in the middle of a one-way system. Do you mind sitting still? I’m trying to focus.’ To focus on the road and not the way her breasts were trying to fight their way out of the bodice of her dress. ‘Do you want me to cause a crash?’
‘I don’t suppose this is how you planned to spend your day.’
‘Dio mio, do not go all humble and apologetic on me.’ He found unreasonable and wilfully awkward much easier to deal with.
‘It’s not this way,’ she said as he swung the car down an alley where the walls of the tall buildings almost touched the car on either side. To make things worse he didn’t reduce his speed.
‘So how well do you know Rome, then?’
She flashed him a killer look and compressed her lips.
‘It was a shortcut,’ she said in a quiet voice as he drew up outside the hotel.
Raoul grunted and turned his attention to the building. Like most in the area, it could have done with some TLC; he was not a person who found peeling paint picturesque. ‘You’re sure this is the right place?’
She nodded.
‘Your boyfriend really knows how to treat a lady, doesn’t he?’
‘He’s not my boyfriend,’ she gritted.
‘Has it occurred to you he might have called the police?’ Her wide eyes said it hadn’t.
She was thinking.
‘I hope not! Well, thank you and last night...you were...kind.’ With a swish of silk she left the car, her comment making him feel like a total bastard.
And maybe he was, Raoul mused as watched her walk up the steps, the sinuous sway of her body in that wicked dress causing several turned heads before she vanished inside the clapped-out-looking building.
How was the man who’d brought her here and then rejected her going to react when she appeared? Raoul knew how he’d have reacted in that position. He wasn’t a possessive man, but if she’d left him and spent the night with another man he’d have throttled her, or maybe just thrown her on the bed and made love to her.
And would Lara forgive him? You never knew with women. Some were drawn like magnets to men who treated them badly.
While he was grimly contemplating make-up sex and wondering if that was what was happening, Raoul was suddenly struck by how extreme his reactions to this woman were. There was no middle ground. Much like her, he reflected grimly, either spitting disdain or melting in submission.
With a curse he put the car into gear and pulled away from the kerb with a rubber-burning squeal. The last thing he needed at this point was a redhead to distract him.
THE HOTEL FOYER was also the dining room and actually the décor inside was much nicer than the façade suggested. About half the tables were occupied when Lara walked in, causing a few brows to rise. She walked straight over to Mark.
‘I was worried.’ He put down his newspaper.
It might have been more convincing without the petulant pout. What did I ever see in him?
‘Really.’ Her glance moved to the buffet breakfast he was tucking into. She struggled to imagine him spending his morning driving around the city to see that the woman he’d spent the night with was safe.
‘As you see, I’m fine.’ She spread her arms wide and hid her irrational hurt behind a flippant façade, trying to ignore the stares she was receiving from the other diners.
‘So how do you feel about the Coliseum?’ His glance slid down her dress. ‘After you’ve changed, obviously.’
Lara shook her head and stared, not believing what she was hearing. ‘What?’
‘I worked out an itinerary. A weekend isn’t long enough to see everything Rome has to offer, but—’
She moved closer to the table and lowered her voice to an incredulous whisper. ‘You expect me to go sightseeing?’
‘Look, this doesn’t have to be a total disaster.’
His attitude made Lara want to hit his fat face. Actually, it wasn’t fat. She held on to her temper with both hands and made herself look objectively at the man she had decided would be a safe bet.
Because that was what it boiled down to. In her determination to find a man who would see beyond her face and body she’d ignored other warning signs. One major flaw in her plan had been assuming a man capable of seeing her as more than a sex object would automatically be sensitive and caring, someone worthy of loving.
No one would have looked at Raoul and thought he was sensitive and caring, she mused, heat accompanying the image of the man she had spent the night with flashing into her head.
If she could have written a list of all the things she had been consciously avoiding in a lover he would have ticked more boxes than she knew existed.
He was all the things, the breathing epitome, of what she had been avoiding in the man destined to be her first lover. Yet his raw, elemental sexuality had been matched by a gentleness and sensitivity... The only flickers of fear had been a fear of the strength of her own response, and that had quickly faded as she had embraced the passion that had blazed between them.
One of life’s little jokes! It turned out she had wanted a man who would rip her clothes off and make her forget where she ended and he began.
With a sigh she tuned back into what a red-faced Mark was saying. ‘The room is paid for.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I couldn’t possibly stay here with you.’
Folding his napkin with irritating precision, he looked at her over the dark rim of his glasses and sounded annoyed as he asked, ‘What’s the alternative?’
Pushed into a corner, she bit her quivering lip. ‘I want to go home.’ She was embarrassed before she had closed her mouth over the unguarded words; his reaction turned her humiliation to anger.
‘I thought I’d brought a woman away, not some little kid.’ The defensive aggression that she had sensed beneath the surface was now overt as he added, ‘I wasn’t funding a school outing for virgins.’
‘You weren’t funding anything.’ She had paid for her own flight. ‘I’ll leave the cash for my share of the hotel room on the dressing table before I leave.’
Turning, she stalked from the room and stomped her way up the stairs to the bedroom; not a room with a view—that was extra. Walking to the wardrobe, she pulled her clothes off the hangers and flung them in a heap on the bed before transferring them to her case. Next came the toiletries out of the bathroom. It might well be a record, she decided, turning the key on the padlock, for packing and stupidity.
She’d wanted to go away with safe and responsible and she’d got selfish and boring.
‘You know, you’re overreacting.’
She didn’t bother to turn around but sighed and said in a flat little voice, ‘Well, that’s me, isn’t it? A drama queen.’
‘Not the best trait in a PA.’
He threw it in casually, didn’t say outright that she’d be looking for another job as soon as she got home, but she’d need to have been stupid not to get the message. Lara’s stomach went into a nosedive. So this was why office romances were frowned on. When they went sour bad things happened for the person who wasn’t the nephew of the company owner.
‘Don’t worry. I’ve been thinking of moving on...’ Her pride made her say it, but in reality she needed the pay cheque. Without it...she didn’t want to go there! The only place she’d be going was back home with her tail between her