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CHAPTER ONE

NIC FALCONE STEPPED through the service door into the casino, glancing around with a deeply satisfied sweep. Yes, this had been a good idea, acquiring and restoring this fading hacienda-style hotel deep in the western desert, yet still within reach of both Las Vegas and the West Coast. Another prestigious money-spinner for the global Falcone chain of luxury hotels. More glittering proof of just how far he’d come in his thirty-odd years—from the backstreets of Rome to being one of the richest men in Italy.

The fatherless slum kid who’d started his first job at barely sixteen in the basement—literally—of the fabled Viscari Roma hotel had, by his own gruelling efforts, climbed as high as that dilettante playboy Vito Viscari, who’d had a legendary hotel chain handed to him on a plate by his family.

Nic’s expression shadowed as he remembered. Through dogged hard work he’d worked his way up through the ranks at the Viscari Roma, every promotion striven for, until he had finally been in line for the big move into management that he had known he was totally qualified for.

But Vito’s uncle, the chairman of the company, had instead preferred that his inexperienced nephew—fresh out of university, with none of the hard-earned, hands-on track record that Nic had under his belt—should get a taste of his future inheritance.

Nic had been passed over—and from that moment he’d known that from now on he would work only for himself. The seeds of the Falcone hotel chain had been sown. Falcone would be the rival that would outsoar Viscari once and for all.

And through a level of hard work that had absorbed his whole life Nic had succeeded—fantastically. So much so that last year he had been able to swoop, like his namesake the predatory falcon, to take ruthless advantage of an internal power struggle within the divided Viscari family and snap up an entire half of the Viscari portfolio of hotels in a blatantly hostile acquisition.

It had proved, though, to be a triumph that had turned to ashes. Yet again Nic had felt the pampering hand of nepotism thwarting him. This time it had been, of all things, Vito’s mother-in-law, persuading Nic’s own investors, who’d funded his acquisition, to sell the hotels back to her so she could hand them over to her son-in-law, Vito.

Yet again Vito had prospered without lifting a finger for himself—thanks to help from his family.

But the determination that had lifted Nic from the backstreets had kicked in again, and in the months since losing his grip on the Viscari portfolio he had reacted by lining up a string of potential new Falcone properties, including this, the newly opened Falcone Nevada, with its oh-so-lucrative on-site casino.

His keen eyes swept the crowded gaming floor as he strolled forward, noting that a good few of the gamblers had likely come over from the conference wing of the hotel, where a gathering of astrophysics academics were holding their annual shindig. Including the cluster of young hopefuls now quitting the bar area to head to the gaming floor. Leaving behind a woman who was now raising a hand to them in a casual goodnight.

A woman who halted him in his tracks. Tall, graceful and dazzlingly blonde.

Every sense went on high alert. In his time he’d seen—and sampled—many, many beautiful women. But none like this. He felt his stomach muscles clench, held his breath. His eyes fastened on her. And desire—hot, intense and instant—quickened...

* * *

Fran watched the post-grad students go off to buy their chips and hoped they wouldn’t lose their shirts at the tables. They were clearly in demob happy mood and making the most of this, the final night of the conference. As for herself, she should head off, for she still had a poster session to give the following morning, before the plenary session, and it wouldn’t hurt to run through her presentation again.

But as she turned back towards the barman to call for her bill a voice behind her spoke.

‘No temptation to try your luck at the tables?’

It was a deep voice, with an American accent that did not sound western, and it held a gravelled timbre that made her turn.

And as she did so her eyes widened.

Oh, wow...

The silent exclamation, as instinctive as it was unstoppable, resonated in her consciousness.

The man who stood there, his pose deceptively relaxed, was tall—easily topping her own willowy figure—with broad shoulders, lean hips and a muscled chest that looked as if it could take a punch without even noticing.

In fact, she registered, in her subliminal sweep of his features, it looked as if his nose, set in a face that was hard-planed and strong-jawed, had been on the receiving end of a slug at some stage.

The slight bump was a flaw that only added to his powerful appeal. The man might be in a tux, but everything about him said tough.

Part of the security team here? she wondered, a mind still reeling from the visceral impact he’d made on her. It had been like walking into a wall—a wall she’d never seen coming.

