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“You’re embarrassed by how strong the attraction is,” Vittorio deduced after watching her for a moment.
He sounded amused. Gwyn’s stomach cramped with self-consciousness. Could her face get any hotter?
“This releasing of compromising photos is very shrewd,” he said in an abrupt shift.
His tone suggested it was an item of political news, not a gross defilement of her personal self. His finger rested across his lips in contemplation.
“Jensen has very cleverly made himself appear a victim,” he said. “Whatever story he comes up with, it will point all the scandal back to you and the bank.”
“I’m aware that my life is over, thanks,” she bit out.
“Nothing is over,” he said with a cold-blooded smile. “Jensen has landed a punch, but I will hit back. Hard. You must want to set things straight? If so, you’ll help me make it clear you have zero romantic interest in Jensen.”
“How?” she choked, wondering what was in his drink that he thought he could accomplish that.
“By going public with our own affair.”
Canadian DANI COLLINS knew in high school that she wanted to write romance for a living. Twenty-five years later, after marrying her high school sweetheart, having two kids with him, working several generic office jobs and submitting countless manuscripts, she got ‘The Call’. Her first Modern Romance novel won the Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best First in Series from RT Book Reviews. She now works in her own office, writing romance.
Bought by Her Italian Boss
Dani Collins
For my editor, Kathryn, because she ‘loved, loved, loved’ it.
Contents
GWYN ELLIS LOOKED from the screen to Nadine Billaud, the public relations manager for Donatelli International, then back to the screen.
“This is you, oui?” Nadine prodded.
Gwyn couldn’t speak. Her heart had begun slamming inside her rib cage the moment she had recognized herself. Cold sweat coated her skin. Air wouldn’t squeeze past her locked throat, let alone words.
That was her. Naked. Right there on that computer, the line of her bare bottom clear as the crack of dawn, neatly framed by her hot pink thong. Everyone had a backside that looked more or less like that, but she was extremely selective about showing hers to anyone. She certainly didn’t email shots like this to men she barely knew. Or post them online.
Her whole body felt like a frozen electrical current was vibrating through her, paralyzing her.
The photo changed and that bare torso with the sheet rumpled across her upper thighs was all her, too. The way her breasts lifted as she arched her back and ran fingers through her hair bordered on deliberately erotic, coupled with that blissful, upturned expression. She looked like she’d been making love all day—as if she even knew what that felt like!
Then the final one came up again. She was adjusting the band of her hot pink undies across her cocked hip, looking like she was teasingly deciding whether to keep them on or remove them, eyes still lazily drooped and soft satisfaction painted across her lips.
The lighting was golden and her skin faintly gleamed—with oil, she realized as her brain began to function past the shock. These had been taken at the spa where she’d had a massage, trying to fix the ache between her shoulder blades that had been torturing her for weeks. She was sitting up and dressing after her appointment, relaxed and comfortable in what she had perceived as complete privacy.
The massage table had been cropped from the images, leaving muted sage-green walls and indistinct, blurred flowers in the background. It could have been a hotel room, a bedroom—whatever the viewer wanted to imagine.
Her stomach roiled. She thought she might be hyperventilating because she could hear a distant hiss. She wanted to throw up, pass out, die. Please God, take me now.
“Mademoiselle?” Nadine badgered.
“Yes,” she stammered. “It’s me.” Then, as the sheer mortification of the whole thing struck, she added a strident, “Can you close that, please?”
She glanced at Signor Fabrizio, her supervisor. He sat next to her with a supercilious expression on his middle-aged face.
“Why are you showing those like that? With him in here?” Gwyn asked. “Couldn’t we have done this privately?”
“They’re available to anyone with an online connection. I’ve seen them,” Fabrizio said pithily. “I brought them to Nadine’s attention.”
He’d already taken a long look? Gross.
Tears hit her eyes like the cut of a hard, biting wind. An equally brutal blow seemed to land in her stomach, pushing nausea higher into the back of her throat.
“Surely you knew this could happen when you took those photos and sent them to Mr. Jensen?”