The Italian's Secretary Bride (5 page)

‘I'm not hungry and, besides, it would be rude to order before Seth gets back.'

‘You'll eat anyway, if only to soak up the drinks you've had, and Seth doesn't need to come back on my account.'

‘Are you suggesting I'm drunk?' Alice demanded, indignant at the slur.

His lips curved in a sardonic smile. ‘Aren't you?'

‘Not saying what you want me to doesn't make me drunk.'

‘I think when you review this conversation tomorrow morning you might want to revise that opinion.'

‘Are you saying I'm talking rubbish?'

‘You're talking. Normally you act as though—what do they say in the cop shows?—anything you say will be used against you. Though,' he added thoughtfully, ‘you still get the message across. You have silent disapproval off to a fine art.'

‘I have never assumed that anything I have to say would interest you. Now I know we can have nice long cosy chats.'

Her venom made his lips twitch. ‘I can hardly wait.'

Alice saw the twitch and her own lips pursed as her eyes continued to linger on his mouth; it was extremely expressive. And sensual, she added, covertly examining the sculpted sexy outline. It was the mouth you expected someone who kissed really well to possess.

Did Luca kiss really well? If practice counted for anything he ought to, she reflected. An indentation appeared to mar the smooth perfection of her broad brow as she considered a small sample of the women he'd practised with. All were stunning, not just good-looking, but the sort of women who turned heads when they walked into a room.

It wasn't until her restless gaze clashed with Luca's that she appreciated how long she'd been sitting there staring at him, thinking about his mouth and kissing! A shamed warmth spread across her skin.

Good God, he's right, I must have had a bit too much to drink!

Nothing else could even begin to excuse her behaviour.

She lifted her hand and smiled at the figure who was approaching the table from across the room. ‘Here's Seth. Will you
please
try and be nice?' she hissed.

‘I'm always nice.'

This was so
not
true that she didn't even bother responding.

'P
ROBLEM
?'
Luca said as the other man approached.

Seth shook his head. “Fraid so. I'm going to have to love you and leave you.'

'Oh, God, no!'
Alice flushed deeply when both men turned to look at her. ‘That is, we wanted you to stay and eat with us, Seth.' Her glare dared Luca to deny this assertion.

He did.

‘
We
didn't.'

Alice shot Luca a murderous look, and he shrugged, which made her want to shake him. A physical impossibility, of course, considering his size. Not only was Luca tall, but his body had the toned development of an athlete, all lean muscle and whipcord strength.

Her breathing imperceptibly quickened as her eyes slid to his upper body. His jacket was open and she noticed for the first time that there was a slight rent in the expensive fabric through which she could see a section of smooth golden skin.

Normally he was immaculately turned out, not a hair out of place. Was it the minor accident he had lightly touched upon or had some over-zealous lover been a little too eager to remove his clothes?

In her head she saw eager hands ripping at his clothes and her concentration slipped. A secret little shiver of which she was deeply ashamed ran down her spine. Swallowing, she tore her eyes away.

As she turned to the Texan she put a few hundred watts of extra warmth into her smile. ‘
I'd
love for you to eat with us.'

‘And I'd like nothing better,' Seth returned with a rueful sigh.

‘Men like a woman to be direct,' her sister, who was happy and married and wanted Alice to be happy again, had explained on her last visit home.

‘Direct women scare men off,' her brother, Tom, had corrected.

‘Direct women scare
you
off. Men who are not immature and lacking in confidence are not scared by strong women who speak their mind,' her sister replied.

This provocative reply had been the start of a heated discussion. Now seemed as good a time as any to see which of her siblings had been right, despite her not really feeling attracted to Seth.

‘Will I see you again?'

Encouraging. Seth looked surprised, but he wasn't running away.

‘If you're still here at the end of the week I've got tickets for the opening night of Krebs's exhibition.'

‘I'm not totally sure yet how long we'll be in town, but—'

‘Roman keeps her pretty busy,' Luca inserted smoothly. His eyes were fixed on the hand laid against the smoother-than-silk contours of Alice's shoulder. As Seth's fingertips brushed casually against the hollow of one collar-bone, which was delicately defined without being unattractively bony, Luca stiffened.

