her arm, she held out her free hand in greeting. ‘This is very good of you, sir—’ She braced herself for contact.
Contact there was none.
Startlingly green and uncomfortably shrewd eyes refused to share Signor Ruggiero’s practised smile. He was not the man in the magazine photograph. That man was a playboy with pleasure on his mind. The man in front of her was a realist, a thinker, a business tycoon, and he took no prisoners. The hand she had extended dropped back to her side. ‘I didn’t think you would come to meet me in person—’
‘It is my pleasure to do so.’
He even bowed slightly, but his tone suggested it was anything but a pleasure for him.
Katie’s worst fears were confirmed. Rigo Ruggiero was hiding disappointment. Having heard her husky voice over the phone, he had imagined he had come to the airport to meet a siren. They had both been misled, Katie reflected wryly. Now this was not business for her; it had become personal. Rigo Ruggiero had shadows behind his eyes she couldn’t resist and wanted to understand, and he was so handsome he made her heart ache.
‘You had a good journey, I hope.’
‘Very good, thank you.’
She registered the fact that he had spoken to her in a tone of voice she imagined he might use with a maiden aunt. He was so much taller, bigger and had a more powerful aura than her imagination had allowed and was far more rugged. He was the type of man who could look dangerous even in tailored clothes. The dark trousers complemented his athletic figure and the crisp blue shirt was open a couple of buttons at the neck, revealing a hard, tanned chest, shaded with black hair. The sight of this gave parts of her that were largely unused a vigorous workout. If this wasn’t lust at first sight, it was the closest Katie Bannister had ever come to it.
But what she needed now, Katie reasoned with her sensible head on, was some form of identification to prove to Rigo Ruggiero she was who she said she was. On plundering her bag she managed to spill the contents all over his designer-clad feet.
‘Allow me, Signorina Bannister…’
To his credit, he immediately dipped to rescue her passport, tickets, toffees, tissues and all the other embarrassing detritus she had accumulated during the flight.
‘Why don’t I take your bag?’ he suggested, staring her straight in the eyes as he straightened up.
My shabby, disreputable-looking bag? ‘That’s very kind of you. And here’s my passport for purposes of identification.’
‘I don’t think we’ll need that,’ he said, lips pressing down in an unfeasibly attractive way. And then, in a final cataclysmic put-down, he suggested, ‘Why don’t you put your passport somewhere safe before you lose it?’
So she wasn’t a maiden aunt, she was a child.
She’d made a great first impression. He even held the bag steady for her as she stuffed her possessions back inside. She glanced at him apologetically. He had no need to flag it up. Her clothes, her gaucheness, her red cheeks and clumsiness, all told a story Rigo Ruggiero had no interest in reading.
‘And my stepbrother’s personal effects?’ he pressed, gazing past her.
She wondered if he expected a packing case to be following on. ‘Your stepbrother’s effects are right here.’ She patted the breast pocket of her jacket to reassure him.
‘That doesn’t look like very much.’
‘Well, it is a very small package.’ She blushed violently to see him conceal a smile.
‘OK,’ he said, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, ‘I’ll get the car.’
‘Honestly, I’m quite happy to take a cab—’
‘So we arrive at my penthouse in convoy?’ he suggested, shooting her a look.
How much better could this get? ‘See your point,’ she murmured with a nervous laugh.
How much better? A lot better, Katie realised as a blood-red sports car drew up at the kerb. She didn’t need to remember the blonde in the magazine to know she was hardly in this class. A sick, heavy feeling was building in her stomach as an admiring crowd gathered around the high-performance vehicle and its elegant driver. They had recognised Rigo, of course, and now they were eager to find out who he was meeting at the airport.
That was what she had to walk through to get to the car.
‘I don’t bite, Signorina Bannister.’
The throaty drawl drew her attention to the man leaning over the roof of the low-slung sex-machine.
A laugh rippled through the crowd as she locked gazes with him. Everyone was staring at her and she could feel their disappointment. She was not some famous beauty or a supermodel. She was about the furthest thing from that you could get. Steeling herself, she took the half-dozen steps required to close the distance between herself and the car. Signor Ruggiero had already stowed her bag, and so all she had to do was get in—but that meant she had to slot herself into an impossibly narrow-looking opening.
‘When you’re ready,’ he drawled.
She had already anticipated that folding her inelegant body into such an elegant car was a skill she didn’t possess. She was right and, to her horror, she got stuck.
What made it worse was that Signor Ruggiero came to help her, and all but lifted her into the formed seat, which she now discovered had been moulded around a fairy’s bottom.
But at least she was out of sight of the crowd, Katie reasoned as he slid into the driver’s seat beside her.
‘Comfortable?’ He glanced at her to check.
‘Perfectly.’ On edge.
Now she had to convince herself that you couldn’t die from the shock of meeting a man like this in person, and that the air in the confined cabin hadn’t changed with an overload of ions and his delicious scent. But it had. And it was charged with something else…sex, Katie realised, primly tugging down her skirt. Rigo Ruggiero radiated sex.
‘You can understand my impatience, I’m sure,’ he said.
She gripped the seat as the engine roared like a jet.
‘This bequest from such an unexpected quarter has intrigued me,’ he went on.
This was business, she told herself in a silent shout, but that reassurance was growing a little thin.
‘I ask myself,’ he said, ‘what can be so important that only a personal delivery of the documents would do?’
As he glanced at her, Katie thought: And by a girl like this? She shrank beneath a gaze that took in every stitch of manmade fibre until finally it came to rest on her sensible, lowheeled shoes. She quickly tucked her feet away, out of sight. ‘I’m sorry if I kept you waiting.’
He shrugged. ‘I must have missed you, somehow.’
Searching for that husky-voiced siren would do it every time.
‘But never mind,’ he added dryly, flashing that wolf smile of his. ‘I’ve got you now.’
‘Indeed you do.’
He shrugged as he released the brake and pulled away. The adventure begins, Katie thought, hoping she was up to it. She didn’t need Signor Ruggiero to spell it out. Katie Bannister was hardly the type of woman he would normally put himself out for.
She held on tightly to the seat as he steered smoothly away from the kerb. ‘Ten kilometres an hour OK for you?’ he murmured as they joined a crawling stream of traffic.
‘Sorry, I’m just not used to…’
How many people were used to driving in a sports car? Katie asked herself sensibly. She had entered a world that was completely alien to her, and it would take a while to adjust. Closing her eyes