Buch lesen: «Hired For Romano's Pleasure»

CHAPTER ONE

‘I DON’T UNDERSTAND why you invited your ex-wife’s daughter to your birthday celebrations.’

Torre Romano could not hide his irritation as he turned away from the window at Villa Romano and looked across the study at his father. Moments ago he had been enjoying the stunning view of the Amalfi coastline—although he was of the opinion that the views from his own house in Ravello, higher up the cliffs, were better. But the bombshell his father had just dropped had re-awoken the complicated emotions that Orla Brogan evoked in him. Still.

‘I invited my stepson,’ Giuseppe said mildly. ‘Why wouldn’t I also invite my stepdaughter?’

‘It’s different with Jules. He came to live here with his mother when he was a young boy and you are the only father he has ever known.’ Torre looked away from Giuseppe’s astute gaze. ‘I barely remember Orla,’ he said, frustrated that it was not true. ‘The only time I met her was eight years ago when you married her mother. The marriage did not last for more than a handful of years,’ he reminded Giuseppe drily. ‘I know that Orla used to visit Kimberly here, but I must have been away on those occasions and I never saw her again.’

An unbidden memory flashed into Torre’s mind of Orla lying beneath him, her milky-pale skin a stark contrast to his dark tan and her hair spread like amber silk across the pillows. Unbelievably he felt his body stir. Dio! How could she still affect him all these years after he had spent just one night with her? he wondered grimly.

But the truth was that Orla was the only woman who had ever made him lose control. Eight years ago he’d taken one look at her and the promise he’d made to himself—that he would never be led by his libido, like his father—had been swept away on a riptide of lust. It had been shameful proof that he had inherited Giuseppe’s weakness for pretty women and sex.

Torre pulled his mind back to the present when he realised that his father was speaking again. ‘Orla has not been back here in the four years since her mother left me and hired a top divorce lawyer,’ Giuseppe said ruefully. ‘But I remain fond of her and I am pleased that both my stepchildren are coming to Amalfi to help me celebrate my seventieth birthday. I wonder if Jules will use the occasion to make an announcement?’

‘An announcement about what?’ Torre’s brows rose.

‘That he plans to marry Orla. Don’t look so surprised. I’m sure I mentioned that Jules had met up with her when he moved to London a few months ago to work at the English branch of ARC. Recently he has hinted that he has stronger feelings for her than simply friendship. Perhaps it is significant that Orla accepted an invitation to my birthday party and she is coming here with Jules,’ Giuseppe mused. ‘I would be delighted if my step-children from my last two marriages were themselves to marry. But what would please me most, Torre, is if you would choose a wife and provide an heir.’

Torre stifled his impatience and headed towards the door, keen to avoid a discussion with his father about the fact that at nearly thirty-four he was still unmarried. His single status was something he intended to continue for many more years. But he understood that a recent health scare had focused Giuseppe’s attention on the future of the family’s construction company Afonso Romano Construzione—known as ARC. Torre knew that his father was desperate for him to have an heir to secure the leadership of the company, and he supposed that one day he would have to do his duty and marry a woman who shared similar interests and values to him in order to have a family of his own. But, unlike his father, he had no intention of being led by his heart or his hormones.

Torre loved his father and respected his business acumen, which had helped to make ARC the biggest construction company in Italy, responsible for many of the country’s civil and infrastructure works. But outside the boardroom Giuseppe’s personal life had been less impressive. He had regularly been unfaithful to his second wife, Sandrine—Jules’s mother—and his inability to resist the countless young women who were attracted to his wealth in the way that predatory sharks were attracted to blood had made Giuseppe an object of ridicule in the press.

Eight years ago the paparazzi’s interest in Giuseppe’s private life had become frenzied when he had fallen for an English former glamour model and Z-List celebrity Kimberly Connaught. Within months of meeting her, Giuseppe had divorced Sandrine and married Kimberly. Not even Torre had been invited to his father’s secret wedding, and the first time he’d met his new stepmother had been at the party Giuseppe had thrown to celebrate the marriage.

It had been obvious to Torre that his father’s new wife was a gold-digger and he’d failed to understand how Giuseppe had been such a fool. But at the party that night he had met a red-haired witch in the guise of an angel and his arrogant belief that he was a better man than his father had come crashing down around him.

