Italian Bachelors: Unforgotten Lovers. Lynn Raye Harris

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       CHAPTER SIX

      DRAGO HAD NEVER met a more infuriating woman in his life. Holly Craig sat across from him at the table, with golden sunlight playing across her face and her pale hair, setting flame to the strands, and looked like a sweet, innocent goddess.

      An illusion.

      She was not sweet. She was most definitely not innocent. Remembering the ways in which she was not innocent threatened to make him hard, especially after he’d just had his hand on her soft skin. He forced the memory of making love to her from his mind and focused on the stubborn set of her jaw.

      So determined, this woman. So different compared to last year. He sometimes had glimpses of that innocent girl under the veneer, but mostly she was hard and weary. Changed.

      Or perhaps last year had been nothing more than an act. Perhaps she’d been just as hard then but had pretended not to be. He’d learned, over the years, that women would do much in an attempt to snare a wealthy man. Holly might have been a virgin, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t been a virgin with a plan. Innocence in sexual matters did not imply innocence overall.

      Nevertheless, he still wanted her for Sky. She had the face he needed. An everywoman face, but pretty in the way every woman wanted to be. No, she was not perfect. She wasn’t the sort of gorgeous that a top supermodel was.

      But she was perfect for what he wanted her for.

      And that was why he put up with her, he told himself. With her hostility and her loathing and her refusal to cooperate.

      Drago had worked his way up the ladder at Navarra Cosmetics, because his uncle had insisted he start at the bottom to really know the business, but one of the things he’d always had—and had honed into a fine instrument these days—was a gut feeling for what was right for the company. Holly Craig was right for Sky, and he intended to have her.

      Even if he had to suffer her hostility and a baby in his house. When they went to Italy, he would put her and the child in another wing of the estate. Then he would cheerfully forget about her until the shoot was completed and he went over the photos.

      She took a sip of the wine and he thought of the way she’d described it to him. She’d never had Château Margaux, he’d bet on that, but she’d described it perfectly after one sip. She knew scents and flavors, he had to give her that.

      Whether or not that made her a good perfumer was an entirely different matter.

      “Tell me what you expected when you came to New York last year.”

      Her eyes widened. And then narrowed again, as if she were trying to figure out the trick.

      “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said carefully.

      Her eyes dropped and a current of irritation sizzled into him. “Are you not? You had a case of perfume samples. You pretended to be a model. What was your intent? What did you think would happen once you had my undivided attention?”

      She colored, her eyes flashing hot. He didn’t know why, but that slice of temper intrigued him. “Because I had intent, right? You never gave me a chance to explain that morning, if I recall. It was a misunderstanding, but you didn’t stay for that part.”

      He sipped the wine. “How did I misunderstand you, cara? You were not mute. You spent the entire evening with me. Not only that, but you stood in front of the cameras for two hours and never corrected the impression you were there to model.”

      Her color remained high. She closed her eyes for a moment. A second later, she was looking straight at him, her eyes shiny and big in her pale face. “I know. I should have. But you assumed I was a model, and I was too scared to say otherwise. Scared I’d lose my chance to talk to you.”

      “You had my undivided attention all evening,” he bit out.

      “Hardly undivided,” she threw back at him. “You took a dozen phone calls at least. How anyone could have a conversation with you under those СКАЧАТЬ