LITMIR.BIZ

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knew she should be furious—and she would be later—but right at this moment all she felt was a languorous sense of physical satisfaction, and she fell into a deep sleep.

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      THE tourist trade fell off as children returned to school. The summer was virtually over and Lucy was in a plane flying to Italy, trying to come to grips with the course her life had taken. It wasn’t easy. She looked out of the window and below her could see the snow-covered peaks of the Alps, sparkling in the sun. Their beauty was lost on her. She was, for want of a better description, Lorenzo’s mistress. She had become accustomed to travelling in a chauffeured car and a private jet … how bizarre was that.?

      Lorenzo, after that fatal night when he had given her no choice but to become his lover, had virtually taken over her life, and the following morning had charmed Elaine into believing he was genuinely interested in Lucy. Obviously she could not deny it, and it had left her playing the part of his girlfriend all day, every day. The strain was beginning to tell.

      That first day Lorenzo had whisked her away for dinner at the luxury country house hotel he had stayed at before, and the pattern had been set. Sometimes he would arrive and take her to the hotel—other times he’d send a car to take her to Newquay or Exeter Airport and the short flight to London, where Lorenzo kept a hotel suite when he was working in the city—which he had been doing a lot lately. Though now she had not seen him for five days—the longest they had been apart. Maybe it was not coincidence. He had stipulated at the beginning that she was to visit Italy in a month. It was exactly a month today. She had a growing feeling this visit would be the conclusion of their relationship. He had got what he wanted. As for Lucy, she was not sure what she wanted any more.

      Lorenzo was a highly-sexed man, and they rarely got further than the bed—though a desk and the shower and on one memorable occasion a chair outside on the balcony had all figured in their sex-life.

      Yet Lucy knew him little better now than she had the first time they’d met. He was for the most part a reserved, emotionless man, who gave little away except in the bedroom, where sometimes, with his dry wit and humour, he made her laugh. Other times he could be incredibly tender, and kiss and caress her as though he adored her. He always called her to arrange their meetings, but occasionally he called just to talk, and she could almost believe they were a normal couple. But maybe that was just wishful thinking on her part. Alone in her own bed at night, aching for him deep down, she knew for her it was more than just sex.

      One thing she had learned about him and liked best was that he wore gold-rimmed glasses when working. Somehow they made him look younger and even more attractive, softening his hard face.

      Well, maybe not best—because she could not deny the sex was fantastic. He had, with skill and eroticism, taught her more about the sensual side of her nature than she had imagined possible. She no longer made any attempt to resist, but welcomed him with open arms, and she knew when it was over between them there would be no other man for her. She could not imagine doing with any man what she did with Lorenzo … didn’t want to.

      The flight attendant—a handsome young man about her age—appeared, and offered to fasten her seat belt as they were about to begin their descent to the airport. She refused and fastened it herself, because there was something about the way he looked at her she didn’t like. But then he was probably accustomed to ferrying women around the world to meet up with his boss, so she could hardly blame him for thinking the worst.

      Lucy walked down the steps from the plane, blinking in the bright light, and smoothed the skirt of the red suit she wore down over her hips. A suit Lorenzo had bought for her the one day he had taken her out for lunch in London on what could pass for a date. Afterwards he had insisted on taking her shopping in Bond Street. She had tried to refuse, but he’d reminded her he was the boss and he wanted to see her in fine clothes and lingerie.

      She looked up to see Lorenzo striding towards her, as immaculately dressed as ever in a grey suit, his hair as black as a raven’s wing gleaming in the midday sun. Her heart turned over. He stopped in front of her and she glanced up through the thick fringe of her lashes, suddenly feeling too warm.

      ‘Good—you made it,’ he said coolly and, taking her arm, added, ‘This is a private airfield and Customs are a mere formality.’ He led her across the tarmac.

      No greeting or kiss, Lucy noted. But then sadly they did not have that kind of relationship.

      Ten minutes later she was sitting in the back of another chauffeured car, her nerves jangling as Lorenzo slid in beside her, his muscular thigh lightly brushing hers. She could sense the tension mounting in the close confines of the car as the silence lengthened, and finally found her voice. ‘How long does it take to get to Lake Garda?’

      He turned his head, his dark eyes meeting hers. ‘We are going to my apartment in Verona first.’

      Lifting a hand, he swept a tendril of hair that had escaped from her severely styled chignon behind her ear, and she felt the touch of his fingers down to her toes, a flush of heat staining her cheeks.

      ‘I think you need to relax before travelling further. I know I do,’ he said with a predatory smile that left her in no doubt as to what he had in mind.

      To her shame, she felt an immediate physical response. Hastily she looked away, and heard him chuckle.

      Lorenzo’s apartment was a shock. Lucy stood in the huge living room, eyes wide in surprise. She had expected something formal—and it was. Elegant blue and cream drapes hung at the tall windows of the main reception room, and two huge blue silk-covered sofas flanked a white-veined marble fireplace. The bookshelves either side were stuffed with books—hardback and paperback, shoved in haphazardly—and in front stood a big leather captain chair in scarlet! A large low glass table had papers and magazines scattered all over it. The room was a bit of a mess.

      But a fabulously expensive mess, she realised. An antique bureau had a bronze statue of a naked lady—pure Art Deco—standing on it, along with an incredible yellow and blue glass sculpture of a fish and a carved wooden statue of what looked like a Native American Indian. But it was the walls that really captured her attention. She recognised a Picasso from his Blue Period, a Matisse, and what she was sure was a Gauguin, along with some delicate watercolours and a huge Jackson Pollock that almost filled one wall.

      She turned to Lorenzo and saw he had shed his jacket and had tugged his tie loose so the knot fell low on his chest. ‘This is nothing like I imagined.’ She waved her hand around, grinning delightedly.

      ‘I know it looks a bit untidy, but Diego, my houseman, is on holiday, and I am not in the least domesticated,’ he said wryly.

      ‘I had noticed,’ Lucy quipped, recalling the way he stripped off and dropped his ruinously expensive clothes anywhere, without a second thought, every time they met. ‘But what I meant was I love the room—it is so colourful, and the art work is incredible. Some of it I would never have expected you to like.’

      He reached for her then, his dark eyes holding hers and his hands closing over her shoulders ‘Not quite such a staid old banker as you thought?’ he queried, his hands slipping beneath the lapels of her jacket to peel it off her shoulders and drop it on the back of the sofa.

      ‘I never think of you as old,’ Lucy murmured, and the tension between them thickened the air as a different silent conversation took place. She was braless, and the white camisole she wore suddenly felt like a strait-jacket.

      He glanced down at her breasts, knowing he would see her nipples jutting against the silk. He raised his eyes, reaching for her hair and pulling out the pins. ‘I love … your hair.’ He ran his long fingers through the silken length. ‘The colour is incredible—tawny like a lion is as near as I can get,’ he murmured, and closed his arms around her. His dark head bent and the smouldering flame of desire glittered in his eyes as he touched his mouth gently against hers.

      It was what Lucy had been waiting for from the moment

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