Love Islands: Red-Hot Sunsets - Jane Porter Mills & Boon M&B

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advice, and the example she had seen on the doorstep of the vicarage of broken-hearted, often pregnant young girls abandoned by men they had fallen for, had made her realise that when it came to love it paid to be careful.

      In fairness, had temptation knocked on the door, then perhaps she might have questioned her old-fashioned take on sex but, whilst she had always got along just fine with the opposite sex, no one had ever grabbed her attention until Duncan had come along with his charm, his overblown flattery and his persistence. She had been unsure of where her future lay, and in that brief window of uncertainty and apprehension he had burrowed in and stolen her heart. She had been ripe for the picking and his betrayal had been devastating.

      Her virginity was a millstone now, a reminder of the biggest mistake she had ever made. Whilst she hoped that one day she would find the guy for her, she was resigned to the possibility that she might never do so, because somehow she was just out of sync with men and what they wanted.

      They wanted sex, first and foremost. To get to the prince, you seemed to have to sleep with hundreds of frogs, and there was no way she would do that. The thought that she might have slept with one frog was bad enough.

      So what would Lucas Cipriani make of her story?

      She pictured the sneer on his face and shuddered.

      Disturbed at the direction of her thoughts, she tilted her chin and looked at him with equal cool. ‘I expect, after all this, I’m being given the sack and that Personnel will be in touch—so there can’t be any reason for me to still be here. And you can’t stop me leaving. You’ll just have to trust me that I won’t be saying anything to anyone about your deal.’

       CHAPTER TWO

      SHE DIDN’T GET FAR.

      ‘You leave this office, Miss Brennan, and regrettably I will have to commence legal proceedings against you on the assumption that you have used insider information to adversely influence the outcome of my company’s business dealings.’

      Katy stopped and slowly turned to look at him.

      His dark eyes were flat, hard and expressionless and he was looking right back at her with just the mildest of interest. His absolute calm was what informed her that he wasn’t cracking some kind of sick joke at her expense.

      Katy knew a lot about the workings of computers. She could create programs that no one else could and was downright gifted when it came to sorting out the nuts and bolts of intricate problems when those programs began to get a little temperamental. It was why she had been carefully headhunted by Lucas’s company and why they’d so willingly accommodated her request for a part-time job only.

      In the field of advanced technology, she was reasonably well-known.

      She didn’t, however, know a thing about law. What was he going on about? She didn’t really understand what he was saying but she understood enough to know that it was a threat.

      Lucas watched the colour flood her face. Her skin was satiny smooth and flawless. She had the burnished copper-coloured hair of a redhead, yet her creamy complexion was free of any corresponding freckles. The net result was an unusual, absurdly striking prettiness that was all the more dramatic because she seemed so unaware of it.

      But then, his cynical brain told him, she was hardly a shrinking violet with no clue of her pulling power, because she had had an affair with a married guy with kids.

      He wondered whether she thought that she could turn those wide, emerald-green eyes on him and get away scot-free.

      If she did, then she had no idea with whom she was dealing. He’d had a lifetime’s worth of training when it came to spotting women who felt that their looks were a passport to getting whatever they wanted. He’d spent his formative years watching them do their numbers on his father. This woman might not be an airhead like them, but she was still driven by the sort of emotionalism he steered well clear of.

      ‘Of course—’ he shrugged ‘—my deal would be blown sky-high out of the water, but have you any idea how much damage you would do to yourself in the process? Litigation is something that takes its time. Naturally, your services would be no longer required at my company and your pay would cease immediately. And then there would be the small question of your legal costs. Considerable.’

      Her expression was easy to read and Lucas found that he was enjoying the show.

      ‘That’s—that’s ridiculous,’ Katy stuttered. ‘You’d find out that I haven’t been in touch with...with Duncan for years. In fact, since we broke up. Plus, you’d also find out that I haven’t breathed a word about the Chinese deal to...well, to anybody.’

      ‘I only have your word for it. Like I said, discovering whether you’re telling the truth or not would take time, and all the while you would naturally be without a penny to your name, defending your reputation against the juggernaut of my company’s legal department.’

      ‘I have another job.’

      ‘And we’ve already established that teaching won’t pay the rent. And who knows how willing a school would be to employ someone with a potential criminal record?’

      Katy flushed. Bit by bit, he was trapping her in a corner and, with a feeling of surrendering to the inexorable advance of a steamroller, she finally said, ‘What do you want me to do?’

      Lucas stood up and strolled towards the wall of glass that separated him from the city below, before turning to look at her thoughtfully.

      ‘I told you that this was not a straightforward situation, Miss Brennan. I meant it. It isn’t a simple case of throwing you out of my company when you can hurt me with privileged information.’ He paced the enormous office, obliging her to follow his progress, and all the time she found herself thinking, he’s almost too beautiful to bear looking at. He was very tall and very lean, and somehow the finely cut, expensive suit did little to conceal something raw and elemental in his physique.

      She had to keep dragging her brain back to what he was telling her. She had to keep frowning so that she could give the appearance of not looking like a complete nitwit. She didn’t like the man, but did he have this effect on all the women he met?

      She wondered what sort of women he met anyway, and then chastised herself for losing the thread when her future was at stake.

      ‘The deal is near completion and a fortnight at most should see a satisfactory conclusion. Now, let’s just say that I believe you when you tell me that you haven’t been gossiping with your boyfriend...’

      ‘I told you that Duncan and I haven’t spoken for years! And, for your information, we broke up because I found out that he was married. I’m not the sort of person who would ever dream of going out with a married guy—!’

      Lucas stopped her in mid-speech. ‘Not interested. All I’m interested in is how this situation is dealt with satisfactorily for me. As far as I am concerned, you could spend all your free time hopping in and out of beds with married men.’

      Katy opened her mouth and then thought better of defending herself, because it wasn’t going to get her anywhere. He seemed ready to hand down her sentence.

      ‘It is imperative that any sensitive information you may have acquired is not shared, and the only way that that can be achieved is if you are incommunicado to the outside world. Ergo that is how it is going to be for the next fortnight, until my deal is concluded.’

      ‘Sorry, Mr Cipriani, but I’m not following you.’

      ‘Which bit, exactly, Miss Brennan, are you not following?’

      ‘The fortnight bit. What are you talking about?’

      ‘It’s crystal clear, Miss Brennan. You’re not going to be talking to anyone, and I mean anyone, for the next two weeks until I have all the signatures right where I want them, at which point you may or may not return to your desk

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