Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Sinful Proposals. Cathy Williams

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СКАЧАТЬ exert a bribe...?’

      ‘I have no idea how that rumour started.’ She tried not to fidget in her acute discomfort.

      How on earth had they got to this point anyway? It wasn’t as though she was going to jump in the sack with him! And yet, if that were the case, shouldn’t she just have laughed off his crazy proposition and headed for the door?

      It was what any normal, disinterested and frankly appalled person might have done...

      Perhaps not appalled, she mentally amended. Who would be appalled at having a pass made at them by Stefano Gunn? He was sex on legs and probably the most eligible bachelor in the country, if not on the planet.

      ‘Although...’ he stood up, flexed his muscles and paced the kitchen, finally pouring them both another glass of wine ‘... I’ll admit there’s a certain amount of truth behind the rumour so whoever started it must have heard something...’

      Sunny felt her insides plummet. She had been shocked when he had told her that he fancied her and she knew that she must have played with the idea of sleeping with him, must have entertained the wicked thought in some small corner of her mind, because to hear him now confirm that Katherine had been the draw for him made her feel slightly queasy.

      Had she turned him down? And had his eyes wandered a little further afield until they had alighted on her?

      ‘It’s none of my business,’ she said crisply, standing up so that he got the message that she was leaving.

      ‘Where are you going?’

      ‘Home. It’s late.’

      ‘I don’t want you to go.’

      ‘Tough.’

      ‘Do you?’

      ‘Do I what?’

      ‘Want to go?’ He watched her as she hovered by the door, saw the flicker of indecision on her face, saw the way she took a deep breath, as though steeling herself to clear off. ‘I would never make a pass at a woman and then, if I happen to get rejected, scout around for someone else to pick up the slack. I’m not that superficial, Sunny. I don’t want Katherine, however beautiful and capable she might be. And I’ll tell you something for free...shall I?’

      ‘What?’ He didn’t want Katherine. He didn’t fancy her. Relief shot through her and in that moment she knew that she wanted him, that it didn’t make sense, not at all, but something in her wanted him and that something was far more powerful than the neat, tidy part of her brain that was telling her not to be a fool.

      ‘What I’m doing right now,’ Stefano drawled, his deep, velvety voice curling around her with the seductiveness of the richest, darkest, smoothest chocolate, ‘is not what I usually do. I don’t usually make passes at women. I don’t usually lay my cards on the table and try to persuade a woman to share my bed. But something about you...’

      Sunny was beginning to feel faint. ‘If you don’t fancy Katherine, then what did you mean when you said that there was truth to the rumour...?’ She was struggling to think straight because all of a sudden her head was filled with the most erotic images, images that had never formed a part of her life at all. Images of her making love...giving in with wild abandon to a deep vein of passion she had never known existed in her.

      Stefano grinned ruefully and she blinked because he no longer looked like the intimidating, ruthless tycoon that he was. He looked sexy and tantalisingly approachable.

      ‘I have my mother to thank for engineering my association with your company.’

      ‘Not my company,’ Sunny automatically said in a distracted voice.

      Stefano smiled. ‘True. My mother...’ he raked his fingers through his hair because this was as intimate a chat with a woman as he could remember having in a very long time indeed ‘...has taken it upon herself to try and find me a nice wife ever since my daughter came to live with me after Alicia died. She’s of the opinion that a girl needs a mother and, in passing, a wife would do me good.’

      ‘Oh...’

      ‘Oh, indeed,’ Stefano said wryly. ‘When my mother puts her mind to something, she can be a force of nature. She gets convenient hearing loss when I try and explain to her that a wife isn’t going to happen.’ He hadn’t envisaged, when he’d put forward his bold proposal, that he would end up explaining any of this to her but, now that he was, he thought that it might be a good idea.

      He’d always made it clear to the women he slept with that he wasn’t up for grabs. There wouldn’t be long-range plans or meet and greet the relatives or any talk at all about a future that wasn’t going to be on the cards.

      If any of them decided that they could somehow find a way past those clear, simple clauses then they were destined for disappointment.

      But then all those women had been eager and enthusiastic. Sunny hadn’t been either of those things and, more importantly, she’d also managed to charm his wilful daughter.

      It was doubly important that she didn’t see any relationship they might have as a gateway to something meaningful because of her connection to Flora.

      Would she anyway? He just didn’t know. What he did know was that, underneath the veneer, she was peculiarly vulnerable because of her background.

      He wondered how it was that he knew so much about her when he hadn’t slept with her. He wondered whether instant sexual gratification had always obviated the need for meaningful personal conversations or whether his interest in her had been sparked by the fact that his daughter was part of the equation. Somehow, through her association with Flora, she had managed to find a back door into parts of him no other woman had managed to access after the bitter fallout of his marriage. Was this something that had made him curiously vulnerable to the thought of bedding her? Had the very thing that should have deterred him been the match that had lit the burning flame?

      He wondered whether Alicia, the mother of his child, had ever had any real access to him or whether their doomed relationship had generated something that had seemed personal at the time but which, in retrospect, had just been the sort of intimacy that warring partners sometimes had. Intimacy of the wrong kind.

      The roundabout cycle of pointless questions was irritating and he focused on the here and now.

      ‘She knows Katherine’s mother,’ he elaborated with a shrug, ‘and she promptly decided that a love match was on the cards.’

      ‘And you went along with it?’ Sunny was puzzled because that element of softness was not what she associated with him.

      The conversation seemed to be getting more rather than less personal and Stefano hesitated before dismissing the distant sound of alarm bells ringing.

      ‘I am close to my mother,’ he told her neutrally. ‘I may not agree with her efforts to find me a suitable bride but I thought that it would cost nothing to place some of my business with your company and meet the woman, rather than staging a flat-out refusal and upsetting my mother, who, at the end of the day, is just doing what she feels is best for myself and my daughter. Naturally, I did all the necessary checks to ensure that the company was capable of delivering what I wanted of them. I wasn’t about to sacrifice my money for the sake of my mother’s whimsy.’

      ‘Naturally.’ СКАЧАТЬ