The Italian's One-Night Consequence

Her glass-green eyes drifted to his forearms, strong and muscled and sprinkled with dark hair, and she wondered what it would be like to be touched by them, to have his hands roam and explore her body. Her heart picked up speed and she licked her lips, panicked by the way her body was insisting on slipping its leash and running wild.

‘Well,’ Leo drawled, his voice a low murmur that made the hairs on the nape of her neck stand on end, ‘looking at the facts: you’re on the other side of the world, without a network of fellow travelling friends, and working in a job that can’t really be classed as career-building. You haven’t mentioned anything about studying, so I’m thinking that’s not relevant. Which leads me to think that you’re running away from something. Or someone. Or both.’

Maddie laughed, but the tide of colour in her cheeks was more vibrant now. ‘My mum died,’ she said, twirling the stem of her wine glass and then pausing as he filled it with more wine. ‘I’d spent some time looking after her. It was very unexpected. Bad luck, really. She broke her leg, and it was a very complex break, but it should have been okay.’ She blinked furiously. ‘Unfortunately the operation turned out to be a fiasco. She was confined to hospital for much longer than anticipated and then she needed a great deal of further surgery. Every time she felt she was back on her feet something would go wrong and back she would have to go.’

‘How old were you when all this happened?’

‘Just before my twentieth birthday,’ Maddie admitted.

‘Must have been tough.’

‘Everyone goes through tough times.’ She brushed off any show of sympathy because she was close enough to tears already. But she could see sympathy in the deep navy eyes resting on her and that was weird, because her very first impression of him had been of a guy who was as hard as nails.

Something about the predatory way he moved, the cool, lazy self-assurance in his eyes, the arrogant set of his features... But then being wary of the opposite sex, suspecting the worst before the worst could happen, had become a way of life for her.

‘You must have,’ she said lightly, blushing. ‘Gone through rough times, I mean? Or at least had one or two hairy encounters! Isn’t that part and parcel of being a nomad? A side effect of living life as an adventurer?’

Leo was enjoying the tinge of colour staining her cheeks. Australia. Hence the golden hue of her skin. Next to her, the other women in the restaurant seemed pale and anaemic.

He shrugged, adept as always at evading any sort of real sharing. ‘Sisters? Brothers?’ he asked. ‘Anyone out there for you when your mother was ill?’

‘Just me.’ Maddie realised that somewhere along the line food had been eaten and plates cleared away. She couldn’t remember when exactly that had happened. ‘My mother was from here, actually...’

‘Ireland?’ Startled, Leo caught her eyes.

‘As a matter of fact, she was.’

Maddie wondered what he would think if she told him that she was the owner of the very store he had been busy criticising only hours before. He didn’t look the type to scare easily, but men could be funny when it came to women being higher up the financial pecking order than they were.

‘Hence you’re returning to your motherland...?’

‘I thought it made sense. I wanted to get out of Australia after...after everything...’

Leo didn’t say anything, but his gaze was penetrating.

The waiter had approached, asking them what they’d thought of their meal, pressing them to sample some dessert but they both politely declined, asking only for the bill.

Maddie reached into her rucksack, withdrawing a wallet and extracting notes.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked with a frown.

‘Paying my way.’ Maddie looked at him, surprised at his reaction to what she thought was perfectly obvious.

‘When I go out with a woman I foot the bill,’ Leo asserted.

She stiffened. ‘Not this woman. I pay my half. That way I’m in no one’s debt.’

‘The price of a cheap Italian meal doesn’t put you in my debt.’ Leo tossed a handful of euros onto the silver platter—enough to cover the meal with an overly generous tip.

‘Have you never met a man who knows how to treat a woman?’ he asked, rising to his feet.

Maddie thought of her ex-boyfriend. Adam had loved paying for things for her. Flowers, chocolates, expensive meals out—but with the lavishing of gifts had come the manacles of control, the compulsion to turn her into something he wanted. And underneath all that had been his superiority—thinking that by making her into his doll he was asserting ascendancy over her, owning her.

But she’d remained the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and sure enough that was something that couldn’t be buried under gifts and presents. Inevitably she’d learned a valuable lesson in the perils of ever thinking that someone rich and well-connected could ever be anything but condescending and manipulative.

Anyway, all those wildly expensive gifts had made her feel horribly uncomfortable, and she certainly didn’t like the idea of Leo or anyone else paying for her. As she had found to her cost, there was no such thing as a free lunch.

‘Are you asking me if I’ve ever met a man who knows how to reach for his wallet and buy me pretty baubles?’ She slapped a few euros on the table. The waiter was going to be very happy indeed with the extravagant tip coming his way. ‘Because if that’s what you’re asking then, yes, I have. And it didn’t work out for me. Which is why I prefer to keep things simple and pay my way.’

She stood up, and Leo shrugged, but his deep, dark eyes were assessing and thoughtful.

‘Far be it from me to tear someone away from her closely held principles,’ he murmured.

They headed outside, walking in the balmy summer air in no particular direction.

Except with some surprise Maddie realised that her legs were somehow moving towards the honeycomb of streets where her grandfather’s house was. It was on the outskirts of the city centre and, whilst the location was to die for, the house was not nearly as grand as some of the others and was in a state of disrepair.

The old man, so she had been told by her solicitor, had gradually downsized over the years, more and more as his healthy income had been whittled away to next to nothing, lost in gambling dens and crates of whiskey.

Maddie had wondered whether the absence of his only child had perhaps fuelled that spiral of despair, which had made her even more motivated to accept the challenge that had been bequeathed to her.

She stole a sneaky glance at the towering, over-the-top, sex-on-legs guy next to her and suddenly felt ashamed that she had snapped at him for trying to be a gentleman when in all likelihood he couldn’t afford it any more than she could.

‘Sorry,’ she apologised sheepishly. ‘You hit a sore spot there.’

Leo paused and looked down at her, holding her eyes with his, his expression speculative.

Her body trembled as she gazed back up at him, her eyes undoubtedly betraying her want.

‘I’ll be on my way,’ Leo murmured, breaking eye contact to stare up the road which was still as busy now as it had been hours previously. New York was not the only city, it would seem, that never slept.

‘Leo...’ Maddie breathed.

She wanted him. She didn’t know whether it was because she was lonely or because the unexpected stirring of attraction had reminded her that she was still young after all. Maybe he had unlocked some realisation that she couldn’t remain a prisoner of her past for the rest of her life.

Or maybe he was just so damned sexy that she simply couldn’t resist the pull of raw, primal lust.

Two ships passing in the night, she thought...

‘Do you want me to kiss you?’ Leo asked on a husky murmur, still not touching her.

‘No!’ Thank goodness they had managed to find themselves in a quiet corner of the otherwise busy street.

‘Then you need to stop looking at me like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you want to eat me up...like you’d like me to eat you up.’