The Italian Billionaire's Pregnant Bride. Lynne Graham

Sergio aimed at striking a peaceful note, while he continued to watch her with shrewd concentration. Her heated distress was convincingly real and she was definitely slurring her words a little. She looked very young and quite magnificent.

      Kathy loosed an unimpressed laugh, for she was not taken in by that smooth inflection. ‘No, you couldn’t care less if you were rude or not! You think you can get away with it.’

      ‘You could well be right,’ Sergio drawled in the same even tone. ‘It’s an unfortunate fact that gold-diggers target me—’

      ‘You deserve a gold-digger!’ Kathy snapped with furious conviction. ‘If you think for one minute that that explanation excuses you for talking to me as if I was a prostitute, you’re seriously out of line!’

      ‘I wasn’t aware that I made an excuse.’

      Scornful dismissal flamed in Kathy’s shimmering gaze. ‘You haven’t even got the manners for that, have you?’

      ‘If you could rise above my failings in that department, I believe we have more important things to consider—’

      ‘I doubt if I’ll be pregnant, but if the worst was to happen, you don’t need to worry,’ Kathy tossed at him glibly as she walked to the door. ‘I wouldn’t even consider going for the “lucrative lifestyle choice” option!’

      ‘That’s not funny,’ Sergio intoned grimly.

      ‘Neither are your assumptions about me.’ Kathy marched down the corridor, and when she registered that he was following her she hastened into the lift at speed. There she stabbed repeatedly at the button that closed the doors but he still made it past them to join her. The enclosed space felt unbearably claustrophobic. Hostility radiating from her in waves, her willowy figure rigid, she ignored him. She could not understand why he refused to get the message and leave her alone.

      Sergio glanced down at his watch only to discover that he was no longer wearing it: he had left his sleek timepiece behind in his office. ‘It’s late. I’ll take you home.’

      ‘No, thanks.’

      As the lift came to a halt Sergio imposed his lean powerful frame between her and the doors opening. ‘I’ll take you home,’ he told her steadily.

      ‘What is it about the word no that you don’t understand?’

      Sergio shifted closer. His intent dark gaze flared gold over her mutinous face. Her continuing defiance and refusal to be reasonable was so far outside his usual experience with women that he was astonished.

      ‘You’re in my way. I’m getting annoyed with you,’ Kathy warned him, an unevenly drawn breath rasping in her throat as she fired an unwilling glance at him. His dark gaze flashed down into hers like a livewire connection. Excitement came at her out of nowhere. Her heartbeat broke into a sprint, her mouth ran dry.

      ‘But you feel the burn between us the same way I do, bella mia,’ Sergio husked, reaching out to frame her cheekbones between shapely brown hands, his thumbs delicately smoothing over her fine creamy skin.

      For the merest instant she was frozen there, tantalised by his approach and teased by his touch. She was extraordinarily aware of the intimate ache between her thighs and his intense sexual magnetism. Her brain had no control over her body. It terrified her that he could still win that response from her and angry defensiveness overcame her paralysis and forced her into urgent denial. ‘I don’t feel anything!’

      Sidestepping him in an impulsive move that took him by surprise, Kathy stalked across the brightly lit empty space of the vast foyer and headed straight for the exit doors. She was in total turmoil, deeply disturbed by what she had allowed to happen between them.

      ‘Kathy,’ Sergio grated, his patience on the ebb since he had not believed that she would actually walk away from him.

      ‘Get lost!’ Kathy told him roundly, impervious to the fact that they had an audience. One of the two night security guards on duty, both of whom had been studiously staring into space, abruptly unfroze to hurry forward and thrust a door wide for her. She walked out onto the street.

      Renzo Catallone moved forward from his discreet position in the shadow of a pillar to intercept his employer. A stocky man in his forties, he looked unusually ill at ease. ‘I—’

      ‘While I appreciate that it is your job to take care of my security, your zeal is occasionally more than I require,’ Sergio informed his security chief drily. ‘No more enquiries or checks on Kathy Galvin. She’s off limits.’

      ‘But—sir—’ Renzo began with a frown of dismay.

      ‘I don’t want to hear another word about her,’ Sergio instructed in a flat tone of finality. ‘With the exception of one piece of information: the lady’s address.’