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He tasted divine, of darkness and coffee and something else Hannah could only assume was him, filling her senses.
Deep inside, the pulsations she had first experienced when he had touched her in his London office began to vibrate and hum.
To think she had gone for twenty-seven years without experiencing this.
Brushing her hand down his cheek to rest on the sharp crease of his collar, she stroked the tips of her fingers over the strong neck, marvelling at his strength and the power that lay beneath the skin.
It wasn’t the power that came from his position in the world that attracted her so much, she thought dimly, it was the latent masculine power within him.
Before she could make sense of all the wonderful sensations rising within her, he pulled away—or, rather, wrenched apart the physical connection between them.
His chest rising and falling in rapid motion, Francesco took a step back, wiping his mouth as if to rid himself of her taste.
‘I know my power and money mean nothing to you,’ he said, virtually spitting the words out. ‘That’s why getting involved with you is wrong on every level imaginable.’
Trying to clamp down on the humiliation that came hot on the heels of his abrupt rejection, Hannah jumped down from the windowsill. ‘I don’t know how many times I have to say this, but I do not want to become involved with you, not in any real sense. All I want is to experience some of the life every other woman takes for granted but which has passed me by.’
‘And you should experience it, but it should be with someone who can give you a future.’
‘Medicine is my future.’
‘And that stops you building a future with a man, does it?’
Not even bothering to hide her exasperation, she shook her head. ‘I’m married to my work, and that’s the way I like it. I want to make it to consultant level and I’ve worked too hard and for too long to throw it all away on a relationship that would never fulfil me even a fraction as much as my job does.’
‘How can you know that if you’ve never tried?’
She pursed her lips together. A deep and meaningful debate about her reasons for not wanting a relationship had not been on the agenda. ‘I just know, okay?’
‘Your job will never keep you warm at night.’
‘My hot-water bottle does a perfectly good job of that and, besides, what right do you have to question me on this? I don’t see a wedding ring on your finger. If the internet reports on you are true, as you say they are, you seem to have a phobia towards commitment yourself.’ Hadn’t that been another tick on her mental checklist, the fact Francesco appeared to steer away from anything that could be construed as permanent?
His face darkened. ‘I have my reasons for not wanting marriage.’
‘Well, I have mine, too. Why can’t you respect that?’
Francesco took a deep breath and slowly expelled it. Why could he not just take everything Hannah said at face value? His body was telling him to just accept it, to take her back to his villa and take her, just as she’d asked, until she was so sated she would be unable to think.
But even if he did take her words at face value and accepted that she wasn’t asking for anything more than one night, it didn’t change the fact that making love to her would taint her. She deserved better than Salvatore Calvetti’s son, even if she couldn’t see it herself.
He would make her see.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said, unable to endure the claustrophobia being shut in four walls with Hannah Chapman induced a minute longer. ‘I’m taking you shopping.’
‘Shopping?’
‘You need a dress for tonight.’
‘Why? What’s happening tonight?’
‘We’re going to my casino. There’s a poker tournament I need to oversee. I’m not having you by my side dressed as some kind of bag lady.’
Her face blanched at his cruel words, but he bit back the apology forming on his tongue.
In truth, there was something unbearably sexy about Hannah’s take-me-as-I-am, comfortable-in-my-skin approach to her appearance, and the longer he was in her company, the sexier he found it.
* * *
A bag lady.
Francesco looked at her and saw a bag lady?
Having been dumped in a designer shop, whereby Francesco had promptly disappeared, leaving at her disposal a driver with the words, ‘I’ll meet you at my villa in a few hours—buy whatever you want and charge it to me,’ Hannah still didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh or punch him in the face.
