Mills & Boon Stars Collection: Sinful Proposals: Seduced into Her Boss's Service / Wearing the De Angelis Ring / The Surprise De Angelis Baby

‘Do I what?’

‘Want to go?’ He watched her as she hovered by the door, saw the flicker of indecision on her face, saw the way she took a deep breath, as though steeling herself to clear off. ‘I would never make a pass at a woman and then, if I happen to get rejected, scout around for someone else to pick up the slack. I’m not that superficial, Sunny. I don’t want Katherine, however beautiful and capable she might be. And I’ll tell you something for free...shall I?’

‘What?’ He didn’t want Katherine. He didn’t fancy her. Relief shot through her and in that moment she knew that she wanted him, that it didn’t make sense, not at all, but something in her wanted him and that something was far more powerful than the neat, tidy part of her brain that was telling her not to be a fool.

‘What I’m doing right now,’ Stefano drawled, his deep, velvety voice curling around her with the seductiveness of the richest, darkest, smoothest chocolate, ‘is not what I usually do. I don’t usually make passes at women. I don’t usually lay my cards on the table and try to persuade a woman to share my bed. But something about you...’

Sunny was beginning to feel faint. ‘If you don’t fancy Katherine, then what did you mean when you said that there was truth to the rumour...?’ She was struggling to think straight because all of a sudden her head was filled with the most erotic images, images that had never formed a part of her life at all. Images of her making love...giving in with wild abandon to a deep vein of passion she had never known existed in her.

Stefano grinned ruefully and she blinked because he no longer looked like the intimidating, ruthless tycoon that he was. He looked sexy and tantalisingly approachable.

‘I have my mother to thank for engineering my association with your company.’

‘Not my company,’ Sunny automatically said in a distracted voice.

Stefano smiled. ‘True. My mother...’ he raked his fingers through his hair because this was as intimate a chat with a woman as he could remember having in a very long time indeed ‘...has taken it upon herself to try and find me a nice wife ever since my daughter came to live with me after Alicia died. She’s of the opinion that a girl needs a mother and, in passing, a wife would do me good.’

‘Oh...’

‘Oh, indeed,’ Stefano said wryly. ‘When my mother puts her mind to something, she can be a force of nature. She gets convenient hearing loss when I try and explain to her that a wife isn’t going to happen.’ He hadn’t envisaged, when he’d put forward his bold proposal, that he would end up explaining any of this to her but, now that he was, he thought that it might be a good idea.

He’d always made it clear to the women he slept with that he wasn’t up for grabs. There wouldn’t be long-range plans or meet and greet the relatives or any talk at all about a future that wasn’t going to be on the cards.

If any of them decided that they could somehow find a way past those clear, simple clauses then they were destined for disappointment.

But then all those women had been eager and enthusiastic. Sunny hadn’t been either of those things and, more importantly, she’d also managed to charm his wilful daughter.

It was doubly important that she didn’t see any relationship they might have as a gateway to something meaningful because of her connection to Flora.

Would she anyway? He just didn’t know. What he did know was that, underneath the veneer, she was peculiarly vulnerable because of her background.

He wondered how it was that he knew so much about her when he hadn’t slept with her. He wondered whether instant sexual gratification had always obviated the need for meaningful personal conversations or whether his interest in her had been sparked by the fact that his daughter was part of the equation. Somehow, through her association with Flora, she had managed to find a back door into parts of him no other woman had managed to access after the bitter fallout of his marriage. Was this something that had made him curiously vulnerable to the thought of bedding her? Had the very thing that should have deterred him been the match that had lit the burning flame?

He wondered whether Alicia, the mother of his child, had ever had any real access to him or whether their doomed relationship had generated something that had seemed personal at the time but which, in retrospect, had just been the sort of intimacy that warring partners sometimes had. Intimacy of the wrong kind.

The roundabout cycle of pointless questions was irritating and he focused on the here and now.

‘She knows Katherine’s mother,’ he elaborated with a shrug, ‘and she promptly decided that a love match was on the cards.’

‘And you went along with it?’ Sunny was puzzled because that element of softness was not what she associated with him.

The conversation seemed to be getting more rather than less personal and Stefano hesitated before dismissing the distant sound of alarm bells ringing.

‘I am close to my mother,’ he told her neutrally. ‘I may not agree with her efforts to find me a suitable bride but I thought that it would cost nothing to place some of my business with your company and meet the woman, rather than staging a flat-out refusal and upsetting my mother, who, at the end of the day, is just doing what she feels is best for myself and my daughter. Naturally, I did all the necessary checks to ensure that the company was capable of delivering what I wanted of them. I wasn’t about to sacrifice my money for the sake of my mother’s whimsy.’

‘Naturally.’ Sunny cleared her throat. If he had gone full-steam ahead and tried to seduce her with his sheer overwhelming physicality she would have resisted, or at least she hoped that she would have resisted. Instead, they were talking and she got the feeling that she had, for whatever reason, been allowed into an inner circle to which not many were invited. She had no idea where that impression came from. Maybe because underneath the casual tone of his voice there was something ever so slightly...hesitant. As though he was picking his words carefully because he was in foreign territory.

