The Italian's One-Night Consequence. Cathy Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ site would be perfect for expanding his businesses into a new market.

      His thoughts far away, he was already indulging in the pleasurable exercise of planning how he would use the space to its best advantage.

      Naturally it would have to be gutted. Wood, carpet and dowdy furnishings might have worked back in the day—although to be fair Leo wasn’t sure when that day might have been—but as soon as he got his hands on the store they’d have to go. God knew, the place was probably riddled with rising damp, dry rot and termites. By the time he was through with it, and the ‘Gallo’ sign had been unceremoniously dumped, it would be unrecognisable.

      He looked around, wondering which decrepit part of the store he should hit first—and there she was.

      Standing behind one of the make-up counters, she looked as out of place as a fish in a bookstore. Despite the fact that she was surrounded by all manner of war paint, in expensive jars and shiny compact holders, she herself appeared to be devoid of any cosmetics. Frowning at an arrangement of dark burgundy pots on the glass counter, and needlessly repositioning them, she was the very picture of natural, stunningly beautiful freshness, and for a few seconds Leo actually held his breath as he stared at her.

      His libido, which had been untested for the past three weeks, ever since he had broken up with his latest conquest after she’d started making unfortunate noises about permanence and commitment, sprang into enthusiastic life.

      Leo was so surprised at his reaction that he was hardly aware that he was staring like a horny teenager. Not cool. Not him.

      Especially when the leggy girl he was staring at was definitely not a Page Three girl and even more definitely not the sort of woman he was attracted to.

      She was tall and willowy, from the little he could make out under the cheap store uniform, and she had the sort of wide-eyed innocence that was always accompanied in his head with the strident ringing of alarm bells. Her skin was smooth and satiny and the colour of pale caramel, as though she had been toasted in the sun. Her hair was tied back, but the bits escaping were a shade darker than her skin, toffee-coloured with strands of strawberry blonde running through it.

      And her eyes...

      She abruptly stopped what she was doing and looked up, gazing directly back at him.

      Her eyes were green—as clear as glass washed up on a beach.

      The kick of sexual attraction, a lust as raw as anything he’d ever felt before, shot through him like a bolt of adrenaline, and Leo felt himself harden in immediate response. It was fierce enough to take his mind off everything that had hitherto been occupying it.

      His stiffened shaft was painful, and he had to adjust his position to release some of the pressure. As their eyes tangled he thought that if she kept looking at him like that, making him imagine what it would be like to have that succulent full mouth circling the throbbing, rigid length of him, he would soon be desperate for release.

      He began walking towards her, every hunting instinct inside him honing in on his prey. He’d never wanted any woman with such urgent immediacy before and Leo wasn’t about to ignore the pull. When it came to sex, he was a man who had always got what he wanted—and he wanted this woman with every fibre in his body.

      The closer he got to her, the more stupendously pretty she was. Her huge eyes were almond-shaped, fringed with very dark lashes that seemed to contradict the colour of her hair. Her lips, parted, were sensuous and full, even though their startled-in-the-headlights expression was teasingly innocent. And her body...

      The unappealing, clinical white dress, belted at the waist, should have been enough to dampen any man’s ardour, but instead it sent his imagination into frantic overdrive and he caught himself wondering what her breasts would look like, what they would taste like...

      * * *

      ‘Can I help you?’ Maddie’s heart was beating like a sledgehammer, but her expression was studiously polite as she met the stranger’s openly appreciative gaze.

       Man sees girl. Man is attracted to girl. Man makes beeline for girl because he has one thing on his mind and that’s getting her into bed with him.

      Maddie was used to that response from the opposite sex. She hated it.

      What was even more galling was the fact that this particular man had, just for a second, aroused something in her other than her usual instinct to slam down the shutters hard the minute she saw a come-on situation on the horizon.

      In fact, for a second, she had felt a stirring between her thighs—a tingling, tickly melting that had horrified her.

      ‘Interesting question,’ the man murmured, positioning himself directly in front of her.

      The look in her eyes seemed to amuse him.

      ‘Are you looking for make-up?’ Maddie asked bluntly. ‘Because if so you’re in the wrong department. I could always point you in the right direction.’

      In response, the man randomly picked up a jar from the precarious display she had been fiddling with earlier and twirled it in his hand.

      ‘What’s this if not make-up?’

      Maddie removed it from him and swivelled it so that the label was facing him. ‘Regenerating night cream, targeting a woman in her sixties,’ she said crisply. ‘Are you interested in buying it?’

      ‘Oh, I’m interested,’ he said, in a tone laced with innuendo.

      ‘Well, that’s all I’m selling, so if it’s not what you’re interested in you should probably keep moving.’

      Maddie folded her arms. She knew she was blushing. She also knew that her body was misbehaving. Once upon a time, it had misbehaved before, and she still had the scars to show for that. A repeat performance wasn’t on the cards—especially not with some arrogant guy too good-looking for his own good.

      ‘Are we cutting to the chase, here?’ Leo purred, rising to the challenge and liking it. ‘Who’s to say I’m not...interested...in that very expensive pot of cream for my mother?’

      ‘Oh!’ Maddie flushed. She’d misread the situation.

      At this rate, sampling how things worked on the shop floor was going to get her precisely nowhere—because she clearly had no idea about effective salesmanship. But then she’d never stood behind a counter selling anything in her entire life.

      Yet again she wondered whether she was doing the right thing. Was she? Three and a half weeks ago she’d received the startling news that she was the sole beneficiary of a bequest that included a department store, a house, and various assorted paraphernalia—courtesy of a grandfather she had never seen, nor met, and never really known existed.

      Having been struggling to make ends meet, and living the sort of disastrous life she had never imagined possible, she had already been asking herself what direction she needed to take to wipe away the past couple of years of her life, or at least to put it all in perspective, and wham—just like that, she’d received her answer.

      She’d arrived in Ireland still barely able to believe her good fortune, with big plans to sell the store, the house and whatever СКАЧАТЬ