‘I’m surprised that you are pleased about the possibility of a match between Jules and Orla,’ he told Giuseppe. ‘When I was in England a month ago there was speculation in many of the newspapers that she had been awarded a huge divorce settlement from her ex-husband. Apparently her marriage to a well-known sports star lasted for less than a year before she dumped him. It would seem that Orla has inherited her mother’s gold-digger tendencies for marrying and divorcing rich men,’ Torre said sardonically. ‘If she has set her sights on Jules then God help him.’

‘I don’t believe much of what is printed in newspapers, and I certainly do not believe that Orla is interested in Jules’s money.’ Giuseppe looked closely at Torre when he gave a snort. ‘I have noticed before when I’ve spoken about Orla that you seem to have a low opinion of her, and yet you say that you hardly remember her. Did something happen between the two of you years ago? I recall that Orla rushed back to England the day after the wedding party, ostensibly because she was due to start at university.’

‘Of course nothing happened.’ Torre gave a laugh that sounded too loud to his ears. He avoided his father’s speculative gaze and shoved the image of Orla’s slender beauty to a far corner of his mind. It was a constant irritation that he had been unable to completely eradicate his memories of her. Other women regularly came and went in his life without making an impact on him and he did not understand the restless feeling that had gripped him since he’d learned that Orla was coming to Amalfi.

‘I’m merely concerned that Jules doesn’t make a fool of himself over her. You know what a dreamer he is,’ he said, striving for a casual tone. But as he strode out of the study he had the uncomfortable sense that Giuseppe’s shrewd grey eyes had seen more than Torre wanted him to.

Damn it, he thought savagely. Damn her—the red-haired sorceress who had cast a spell on him that night eight years ago. Thank God he had come to his senses the next morning. Right now he had enough to deal with since his father had decided to retire and hand over the role of Joint Chairman and CEO of the company to him. Torre had always known that it was his destiny and he was determined to run ARC as successfully as his father and grandfather, Afonso, had done. But he had a passion for engineering, and after he had qualified as a civil engineer he had carved out a niche role for himself as an expert advisor and troubleshooter, visiting ARC construction projects around the world.

He enjoyed his job and the freedom it gave him, and he did not relish the restraints that would inevitably come with leadership. He acknowledged that he had a few nerves, too, at the prospect of filling his father’s shoes. The last thing he needed was to meet Orla again and be reminded of the shameful lapse of judgement he had made eight years ago.

If his stepbrother had fallen for Orla’s charms then good luck to him, Torre told himself. But his inexplicable black mood lingered and he felt a sudden need to get out of the house. Muttering a curse, he grabbed his car keys from the table in the hall and strode outside to where the current love of his life was parked on the driveway.

* * *

Unusually for midsummer there was little traffic on the Amalfi Drive. The road on the iconic stretch of Italian coastline hugged the steep cliffs between Sorrento and Salerno and was famous for its hairpin bends. Orla was glad Jules had said he would drive so that she could enjoy the spectacular view of the turquoise Tyrrhenian Sea far below.

But the tranquillity was suddenly shattered by the loud roar of a car coming up behind them. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw a red sports car gaining fast on the hire car they had collected at Naples airport. The engine screamed as the sports car overtook them on a steep bend. Orla held her breath, fearing it would crash through the railings at the side of the road and tumble over the edge of the cliff. In seconds the sports car had streaked past and was a flash of brash scarlet in the distance.

‘There goes my stepbrother in his new toy,’ Jules murmured. ‘The latest model is reputed to be the quickest and most expensive car on the planet. Torre’s twin passions in life are fast cars and women.’

Torre. Foreboding set like wet concrete in the pit of Orla’s stomach. She had caught a glimpse of the driver of the open-topped sports car but there hadn’t been enough time for her to recognise him. For a moment her nerve faltered and she was tempted to ask Jules to turn the car around and take her back to the airport. Take her anywhere as long as it was far away from Villa Romano and the man who had invaded her dreams for eight long years.

