LITMIR.BIZ

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cared. She wasn’t his type at all. He preferred his women petite, dark-haired and quintessentially feminine. Lynda met those standards. She was also all curves, where the blonde was as skinny as a boy. Lynda smiled when a man smiled at her. The blonde didn’t. She meted out favors with the stinginess of a miser opening his purse.

      A waiter stepped out on the terrace. “Something to drink, sir?”

      Gianni nodded, took a glass of red wine from the tray and raised it to his lips.

      He and the blonde had arrived in the lobby at the same time. The doors of the private elevator for the penthouse were closing when he heard a voice call out.

      “Hey,” a woman said.

      A slim hand had thrust between the doors.

      Gianni hit the button that reversed the doors’ direction. They opened, and he saw the blonde.

      Not my type, was his first thought.

      He gave her a polite smile. “Sorry. I didn’t see you coming.”

      She gave him a long look. Her expression was one of suspicion.

      “This is a private elevator,” she said.

      Gianni’s smile tilted. “Indeed it is.”

      “It only goes to the penthouse.”

      “How convenient,” he said dryly. “That happens to be where I’m going.”

      “Did the doorman—”

      “Perhaps you’d like to see my driver’s license, passport and birth certificate,” he said, his smile fading. “Or perhaps I should ask to see yours.”

      That, at least, had put a stain of color across the arcs of her high cheekbones.

      “I’m going to the Lucchesi party.”

      “So am I. Or, at least, I will once you step inside and the doors shut.”

      She entered the elevator and stood beside him, eyes straight ahead. Okay. He’d decided to give it another try.

      “Are you a friend of Fallon’s?”

      “No,” she said, without looking at him.

      “Stefano’s?”

      “No.”

      “Then are you with—”

      “I don’t see that it’s any of your affair,” she said, still staring straight ahead. Then she turned toward him, her eyes cold as ice. “Besides, I’m not interested.”

      It was his turn to be the one whose face stung with heat.

      “I assure you,” he said, “I’m not—”

      The elevator stopped, the doors opened. Gianni stepped out first without waiting for the woman to precede him. It was a good thing the car opened directly into Stefano’s foyer. He wasn’t sure what he’d have done if they’d ended up in front of an apartment door and he’d had to decide whether to ring the bell or tell her she could go straight to hell.

      Pathetic, he knew. Even more pathetic that she’d reduced him to such childish musings. He’d almost told her what he was thinking but he’d spotted Stefano coming toward him and he’d smiled, only to have the blonde sweep past him, give a little squeal of delight and run straight into Stefano’s arms.

      “Stefano,” she’d cried happily, and Gianni, mouth thinning in disgust, had let himself blend into the crowd.

      Apparently the Ice Princess reserved her smile solely for a favored few.

      Now, watching her, he saw her flash that smile for Stefano’s wife and baby daughter as she took the child from Fallon’s arms. He saw her lips purse as if she were cooing. The baby kicked its legs and the blonde not only smiled again, but she threw back her head and laughed.

      It was quite a laugh. Husky. Throaty. Under the right circumstances, he suspected that laugh would be sexy as hell.

      Gianni narrowed his eyes.

      He could see he’d made some errors about the woman. They were unimportant, given the circumstances, but he was a man who liked to get the details straight. Her hair wasn’t blond, it was half a dozen shades of palest gold. And she wasn’t skinny. Slender, yes, but with rounded hips and a nicely defined backside.

      And when, still laughing, she hoisted the baby high in the air, her breasts lifted and only a blind man wouldn’t have noticed that they were round and full…

      And not confined by a bra.

      The pale green silk dress clung to her body just enough so he could see the outline of her nipples.

      What were they like? Small? Large? What color would they be? Rosebud-pink, he imagined, like her mouth. Soft to the touch, silken and responsive. They’d tighten under his caress, bloom under the laving of his tongue…

      Hell, what was he doing?

      This was a christening, not a stag party. And wasn’t it a good thing he was on the terrace so he could turn his back to the room, because his wandering thoughts were having an all-too-predictable effect on his anatomy.

      Gianni concentrated on the Manhattan skyline, bathed now in the variegated orange hues of the setting sun, but thinking about the colors of things wasn’t a good idea right now. It took him straight back to the blonde’s breasts.

      Green was a better color. The green of the boxwood, growing in some of the terrace’s many planters.

      The green silk of the woman’s dress and the way it molded to her…

      “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

      Stefano had come up beside him, grinning, holding out a bottle of wine. Gianni nodded and held out his glass for a refill.

      “Was it that obvious?” he said with a rueful smile.

      “Are you kidding? Of course.”

      Gianni sighed. “Thanks a lot.”

      “Hey, I’m only speaking the truth.”

      “Easy for you to say, Lucchesi.”

      “Well, sure, but who wouldn’t react to such beauty?”

      “Let’s not go overboard here,” Gianni said. “She’s attractive, assuming you like the type.”

      “Attractive?”

      “Yes. You know, she’s got all the right equipment in all the right places.” Stefano was looking at him as if he’d lost his mind. He thought back to how the blonde had greeted his old friend, married or not. “But that doesn’t make her gorgeous.”

      “That’s a joke, right?”

      “Why would I joke? I’m dead serious. Plus, she’s got all the charm of a tarantula.”

      Stefano’s expression turned grim. “You’d better be glad you and I’ve been friends since P.S. 26, Firelli, or I’d pin your ears back.”

      “What wrong with you, man? You’d take me on because I don’t agree a woman’s gorgeous?”

      “Damned right I would. This particular woman is—this woman is…” Stefano’s eyebrows rose again. “What woman?”

      Was this what happened to a man when he married and had a child? Did he lose his sanity as well as his freedom?

      “The blonde, of course,” Gianni said impatiently. “The one who greeted you with such, uh, warmth…and, by the way, doesn’t Fallon object to that kind of thing?”

      Stefano’s eyes widened. Then he threw back his head and roared with laughter.

      “Wonderful,” Gianni said coldly. “I’m glad you think this is—”

      “The blonde,” Stefano

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