LITMIR.BIZ

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      Sensing her discomfiture, he said, “Relax, sweetheart. We’re only dancing. There’s no sin in that.”

      “The way they’re all staring, you might as well be making love to me,” she said miserably, the blood surging in her cheeks.

      He stroked his forefinger along her jaw, the smile tugging at his mouth belying the smoky passion in his eyes. “In a way I am. Or do you think I dance this way with every woman in the company?”

      “I hope not,” she sighed, temporarily dazzled into ignoring the ammunition they were giving Carl Newbury and his cohorts.

      Common sense reasserted itself, however, as the evening drew to a close and Dante insisted on walking her to her room. The house, a restored sugar plantation mansion built at the end of the eighteenth century, was a magnificent example of neo-classical architecture, with tall pillars on the front of the building soaring to the tiled roof and separating the verandas lining the executive suites of the upper story. Inside, a wide staircase swept up from the great hall to a long gallery which branched off at each end to encompass two side wings.

      Leila’s room was situated toward the back of one of these, overlooking the lush rear gardens with their fountains and courtyards. “A good thing we’re not next-door neighbors,” Dante observed wryly, stepping aside as she opened her door. “The temptation to haul you over the veranda and into my bed would be too hard to resist.” Checking first to make sure the hall was deserted, he dropped a swift kiss on her mouth. “Have breakfast with me in the morning?”

      Although she hated to spoil the moment, conscience forced her to reiterate something he seemed wilfully determined to ignore. “Dante, you’re asking for trouble. You haven’t been around the office lately. You don’t realize how—”

      He kissed her again, lingering this time so that her words died on a sigh. “Make that an order, Ms. Connors-Lee,” he murmured. “Have breakfast with me in the morning.”

      “Maybe.” She closed her eyes, aching for him and knowing it would be professional suicide to give in to the yearning.

      Perhaps he knew it, too, because the next moment he was striding away to the main gallery which housed the oceanfront executive suites, and she was able to slip into her room unnoticed.

      

      At first he thought he’d be lying awake all night, his mind too filled with the tactile memory of her to allow him to rest. But three days of intensive seminars coupled with the previous month’s overseas itinerary claimed him somewhere around one in the morning and dropped him into a black hole of sleep.

      He awoke just after seven, feeling as if he’d been hit broadside across the head with a two-by-four, and with a restless dissatisfaction clouding his mind. Not exactly prime condition for a man who prided himself on always being in charge—of himself and of his company.

      But the truth was, he hadn’t been on top of things since that first night when she’d stepped out onto the terrace and stolen his... what? Heart—or sanity? Because the way he’d been acting was hotheaded to put it mildly, and atypical to say the least.

      The only time he’d known anything remotely like this had been during his senior year in high school when he’d dated Jane Perry.

      “I love you,” he’d foolishly told her, the steamed-up windows of his father’s old Chev and his own rampant hormones driving him to indiscretion.

      And for a few days, maybe even a week, he’d believed that he did. Certainly, it had been the right thing to say. Jane had become amazingly compliant and he’d been no different from any other boy his age when it came to experimenting with sex.

      But the blush had worn off pretty damn fast when he’d cornered her at her locker between classes and said, “Hey, look, I can’t make it to the movie on Friday.”

      “Why not?” She’d pouted, standing just close enough that the tips of her nipples had brushed against his chest.

      “I’ve got a late basketball practice,” he’d choked out, doggedly ignoring that part of him eagerly rising to the bait she’d so knowingly cast

      “Basketball?” Her indignation had bounced off the school walls. “Baskerball?”

      “Well, yeah. There’s a big game coming up and the coach wants the team in top form.”

      “Oh, fine thing!” she’d snapped. “If you think I’m going to play second banana to basketball, Dante Rossi, you can think again.”

      “It’s only for one night, for Pete’s sake! This is important, Jane.”

      “And I’m not?”

      “I didn’t say that.”

      Her baby-blue eyes had welled with tears. “Prove it.”

      “Huh?” He’d been genuinely puzzled. Prove what?

      “Prove that you really love me.” She’d planted her fists on her hips and glared at him. “Make up your mind what you want—me or basketball.”

      Well, nice nipples or not, it had been no contest! “Okay,” he’d said. “Basketball. So long, Jane. It was a blast while it lasted.”

      That had been it as far as he was concerned. Girls came and went but in those days, basketball was forever. End of love affair—or so he’d thought until Mrs. Perry showed up on his family’s doorstep, weeping daughter in tow, and read the riot act at the callous way he’d behaved.

      “You’ve broken my little girl’s heart, Dante Rossi,” she’d informed him and half the neighborhood, “not to mention sullied her good name.”

      Because he knew he hadn’t behaved well, he’d refrained from pointing out that he wasn’t the first to sample everything Jane was so willing to share, nor was he likely to be the last. Instead, he’d learned from the experience and never again made the mistake of confusing lust with love or indulged in a spur-of-the-moment declaration that he wasn’t prepared to honor.

      Instead he kept his feelings on a tight rein and if his hormones weren’t always as firmly controlled, at least he made sure a woman understood the ground rules before she entered into a liaison with him.

      After that, there’d been no room in his life for long-term commitment. His father and grandfather had earned a living making the best pasta in town for a company owned by other men. But good Italian son though he’d been, Dante had known he’d never follow in such mundane footsteps.

      His priorities had followed a different blueprint, one in which success and personal fulfillment were built upon a foundation of pride and a determination not just to be as good as other successful men, but to be better, stronger, smarter and—ugly though some might find the word—richer. Because another lesson he’d learned well and early in life was that honest labor and pride in a job well done didn’t, by themselves, guarantee the sort of success he was looking for.

      It took more to inspire respect in a man’s peers. It took power. Authority. And money.

      Without money, a man never amounted to anything but someone else’s patsy.

      Until Leila, he’d found satisfaction enough in such a creed. Until Leila, he had scoffed at the kind of consuming romantic passion that afflicted other people and turned their ambitions toward suburbia and babies. Not that he didn’t value family; it was probably his most sacred asset, the motivation that drove him to success. He just hadn’t expected he was as susceptible as all those others. He was Dante Rossi, after all—king of his own corporate empire, too focused and too sophisticated to be blindsided by love.

      He’d spent the better part of the last three days trying to convince himself of that—three days of covert glances, accidental touches that really were no accident at all, and flimsy excuses to strike up conversations with Leila in which the subtext of the words exchanged were charged with a powerful sexual innuendo.

      And the result? Far from burning itself

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