She firmed her jaw. Enough was enough, she told herself. She’d allowed a stupid mistake when she had spent one night with Torre to haunt her for too long. Everyone had regrets—and he was hers. But she was twenty-six, not the naïve eighteen-year-old who had scrambled back into her clothes and fled from his room with his mocking taunt that she was a gold-digger, like her mother, ringing in her ears.

In the intervening years she had survived an abusive marriage, and she would survive meeting Torre again and be stronger when she discovered—as she was confident she would—that all she had felt for him eight years ago had been an embarrassing teenage crush.

Ten minutes later, when they turned through the gates of Villa Romano the sports car was on the driveway but there was no sign of its owner, Orla noted thankfully. Jules parked the hire car and as Orla opened the passenger door the heat outside felt intense. She grabbed her wide-brimmed straw hat from the back seat, aware that her skin would burn—or, worse, freckle—if she spent any time in the sun. Her milky complexion and pale red hair were a legacy of her Irish heritage on her father’s side—although on those precious visits to Liam Brogan’s home on the wild, wet, west coast of Ireland when she’d been a child, sunburn had not been a problem, she remembered ruefully.

She gathered her long hair in one hand and piled it on top of her head before jamming the hat on. An evocative citrus scent from the lemon groves drifted on the slight breeze and mingled with the sweet fragrance of the honeysuckle that grew over the walls of the villa. On her first visit to the Amalfi Coast a month before her nineteenth birthday, Orla had fallen in love with the stunning scenery and intensity of colour—the vivid pink of the bougainvillea, the dark green of the elegant cypress trees and the cerulean blue of the sea surrounding the rocky headland where Villa Romano had stood for two hundred years.

Eight years ago she had come to Amalfi when her mother had become the third wife of Giuseppe Romano, the billionaire head of Italy’s largest construction company. But the marriage—like most of Kimberley’s marriages—had been short-lived and Orla had not been back to Villa Romano since her mother had returned to London and set about spending her divorce settlement.

Initially when she had received an invitation to Giuseppe’s seventieth birthday party, she’d planned to invent an excuse for why she couldn’t attend—knowing that Torre was bound to be there. But she had grown fond of her stepfather while her mother had been married to him. He had made her feel welcome at Villa Romano whenever she’d visited—only after she’d ascertained that Torre would not be at his father’s home—and she had kept in touch with Giuseppe after he and her mother had divorced.

When Jules had suggested that she could travel to Amalfi with him, Orla had decided it was time she faced her nemesis. Meeting Torre again was something she needed to do so that she could put the past behind her and move on with her life.

A member of the villa’s staff came down the steps to greet them and Jules strolled over to speak to the man while Orla looked around at the beautiful formal gardens.

‘There seems to be some confusion over which rooms we have been allocated,’ Jules told her when he returned to her side. ‘Apparently some distant relatives of Giuseppe have arrived unexpectedly and Mario is not sure where to take our bags. I’ll go and talk to the housekeeper and find out what’s happening.’

‘I’ll join you inside in a minute. I want to stretch my legs after the journey.’

‘All right, but keep in the shade. You are not used to the heat of the Italian sun, chérie.’

Orla smiled as she watched Jules walk back to the house. French by birth, he had a gentle Gaelic charm, and he had always been kind to her when she had visited her mother at Villa Romano, even though Kimberly had been the reason that Giuseppe had divorced his mother. Jules had continued to have a good relationship with his stepfather and six months ago he had been appointed chief accountant at the English branch of the Romano family’s construction company. Orla lived in a studio flat not far from ARC UK’s offices after she’d been forced to sell her mother’s luxury apartment to pay off Kimberley’s debts. She had got into the habit of meeting Jules for dinner once or twice a week and he had proved to be a good friend while she had struggled to cope with her mother’s serious health problems.

At the same time Orla had been vilified in the tabloids for supposedly receiving a huge divorce settlement from her wealthy ex-husband. She had not asked for or received a penny from David, but that hadn’t stopped the lurid newspaper headlines speculating on how much money she had ‘earned’ for ten months of marriage.

No, she was not going to think about the past, she ordered herself. She was finally free from David, and in many ways her disastrous marriage had made her stronger. Never again would she allow a man to control her as her ex-husband had done.