Alice simmered silently. What was it with Luca? Did he begrudge her a social life?

‘Ring me.' She softened the abruptness of her demand with a warm smile and added, ‘I'd really love to go to the opening although I won't be able to afford to buy anything,' she admitted.

‘I'm sure Seth will buy it for you if you look wistful enough,' Luca observed lazily.

Alice's hands clenched into fists under the table.

Luca watched the colour wash over her skin then equally abruptly recede leaving a febrile spot of colour on each smooth cheek. One dark brow lifted.

‘Calm down, I was just joking.'

Seth chuckled, apparently having no problem with believing him, but Alice was under no such illusion.

‘Of course I'll ring,' Seth promised her. ‘You're staying here?'

She nodded, all the while very conscious of heavy-lidded blue eyes watching her.

‘Together…?'
One brow raised, Seth's speculative look encompassed both Alice and Luca.

It was such an off-the-wall idea that it took several moments for Alice to catch his meaning. When she did her bewildered frown morphed into a look of stark horror. ‘Me and…
Luca
?' she squeaked, shaking her head hard in a negative motion to the insulting question.

‘You don't fight like friends, more like an old married couple…
or lovers
.'

Alice looked at him as though he were mad. Her own parents rarely raised their voices, let alone fought like cat and dog.

‘We don't fight like friends, because we're not.' Trying to tear emotional strips off one another was not to her a sign of a close emotional relationship or for that matter—the thought made her skin heat—a
physical
one!

She turned her head, expecting to find Luca either laughing his socks off at the idea of them being an item or seeing the same revulsion she had experienced reflected on his face.

She found neither.

Luca was still, so still he appeared barely to be breathing. His glossy dark head, which in the candlelight gleamed blue-black, was tilted at an angle so that he appeared to be looking down at her. Through the thick dark mesh of his lashes she could see the gleam of his eyes, but nothing in his facial expression gave a clue as to what he was thinking. A sphinx would have given away more of his feelings than Luca, but the act of looking into those still criminally perfect frozen features set her heart off fibrillating like a wild thing in her chest.

‘Sorry, folks, I got the wrong idea.'

Seth's amused apology broke the spell that bound her. ‘Yes, you did,' she agreed. Did her smile look as forced as it felt? she wondered. ‘Do I look like someone
he
would date?' she demanded in a voice that was the verbal equivalent of a shudder.

Seth appeared to find the question highly amusing. ‘I thought maybe Luca here had decided to go for a bit of class for a change.' He slid the younger man a sideways twinkling look of challenge.

‘I see you're a believer in miracles,' Alice retorted. ‘And a sense of humour, I like that in a man.'

‘I'm an easy man to like,' he promised her as he bent forward to kiss her lightly on the cheek. ‘I'll be in touch,' he promised. ‘Nice to see you again, Luca.'

Watching him go, Alice was suddenly filled with blind panic at the thought of being left alone with Luca, even alone in such a public place!

‘I have a sense of humour,' Luca announced from out of the blue.

‘No, you have a savage and cutting wit.' As someone who had been on the receiving end often enough, she felt qualified to respond on this score. ‘It isn't the same thing,' she promised with feeling.

Luca shrugged but didn't respond to the accusation. ‘I thought he'd never go.' He sighed, leaning back in his seat. ‘We're ready to order now,' he said to the waiter, who had returned to their table.

‘I'm not.' How come when
I
want a waiter there is never one around? ‘I'm not hungry.' She was, but she felt like being stubborn.

‘Sorry, the lady isn't ready to order…' The waiter nodded and vanished.

‘Don't apologise for me,' she retorted spikily. ‘You were unconscionably rude to Seth!' she hissed.

‘I've had a bad day.'

‘My heart bleeds.'

A look of fastidious distaste contorted his aristocratic and fabulously good-looking features. ‘And my idea of winding down is
not
watching you and Seth making out,' he revealed.

‘We were not making out!' she choked in outrage.

‘Talk about all over one another!' he exclaimed in disgust. ‘I thought I might have to throw a bucket of water over the pair of you.'

The hand Alice had been threading though her blonde hair fell away as her jaw dropped. It took her several moments to recover the power of speech; when she did her voice shook with anger.

