LITMIR.BIZ

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with each step.

      His sexy whistle sent a fierce flush to her face. Flustered yet flattered at the same time, she threw what was hopefully a haughty glare over her shoulder at him.

      ‘I’m beginning to think you’re no gentleman, after all,’ she said.

      He just laughed, leaving her no option but to continue on her way whilst valiantly ignoring the memory of the way his eyes were glued to her bottom. And they were, Bella having noted the direction of his gaze when she’d glanced back at him.

      But it was no walk of shame in the end. By the time she closed the bathroom door behind her Bella was actually smiling. If felt good to be desired by Sergio. In fact it felt fantastic.

      There was a lot to be said for a friends with benefits fling, Bella decided. The month ahead promised to be the best holiday she’d ever had, a wonderful combination of the most beautiful setting, wonderfully warm weather and the best sex she’d ever had.

      The last bit made her laugh, since she hardly had a history of even good sex. If she was brutally honest, her lack of libido over the years had troubled Bella for some time. Had made her feel such a failure in that part of her life. Her lack of sexual confidence was why she’d never been a flirt, only the most persistent admirer getting to first base with her. So why had her libido come to life now? she wondered. And why with Sergio?

      All she could think was maybe she was a late bloomer in the sexual sense. She had been late into puberty, never being boy mad as a teenager like other girls. Or maybe it had something to do with Sergio himself. Though what, she couldn’t fathom. Yes, he had a great body. And yes, he was also a great lover. But her other boyfriends had all been good-looking men too, as well as very experienced where the ladies were concerned, not to mention way more charming and complimentary in their manner to her. Bella still hadn’t forgotten how Sergio had called her too thin. Though he’d also called her beautiful when he’d been making love to her, hadn’t he?

      ‘Oh, whatever,’ she muttered irritably as she walked over and turned on the taps in the shower.

      There really was no point trying to work out such a difficult conundrum. The wonderful reality was that, at last, she’d responded to a man like a normal woman. At last, she’d discovered orgasms. There would be no more boyfriends telling her she was boring in bed. No more believing that she needed to be madly in love to have a satisfying sex life either.

      Sergio had shown her that that was a total fallacy, a romantic fantasy. After all, she wasn’t in love with him any more than he was in love with her. How liberating was that?

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

      ‘THIS PIZZA IS sinfully yummy,’ Bella mumbled with her mouth half full.

      ‘Sì,’ Sergio replied, and refilled her glass with the bottle of champagne he’d opened in celebration of the way things were going between them.

      Her singing in the shower had filled him with a joy that might have troubled him, if it had been any other woman singing in his shower. But this was Bella, the woman who had sexually tormented him for years. And now she was here, in his home and in his bed. Sergio was way too enamoured of her glorious beauty, too bewitched by her sex appeal, too thrilled with having succeeded in her seduction, to dig deeper into his emotions.

      They were sitting at a table on the balcony, Bella back in her PJs, Sergio having dragged on a pair of jeans, not needing to play the exhibitionist any longer. She’d already seen what he had to offer. Had experienced it up close and personal. She’d liked it too. Liked it a lot, if he were any judge.

      She swallowed, then smiled over at him. ‘Do you know that’s the first Italian word you’ve used since I arrived? You’ve totally lost your accent, do you know that? Not that it was ever strong. Even when you first came to live with us in Sydney, you didn’t talk like your father did.’

      ‘That’s because I was sent to an English boarding school when I was eight.’

      ‘I vaguely recall you telling me that. Did you like it there?’

      ‘Hated it. I was very happy when our parents married and my father sent for me to come live with him and go to school in Sydney.’ Happy till he’d realised that Dolores didn’t really love his father. Or him. Though she’d pretended to. Sergio had always been good at spotting a fake. If it hadn’t been for Bella’s vivacious company, he would have been miserable. His schooling in Sydney had been barely tolerable, with his never being a popular boy.

      ‘You sounded like a real Aussie for a while,’ she said, smiling at the memory. ‘Till your dad sent you off to university in Rome and you came back sounding all Italian.’

      ‘Did I? I didn’t notice.’

      ‘And now you sound totally English.’

      Sergio shrugged. ‘Well, I have lived in England for the last eleven years.’

      Bella put down the remains of her slice of pizza. ‘Doing what, Sergio?’

      Before he could think better of it, Sergio started telling her all about his life since their parents’ divorce, beginning right back at his first year in Oxford where at last he’d found true male friendship with Alex and Jeremy. He told her all about them, even telling her about their formation of the Bachelors’ Club. Admittedly, at the last second, he did have the foresight to let Bella think that their vow to remain bachelors and become billionaires didn’t have any age deadline. He wasn’t about to give her any inkling that, shortly, he would be looking for a wife.

      He then went on to explain how he and his two best friends first got into the wine-bar business, relating that one day, shortly after they’d formed the Bachelors’ Club, he and Alex had spotted a dilapidated old bar for sale not far from the Oxford campus. They’d told Jeremy about it that evening, insisting it could be turned into a good business with the right décor and the right wine to appeal to the mainly student clientele. They’d raved about its location, being situated near the university, and they’d known Jeremy had come into a substantial inheritance from his grandmother’s estate, and it wasn’t long before they made a deal with him that they would do all the physical work if he put up the money.

      ‘Alex and I did all the refurbishing ourselves,’ Sergio told Bella. ‘We sanded and varnished the wooden floors and painted all the walls and ceiling black.’ He laughed at this memory. ‘We’d got a great special from a local paint shop on black paint. Then we hung huge posters of grapes and vineyards on the walls and covered the bar stools in a dark purple vinyl. We got a special on that too. Oh, and we got rid of the mirrors behind the bar. We thought they were too in your face. After that, we hunted the charity shops and flea markets for lounge furniture and coffee tables at reasonable prices and in reasonable condition. We figured our patrons would like somewhere they could relax, or study on their laptops whilst drinking our very affordable wine. The lighting we kept low, mostly with lamps and a few ceiling lights over the bar area. Then we hired the prettiest girls as staff, but dressed them in simple black skirts and white blouses. Nothing too sexy.’ He grinned at Bella. ‘As I said, they were very pretty girls.’

      At this point in his story Sergio realised that Bella was staring at him. No, frowning at him.

      ‘What?’ he said.

      ‘But I’ve been to a wine bar that looks just like that. And it wasn’t in Oxford. It was in New York, in a street just off Broadway. It’s not far from where I live. It’s called Wild Over Wine, but everyone calls it the—’

      ‘WOW bar,’ Sergio finished for her. ‘Yes. There’s a couple of them in New York now.’

      Bella’s face could not have been more astonished. ‘You own them?’

      ‘No. The Wild Over Wine bars are now a highly successful franchise. After the success of our first bar, we bought another, then another. Always near a university at first, but in the end anywhere which had a good location. Eventually, things got too much for us to handle, despite Jeremy

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