She strolled across the drive, inexplicably drawn towards the sports car. For the first time she understood how a car could be described as sexy. The sleek lines and scarlet bodywork demanded attention and the black leather interior was rampantly masculine. The car promised excitement and danger, and no doubt its owner would promise the same. But she did not want excitement, Orla reminded herself as she ran her hand over the sensuous curves of the vehicle.

She had thought that her marriage to David would give her the security she had craved all her life, but she had felt vulnerable and sometimes even afraid for her safety when he had been at the red wine. His mood could change in an instant, and for a long time she had thought she’d done something wrong that had triggered his outbursts of temper.

A flash of pain crossed her face and she instinctively lifted her hand and traced her fingers over the slightly raised three-inch scar that ran from the edge of her eyebrow up to her hairline. She wore her hair parted on one side so that it covered the scar, and make-up disguised its redness. But it would always be there, an ugly reminder of why she dared not trust her own judgement and would never trust a man again.

She had never told anyone about the mental and physical abuse she had been subjected to during her short, unhappy marriage to an English professional cricket player. David Keegan was popular with fans and the media for his affable nature on the cricket pitch and during post-match interviews. Orla was sure no one would believe that David had a drink problem, or that alcohol turned him into an aggressive monster.

The press had accused her of callously breaking David’s heart and ruining his career when she had left him days before he had captained the England cricket team against Australia in the famous Ashes series. England had lost the series and David had lost his captaincy. In an interview he had blamed his heartbreak over his wife’s desertion for his dire performance on the cricket pitch.

It had been easy to blame herself for the problems in their relationship when David had constantly undermined her confidence and made her believe she was as useless as he told her she was. It had taken a physical assault by him to bring her to her senses. She’d stopped pretending that everything was all right in her marriage and acknowledged that David had killed her feelings for him. If she had stayed with him, she’d been scared that the next time he hit her, he might kill her.

Taking back control of her life had been a hard process but Orla had discovered that she possessed a strong will and a gritty determination to survive. Returning to Villa Romano when she knew that Torre would be here was another step away from the girl with a head full of romantic dreams she had once been to the independent woman she was now.

‘She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’

The voice from behind Orla was rich and dark like bitter-sweet chocolate laced with a hint of sardonic amusement that made her nerves jangle. She had heard the voice in her dreams countless times, but now it was real and her stomach lurched. She snatched her hand away from the car.

It was said that some men bought high-powered, piston-throbbing cars to compensate for their own inadequacies. The last time she had seen Torre he had been twenty-four or -five, but now he was in his early thirties, and he was probably losing his hair and gaining a paunch, she told herself.

Heartened by the thought, she spun round to face him and her heart slammed into her ribs as her eyes collided with his glittering grey gaze. She had an odd feeling that he had been staring at her rather than the car.

Eight years ago Torre had been impossibly handsome. With his perfectly symmetrical features and impeccably groomed image he could have been a male model in a glossy magazine. Now he was even more devastating than Orla’s memories of him and his raw masculinity and smouldering sensuality evoked an incandescent heat in her blood.

Too late she realised that she should have heeded her instincts on the journey to Villa Romano and asked Jules to turn the car around. But she was not the awestruck girl who had once believed in fairy-tales and seen Torre as her Prince Charming who would rescue her and keep her safe. She had learned the hard way that the only person who could protect her was herself and she was pleased that her voice sounded cool and crisp when she spoke.

‘Hello, Torre. Jules said it was you who overtook us on the Amalfi road, driving like a lunatic.’

He smiled, revealing a flash of white teeth in his darkly tanned face. Orla felt heat unfurl in the pit of her stomach and with a sense of shock she recognised the coiling sensation low in her pelvis as desire. It had been so long since she had felt the heady sensation of sexual attraction. She’d believed that David had destroyed those feelings in the same way he had destroyed her pride and self-respect. It was disconcerting to discover that her libido was alive and fully functioning, and a disaster that it was Torre who had set her pulse hammering.

Memories pushed into her mind of his mouth on hers. The wild sweetness of their first kiss was etched indelibly on her soul. Eight years ago he had taken everything that she had offered him with a naivety that—looking back—made her want to weep. He had taken her innocence and then he’d crushed her as if she were an insect that he had ground beneath his heel.

