detached, not given to emotional outbursts of any kind—everything would be fine.
Then she spotted the tall, well-muscled man strolling out of the gate in a worn T-shirt and low-slung jeans. His caramel brown hair was shorter than she remembered it, hugging his head and curling only slightly around his ears. But there was no mistaking that devastatingly handsome face, the olive skin, or the dark gaze that scanned the crowd, then locked onto her face with a focus and intensity that reminded her of their first meeting.
Her grip flexed and tightened on the handle to stop the trembling in her fingers and the quick, shallow gasp of breath. But it didn’t do a thing for the swell of heat beneath her pencil skirt that dampened the gusset of her panties.
She bit down on her bottom lip as he strolled towards her, his strides
measured but exact, and the expression on his face completely unreadable.
Ignore the heat. Stay calm, stay professional and, whatever you do, do not say sorry. You’re not the one who should be apologising.