Falco: The Dark Guardian. Sandra Marton

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      “Has he contacted you again?”

      “You already asked me that. I told you, he hasn’t.”

      She’d lied again. So what? So what if there was more to this than she was letting on? Fifteen minutes from now, he’d be on a plane heading back to New York.

      “Just that one thing?” he heard himself ask. “Nothing else?”

      “Isn’t that what I just said?” A smile as false as the one she wore in that lingerie ad curved her lips. “Look, I’m not worried. Really. There’s security on the set. I have an alarm system in my house.” Another smile. A toss of the head. Forget despair. What he saw in those topaz eyes now was dismissal. “At any rate, thank you for coming to see me.”

      Falco shrugged. “No problem.”

      She held out her hand. It was a queen’s gesture. She was discharging him, her subject.

      Something flickered inside him.

      Had that softening of her mouth under his, that barely perceptible sigh, really all been an act? Had she been diverting him so he wouldn’t expect that phony knife at his belly? Or had it been real? That sudden, sexy little sound she’d made. The way she’d parted her lips beneath his.

      One step forward. One tug on those slender fingers extended toward him. Then she’d be in his arms, her breasts soft against his hard chest, her thighs against his, her lips his for the taking. And he would take them, he’d kiss her again and again, taking each kiss deeper than the last until she moaned and rose to him, whispered her need and her hunger against his mouth…

      Dammit, was he insane?

      She didn’t go for men like him. Hey, that was fine. He didn’t go for women like her. And he sure as hell wasn’t turned on by women who flaunted their sexuality, who all but invited a faceless sea of men to get off on thinking what it would be like to take her to bed.

      Falco ignored her outstretched hand.

      “Goodbye, Ms. Bissette,” he said, and he opened the door of the trailer and stepped briskly into the heat of the desert.

      The afternoon’s shoot began badly and went downhill from there.

      It made the morning’s attempts look good.

      Everybody was unhappy.

      The heat was awful; they’d been breaking early because of it but Farinelli announced that they were going to get this scene filmed or, per Dio, nobody was leaving!

      Elle just could not get the scene right. Not her fault, she kept telling herself. The encounter with Falco Orsini had shaken her. She’d done her best to be polite to him at the end but it hadn’t been easy. Finding him in her trailer, a stranger so tall, so powerful that he’d seemed to fill the space…

      And the way he’d kissed her, as if he could make her want to kiss him back.

      Some women might; even she knew that. Not her, though. She hated the whole sex thing. It was like a bad joke, a woman hired for her sex appeal in an ad, but it wasn’t a joke, it was the terrible truth. A man’s wet mouth, his rough hands…

      Falco Orsini’s mouth had not been wet. It had been warm and hard and possessive but not wet. And his hands…hard, yes. Strong. But he hadn’t touched her roughly…

      Elle gave herself a mental shake.

      So what? The point was, he’d had no right to kiss her even though he’d done it in response to her telling him she and he could never pretend they were lovers. Besides, it didn’t matter. He would not be her bodyguard. Nobody would. Nobody would poke and pry and ask questions she had no intention of answering…

      “…listening to me, Elle?”

      She blinked. Antonio was standing close to her while everyone waited. “This is a love scene. A very important one. You must convey passion. Desire. Hunger. And you must do it with your eyes, your hands, your face. There is no kissing in this scene, sì? There is only teasing. Of your character, of Chad’s character, of the audience.” He took her arm, looked up at her, his expression determined. “You can do this. Relax. Forget the cameras, the crew. Forget everything but whatever brought that look to your face in the advertisement you did for Bon Soir.”

      Elle almost laughed. She’d had small movie roles before but that ad had gotten her this big part. What if people knew that “that look” had been the lucky result of an unlucky sinus infection? A heady combination of aspirin, decongestant and nasal-and-throat spray had miraculously translated to glittering eyes, slumberous lids and parted lips.

      Better not to mention that, of course.

      “One last try,” Farinelli said softly. “I want you to imagine yourself in the arms of a man whose passion overcomes your most basic inhibitions, a man who stirs you as no other ever could. Imagine a flesh-and-blood lover, bella, one you have known and never forgotten. Put Chad out of your mind.”

      Chad rolled his eyes. “Damn, Antonio. You really know how to hurt a guy.”

      The joke was deliberate. A tension reliever, and it worked. Everybody laughed. Elle managed a smile. Farinelli patted her hand, stepped away, then raised his hand like the Pope about to give a benediction.

      “And, action!”

      Elle lay back in her co-star’s arms. Her heart was racing with nerves. What had she been thinking, letting her agent convince her to take this part? What Antonio wanted of her was impossible. She couldn’t do it, couldn’t look into a man’s eyes and want him not even when it was make-believe.

      Having a man’s hands on her. His wet mouth on her mouth. God, oh, God…

      “Look at me,” Chad’s character said. It was a line of dialogue he’d repeated endless times today. Elle looked up, just as she had done endless times today…

      And saw not his movie-star handsome face, but the beautiful, proud, masculine face of Falco Orsini.

      Obsidian eyes. Thin, aristocratic nose. Chiseled jaw and a hard, firm mouth—a mouth that she could still remember for its warmth, its hunger, its possessiveness.

      An ache swept through her body, heat burned from her breasts to low in her belly…

      “And, cut!”

      Elle blinked. She stared at the man looking down at her. Chad, her co-star, who flashed a toothy grin.

      “Elle, mia bella!” Antonio Farinelli hurried toward her. She heard a smattering of applause, a couple of whistles as he held out his hands and helped her to her feet. “Brava, Elle. That was perfetto!” He brought his fingers to his lips and kissed them. “The screen will sizzle!”

      Chad rose beside her and winked. “I don’t know who you were thinkin’ about, honey, but he is sure one lucky guy.”

      A quarter of a mile away, half-concealed by a Joshua tree, Falco Orsini slammed a pair of high-powered binoculars into a leather case and tossed it into the front seat of his rented SUV.

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