LITMIR.BIZ

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voice. ‘However, much as I would love to dwell on the enchantments of undressing you in some long-ago hotel room, I have a mountain of work to get through.’ As though unaware of her sharp intake of breath, he gave the file a little shake. ‘So?’ He lifted an aristocratic eyebrow to chivvy her along. ‘Can we leave our personal issues aside? Shall we continue?’

      His imperious tone set her hackles bristling. Was this the man she’d fallen in love with? She sat stiffly, her muscles clenched, and smouldered with resentment.

      He cast her a veiled glance, then carried smoothly on.

      ‘There’s one thing that strikes me. I am curious. You have been with this company a short time, yet when last we met you were well on your way to an illustrious career in publishing. What have you been doing with your—impressive talents, apart from this part-time work as an assistant?’

      That infinitesimal pause. The way he’d flicked down his eyelids on the word impressive. There had definitely been sarcasm there. She felt a surge of anger as an exquisite small face with big dark eyes, long luxuriant lashes and a halo of dusky curls rose before her.

      Here it was. The moment of truth. The point to which all the tortuous pathways of her life had so far conspired to bring her.

      Unfortunately, the moment hardly felt ripe.

      She sat back and examined him. The Marquis of the Minor Venetian Isles was not the charming man she remembered. He was an icy, mocking, work-obsessed autocrat. Did he even deserve to hear what she could tell him, if she had a mind to?

      She folded her arms under her breasts and smiled coldly. ‘I don’t want to bore you with the details of my little life, Alessandro. The truth is, I suspect that what I’ve been doing is probably too personal an issue to interest you. Suffice it to say I’ve done other things besides work in publishing.’

      He narrowed his gaze to study her through his long lashes. ‘There’s no need to be defensive, Larissa.’

      ‘Isn’t there?’ She wiped her smile, leaned forward and said in a low, trembling voice, ‘You know, you aren’t the man I remember.’

      His brows shot up. ‘No? Who do you remember?’

      ‘Someone else. Someone—kind.’

      His eyes glinted, but his expression remained hard and implacable, though she noticed a tiny vein jump in his temple. ‘Whereas you, on the other hand, are exactly as I remember.’ He added softly, ‘To my regret.’

      She gasped. ‘Fine.’ She gathered her bag, and, drawing her dignity around her, rose to her feet. ‘In that case, I won’t waste any more of your time.’

      He sprang up as well, and to forestall him from opening the door for her and ruining her grand exit she turned quickly towards it. He must have lunged at the same time, for somehow his ankle hooked around hers, and their bodies entangled in an electrifying physical collision. It was like flint striking flint. At the points of contact at hip and thigh a high-voltage shock sped through her flesh, while the sudden blaze that flared in his dark eyes gave her a sensation of being showered in hot sparks.

      Intensely aware of his arms whipping around to steady her, her deprived senses surged to the friction of his long, muscular thighs grazing hers, his evocative masculine scent and the strength of his big, iron-hard frame.

      His hands slid to her upper arms, and he held her against him for a breathtaking moment that stretched into infinity.

      ‘Careful, now.’ His deep voice was a growl.

      She was almost preternaturally conscious of the raw proximity of the hard body beneath the clothes brushing hers. Her mouth dried as her glance slid to his lips, and somehow those fire sparks in his eyes and voice must have crept under her skin, because she felt shaken all over.

      Shaken and stirred.

      Then abruptly, almost as if at some urgent signal, at the exact same instant they thrust each other away. She was left feeling giddy and disturbed, with a wild tingling in her breasts as though all her aroused blood cells were unwilling to lie down again.

      ‘So sorry,’ he said, a rasp in his voice. ‘I don’t know how that happened.’ For a second his eyes were agleam as though he was about to say something more, but the nuance quickly vanished.

      She pulled herself together and made for the door, then hesitated with her hand on the handle. His attitude about their past relationship had been so—negative, so repressive. But did she have to allow him the last word?

      She turned proudly to face him.

      He was back at his desk, tidying files and placing them in his briefcase.

      ‘Alessandro?’ That brush with him had given her voice an unwelcome huskiness.

      He paused to glance up at her, one querying brow raised.

      ‘There is something I need—to ask you. Something I need to get straight.’

      ‘Si?’ His eyes sharpened.

      ‘Do you remember the pact?’

      He stilled. For a full second it was as though his big frame had been snap frozen, and she had the scary sensation of having blundered onto a live mine. For a second his lean, handsome face might have been carved from ice.

      Her heart began to tremble as his eyes narrowed on her face with a hard intensity.

      ‘Pact?’

      ‘The pact we made.’

      His expression didn’t change, but she was so sorry she’d mentioned it. How could she have offered it up for re-inspection in this hostile climate? But he was waiting now, and she felt condemned to plough on.

      ‘You know,’ she persevered in a breathless voice. ‘When you had to go back to finish your studies at Harvard. The deal—that if we still felt the same way…’ It was so embarrassing now, having to refer to their former feelings. ‘If we thought there was a chance of us still—wanting to—be together, we’d meet in six weeks at the top of the Centrepoint Tower.’

      He glanced down at the floor, a sardonic quirk to his mouth as if there were something nasty on the rug, then he looked up, his glittering eyes narrowed. ‘Remind me. What was my part in this deal?’

      ‘You—you agreed to fly back from Harvard in your mid-semester break.’

      He considered her in silence, his eyes veiled, then his lashes drifted down. ‘And your part was…?’

      ‘Oh, well…’ In truth, from a travel perspective she had always been shamefaced about the lightness of her end of the pact. From a certain angle, it could have looked to outsiders as though her sincerity was above reproach, whereas his…

      Her lips dried with discomfort. ‘I—I was to meet you there. Travel down from Bindinong.’

      He strolled around to the front of the desk and leaned his big frame on the edge, his arms folded across his powerful chest, brows lifted.

      ‘All the way from Bindinong?’ he drawled softly, with a mockery that made her insides squirm. ‘Sacramento, I think it’s clear who had the easier end of this deal.’ There was a flash of something she couldn’t interpret in the depths of those black eyes.

      She wished she’d never brought it up. Certainly, Bindinong in the Blue Mountains wasn’t that far from Sydney. When she’d lived there with her parents it had only been a ninety-minute train trip. Not quite as far as Harvard. Viewed now from the vantage point of maturity, the whole thing made the younger Lara Meadows look like some dewy-eyed tyrant, willing to put a man through hell to prove himself.

      She made a small gesture of appeal. ‘I know, I know it sounds unlikely from this distance, but at the time we both believed… We sincerely felt… Don’t you remember?’ As she tried to interpret his expression she felt herself growing hot. ‘There were good reasons to make sure. You

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