It was fanciful, of course. For all she knew, this could be a tried and tested ruse to get what he wanted. State his intentions...switch tactics to persuasive conversation...then stake his claim... It helped to be cynical but not even that could kill her curiosity.

‘Your parents must have a very close marriage,’ she said wistfully. ‘I’ve always thought that people who are happily married are the ones who recommend marriage...’

‘My father’s dead but yes, they had a very happy marriage.’ He was bemused at the twists and turns their conversation was taking, whilst telling himself that exchanging a few personal details wasn’t anything of earth-shattering importance, even if those personal details were not ones he’d ever exchanged with the women who had flitted in and out of his life in the past few years.

‘Girls need a mother—’ Sunny thought of her own mother and all her tragic failings and she thought of all the allowances she had made for her ‘—so maybe your mother has a point.’ She shrugged, just in case he thought that she was overstepping the mark in giving an opinion.

‘In an ideal world—’ Stefano thought that this might be the perfect opportunity to get a few things straight ‘—Flora would have a delightful and adoring mummy, but it isn’t an ideal world. A delightful and adoring mummy would necessitate me having a wife and that’s a country I’ve visited once and have no intention of returning to.’ He drained his glass, stood up, strolled towards the wide windows that overlooked the extensive back lawns before turning to face her. ‘I’ve been married once,’ he said flatly, ‘and it was an unmitigated disaster. That’s something I need not tell you, but it might explain why there is no Katherine on the face of the earth who could entice me back into thinking that marriage is anything but a train wreck waiting to happen.’

‘That’s very cynical.’

‘You think? I’m surprised we don’t share the same sentiment.’

‘You mean because of...my background?’

‘Yes.’ Stefano was curious enough to prolong the conversation. ‘Surely you can’t tell me that you believe in fairy stories and happy endings when your mother was, from all accounts, a failed and unhappy woman and your father...was a bloke who did a runner before you were born and never looked back...?’

Sunny flushed. He wasn’t pulling any punches, was he? But there was nothing disdainful or pitying about his remarks. He was saying it like it was and, weirdly, she didn’t seem to mind that.

‘I’ve never thought about it one way or the other.’ She felt the nervous beat of the pulse at the base of her neck. His eyes resting lazily on her seemed like the whisper of a promise of things to come and every nerve in her body was on full alert, throbbing with barely contained excitement.

‘Are you asking me that because you want to warn me not to get involved with you?’

Stefano shot her a curling smile because there was unspoken acquiescence in that question, although he was certain that she barely realised that herself.

‘I’m not looking for involvement with anyone,’ Sunny dismissed. She glanced jumpily at him and licked her lips, which were dry and tingly. ‘And maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m not really interested and haven’t actually thought about it because of my background.’ She gave him a sad, twisted smile. ‘Maybe it’s because I don’t exactly have the right role models to fall back on. How could I believe in fairy tales and happy endings when I never knew what that sort of thing was like in the first place? Maybe you just can’t crave what you’ve never had or experienced.’ She wasn’t sure whether she really believed that or not. She knew that when she’d thought she’d found her soulmate she had desperately wanted the happy-ever-after ending except the soulmate hadn’t quite worked out as planned.

Since then, had she toughened up? Turned into the sort of cynical career woman who had no time for love and romance?

She’d thought she’d given up on having the sort of capacity for a physical response that was necessary for any sort of relationship, but she was wrong, wasn’t she? Turned out she did have the capacity for a physical response...

So was she kidding herself that she never thought about the future and what it might hold for her with a guy? Should the right guy come along one day?

If Stefano was warning her off getting ideas about him, as if that would ever happen in a million years, then to tell him that, for all the chaos and heartache of her background, she still believed in the enduring power of love would be a mistake.

He’d get cold feet and run a mile and—why kid herself?— she didn’t want that.

‘You don’t have to warn me off,’ she said huskily, daring to step into the unknown and feeling a shiver of molten excitement, ‘because, like I said, the last thing I would want would be involvement...’ She laughed, heady with the sensation that she was no longer talking to the formidable, feared and respected Stefano Gunn, the man who could make heads of finance quake in their shoes, whose ability to close deals and predict the stock market swings was legendary, who could command immediate attention with the snap of his fingers...

She was talking to a man who fancied her and right now she was no longer the junior in a law firm in the presence of the toughest guy in the concrete jungle. They were both adults working their way towards sleeping with one another.

It was...thrilling. It made her realise how predictable her life was. She had spent so long making sure to impose order and control, so that she would never have a runaway future, that somehow the present had become lost in the process, as had fun.

‘And especially involvement with a guy like you,’ she completed with utter honesty.

Stefano, relieved as he was to know that they were both singing from the same song sheet, was a little irked by the speed with which she had established her distance and he was particularly irked by her statement that there was no way she could become involved with someone like him.

Of course he could understand it. If she happened to be someone on the lookout for a committed relationship. But she wasn’t and he believed her. Experiences shaped people and hers had been frightful.

‘Because I would be unable to return whatever involvement you wanted?’