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‘One night,’ he said flatly. ‘Just one night. We finish off what was started in Italy. And that’s it.’
‘I can’t believe what I’m hearing,’ she breathed.
‘No? Then I implore you to be honest with yourself, cara. The thought of you is driving me wild—and don’t tell me you don’t feel the same way, because I won’t believe you. I can see it in your eyes, too—though you replace it with that icy coolness when you sense that I’m looking at you. But it’s there, and you can’t hide it. The hunger. The need—gnawing away inside you.’
‘You make it sound like an … appetite.’
‘Because that’s exactly what it is.’ He leaned forward, his expression intent, realising that this was at least one good thing about making a proposition to Aisling. At least she saw things in black and white and not dressed up in idealistic shades of make-believe. To a woman with such a good head for business—she would consider this a viable proposition.
‘A hunger which can be fed and then forgotten,’ he continued. ‘We’re colleagues. Neither of us want all the complications of a long-distance relationship—so why not draw a line under the whole affair in the most delightful way possible? We put it to bed, so to speak—and then forget it ever happened.’
Aisling stared into his beautiful face while her heart warred with her head, because it was never going to be up there with one of the Great Romantic Declarations, was it? And yet it was honest.
Some women might have found it insulting—so why didn’t she? Was it because he hadn’t made it out to be something it wasn’t? He’d spoken nothing but the stark, unvarnished truth—and didn’t that count for much more than the kind of empty promises which had seen her mother disappointed over and over again?
There had been no coyness between the two of them that night in Umbria—and that had been the most amazing night of her life. He was treating her as the independent woman she claimed to be. Speaking to her as an equal. Two grown-ups who both wanted each other. He had spoken of ridding himself of a fire in his blood—might she not do the same with this one night?
But what if she couldn’t forget him?
In the flicker of the candlelight his eyes gleamed like jet and her heart turned over with longing. What if one night with this man wasn’t enough? Didn’t women operate differently from men and wasn’t she running the risk of putting herself in the type of terrible emotional danger which she had always sought to avoid?
Yet what was the alternative? An unresolved desire which ran the risk of dominating her world and her life?
The waiter put two plates in front of them, but she barely noticed them.
‘And if I agree—what about … afterwards?’
He gave an odd sort of smile. ‘It will be gone. Finito. Remembered occasionally, no doubt—taken out and remembered as one might remember an especially delicious meal or a particularly beautiful holiday destination, but nothing more than that.’
She thought of the job she worked so hard for. Of the people who relied on her—of the security all those things gave her, that and the sense of being needed. She owed it to those people to put their needs before her own desires. ‘And the contract?’ she questioned.
There was a moment’s silence and his mouth twisted. He had been right—she had nothing in the way of a heart! ‘Oh, do not worry, Aisling, I have no intention of terminating your contract—of jeopardising your precious business—if that’s all you’re concerned about.’
His judgement was harsh and unfair and Aisling was hurt that he should have chosen to interpret her words like that. But perhaps it was better that he should think of her that way. As a kind of tough career-woman rather than the weak and vulnerable kind.
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’
How ironic it was to hear her sounding uncertain—she, whom he always thought of as so crisply decisive. Yet how deeply satisfying t
o see her wavering—to see those iceblue eyes looking so unsure.
Gianluca leaned over towards her and traced the outline of her lips with his finger, and Aisling found her mouth opening so that he slid his finger inside it and she started with pleasure, and shock.
‘See?’ he mocked, and then he mouthed, Suck me.
And she did.
Their eyes met in a silent and erotic question.
‘Come, Aisling,’ he said softly as he withdrew his finger and looked at it, now all wet from her mouth. ‘Before I die from wanting you. One night. No more.’
Her heart was beating so fast she felt dizzy. ‘Our dinner—’
‘Forget the damned dinner!’
She hesitated for one last second and then rose to her feet, taking the hand he offered before they both walked out of the restaurant—oblivious to the stares of the other diners or the waiter’s expression of consternation on seeing the two untouched meals left behind on the table.
CHAPTER SEVEN