‘I admit I was driving fast but I know every twist and bend of the Amalfi road like the back of my hand,’ Torre drawled as he strolled towards her. ‘Besides, everyone needs a little danger to add spice to their life.’ His grey eyes gleamed like polished steel. He halted in front of her, so close that Orla was afraid he would notice the erratic thud of the pulse at the base of her throat, and she instinctively lifted her hand and played nervously with the gold chain she wore around her neck.

‘I don’t. I think it’s stupid to take unnecessary risks.’ She raised her chin so that she could look directly at his face and discovered that he was taller than she had remembered. Even though she was wearing three-inch heels, Torre towered over her. She wondered why she felt a need to challenge him when to do so was dangerous. It would be far more sensible to walk away from him. But she couldn’t seem to move. Her feet refused to follow the command sent by her brain and she was so utterly mesmerised by him that she froze when he stretched his hand towards her and took off her sunglasses.

‘Your eyes are the exact colour I remember them. Hazel, with flecks of olive-green,’ he murmured.

She heard the uneven sound of her shallow breaths and was sure he must hear the loud thunder of her heart. For the past month, since she had accepted the invitation to Giuseppe’s birthday party, Orla had prepared herself for the inevitable meeting with Torre. In her mind the scene had played out with her being cool and dismissive, while Torre was contrite and regretful that he had rejected her years ago.

But her body wasn’t following the script. She felt dizzy and light-headed—which could be a reaction to the heat, she hastened to assure herself. More difficult to explain was the heaviness in her breasts and the tingling sensation of her nipples tightening into hard peaks that she prayed were not visible beneath her dress.

‘Do you mind?’ She welcomed her flare of temper as she snatched her sunglasses from his hand and slipped them back on. She felt safer with her eyes hidden behind the dark lenses. ‘I’m surprised you remember the colour of my eyes. I remember very little about you from eight years ago.’

To her annoyance he did not appear to be bothered by her sharp retort and his smile widened into a grin that made Orla catch her breath. ‘Then it is fortunate that we have this opportunity to become reacquainted,’ he murmured.

‘Why?’ she asked bluntly. ‘I do remember that you couldn’t wait to see the back of me after we had spent the night together.’

Torre did not seem to hear her, and the dark intensity of his stare caused the coiling sensation inside her to tug harder, sharper so that she wanted to give in to a crazy impulse to step closer to him and press her pelvis up against his.

She licked her dry lips and the darting movement of her tongue seemed to fascinate him. His smile faded and something almost feral sharpened his features. ‘You were lovely when you were eighteen,’ he said in a harsh tone. ‘But now... Dio—’ his voice thickened ‘—you are astonishingly beautiful.’

Orla stared right back at him, unable to move, barely able to breathe. He filled her vision and she was as blinded by him as if she had looked directly at the sun. He looked like a fallen angel or maybe the devil incarnate. Either way, he exuded a simmering sex appeal that made her tremble deep inside.

In the years since she had last seen Torre, his so-perfect-he-could-have-been-airbrushed features had become harder and more rugged. The sculpted angles and planes of his face were softened slightly by the sensual curve of his lips. Orla guessed that the dark stubble on his square jaw would feel abrasive beneath her fingertips, but his almost black hair would, she was sure, feel like silk if she ran her hands through its thickness.

Around them the air was hot and still, thick with a fierce tension that threatened Orla’s composure. She could not look away from Torre, from his mouth that was somehow much too close to hers, although she hadn’t noticed him move.

‘People can change,’ he muttered half under his breath.

‘What do you mean?’ She wondered if she had misheard him or misunderstood what he’d said. Her brain wasn’t functioning properly.

He stepped closer to her and her senses were immediately swamped by the heat that emanated from him. The spicy scent of his aftershave was evocatively familiar and she felt dizzy and strangely disconnected from reality.

‘Orla,’ Torre said in a low, urgent voice that rolled through her like thunder and created a storm inside her. Nothing had prepared her for the lightning bolt of sexual awareness that flared between them. She felt drawn to him as if there was an invisible cord around them that wound tighter and tighter, and her heart pounded as Torre angled his mouth over hers and his warm breath grazed her lips.