Secret Heirs: His One Night Consequence. Кэрол Мортимер

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СКАЧАТЬ in that forest-dark gaze that sent shivers of trepidation running through her. Despite his earlier light-hearted words, his stare sizzled. She guessed his deadpan expression disguised an anger almost as great as her own. Now she looked more closely, she read tension in his shoulders and grim mouth.

      Too bad. She tilted her chin up, wishing she had a long aristocratic nose like his so she could look down it.

      ‘But if that’s the way you’d prefer to do this,’ he purred, ‘then I can oblige.’

      She’d opened her mouth to say she preferred to have nothing to do with him, when his next words forestalled her.

      ‘I’m sure the hotel management would be interested in the security camera footage of the lobby outside the presidential suite last night, and in the lift. If they cared to check the recording they’d find it…illuminating.’

      ‘You wouldn’t!’ Shock hammered her like a physical blow, sucking out her breath. That tape would show her emerging from his suite in the early hours looking like…like…

      ‘Wouldn’t I?’ His stare was unnervingly blank. ‘I’m sure they frown on staff providing personal services to guests.’ His tongue dripped with hateful innuendo and Carys burned with frustration and fury. Her hands clenched around the shoulder strap of her bag.

      ‘I wasn’t providing a service, you—’

      ‘It doesn’t matter what you were doing, Carys. All that matters is how the evidence appears.’ He leaned back with a smug glimmer in his eyes.

      Evidence. It sounded so formal.

      It would be formal if anyone decided to check the recording. Formal enough to get her the sack.

      Her heart dived and she shivered, but not from the rain’s chill. She needed this job. How else could she support Leo? Good positions were hard to find for someone with limited qualifications.

      Would Alessandro make good on his threat?

      Once she’d thought she’d known this man. Had trusted him. Had even believed he was falling in love with her.

      What a naïve innocent she’d been.

      She’d learned the hard way not to trust her judgement with him. Better to assume him capable of anything to get his own way. He’d already made a fool of her once.

      He was her enemy, threatening the life she’d begun to build, her independence, even, she feared, her child.

      ‘What do you want?’ She didn’t care that her voice was scratchy with distress, despite her attempt to appear calm.

      ‘To talk. We have unfinished business.’

      He didn’t wait for her to assent but slid back across the wide leather seat, making space for her.

       Unfinished business.

      That was how he described one little boy?

      Her throat closed convulsively as the fight bled out of her. She couldn’t ignore Alessandro. She had to face him and hope against hope she could retain some control of the situation.

      She tottered forward on numb legs and entered the limousine, her wet coat sliding along a leather seat that looked and smelled fresh from the factory.

      Only the best for the Conte Mattani.

      Under no circumstances would she, an ordinary single mum with not an ounce of glamour, be classed as the best. Alessandro had made that abundantly clear in Italy.

      Her heart bumped against her ribs. Had Alessandro decided her little boy was a different matter?

      The limo door shut with a quiet click and she sagged back, shutting her eyes. She was cold to the bone.

       There was no escape now.

      Moments later the front door closed and the vehicle accelerated. Belatedly she remembered to do up her seatbelt. A swift sideways glance told her Alessandro wasn’t happy, despite having got her where he wanted her.

      The proud, spare lines of his face seemed austere and forbidding silhouetted against the city streets. He looked as approachable as some ancient king, brooding over judgement.

      The flicker of unease inside her magnified into a hundred fluttering wings. She was at a disadvantage to him in so many ways.

      His silence reinforced that she was here at his pleasure.

      Carys flicked her gaze away, not deigning to ask where they were going. Two could play the silent game. It would give her time to marshal her resources.

      As she stared straight ahead, trying to control her frantic, jumbled thoughts, she found herself looking through a smoky glass privacy-screen at the back of Bruno’s head.

      Recognition smote her.

      ‘He was on my street. Last night!’ Carys leaned forward to make sure. There was no mistaking the bunched-muscle silhouette of the minder’s neck and shoulders, or the shape of his head.

      As she’d walked up the ill-lit street to her block of flats in the early hours, she’d faltered, her heart skipping as she noticed a brawny man in jeans and a leather jacket just ahead. He looked to be waiting for someone. But as she’d hesitated he’d turned to stroll away in the opposite direction.

      Nevertheless, she’d scurried inside as fast as possible. Her street was peaceful by day, but the shopping strip a few blocks away had been attracting unsavoury characters at night.

      ‘Bruno, your bodyguard. He was outside my home.’

      She swung round to find Alessandro watching her steadily. His lack of response infuriated her.

      ‘You’re not even bothering to deny it!’

      ‘Why would I?’ His brow furrowed in a hint of a frown that, annoyingly, didn’t detract from his handsome looks.

      ‘You had him follow me?’ Already Alessandro had pried into her personnel records. Now his stooge had been scoping out her home. He had no qualms about invading her privacy.

      ‘Of course.’ He stared coolly as if wondering what the fuss was about. ‘It was late. I had to make sure you got back all right.’

      His explanation took the wind out of her sails and she slumped in her seat, her mind whirling.

      ‘You were trying to protect me?’

      Something indefinable flickered in his eyes. ‘You were out alone at an hour when you should have been safely home.’

      At least he didn’t mention her state of disarray. Even in a pair of shoes borrowed from the staffroom, and with her shirt buttoned again, she’d felt as if the few people she’d met on her journey took one look and knew exactly what she’d been up to in the presidential suite.

      Alessandro made her sound like a teenager in need of parental guidance. Not a twenty-five-year-old woman supporting herself and her son.

      Yet СКАЧАТЬ