For a second—a sub-second—she was frozen, taking him in, reacting to him on a level at which she never, just never, reacted to men. Not even the formidably good-looking Cesare, the man she had so nearly married, had had the overpowering instantaneous impact the man standing here now was having on her.

He’s nothing like the men I usually find attractive!

With the exception of Cesare, with his hawkish, aristocratic demeanour, she’d always only gone for men with studious looks—not the muscled type that she’d always regarded as...well, brutish.

But there was nothing brutish about this man. Not with eyes like that. Glinting with sharp intelligence.

And blue—piercing blue—which is really weird, because the tan of his skin tone and the sable of his hair indicates Hispanic, probably...

Yet even as she made that reasonable assumption she realised she needed to do something other than just gaze dumbstruck at him. Should she acknowledge his remark? Without vanity, she knew from experience that her blonde looks drew male eyes—and more—and if she was chatted up she normally kept her reaction vague to the point of evasive until she could get away or the man gave up. If absolutely necessary she froze them out.

For the moment, though, she went for option one, and gave a brief, impersonal flicker of a smile and a demurring shake of her head.

‘Not my thing...gambling,’ she replied, glad to accept the leather-bound drinks bill, and jot her room number on it.

‘You’re part of the conference?’

Again, the deep, slightly gravelled voice made her glance up as she pushed the folder back to the barman.

‘Yes,’ she acknowledged.

She moved to slip off the high stool, and immediately the man’s hand was there, guiding her. She glanced at him, murmuring her thanks, but wished that she could retain the air of impersonal indifference that she knew she should be displaying at this time.

Only it was impossible to do so. Impossible to do anything but feel the extraordinary visceral impact on her that he was having.

An impact that suddenly increased exponentially.

He was smiling—and the smile was like the smile of a desert wolf.

Fran felt her lungs squeeze, her breath catch. The smile was swift—a sudden indentation of the firm mouth, a brief flash of teeth, a lightening of his tough features as if the sun had just come out and then disappeared again.

‘Forgive me for sounding clichéd, but you don’t look the least like an astrophysicist!’

Amusement played around his firm mouth, as if he knew perfectly well that it was, indeed, a clichéd observation, but didn’t give a damn. Because the light in those blue, blue eyes of his was telling her just why he’d said what he had.

He wanted to do anything to keep the conversation going.

Fran lifted an eyebrow. Whatever was going on here, it was unlikely to be anything to do with the man’s role as a member of the hotel’s security team, if that was who he was, given the air of toughness radiating from him. And if he wasn’t—if he was just another guest—then that made it no better. He was still chatting her up. So maybe she should just call time and walk.

Except that she didn’t want to. The sudden fizzing in her veins, the catch in her heart rate, was telling her that she was reacting to this man as she had never reacted to any man before—that something was happening to her that had never happened to her before.

So, instead of whatever she might have been planning to reply to him with, she could hear her own voice, with a clear hint of answering amusement in it, saying, ‘And you’ve encountered many astrophysicists in your time, have you?’

She was conscious that her eyebrow had lifted, just as her mouth had twitched in amusement, conscious too of how that flashing smile had come again. Her sense was that here was a man totally at ease with himself. Even if he was a security guy, chatting up one of the guests in the hotel he worked in, he didn’t care—and he was inviting her not to care either. He was a man who knew he was blatantly accosting a woman who had caught his eye...

She was conscious that long, dark lashes had swept down over those brilliant blue eyes as he answered her in turn.

‘Enough,’ he said laconically.

Fran’s eyes narrowed deliberately. ‘Name three,’ she challenged.

He laughed—a low, attractive sound that went with the flashing smile, and the brilliant blue eyes and the tough face and the tougher body. All of which were doing incredible things to her.

She felt herself reel inwardly.

What is happening to me? I get chatted up by some guy strolling up to me in a bar at a casino hotel and suddenly I feel like I’m eighteen again. Not a sober-minded post-doc on the far side of twenty-five, who writes abstruse scientific papers on cosmology at a prestigious West Coast university.

Hard-working research academics didn’t go doolally because some muscled hunk smiled at them. And nor, came the even more sobering thought, did the woman who was her identity as well as Dr Fran Ristori.

Donna Francesca di Ristori. Offspring of two noble houses—one Italian, one English—both centuries old, with bloodlines that could be traced back to the Middle Ages, and estates and lands, castles and palazzos. She was the daughter of Il Marchese d’Arromento, and granddaughter of one of the peers of the British realm, the Duke of Revinscourt.

