Annie's Secret. Carole Mortimer

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      How had this happened? Why had it happened?

      It had happened for the simple reason that her father, newly fired with a desire to guide the lives of his wayward daughters into less notorious and hopefully more worthwhile channels, had decided that Annie was to take a more active role in the Balfour business empire by attending this management course!

      Her protest that she had no interest in taking on a more high-profile role in her father’s management team hadn’t seemed to matter a jot to him. As the only one of Oscar’s eight daughters who actually worked for him, usually at the office complex at Balfour Manor, Oscar had just overridden all of Annie’s objections by threatening to sack her.

      Annie had known that he had meant that threat too. That Oscar was absolutely adamant in his decision that it was time—past time—that all of his daughters went out into the world to find themselves and what they really wanted out of life. Even if the majority of them, Annie included, went kicking and screaming!

      Which brought Annie back full circle to her presence here at this glamorous hotel set on the shore of beautiful Lake Garda in Italy.

      A hotel at which Luc, her ex-lover, was obviously also a guest…

      Chapter Two

      ‘SO, signorina, you have found time from your busy schedule to relax after all.’

      Annie’s heart jolted in her chest just at the sound of that sexily familiar voice, and she was grateful for the dark glasses that shielded the expression in her eyes as she looked up to see Luc standing beside her. She had been hoping for a little peace and quiet as she lay on a towel on the sand of the private beach in front of the hotel.

      But she would obviously get no peace today. The man was gorgeous. Decadently. Wonderfully. Indecently. Lethally gorgeous.

      Luc had been vitally and excitingly handsome when Annie had met him all those years ago, but the skimpy pair of black bathing trunks that were all he wore now showed an added toughness to the lean and muscled contours of his body.

      His skin had always been the colour of mahogany. But his shoulders were wider, and more muscled. A light dusting of dark hair covered a chest and washboard abdomen. His hips and thighs were lean and powerful, and those black bathing trunks seemed to emphasise rather than disguise the telling bulge between those spectacular thighs.

      Thighs that Annie had once been intimately familiar with…

      She sat up abruptly, her manner instantly defensive as she glared up at him from behind her brown sunglasses. ‘Are you following me?’

      Luc felt only amusement at the accusation. Knowing that the flush of heat on her cheeks, and the way her nipples had hardened against the material of her blue bathing costume, was due to physical awareness rather than the angry indignation she wished to convey.

      In truth, he’d had no idea she was even on the beach when he decided to indulge in a swim before his meeting later this afternoon. But as he had stood on the warmth of the sand looking for a place in which to place his towel, he had spotted that familiar chestnut-coloured hair that had seemed to glow a deeper auburn in the warmth of the midday sun.

      Having swiftly established that it was the little firebrand of earlier this morning, Luc had been unable to resist the impulse to join her. To annoy her further perhaps? She did look so very beautiful when she was scowling at him.

      The black business suit and white blouse she had been wearing this morning had not done her justice, Luc realised once he had crossed the beach to stand looking down at her from behind black sunglasses.

      Her bare skin was tanned a pale gold, the top of the blue bathing costume cupping full and exquisite breasts, the thin strip of material that connected the top to the bottom of the costume at the front revealing the toned flatness of her waist and stomach above enticingly curvy hips and long, shapely legs.

      ‘What if I were following you?’ He answered her accusation teasingly.

      A frown appeared between her eyes. ‘Then I really would have to report your harassment to the hotel management.’

      ‘Please feel free to do so,’ Luc invited as he dropped down onto the sand beside her.

      The fact that he seemed so unconcerned by the threat told Annie that he somehow knew she would be wasting her time in making such a complaint.

      Just as her inner feeling of panic also told her that she was completely aware—achingly aware—of the hard promise of Luc’s almost naked body so close to her own that their thighs were almost touching.

      So close that she could feel the warmth emanating from his body. So close that she could smell his delicious masculine scent. So close she could have easily reached out and touched one of those hard and muscled thighs…

      Her fingers clenched so tightly in an effort not to do exactly that, that her nails dug painfully into the palms of her hands. ‘What is it you want, signore?’ she asked instead. ‘Surely there are enough willing women at this hotel that you don’t need to harass the only one who isn’t interested in you?’ Annie hadn’t missed the openly lascivious female glances in Luc’s direction since he had joined her on the sand. ‘Or is that the challenge?’ she added in disgust.

      An amused smile curved those sculptured lips. ‘Are you not being a little unkind to these other women?’ He ignored her second taunt.

      ‘I prefer to think of it as being truthful,’ Annie retorted waspishly.

      He raised dark brows. ‘And are you always truthful?’

      ‘I like to think so, yes.’

      ‘Hmm,’ he mused softly. ‘So, are you truly not interested in me?’

      Annie felt her cheeks colour in a revealing blush. ‘I’m not interested in any man who, when he’s away on business, just wants a weekend fling while out of sight of his wife and family.’

      ‘And if the man has no wife? Or family?’ he pressed.

      Her mouth compressed. ‘Don’t they all say that?’

      ‘Do they?’ he asked.

      ‘Yes,’ Annie replied. She may prefer to spend most of her time at Balfour Manor but that didn’t mean that she didn’t occasionally accompany her father when he went away on business. Or that her father’s presence protected her from the advances of some of the business associates she met at those times. On the contrary; the often scandalous exploits of Annie’s sisters seemed to have given most of those men the impression that all the Balfour sisters were open to seduction!

      Luc gave her a hard look. ‘In my case it happens to be the truth.’ Children to inherit, and a wife to provide those children, would one day be necessary, Luc accepted. But he would choose his own time, and the correct woman, when it came to filling that position.

      ‘I’m still not interested,’ she announced.

      He arched mocking brows. ‘No?’

      ‘No!’ she said with finality. ‘And I very much doubt you usually have to try this hard to seduce a woman into your bed either,’ she added.

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