Best Of Nora Roberts Books 1-6. Nora Roberts

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СКАЧАТЬ you away.”

      “I was very pleased with the taping,” she said again.

      “But?”

      All right, she thought, he was asking for it. “Perhaps it annoys me to see a woman making a fool of herself.” Juliet stuffed the folder back into her briefcase. “Liz Marks is married, you know.”

      “Wedding rings are things I try to be immediately aware of,” he said with a shrug. “Your instructions were to be charming, weren’t they?”

      “Perhaps charm has a different meaning in Italy.”

      “As I said, you must come to Rome.”

      “I suppose you enjoy having women drooling all over you.”

      He smiled at her, easy, attractive, innocent. “But of course.”

      A gurgle of laughter bubbled in her throat but she swallowed it. She wouldn’t be charmed. “You’ll have to deal with some men on this tour as well.”

      “I promise not to kiss Simpson’s fingers.”

      This time the laughter escaped. For a moment, she relaxed with it, let it come. Carlo saw, too briefly, the youth and energy beneath the discipline. He’d like to have kept her like that longer—laughing, at ease with him, and with herself. It would be a challenge, he mused, to find the right sequence of buttons to push to bring laughter to her eyes more often. He liked challenges—particularly when there was a woman connected to them.

      “Juliet.” Her name flowed off his tongue in a way only the European male had mastered. “You mustn’t worry. Your tidily married Liz only enjoyed a mild flirtation with a man she’ll more than than likely never see again. Harmless. Perhaps because of it, she’ll find more romance with her husband tonight.”

      Juliet eyed him a moment in her straight-on, no-nonsense manner. “You think quite of lot of yourself, don’t you?”

      He grinned, not sure if he was relieved or if he regretted the fact that he’d never met anyone like her before. “No more than is warranted, cara. Anyone who has character leaves a mark on another. Would you like to leave the world without making a ripple?”

      No. No, that was one thing she was determined not to do. She sat back determined to hold her own. “I suppose some of us insist on leaving more ripples than others.”

      He nodded. “I don’t like to do anything in a small way.”

      “Be careful, Mr. Franconi, or you’ll begin to believe your own image.”

      The limo had stopped, but before Juliet could scoot toward the door, Carlo had her hand. When she looked at him this time, she didn’t see the affable, amorous Italian chef, but a man of power. A man, she realized, who was well aware of how far it could take him.

      She didn’t move, but wondered how many other women had seen the steel beneath the silk.

      “I don’t need imagery, Juliet.” His voice was soft, charming, beautiful. She heard the razor-blade cut beneath it. “Franconi is Franconi. Take me for what you see, or go to the devil.”

      Smoothly, he climbed from the limo ahead of her, turned and took her hand, drawing her out with him. It was a move that was polite, respectful, even ordinary. It was a move, Juliet realized, that expressed their positions. Man to woman. The moment she stood on the curb, she removed her hand.

      With two shows and a business brunch under their belts, Juliet left Carlo in the bookstore, already swamped with women crowded in line for a glimpse at and a few words with Carlo Franconi. They’d handled the reporter and photographer already, and a man like Franconi wouldn’t need her help with a crowd of women. Armed with change and her credit card, she went to find a pay phone.

      For the first forty-five minutes, she spoke with her assistant in New York, filling her pad with times, dates and names while L.A. traffic whisked by outside the phone booth. As a bead of sweat trickled down her back, she wondered if she’d chosen the hottest corner in the city.

      Denver still didn’t look as promising as she’d hoped, but Dallas… Juliet caught her bottom lip between her teeth as she wrote. Dallas was going to be fabulous. She might need to double her daily dose of vitamins to get through that twenty-four-hour stretch, but it would be fabulous.

      After breaking her connection with New York, Juliet dialed her first contact in San Francisco. Ten minutes later, she was clenching her teeth. No, her contact at the department store couldn’t help coming down with a virus. She was sorry, genuinely sorry he was ill. But did he have to get sick without leaving someone behind with a couple of working brain cells?

      The young girl with the squeaky voice knew about the cooking demonstration. Yes, she knew all about it and wasn’t it going to be fun? Extension cords? Oh my, she really didn’t know a thing about that. Maybe she could ask someone in maintenance. A table—chairs? Well golly, she supposed she could get something, if it was really necessary.

      Juliet was reaching in her bag for her purse-size container of aspirin before it was over. The way it looked now, she’d have to get to the department store at least two hours before the demonstration to make sure everything was taken care of. That meant juggling the schedule.

      After completing her calls, Juliet left the corner phone booth, aspirin in hand, and headed back to the bookstore, hoping they could give her a glass of water and a quiet corner.

      No one noticed her. If she’d just crawled in from the desert on her belly, no one would have noticed her. The small, rather elegant bookstore was choked with laughter. No bookseller stood behind the counter. There was a magnet in the left-hand corner of the room. Its name was Franconi.

      It wasn’t just women this time, Juliet noticed with interest. There were men sprinkled in the crowd. Some of them might have been dragged along by their wives, but they were having a time of it now. It looked like a cocktail party, minus the cigarette smoke and empty glasses.

      She couldn’t even see him, Juliet realized as she worked her way toward the back of the store. He was surrounded, enveloped. Jingling the aspirin in her hand, she was glad she could find a little corner by herself. Perhaps he got all the glory, she mused. But she wouldn’t trade places with him.

      Glancing at her watch, she noted he had another hour and wondered whether he could dwindle the crowd down in the amount of time. She wished vaguely for a stool, dropped the aspirin in the pocket of her skirt and began to browse.

      “Fabulous, isn’t he?” Juliet heard someone murmur on the other side of a book rack.

      “God, yes. I’m so glad you talked me into coming.”

      “What’re friends for?”

      “I thought I’d be bored to death. I feel like a kid at a rock concert. He’s got such…”

      “Style,” the other voice supplied. “If a man like that ever walked into my life, he wouldn’t walk out again.”

      Curious, Juliet walked around the stacks. She wasn’t sure what she expected—young housewives, college students. What she saw were two attractive women in their thirties, both dressed in sleek professional suits.

      “I’ve got to get back to the СКАЧАТЬ