Not that anyone here in the USA knew that—or cared. In academia only the quality of your research counted, nothing else. It was something that her mother—born Lady Emma, now Marchesa d’Arromento—had never really understood. But then her mother had never really understood why Fran had turned away from the life she’d been born to in order to follow her deep love of learning to the halls of academia.

It had caused, Fran knew, something of a rift between them, and it was only because Fran had agreed to marry into the Italian aristocracy that her mother had been reconciled to her research career.

But last year Fran had broken up with Cesare, Il Conte di Mantegna, whom she had long been expected to marry, and now her mother was barely speaking to her.

‘But he was perfect for you!’ her mother had cried protestingly. ‘You’ve known each other all your lives and he would have let you continue with all this star-gazing you insist on as well as being his Contessa!’

‘I got a better offer,’ was all Fran had been able to say.

It had been an offer her mother could never have appreciated—the exciting invitation to join the research team of a Nobel Laureate out in California.

Fran had been relieved to take the offer, and not just for herself. Cesare was a friend—a good friend—and he would always be a friend, but it had turned out that he was actually in love with someone else and had since married her.

Fran was glad for Cesare, and for Carla, his new bride, and the baby that had been born to them, and wished them every happiness.

She had moved out to the West Coast, rented an apartment, and was revelling in the heady atmosphere of one of the world’s most advanced cosmology research centres. Although it was strange not to have Cesare in her life any longer—even long-distance, across the Atlantic—she had joyfully immersed herself in her work, thrilled to be assisting the famous Nobel Laureate.

Except that this last semester her revered professor had suffered a heart attack and retired prematurely, and his successor wasn’t a patch on him. Already Fran had resolved to seek another post, another university. She would see out this conference and then start actively looking.

‘OK—I fold.’ The man blatantly chatting her up held up a large, square-palmed hand to indicate defeat. ‘You called my bluff.’

The flashing smile came again, and yet again Fran felt her heart give a kick. Tomorrow’s plenary session, the poster session she was giving—both vanished.

She gave a laugh. She couldn’t help it. The guy was so sure of himself. Usually that put her right off, but somehow, in this man, it was simply one more part of his appeal. As to why he had that appeal to her—she just could not analyse that. It was beyond rational thought.

‘Well, we had the conference dinner tonight, so we’re all togged up in our best bib and tucker,’ she answered him. ‘None of us are looking like nerdy scientists right now!’

Blue, blue eyes swept over her. Open in their admiration for her.

‘Sicuramente no.’ Definitely not.

The murmured syllables were audible, and Fran’s expression changed automatically. He wasn’t Hispanic after all...

‘Sei Italiano?’

The question came from her before she could stop himself. The man’s expression changed as she asked it. Slight surprise and then clear satisfaction.

Fran realised she’d just given him a whole new avenue to chat her up with. And she found she didn’t mind at all.

She didn’t notice the slight flicker in his expression as he answered her, nor the very slight air of evasion in his voice.

‘Many Americans are,’ he said, speaking English now. ‘E sei?’ And you?

‘Italian on my father’s side. English on my mother’s,’ answered Fran.

With every passing exchange she could feel herself simply giving in to this—whatever it was—and still not really knowing why it was happening. Why she should be giving the time of day—make that the time of nearly midnight!—to a muscled hunk who was blazingly sure of himself, blatantly chatting her up, when she really ought to be heading back to her room to go through her presentation for tomorrow.

She only knew a sense of heady breathlessness that had come from nowhere the moment he’d spoken to her. Knew that he was suddenly making her feel so, so different from the sober-minded research academic she knew herself to be—so, so different from the stately Donna Francesca she had been born to be.

He was speaking again. ‘English, huh? I thought you were from the East Coast.’

‘I lived there for a while,’ she allowed. ‘Studying for my doctorate.’

A sudden whoop coming from the direction of the post-grads gathered at one of the blackjack tables distracted her and she glanced towards them.

She frowned suddenly. ‘I hope they’re not trying to beat the dealer by counting in cahoots!’ she exclaimed. ‘They’re all maths hotshots, so they probably could if they tried, but I know casinos don’t like that...’

‘Don’t worry—the croupiers know not to let that happen.’