‘I won't ask what
your
idea of winding down after a bad day is,' she said with a scornful sniff. Even as she said it her wilful imagination was doing just that. Minus the tie; minus the shirt; minus…! She sucked in her breath and took control before he lost any more garments.

Luca planted his elbows on the table and, with his big body curved towards her, effectively cut out the rest of the room from her view. His breath caused the candles set in the middle of the table to flare and flicker as he planted his chin against the heel of his palm. The action, abrupt but elegantly co-ordinated, made her tummy flip. The feeling was intensified by the illusion they were alone. Luca's every action, even the most mundane, was performed with a fluid, almost animal, grace that was magnetically
male
.

There had been occasions in the past when caught unawares she had seen him walk across a room, knowing even at a distance who it was, and she would watch, helpless not to follow him with her eyes. Those occasions could unsettle her for the rest of day, though generally she succeeded in laughing off her weakness. Right now there was absolutely no question of laughing; he was too close and she was feeling strange.

‘Why?' Alice blinked to clear her confused, disorganised thoughts as eyes deep and drowningly blue locked onto her own. ‘Afraid you might discover we both like to wind down the same way?'

His taunt, low-pitched and huskily intimate, sent a shiver rippling through her body. Though she had no control over the heat that spilled out across her pale skin, pride stopped her lowering her eyes in confusion.

‘That I seriously doubt.' Her scornful response wasn't quite as scornful as she'd have liked, which had more than a little to do with the images of him
unwinding
her overexcited imagination was predictably supplying.

If he had even the faintest inkling…?

Luca's eyes scoured her faintly flushed face and slowly the corners of his beautiful mouth lifted.

Inkling, girl…? It's written all over your face.

Mortified by her fatal weakness, Alice arranged her features in a careful blank canvas.

With a shrug of his broad shoulders Luca leaned back in his seat. ‘What do you think Roman would say if he knew you went around picking up stray men in hotel bars?'

‘Roman…?'
She imagined that he would say
go for it
. Her boss was always complaining that she had no social life. According to him it made him feel guilty—not guilty enough to cut down on her workload, she had been tempted to retort.

‘By the way, nice going with Seth.'

Alice gave a suspicious frown.

‘You didn't know Seth's father owned half of Texas and he's an only child?'

It wasn't hard to see where he was going with this one. ‘No, I didn't,' she gritted back.

‘One of life's lucky chances,' he mused.

‘It's true!' Alice hissed in frustration. She was hard pressed to decide which made her most mad: being called promiscuous or a gold-digger? Only
Luca
could manage to do both in the same sentence!

She focused on a point over his shoulder. ‘Naturally now I do I will propose at the first opportunity.'

‘I'm sure you wouldn't be so obvious.'

‘A compliment…
gosh
! Also, this isn't a bar.' The cutting retort would have been more cutting if it hadn't taken her thirty seconds to think of it.

‘
Semantics
: the last refuge of the guilty,' Luca suggested gently.

Alice took a deep breath and refused to take the bait. Unless you kept your wits about you when talking to Luca it took him about six seconds to tie a person in knots. ‘And I did not pick Seth up.' She was quite pleased with herself for staying firmly focused.

‘A moderately clever woman doesn't have to, she makes the poor dope think it was his idea.'

‘I'm assuming when you talk about
clever
, you actually mean animal cunning of the variety that men like you assume all women have. You know, I had no idea that you were such a misogynist.' There was a fatal flaw in her coping strategy of focusing on a point over his shoulder—there was only so long she could keep it up!

Her eyes clashed with Luca's and she spoilt her clever rebuttal by adding in a loud, goaded voice, ‘Oh, shut up!'

Colouring pinkly, she gave the couple at the next table an apologetic smile before turning her attention back to her persecutor.

‘I didn't open my mouth.'

If she'd had the energy the innocence in his protest would have made her smile, but she felt totally drained. Talking to him was exhausting! As she tried to marshal her wits her eyes slid of their own volition to the sculpted outline of the lips he had referred to…

‘But you were about to.'

He bowed his dark head in mocking acknowledgement.

‘I knew this evening was going to be awful, I just didn't know
how
awful. And for the record if I had picked up Seth it wouldn't have had anything to do with his bank balance.'