I can’t. I—”
“We can,” he said fiercely. “We can do anything, if this is a dream.”
She shook her head but he drew her into his arms and kissed her, telling her without words how it could be between them, how it would be when they had all the time and privacy they needed.
Her lips softened. Clung to his. She sighed, and he cupped her face with his hands.
“Come with me,” he whispered.
She shook her head again; he kissed her again.
“Is there another man?”
“No,” she said quickly. “But—”
“We’re adults, cara. Both of us are free. Come with me. Be with me tonight.”
He kissed her and the world spun around them. Then he lifted his head and looked down into her eyes.
“Yes,” she said softly.
Nicolo felt his heart soar. He encircled her waist with his arm, drew her against him, led her to the door and unlocked it.
A man was waiting outside.
“It’s about time. I mean, how long did you…” His gaze fell on Aimee and he raised his eyebrows. “Oh. I get it. Hey, no problem. I had a babe like this with me, I’d—”
“Watch your mouth,” Nicolo said, his voice cold and flat.
The man’s face went pale. He stepped out of their way. And Aimee thought, What am I doing?
She’d just had sex with a stranger. A stranger she knew nothing about, except that he could be hard and cold and terrifying…
Her nameless lover drew her close. “Don’t think,” he said, as if he’d read her mind. “Not tonight.”
She looked up at him, into those blue eyes that could go from winter ice to summer sun. Remembered the feel of his hands on her. The feel of him in her, and let the last vestige of sanity slip away.
There was a taxi at the curb. It took them uptown, to a hotel on the park.
He had a suite. It was huge. Luxurious.
Was money a good character reference? she thought, and would have laughed but he was taking her into his arms, slipping the straps of her dress from her shoulders. Cupping her breasts, tasting them, ohgod,ohgod,ohgod…
The hours after that were a blur of excitement. Of whispers and sighs and explorations. Aimee lost herself in a sea of sensation…
And shot awake in the gray hours before dawn, suddenly aware that she was wrapped in the embrace of a man she didn’t know.
A hot tide of shame engulfed her.
Trembling, she disentangled herself from the possessive curve of his arm. Dressed in the dark, slipped from the sumptuous suite and sneaked down the service staircase because the thought of facing the elevator operator made her feel ill.
Moments later, Nicolo came awake and reached for his lover.
The bed, the sitting room, the bathroom were empty.
He cursed, pulled on trousers and shirt, hurried out into the corridor, but she was gone. He rang for the elevator. No, the operator said, he hadn’t taken anyone down to the lobby.
He went to the reception desk, demanded to know if the clerk had seen a woman with honey-blond hair and violet eyes. The answer there was the same.
She had vanished.
As the sun rose over the city, Nicolo paced his rooms while he tried to figure out how in hell he would find a nameless woman in a city of eight million people.
The one certainty was that he would find her.
Nicolo Barbieri did not believe in defeat.
By Sunday evening, Nicolo had learned an ugly lesson.
A man didn’t have to believe in defeat to be subjected to it.
You couldn’t find a woman without a name, not even if you slipped hundred-dollar bills to the club’s bouncer and all its bartenders.
They all said the same thing. Lots of women came through the doors on a Saturday night. So what if one had hair the color of honey and eyes the color of violets? That didn’t mean much to them.
All right, Nicolo told himself coldly.
It didn’t meant much to him, either.
A woman had let him pick her up and take her to bed. She’d probably done the same thing dozens of times before. So what if he never saw her again? All that bothered him was that she’d slipped from his arms without a word.
It didn’t, she didn’t, mean a thing.
He told himself that as he showered Monday morning. Told himself, too, all that mattered was what had brought him to New York. The meeting at SCB with James Black. The acquisition of the old man’s kingdom. Nothing was as important as—
The phone rang.
Nicolo flung open the shower door and grabbed for the receiver.
The woman. It had to be.
But it wasn’t. It was Black’s secretary, calling to cancel the meeting. Black was indisposed. The secretary would be in touch when he was available again.
Nicolo said all the right things. Then he hung up the phone and stared blindly at the mirror over the vanity.
Was it true? Or had Black simply decided not to see him? The old man had a reputation. He liked to treat people like marionettes.
The woman with the violet eyes was the same. She seduced a man, gave him a few hours’ taste of what it was like to possess her and then she slipped away.
Nicolo’s hands knotted into fists.
Black would pay by selling him SCB. As for the woman…She would pay, too. Somehow, he would find her and teach her what it meant to walk out on him.
He was as certain of that as he was of his next breath.
Chapter Four
SUMMER had finally arrived.
No more chilly wind and soaking rain. Instead the city was wrapped in soft breezes and warm sunshine.
The weather was so spectacular that even New Yorkers smiled at each other.
Aimee didn’t notice.
Memories of what she’d done, that she’d gone to bed with a stranger, haunted her, intruded when she least expected.
Walking down the street, she’d turn a corner and see a tall, broad-shouldered man with dark hair and her heart would skip a beat.
Or she’d be in bed, asleep, and suddenly he’d materialize in her dreams.
She’d see his beautiful, hard face. His powerful body. And he’d touch her, kiss her, do things to her no one had ever done, make her feel things she’d never felt…
Until one night in a stranger’s arms.
She tried not to think about that because it seemed so wrong. Still, in her sleep, she’d moan at his touch and awake, shaken and breathless, her skin hot, her body aching for his possession even though her conscious mind knew she despised him, despised herself…
No. It was not turning out to be a good summer, she thought as she stepped from the shower on a balmy June morning. The man. The ugliness of what she’d done.
Then, that same weekend, her grandfather’s stroke.
Her mouth tightened.
Good old Bradley had rushed to the rescue. By the time she reached the hospital, her cousin was there with two of his SCB cronies. He had a piece of paper in