The words were reassuring, the tone laconic, but Fran glanced at him all the same.

‘You sound like you know that,’ she said.

He nodded, the blue eyes on her. ‘I do,’ he answered.

She looked at him. So that sounded as if he was definitely part of hotel security, didn’t it? But she still wasn’t sure.

Then she realised she didn’t care either way. He was speaking again, in that deep, laconic and oh-so-attractive voice of his.

‘So, has it been a good conference for you?’ he was asking.

She nodded. He was keeping her in conversation. She knew he was, he knew she knew he was, and she was OK with it. She didn’t know why she was OK with it, but she was. And right now she would give him an answer to his question.

‘Yes—it’s been mentally stimulating. Full-on, but good. And this hotel...’ she gestured with her hand ‘...is fantastic. I don’t really know the Falcone chain, but they’ve pulled out the stops here. My only regret is that I haven’t made enough use of the facilities—I haven’t even had a chance to try out the pool. I definitely will tomorrow, though, before we leave. It’s just a shame I won’t have time to take any of the tours on offer—not even the one to the Grand Canyon!’

The minute she’d said that she regretted it. Oh, Lord, did he think she was angling for an invitation? She hoped not.

To her relief he let it pass and simply said, ‘I’m glad you like the hotel—a lot of work went into it.’

There was professional pride in his voice—she could hear it. It confirmed to her that he must, indeed, be part of the security team that any hotel—let alone one that included a casino—would surely need.

‘I’d prefer it without the casino, but there you go. When in Nevada...’ she finished insouciantly.

‘Casinos make a lot of money,’ came the laconic reply, and there was another sweep of those long dark lashes over those blue, blue eyes.

Another whoop of triumph came from the post-grads at the blackjack table.

Fran laughed. ‘Maybe a little less tonight,’ she observed dryly.

‘Maybe,’ he allowed, with a glint of amusement in his face, his eyes, around his mouth.

The amusement didn’t leave his face, but suddenly there was something else there in his expression—a question. A question that told her, with a quiver of reassurance, that maybe he was not so absolutely sure of himself as he was giving out. And she liked him the more for it.

‘And maybe...’ he went on, and there was a speculative look in his eyes now that went with the question, that went with the sense that he was in no way taking her answer for granted. ‘Maybe,’ he continued, the change in his tone of voice matching the change in his expression, ‘if I asked if I might buy you a drink to celebrate your fellow astrophysicists’ obvious win over there, you might say yes?’

Fran looked at him, glanced back over towards the blackjack table, then looked back at the man who had been chatting her up and was now clearly intent on getting to second base.

Should she co-operate? Did she want to? Or should she say no politely and head to her room to mug up on her presentation?

Even as she cogitated, in the milliseconds it took for her brain’s synapses to flash their signals to each other, she felt another emotion stab through her. A sense of restlessness, of wanting something more than to give a fluent presentation the next day. Something more than the hard year of non-stop slog she’d put in since breaking up with Cesare, taking up her research post with the world-famous Nobel Laureate, producing a clutch of published papers with him and his team.

Whoever this blue-eyed, tough-faced, muscled hunk was, and why it was that, for reasons she could not yet figure out, he was capable of drawing her into conversation the way he so effortlessly had, only one thought was dominating her consciousness right now.

No, she didn’t want to retire meekly to her room. She wanted, instead, to keep this conversation going, keep this encounter going—keep the rush of fizzing blood in her veins from falling flat.

A smile parted her lips and she climbed back on to the high bar stool. He let her this time, without trying to help. She looked straight at him. Liking what she saw. Going for broke.

‘Why not?’ she said.

* * *

Nic’s gaze swept over her with distinct appreciation as she resettled herself on the bar stool. And with gratification too. He hadn’t been entirely sure she would accept his move on her. But that, he knew, was part of her appeal. He was bored with women being over-keen on him, and maybe that was why he was being evasive about who he was—Nicolo Falcone, billionaire founder and owner of the Falcone hotel chain.

For that very reason he threw a warning glance at the barman as he glided up to them, and received an infinitesimal nod of acknowledgement in return.

They gave their orders—a Campari and soda for her, a bourbon for him—and Nic lowered himself to sit beside her on the next bar stool.

‘So,’ he opened, ‘are you giving any papers yourself at the conference?’

