LITMIR.BIZ

       PROLOGUE

      SAM FELT UNACCOUNTABLY agitated as he boarded his jet bound for Sydney. It was later than he would have liked and he was impatient to get underway.

      ‘Will you be requiring dinner service during the flight, Mr Ventura?’

      Sam folded his powerful frame into one of the leather tub chairs and tossed his mobile phone onto the table beside him before addressing his co-pilot. ‘No, thanks, Daniel. Just a Scotch.’

      ‘Certainly, sir.’

      The flight from LA to Sydney would take about fourteen hours, give or take, during which Sam planned to catch up on work and sleep before he had to hit the ground running the following day. Not an uncommon occurrence for him.

      Delivering his Scotch, the co-pilot headed back to the cockpit to prepare for take-off, leaving Sam to nurse his crystal tumbler and uncharacteristic edginess. As a general rule he wasn’t the kind of person to second-guess himself once a decision had been made, but the question had crossed his mind more than once as to whether relocating to Sydney was the best thing to do right now.

      He had a good life in LA. He surfed regularly, had a thriving legal practice that spanned two continents, lived on a great property on Malibu Beach and had any number of beautiful women he could call upon when he was in the mood for company—all drawn to the combination of power, money and good looks he’d been told he had in abundance.

      Not that any of that mattered to his family, who were over the moon that he was returning home. After two years living in the City of Angels they were of the belief that he should settle back in his hometown and were more than happy with his decision to merge his highly successful legal practice with a large Australian enterprise.

      The idea had been presented to him by his old university pal, Drew Kent, during a late-night dinner. Drew’s father was retiring and Drew didn’t want to take on the running of their law firm by himself. He was all about work-life balance ever since he’d married, and Sam, who had been in the market for a new challenge, had readily agreed to the idea.

      He stared out at the night-dark sky as the plane banked hard to the right. Marriage had a way of changing a man’s perspective on life. He’d seen it happen with colleagues at work and even his own brother, who had fallen in love and then, twelve months ago, got married. Valentino had gone from confirmed bachelor to happily married man with a baby faster than Sam’s Maserati could hit a hundred clicks. Since then Tino had been unfailingly devoted to his lovely wife and son.

      Was that what had set off the restlessness inside of him? The fact that Valentino was married and happy about it? Not that Sam begrudged Tino his happiness; quite the contrary. He loved seeing his older brother so fulfilled, and maybe one day he’d even take the plunge into matrimony himself. One day in the distant future when he met a woman who wasn’t either completely obsessed with her own career, or the potential lifestyle his could provide for her.

      Of its own accord his mind travelled back to the night, two years ago, when Valentino had met Miller, his now wife. Sam and Tino had been catching up in a Sydney bar when a stunning blonde in come-take-me stilettos had approached them. Ruby Clarkson had introduced herself and explained how Miller needed a date for an up-and-coming business event. Tino had jumped at the chance to help her best friend, leaving Sam and the blonde woman at a loose end. Since they both worked for the same law firm, but had never met, they’d spent the night talking shop and trading war stories until the bar had closed and kicked them out. Not wanting the night to end, Sam had offered to walk Ruby home and that was when the trouble had started.

      His blood heated predictably at the memory of what had happened outside her apartment building. Or what had nearly happened outside her apartment building. Despite being incredibly attracted to her, he’d meant only to bid her goodnight, tell her it had been nice to meet her and good luck with her current case, but somehow she’d ended up in his arms and as soon as his lips had touched hers he’d been lost. She’d lit a flame in him that had only been doused when a neighbour had come out on to her balcony calling for her errant cat.

      Later his brother would tell him that he had looked as if he’d been hit over the head with a golf club when he’d first caught sight of Ruby at the bar, and Tino had been right. From the moment Sam’s dark eyes had collided with her wide-spaced intelligent green ones he’d completely lost his train of thought.

      It had been the same at Miller and Tino’s wedding just last year. He’d taken one look at Ruby in her dusky pink bridesmaid gown with the tantalising thigh-high split and decided to hell with it, he’d finish what they’d started the night they’d met and be done with it. That was until her date, some urbane banker-type, had stepped up beside her and ruined that particular fantasy.

      Sam had downed a glass of champagne he hadn’t wanted and told himself to forget it. Told himself that it was for the best. Ruby was his new sister-in-law’s best friend and nothing good would come of them having a brief affair and things becoming potentially awkward later on down the track. Instead he’d forced himself to become interested in a gorgeous Sydney socialite and he’d been about to leave with her when Ruby had come rushing back into the reception room.

      A small smile played at the edges of his lips. She’d been in such a flap she hadn’t seen him at first and Sam hadn’t stepped out of her path, choosing instead to let her run headlong into the circle of his arms as if he were just as startled by the contact as she was.

      She’d stared up at him, a beguiling combination of sophistication and innocence, her gorgeous body pressed against his like Velcro on felt, her breathing laboured, and the memory of the night he’d nearly devoured her shining brightly in her lovely green eyes. For a split second his overly active imagination had caused him to believe that she’d come rushing back to find him. To tell him that she’d ditched her date and wanted to leave with him. Wanted to take him back to her place for the ‘coffee’ he’d stupidly passed up on the night they’d first met.

      Then his oldest brother, Dante, had walked into the empty room and completely obliterated the moment.

      ‘Sam, we’re leav—Uh...sorry, junior, am I interrupting something?’ he’d said smoothly.

      Considering Sam had been a breath away from finding out if Ruby still tasted as delicious as he remembered, of course his brother had been interrupting, and the big idiot had known it!

      Ruby’s eyes had gone from glazed to mortified in the space of a heartbeat and she’d pushed out of his arms just as her date had arrived to find out what had delayed her.

      Extreme sexual attraction, Sam had wanted to tell the other man.

      Ruby had mumbled something about her jacket, quickly grabbed it from the back of her chair and hadn’t looked back as she’d walked away. She’d been cool to him the whole day, he remembered now, and he often wondered why that was.

      He also wondered what it was about her that made his libido override his iron-clad self-control where she was concerned, but he knew he’d work it out one day. And, given their shared profession, and personal connections, it would probably be soon.

      His heart pounded slow and heavy inside his chest just at the thought of seeing her again. He’d deliberately not asked Valentino about her over the past couple of years. Why give his loved-up brother any indication that he had a thing for the beautiful lawyer? He’d only make more out of it than there was

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