LITMIR.BIZ

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full of passion and fire and yet she was so tightly wound up it made him all the more determined to press her buttons to see if she would explode like a firecracker. Was there a little bedroom firebrand behind that ice-princess thing she had going on?

      She pushed the frames of her glasses back up her nose with a jerky movement of her hand. ‘I never do business without one.’

      ‘Then we’re a perfect match, don’t you think?’ He took a sip of his martini and watched as her eyes narrowed even further in disgust. Little did she know it but she was fulfilling every schoolmistress fantasy he’d ever possessed. She made no effort to disguise her disapproval of his lifestyle and his personality. What would it take to get that tightly compressed mouth to smile at him or to yield to him in a kiss?

      He couldn’t stop himself assessing her trim little body with his eyes. She was wearing a classic knee-length beige linen dress with a thin black patent leather belt around her waist, and a matching black three-quarter-sleeved cardigan and low-heeled black court shoes. Although reasonably stylish, the clothes were the wrong colour for her and made her look like a child who had raided her grandmother’s wardrobe for a dressing-up game. She had a simple string of pearls around her neck and pearl studs in her ears, and her hair was still pulled back in that unflattering way, but it exposed her slim elegant neck where he could see a pulse beating like the heart of a hummingbird.

      She turned swiftly and marched farther into the suite, stopping near the entertainment centre to face him again, her expression so frosty he was sure the temperature of the room went down ten degrees. ‘Have you been to a wedding recently?’

      ‘Nope. I generally try to avoid them.’

      ‘What about your twin brother’s?’ Her brows drew together again. ‘He’s married, isn’t he?’

      ‘Separated.’ Lucca took another sip of his drink and held it in his mouth for a moment. Orsino’s relationship with Poppy Graham had always been a little complicated. He suspected there was some unfinished business between his twin and his estranged wife but he didn’t like to cause any angst by asking too many questions. Although he was close to his twin, they lived quite different lives. ‘They had a quickie ceremony five years ago. You might’ve read something about it in the press. It got quite a lot of coverage at the time.’

      ‘I don’t make a habit of reading such unedifying rubbish.’

      He gave a little laugh. ‘Nothing but the classics then, eh? Tolstoy? Hardy? Dickens? Dostoyevsky?’

      Her eyes fired another round of loathing at him. ‘What about your other siblings? Are any of them married?’

      ‘No, none of us has been lucky—or unlucky, depending on your take on it—to meet their soul mate. Mind you, given the example our parents set for us it’s no wonder we’re all a little gun-shy in the marriage mart.’

      There was a pregnant pause.

      Lucca wished he hadn’t revealed quite so much about his background, not that she couldn’t read all about it online or in the gossip magazines if it took her fancy. People were still speculating on the whereabouts of his mother, who had finally walked out on the family soon after his youngest sister, Cara, had been born, leaving signed divorce papers on his father’s desk. No one had seen or heard from her since.

      The train wreck of his parents’ marriage had affected all of his siblings in various ways. He liked to think he was the least affected but he knew it wouldn’t take too many sessions with a therapist to see his inability to connect emotionally with people was a hoof-mark of his childhood. He didn’t talk about it. To anyone. He didn’t even think about it. The bewildered little boy who had cried night after night for his mother was long gone.

      Lucca’s philosophy in life was to have fun. The only feelings he wanted were pleasurable ones, physical ones. He was a sybarite, through and through. He didn’t deny it and nor did he apologise for it. He had been born to enormous wealth and privilege and he made the most of it. Exploited it. He didn’t believe in working to live or living to work.

      He lived to party.

      He treated all his relationships as transitory things. Just like a party. He showed up for an hour or two, had a good time and then he left to move on to the next one. His relationships were simply casual hook-ups that had a common goal of pleasure, not permanency. He didn’t set out to deliberately hurt people—he wasn’t wired that way. He had suffered too much hurt in his childhood to make it his life’s mission to do the same to others. He used them certainly, but he always did it with lashings of his signature charm so no feelings were damaged. He got in and out of relationships so adroitly the women he dated hardly noticed they were being dispensed with. The closest he got to commitment was keeping someone’s number in his phone in case he ever fancied a booty call.

      But as if the uptight little princess sensed his family background was a painful subject, or perhaps didn’t feel comfortable offering a sympathy she didn’t feel, she brusquely announced, ‘I would like to inspect the hotel ballroom. I would like you to accompany me.’

      It was the very last thing she would like, Lucca thought, which made him wonder why she had suddenly changed her mind about including him in the wedding arrangements when she had been so vehemently opposed to it initially. Had her sister put the hard word on her? He knew Princess Madeleine was determined to have a glamorous wedding with all the trimmings and there was no better place than a Chatsfield hotel to put on a party to remember.

      Was little Princess Charlotte playing him at his own game? Making him tag along to every tedious meeting or boring inspection of crockery or cutlery until he got so thoroughly sick of it he walked off the job?

      He wasn’t going to let her trick him out of what was rightfully his. If he had to tag along, then he would, but he would make sure he had plenty of fun while doing it.

      ‘Sure.’ He put down his drink and gave her a winsome smile. ‘I’m all yours.’

      Lottie kept her back straight as a ruler as she led the way to the hotel lift outside the penthouse. She knew Lucca Chatsfield’s dark brown eyes were following her every move. She could feel the lazy heat of his gaze sliding over her with every step she took. The man was a dissolute rake and she had no business in being even vaguely interested in his childhood with its tragic circumstances of a disappearing mother. What did it matter to her if he and his twin had been lost lonely little boys being brought up by their older siblings and a father who was known for his affairs and his heavy bouts of drinking?

      Lucca Chatsfield was here for all the wrong reasons and she had to get rid of him by fair means or foul. She didn’t want anything or anyone to jeopardise her meticulous planning of Madeleine’s wedding. This was the most important month of her life. This was her chance to show not just her family—most especially her sister—but also the entire world she was not just the spare heir.

      ‘Aren’t you supposed to have bodyguards or something?’ Lucca reached past her to press the call button just as she put her hand out for it.

      Lottie snatched her hand back but not before it brushed briefly against his. She felt the tingle and sizzle of his touch travel straight to the centre of her being, pooling there in a hot liquid mass that seemed to take on a life of its own. She felt it moving through her blood, swirling, swelling, hot and urgent like a tide that was threatening to break its banks.

      Everything about Lucca Chatsfield unsettled her. His easy smile, that knowing glint in his laughing, mocking eyes and his laid-back, couldn’t-give-a-damn-what-you-think-of-me stance that was such a stark contrast to her straitlaced and serious demeanour.

      He was a self-serving playboy, a time waster, a shallow sensualist with nothing better to do than swan around the globe from one holiday destination to the other. As far as she knew he had never held down a proper job and—unlike his twin brother, who contributed to charity through his thrill-seeking sporting activities—did nothing for anyone other than himself.

      Lottie stared fixedly at the illuminated lights above the lift as it climbed from the lower floors, conscious of the scent of him, the energy of

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