The Venetian One-Night Baby. Melanie Milburne

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       CHAPTER ONE

      SABRINA WAS HOPING she wouldn’t run into Max Firbank again after The Kiss. He wasn’t an easy man to avoid since he was her parents’ favourite godson and was invited to just about every Midhurst family gathering. Birthdays, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, parties and anniversaries he would spend on the fringes of the room, a twenty-first-century reincarnation of Jane Austen’s taciturn Mr Darcy. He’d look down his aristocratic nose at everyone else having fun.

      Sabrina made sure she had extra fun just to annoy him. She danced with everyone who asked her, chatting and working the room like she was the star student from Social Butterfly School. Max occasionally wouldn’t show, and then she would spend the whole evening wondering why the energy in the room wasn’t the same. But she refused to acknowledge it had anything to do with his absence.

      This weekend she was in Venice to exhibit two of her designs at her first wedding expo. She felt safe from running into him—or she would have if the hotel receptionist could find her booking.

      Sabrina leaned closer to the hotel reception counter. ‘I can assure you the reservation was made weeks ago.’

      ‘What name did you say it was booked under?’ the young male receptionist asked.

      ‘Midhurst, Sabrina Jane. My assistant booked it for me.’

      ‘Do you have any documentation with you? The confirmation email?’

      Had her new assistant Harriet forwarded it to her? Sabrina remembered printing out the wedding expo programme but had she printed out the accommodation details? She searched for it in her tote bag, sweat beading between her breasts, her stomach pitching with panic. She couldn’t turn up flustered to her first wedding expo as an exhibitor. That’s why she’d recently employed an assistant to help her with this sort of stuff. Booking flights and accommodation, sorting out her diary, making sure she didn’t double book or miss appointments.

      Sabrina put her lipgloss, paper diary, passport and phone on the counter, plus three pens, a small packet of tissues, some breath mints and her brand-new business cards. She left her tampons in the side pocket of her bag—there was only so much embarrassment she could handle at any one time. The only bits of paper she found were a shopping list and a receipt from her favourite shoe store.

      She began to put all the items back in her bag, but her lipgloss fell off the counter, dropped to the floor, rolled across the lobby and was stopped by a large Italian-leather-clad foot.

      Sabrina’s gaze travelled up the long length of the expertly tailored charcoal-grey trousers and finally came to rest on Max Firbank’s smoky grey-blue gaze.

      ‘Sabrina.’ His tone was less of a greeting and more of a grim not you again.

      Sabrina gave him a tight, no-teeth-showing smile. ‘Fancy seeing you here. I wouldn’t have thought wedding expos were your thing.’

      His eyes glanced at her mouth and something in her stomach dropped like a book tumbling off a shelf. Kerplunk. He blinked as if to clear his vision and bent down to pick up her lipgloss. He handed it to her, his expression as unreadable as cryptic code. ‘I’m seeing a client about a project. I always stay at this hotel when I come to Venice.’

      Sabrina took the lipgloss and slipped it into her bag, trying to ignore the tingling in her fingers where his had touched hers. She could feel the heat storming into her cheeks in a hot crimson tide. What sort of weird coincidence was this? Of all the hotels in Venice why did he have to be at this one? And on this weekend? She narrowed her gaze to the size of buttonholes. ‘Did my parents tell you I was going to be here this weekend?’

      Nothing on his face changed except for a brief elevation of one of his dark eyebrows. ‘No. Did mine tell you I was going to be in Venice?’

      Sabrina raised her chin. ‘Oh, didn’t you know? I zone out when your parents tell me things about you. I mentally plug my ears and sing la-de-da in my head until they change the subject of how amazingly brilliant you are.’

      There was a flicker of movement across his lips that could have been loosely described as a smile. ‘I’ll have to remember to do that next time your parents bang on about you to me.’

      Sabrina flicked a wayward strand of hair out of her face. Why did she always have to look like she’d been through a wind tunnel whenever she saw him? She dared not look at his mouth but kept her eyes trained on his inscrutable gaze. Was he thinking about The Kiss? The clashing of mouths that had morphed into a passionate explosion that had made a mockery of every other kiss she’d ever received? Could he still recall the taste and texture of her mouth? Did he lie in bed at night and fantasise about kissing her again?

      And not just kissing, but...

      ‘Signorina?’ The hotel receptionist jolted Sabrina out of her reverie. ‘We have no booking under the name Midhurst. Could it have been another hotel you selected online?’

      Sabrina suppressed a frustrated sigh. ‘No. I asked my assistant to book me into this one. This is where the fashion show is being held. I have to stay here.’

      ‘What’s СКАЧАТЬ