‘Yes, a post—that’s a small presentation—about where I’ve got to in my current research. It’s for tomorrow, before the final plenary session.’

‘What’s it about—and would I even understand the title?’ he added with good-humoured self-deprecation.

For all that her incandescent beauty lit up the room for him, she lived in a world that was far, far distant from the cut and thrust of his.

He watched her take a sip from her drink, admiring her delicate fingers, the elegant air she had about her. She was wearing a mid-price-range cocktail dress, with a square neckline and cap sleeves, which, although it was fitting for the purpose of a formal conference dinner, had little pizzazz about it. Her hair was dressed in a neat pleat, and her make-up was subdued. She looked what she was—an academic dressed up for the evening.

Desire curled in him, focussed and demanding.

She was answering him now, and he paid attention, subduing his primitive response to her.

Her voice, light and crisp in the English style, had warmed with an enthusiasm that came, he knew instinctively, from the intellectual passion in her that lit up in her eyes, animating her fine-boned face.

‘My research field is cosmology—understanding the origins and eventual fate of the universe. This poster is just one small aspect of that. I’m running observational data through a computer model, testing various options for the geometry and density of space which might indicate whether, to put it at its simplest, the universe is open or closed.’

Nic frowned in concentration. ‘What does that mean?’

Her voice warmed yet more as she explained. ‘Well, if it’s open, the expansion that started with the Big Bang will cause all the matter in the universe to be dissipated, so there will be no stars, no planets, no galaxies and no energy. It’s called heat death and it would be really boring,’ she said with a moue of dislike. ‘So I’m rooting for a closed universe, which could cause everything to eventually collapse back in a Big Crunch and trigger another Big Bang—and the universe will be reborn. Far more fun!’

Nic took a mouthful of bourbon, feeling the strong liquid ease pleasantly down his throat.

‘So, which is it?’ he asked in his laconic fashion.

She gave another moue. ‘No one knows for sure—though it’s tending towards open at the moment, alas. Whichever it is we have to accept it—even if I don’t like it.’

Nic felt himself shake his head. ‘No. I don’t buy that.’

She was looking at him questioningly, her eyes beautiful and wide.

He elaborated, his voice decisive. ‘We should never accept what we don’t like. It’s defeatist.’ His jaw set. ‘OK, maybe it applies to the universe—but it doesn’t apply to humanity. We can change things, and it’s up to us. We don’t have to accept the status quo.’

She was still looking at him, but her expression was one of curiosity now. ‘That sounds like it runs very deep in you,’ she said. Her eyes rested on him a moment, as if reading him.

He gave a half-shrug of one shoulder, as if impatient. ‘We can’t just accept things as they are.’

She frowned slightly. ‘Some things we have to, though. Some things we can’t change. Who we are, for example. Who we were born as—’

Like I was born Donna Francesca—that’s in me whether I want it to be or not. It’s part of my heritage—an indelible part. For all the changes I’ve made to my life, I can’t change my birth.

‘That’s exactly what we can change!’ There was vehemence in his reply, and he took another slug of bourbon. Memories were pressing in on him suddenly—bad memories. His hapless mother, abandoned by the man who’d fathered her son, abandoned by all of the other men who’d taken up with her—or worse. His memory darkened. Like the brute who had inflicted beatings on her until the day had come when Nic had reached his teenage years and had been strong enough to protect her from thugs like that....

I had to change my life! I had to do it for myself—by myself. There was no one to help me. And I did change it.

She was looking at him, a slightly curious look in her eyes at the vehemence of his expression, her beautiful grey eyes clear in her fine-boned face.

She gave a slow nod. ‘Then perhaps,’ she said, in an equally slow voice, ‘we have to bear in mind that old prayer, don’t we? The one that asks that we be granted the courage to change what we can, but the patience to accept what we can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.’

Nic thought about it. Then, ‘Nope,’ he said decisively. ‘I want to change everything I don’t like.’

She gave a laugh—a deliberately light one. ‘Well, you wouldn’t make a scientist, that’s for sure,’ she said.

He gave an echoing laugh, realising with a sense of shock that he had spoken more about his deepest feelings to this woman than he had ever done to anyone. It struck him that to have touched on matters that ran so very deep within him with a woman he hadn’t known existed twenty minutes earlier was....