long enough to eat a meal. The unease that had been nibbling bites out of his self-discipline for days returned in full force.
His day had had an unfortunate start with a call from his estate manager, Damien Keel. Damien, keen to get his festive calendar organised, had asked him if there would be a Christmas party this year at the castle. Ironically it was the first time that Vito had been asked that question since his brother’s death but Damien, a relatively new employee, had never been part of that loop. The first year, nobody had asked or expected a party and since then Vito had just quietly ignored that custom. Now, suddenly, he felt guilty about that break with tradition. His staff deserved the treat. Three years was long enough to make a public display of grief. He decided there and then that it was past time he reinstated normality. He glanced at Laura, happily engaged in a very long drawn-out story about yet another rival in the modelling world, and he suppressed his growing impatience. He knew he would be moving on from Laura as well.
Striding back into AeroCarlton, he glanced at Reception. There was no sign of Ava in the general office either. For a gopher she was keeping an exceptionally low profile. It was not that he wanted to see her, more that he was steeling himself to accept her presence. But it was a week since he had last laid eyes on her and he was getting curious.
‘Is Ava Fitzgerald still working here?’ he asked his PA.
‘I don’t know, sir …’
‘Find out,’ he instructed.
Ava was in the basement, the layout of which she now knew like the back of her hand. She had filed away entire boxes of documents, and when she had completed that task Karen had introduced her to her shiny new and fiendishly complex filing system and put her to work on it. In the distance she heard the lift clanging as the doors opened and she did not have long to wait for her visitor.
‘Since you won’t go out to lunch, I’ve brought lunch to you,’ a familiar voice announced.
Suppressing a groan, Ava spun round from the cabinet of files she was reorganising and smoothed down her skirt in a movement that came as naturally as breathing to her in Pete Langford’s radius. Of medium height and lanky build, Pete looked over her slender figure in a way that made her feel vaguely unclean. It was a few days since he had made his first call down to the basement to chat to her and even her display of indifference had failed to daunt him. Now he extended a panini and a soft drink to her while he lounged back against the bare table in the centre of the room.
‘Take a break,’ he urged, setting the items down on the table.
‘You shouldn’t have bought those.’ Her stomach growled because her tiny budget didn’t run to lunches. ‘Give them to someone else—I have some shopping to do.’
‘Do it after work. I’m here now,’ he pointed out as if she ought to drop everything to give him some attention.
Ava hated being railroaded and valued her freedom of choice. She didn’t fancy an impromptu lunch with Pete in the solitude of the basement and had no desire to drift into a situation where she would have to fight him off. He was the sort of guy who thought he was God’s gift and who believed persistence would pay off. One of her co-workers had already warned her that he went after all the new girls. ‘I’m going to take a break upstairs,’ she told him.
Pete sighed. ‘What’s your problem?’
‘I don’t have one. I’m just not interested,’ Ava told him baldly.
‘Are you gay?’ Pete demanded abruptly. ‘I mean, all that time in prison, I suppose you didn’t have much choice …’
Ava lost colour and stiffened. ‘Who told you I was in prison?’
‘Was it meant to be hush-hush? Everybody knows.’
‘It’s not something I talk about,’ Ava retorted curtly, trying not to react to the news that her past was an open secret amongst her co-workers, some of whom had proved quite reluctant to speak to her. The bite of humiliation, the pain of being the oddity and distrusted while people speculated about her crime, cut deep.
‘Who told you?’ another, harsher male voice enquired from the doorway. ‘That was supposed to be confidential information.’
Ava levelled her stunned gaze on Vito. He must have used the stairs because she hadn’t heard the lift. He stood at the door, his gorgeous eyes a brilliant scorching gold, his lean strong face hard as granite as he awaited Pete Langford’s response. Having heard that last crack about Ava being gay, Vito was taut with outrage and simmering fury. He did not understand why he was so furious to find Ava with another man until it occurred to him that after her prison sentence she was probably a sitting duck for such an approach and that as her employer it surely behoved him to ensure that nobody took advantage of her vulnerability. Not that at that precise moment Ava actually looked vulnerable, he conceded abstractedly. Her eyes were sparkling with angry resentment and her slim but undeniably curvy figure was beautifully sculpted in the black pencil skirt and tight-fitting red shirt she wore. Without any warning, another image was superimposed over her: Ava, amazingly elfin cute in a lace corset top, short black leather skirt and clunky boots. Startled, he blinked, but the damage had been done and he was left willing back a surge of arousal.
Pete Langford had turned shaken eyes onto his employer. ‘I don’t remember who first mentioned Ava’s background,’ he mumbled evasively, his former attitude of relaxation evaporating fast below Vito’s intimidating stare. ‘Look, I’d better get back upstairs.’
‘What a good idea,’ Vito pronounced deadpan, his big powerful body taut with silent menace.
As the lift doors closed on Pete’s hurried departure Ava frowned uncertainly. ‘What was that all about?’
‘How long have you been working down here?’ Vito demanded, ignoring the question.
‘Since I finished the Christmas list that day I was in your office,’ Ava admitted.
‘You’ve been working down here a full week? Every day, all day?’
In silence, Ava nodded, entrapped by the aura of vibrant energy he emanated. Her gaze locked to his face, scanning the sinful cheekbones, the bold nose and sensual mouth. Suddenly she didn’t blame herself any more for having a crush on him at the age of sixteen. After all, he turned female heads wherever he went.
‘It must feel like you’re back in a cell!’ Vito ground out grimly, scanning the bare comfortless lines of the big room with angry dissatisfaction.
‘It’s work and I’m grateful to have a job,’ Ava countered quietly. ‘And if you think this place reminds me of prison, you have no concept of what prison life is like.’
‘Putting you down here was not my idea,’ Vito informed her grimly.
‘I didn’t think it was. You’re not petty but you did want me out from under your feet and I am literally fulfilling that function here,’ she pointed out, dimples appearing as she shot him an irreverent grin.
And that grin lit up her heart-shaped face like the dawn light. She was beautiful. Why had he never realised that before? The fine-boned fragility of her features allied with that transparent complexion and the contrast of that fiery hair was stunning. He didn’t like red hair, he reminded himself, at least he had never had a redhead in his bed. Not that he wanted her there either, he told himself fiercely, fighting the heat and tension at his groin to the last ditch of denial. He didn’t want her, he had never wanted her, he had just kissed her once because she gave him no other choice. Or was that the excuse she had labelled it? He studied that ripe pink mouth, bare as it was of lipstick, and remembered the taste of her, heady, sweet and unbearably sexy …
Ava’s bright blue eyes had widened and darkened. The sparks in the atmosphere were whirling round her faster and faster. It was like standing in the eye of a storm. She moved forward, unconsciously reacting to a sexual tension she could not withstand. Her clothes felt shrink-wrapped to her skin and she was insanely conscious of the swell of her breasts and the tingling tightness of her