CHAPTER NINE
ISABELLA BYRNE PUT down her coffee cup in the crowded café with a sigh. Husband-hunting would be so much easier if she actually wanted to get married. She. Did. Not. The thought of marrying someone was enough to bring her out in hives. Anaphylactic shock. A stroke. She wasn’t the girl who’d been planning her wedding day since the age of five. She wasn’t a hankering-after-the-fairy-tale fanatic like most of her friends. And now that she’d put her ‘wild child’ days behind her, even the thought of dating made her want to vomit.
She was Over Men.
Izzy looked at all the couples sitting at the other tables. Was no one single any more in London? Everyone had a partner. She was the only person sitting by herself.
She could have tried online dating in her find-a-husband quest, but the thought of asking a stranger was too daunting. And the small handful of friends she might have considered asking to do the job were already in committed relationships.
Izzy folded her copy of her father’s will and stuffed it back in her tote bag. No matter how many times she read it, the words were exactly the same. She must be married in order to claim her inheritance. The inheritance would go to a distant relative if she didn’t claim it. To a relative who had a significant gambling problem.
How could she let all that money be frittered away down the greedy gobbling mouth of a slot machine?
Izzy needed that money to buy back her late mother’s ancestral home. If she failed to claim her inheritance, then the house would be lost for ever. The gorgeous Wiltshire house, where she had spent a precious few but wonderful holidays with her grandparents and her older brother before he got sick and passed away, would be sold to someone else. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing the one place where she had been happy. Where she and Hamish and her mother had been happy. Truly happy. She owed it to her mother and brother’s memory to get that house back.
There was twenty-four hours left before the deadline. One day to find a man willing to marry her and stay married for six months. One flipping day. Why hadn’t she looked a little harder this month? Last month? The month before? She’d had three months to fulfil the terms of her father’s will, but the thought of marrying anyone had made her procrastinate. As usual. She might have failed at school but she had First Class Honours in Procrastination.
Izzy was about to push back her chair to leave when a tall shadow fell over her. Her heart gave an extra beat...or maybe that was the double macchiato she’d had. She should never mix caffeine with despair.
‘Is this seat taken?’ The deep baritone with its rich and cultured Italian accent made her scalp prickle and a tingling pool of heat simmer at the base of her spine.
Izzy raised her eyes to meet the espresso-black gaze of hotel magnate, Andrea Vaccaro. Something shifted in her belly—a tumble, a tingle, a tightening.
It was impossible to look at his handsome features without her heart fluttering like rapidly shuffled cards.
Eyes that didn’t just look at you—they penetrated. Seeing things they had no business seeing.
His strong, don’t-mess-with-me jaw, with just the right amount of stubble, always made her think of the potent male hormones pushing those spikes of black hair out through his skin. A mouth that was firm but had a tendency to curve over a cynical smile. A mouth that made her think of long, sensual kisses and the sexy tangling of tongues...
Izzy had taught herself over the years not to show how he affected her. But while her expression was cool and composed on the outside, on the inside she was fighting a storm of unbidden, forbidden attraction. ‘I’m just leaving so—’
His broad tanned hand came down on the back of the chair opposite hers. She couldn’t stop staring at the ink-black hairs that ran from the back of his hand and over his strong wrist to disappear under the crisp white cuff of his shirt. How many times had she fantasised about those hands on her body? Stroking her. Caressing her. Making her feel things she shouldn’t be feeling. Not for him.
Never for him.
‘No time for a quick coffee with a friend?’ His mouth curved over the words, showing a flash of white, perfectly aligned teeth. An I’ve-got-you-where-I-want-you smile that made the fine hairs on the back of her neck stand up and pirouette in panic.
Izzy suppressed a shiver and forced herself to hold his gaze. ‘Friend?’ She injected a double shot of scorn into her tone. ‘I don’t think so.’
He pulled the chair out and settled his lean athletic form into it, his long legs bumping hers under the table. She jerked her legs back as far as they would go but it wasn’t fast enough to avoid the electrifying zap of contact.
Hard. Virile. Male flesh.
Izzy began to push back her chair in order to leave but one of his hands came down on hers, anchoring her to the table. Anchoring her to him. She snatched in a breath, the warm tensile strength of his hand making every female hormone in her body get all giggly and excited. Every cell of her body vibrated like the plucked string of a cello. She looked at his hand trapping hers and disguised a swallow. Heat travelled from her hand, along her arm and all the way to her core like a racing river of fire.
She gave him a glare so cold it could have frozen the glass of water on the table. ‘Is this how you usually ask a woman to have coffee with you? By brute force?’
His thumb began a lazy stroking of the back of her hand that sent little shockwaves through her body as if a tiny firecracker had entered her bloodstream. Pippity pop. Pippity pop. Pippity pop. ‘There was a time when you wanted more than a quick coffee with me. Remember?’ The glint in his eyes intensified the searing heat travelling through her body.
Izzy wished she could forget. She wished she had temporary amnesia. Permanent amnesia. It would be worth acquiring a brain injury if she could eradicate the memory of her seduction attempt of Andrea seven years ago at one of her father’s legendary boozy Christmas parties. She had been eighteen and tipsy—deliberately, dangerously, defiantly tipsy. Just like she had been at every other party of her father’s. It had been the only way she could get through the nauseating performance he gave of Devoted Dad. She’d been intent on embarrassing her father because of all the behind-closed-doors torment he put her through. All the insults, the put-downs, the biting criticisms that made her feel so utterly worthless and useless.
So unloved.
So unwanted.
She’d foolishly thought: How better to embarrass her overbearing father than to sleep with his favourite protégé?
Izzy pulled her hand out from under Andrea’s and rose from her seat with a screech of her chair along the floorboards. ‘I have to get back to work.’
‘I heard about your new job. How’s that going for you?’
Izzy searched his expression for any sign of mockery. Was he teasing her about her job? Or was he just showing mild interest? There was no note of cynicism in his tone, no curl of his top lip and no mocking glint in his eyes, but even so she wondered if he, like everyone else, thought she couldn’t get through a week in a new job without being fired.
But, whatever he was thinking behind that unfathomable expression, Izzy was determined not to lose her temper