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PROLOGUE
New Year’s Eve
SHE HAD RULES. Rules she never broke. There were no exceptions. Charlotte never mixed business and pleasure, never. She wasn’t ever tempted, either...regardless of the value of her clients. All her clients were VIPs to her, clients who came to her for her sterling reputation. They trusted her to make the best possible decisions for them. They came to her because they needed her expertise in sorting out image issues, public relation snafus and social media nightmares. How could they trust her judgment, if her judgment was faulty?
If her judgment lost sight of the objective?
If she forgot why she was there in the first place?
Charlotte Parks knew all these things, and yet Brando Ricci was making it almost impossible to remember why these—her—rules were so important. She’d wrapped up business weeks ago, well before Christmas. All conversations and concerns with the Ricci-Baldi family had been handled, settled, put to bed. She was here at the Ricci family’s grand New Year’s Eve party because they loved to throw lavish parties and loved to include everyone who had helped them. And Charlotte had helped them, having spent the entire autumn in Florence, working to smooth tensions following intense, negative media attention arising from the family’s struggles with power, and issues from succession.
Not all issues were completely settled, but much of the tension was gone, and the family had come together to present a unified face to the public once again. Tonight’s party was part of that unified face.
She shouldn’t have come tonight. Her part was done. She’d been paid—well paid, too. There was no justifiable reason to have returned to Florence for a party.
The music changed, slowed, and Brando pulled her closer, his hand settling low on her back, her breasts crushed to his tuxedo-covered chest. “You’re overthinking,” he murmured, his breath warm against her ear.
“I am,” she agreed. “Or perhaps I should say, I’m thinking. And I should be thinking. You are dangerous.”
“I would never hurt you. That is a promise.”
And she knew that. She knew he’d be amazing—in bed, out of bed. The chemistry between them was electric and had been there from the moment they’d met last September. But the chemistry is what also troubled her, because she’d never felt a pull like this... She’d never even considered throwing caution to the wind. And yet here she was, a half hour from midnight, wrestling with her conscience, wrestling with desire.
“I shouldn’t be here,” she whispered, fingers curling around his, her heart thumping too hard, her body warm, sensitive, exquisitely aware...aroused. She hadn’t made love in over a year...perhaps two years... She hadn’t felt this at
tracted to anyone...ever. Part of her was so tempted to give in to the heat, while the logical, disciplined part warned that it was a mistake, a mistake that could jeopardize her career, her reputation...
Her heart.
She looked up into his handsome face again. He was gorgeous...truly handsome, but it wasn’t just beautiful bone structure. He was smart, fascinating, compelling. During the months of working with the Ricci family, Brando was the one who drew her, time and again. Even though he was the youngest in his family, he had the most wisdom and insight, and she’d come to trust and respect his point of view, even going to him when Enzo, Marcello and Livia couldn’t agree on anything, hoping Brando could find a diplomatic way to bring his fractious siblings together. And he had. And he did.
She’d returned tonight to Florence for him.
For this...
Whatever this was.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked now, his narrowed gaze sweeping her face.
His scrutiny made her face tingle, setting countless nerve endings alight. “Losing my head. Losing control.”
The corner of his mouth lifted ever so slightly. His hand slid lower on her back, nearly cupping the curve of her butt. “We’re two consenting adults.”
She could feel his sinewy strength pressed against the length of her. His hard chest, his waist, the powerful thighs. “Yes, but business and pleasure should always be kept separate—”
“We’re no longer working together,” he reminded, his head dropping, his lips brushing the side of her neck.
She shuddered, and closed her eyes, trying to ignore how her breasts tightened, nipples pebbling, desire coiling within her. It was becoming increasingly difficult to keep a clear head. All she wanted was his mouth on hers, his hands teasing, exploring the length of her. It had been so long since she’d been with anyone and yet she wanted him...wanted his weight on her, wanted his body filling hers, wanted the pleasure she knew he’d give. The pleasure she craved...not from just anyone, but him. Brando Ricci. Vintner. Entrepreneur. Billionaire.
Lover.
No, not her lover, not yet.
“We shouldn’t do this,” she whispered, air catching in her throat as his thumb stroked the side of her neck, lighting little tongues of fires just beneath the surface of her skin.
“We’ve done nothing wrong,” he murmured. “We’re simply dancing.”
Done nothing wrong yet, she silently corrected, with yet being the operative word.
Charlotte tipped her head back to look up into Brando’s mesmerizing silver eyes that were anything but cool, or cold. The heat in them scorched her now and she felt a shiver race through her. She’d fought this attraction for months, fought the sizzling awareness, suppressed the hunger, but tonight she was losing the battle. Just being in his arms was making her breathless and dizzy. Her body hummed, aching with awareness. Hunger.
“It’s nearly midnight,” she said, glancing over his shoulder at the enormous clock that had been mounted on the wall of the palace ballroom for tonight’s New Year’s countdown.
He glanced at the clock, too. “Ten minutes.”
Her gaze took in the orchestra on the stage playing everyone’s favorites, and the throng of beautiful people filling the dance floor. The seventeenth-century ballroom was packed with some of Europe’s most glamorous, wealthy people. They were having a wonderful time, laughing, dancing, drinking, celebrating. When the clock struck midnight, the celebration would become deafening.
She’d always hated crowds, and normally avoided parties, but when the invitation came to attend the Riccis’ party, she didn’t say no. She couldn’t say no.
“What are you thinking, cara?” Brando’s deep voice was a caress.
Cara, darling. She felt another helpless shiver race through her.
She’d come tonight for him.
She wanted only him.
And yet, her rules. Her stupid rules.
She dampened her lips with the tip of her tongue. “I don’t mix—”
“Business and pleasure,” he completed for her. “I know. But tonight is not business. We’re done with business, done with the family, done doing what others want us to do.”
His lips brushed hers, a fleeting kiss that felt as if he’d set a thousand butterflies free inside her heart and mind. Wings of hope. Flutters of possibilities.
She always lived so alone, so controlled, so contained, but tonight... Tonight she felt as if maybe, just maybe, she belonged somewhere, to someone. Even if it were for one night only.
“Just tonight,” she said hoarsely. “You must agree this is just one night, and nothing more than that. Promise me, Brando.”
His lips brushed hers again. “Fine. Tonight is ours. Tonight belongs to us.”
“And tomorrow—”
“We won’t worry about. It’s not here.”
CHAPTER ONE
CHARLOTTE PARKS TUCKED her long pale hair behind an ear, straightened the lapel on her fashionable coat and rang the doorbell on the tall, handsome seventeenth-century building in the heart of Florence, just steps from Ponte Vecchio. Originally constructed as a palace, the building had been turned into several private homes, including the town house for Italian tycoon Brando Ricci.
She’d been here twice before, once for business last October, and once for—well, not business—New Year’s Eve. It was a large, lavish town house with three separate floors and the sheer size of it meant that it’d take a moment for someone to come to the door, and so she waited calmly, expression serene.
Charlotte was skilled at serene. She’d mastered stress and pressure, having learned how to adjust to instability and conflict early in life, as the next to youngest in a big, rather famous British family, her affluent, aristocratic parents marrying and divorcing with rather joyous abandon, giving her a dozen siblings, half siblings and stepsiblings. She’d been born in England, then hauled to Los Angeles for ten years with her mother when she married the roguish film director Heath Hughes, and then bounced back to Europe at fifteen for finishing school in Switzerland.
Charlotte’s siblings and stepsiblings were quite famous in their own right—models, actresses, race car drivers, as well as beautiful, envied English socialites. The Parks-Hughes-horpe family even had their own reality TV show for a bit, before certain members of the family decried it as too common, too crass, too American. It didn’t help that nearly half of the family was now American, and full of plans and ambition. Charlotte, having spent twelve years in America, the ten with her mom, and now the past two on her own with a lovely house in the Hollywood Hills, had come to appreciate American bluntness and the efficiency with which Americans tackled problems. Well, maybe that was overstating things. Affluent Americans, inevitably image conscious, were very good at hiring help for damage control, and Charlotte was very good at damage control, so good, she had her own little company that had become a very successful PR company with global clientele.
Her ability to solve problems is what brought her to Florence. She’d met Brando Ricci nine months ago when she was hired to sort out a public relations nightmare involving the legendary Ricci family, one of Italy’s most famous families, known for their wine, their leather goods, as well as their modern fashion house.
The Ricci family business dated back to the turn of the century, when making a great Chianti was their claim to fame. Following World War II, the family expanded, adding fashion and luxury leather goods to their business. The three Ricci brothers, grandsons to the founder, grew and nurtured the business until they ran into a rather common problem—how would succession work in a family where the three brothers had been almost equals, and yet each brother had two or three children each? It was one thing to share leadership among three, but a corporation couldn’t have eight leaders. She’d stepped in late last August to smooth over some of the negative publicity stemming from the internal family struggles,
generating new media coverage that focused on the family’s cohesiveness, but behind the scenes, the family was still rather fractious as succession hadn’t yet been truly addressed. But she’d done her part. The Ricci family was out of the tabloids, and she’d been given a very generous payment for services, and that should have been that.
Except it wasn’t.
Charlotte, who rarely made mistakes, made a critical tactical error on New Year’s Eve. She shouldn’t have spent a night with Brando Ricci. Yes, it had been an extraordinary night, but letting down one’s guard, and breaking one’s rules, had staggering consequences.
Now she was here, but she dreaded the moment she’d be face-to-face with him. Brando was brilliant, powerful, perceptive, exciting. He’d made her feel all kinds of things she’d never felt before, and that was while still on the dance floor.
Returning here, being carried up to his bedroom, had been earth-shattering. She wasn’t a virgin but she’d never felt anything as exquisite as what she felt in his arms, in his bed. It was without a doubt the most amazing night of her life. The sex had been so good, so unbelievably good, that she’d flown home dazed and dazzled and completely swept away.
Thank goodness there was a huge distance between them—6,188 miles to be precise—a trip that required at least one or two stops, depending on the airline and route, so it wasn’t easy, or convenient to jet over to say hello. She returned home determined to focus on the future, not the past, or the bliss of being with a man who knew how to make a woman feel like the most glorious thing in the world.
There would be no reunions, no weekend escapes. They’d had their fling, and yes, it’d been the most exciting, sensual thing she’d ever experienced, but she wasn’t going to lose her head over incredible sex with the sexiest, most sensual, most overwhelming man she’d ever met. That would be plain foolish, and she might be slightly, slightly, secretly besotted with Brando, but she was no fool. He was completely out of her league, and she’d told him so when he’d phoned to say he’d be in Los Angeles and hoped they could get together.
