CHAPTER ONE
Rome, Italy. Two years earlier.
“CRAP, CRAP, CRAP, CRAP.” Grace stared at the documents with a sinking feeling that began right in the bottom of her feet and enveloped the rest of her, including her gut. She looked down at the black and white writing, and any doubt over what had happened disappeared.
“Maria?” She called through her door, flicking through the documents still hoping there was some sort of mistake.
Her assistant was an incredibly beautiful woman, all long blonde hair, pursed lips, brown eyes and caramel tan. She had legs that went on forever, and today they were encased in white leather pants. Her cleavage was barely contained by the silky blue singlet she wore.
Grace didn’t hold the other woman’s beauty against her. Just because Grace had always been more of the ‘cute, girl next door’ kind of attractive, rather than va-va-voom knockout sex kitten, it wasn’t Maria’s fault.
“These files are for the Vanditto loan,” she said.
“What? No.” Maria shook her head, her face draining of colour as she teetered across the room in her sky high stilettos. “It’s not possible. I checked them myself.”
“I’m telling you,” Grace spun the document around, hovering her finger over the name at the top. “This is a property in Venice.”
“Oh, madre di Dio.” Maria flicked through the papers, her fingers shaking. “He’s going to kill me.”
Grace thought of Marco Dettori with an answering surge of emotion. He would kill Maria. It was a stupid, foolish mistake to make, and it could cause a heap of damage to the business. The ancient bank handled some of Europe’s wealthiest citizens’ finances. The last thing they needed was for their air-tight confidentiality to be blown because of clerical errors.
“I’m dead,” she said with a shake of her head.
“It was just a mistake,” Grace said softly, bundling the papers up and holding them to her chest. She was at the end of her three-month internship, due to leave the next day. Her decision was an obvious one. The worst the mistake would cost Grace was a good reference. True, she wanted it, and she’d wanted to earn it, but she had employment guaranteed back home in Chicago regardless.
Maria was a single mom who needed this job.
“Listen, I’ll go talk to him,” Grace promised. “I’ll go now. We can sort this out. But Maria? Go home. Let’s … let’s pretend you called in sick today.”
Maria’s eyes were huge in her face. “Why? Then it will be you who is to blame…”
“I know, exactly. I’m leaving anyway. Trust me.”
“No, I cannot do it.”
“He can’t fire me. He can’t do anything to me.” She reached a hand out and pressed it gently into her assistant’s forearm. “Think of Lilliana.”
Maria’s eyes swept closed and she nodded. “I am so sorry.”
“It was an accident,” Grace murmured, moving towards the door. She could only hope Marco saw it that way.
As the elevator lifted her off the seventh floor, where she’d spent most of the past three months, and up onto the lofty thirty-second floor, Grace had time to regret her generosity and to balk at the scene she had ahead.
As she stepped out of the lift and approached the circular desk that housed Marco’s three assistants (A secretary, a diary manager and one for everything else) Grace couldn’t help but wish she’d picked up some fashion tips on this stint in Italy. Fashion capital of the world and she was still getting around in the same sensible suits she’d brought with her. The gray pants she wore did little to showcase her figure – if anything, they drew attention to her curvaceous hips and bottom. The shirt was a simple black blouse and it too disguised any hint of attractive curviness.
“Si?” The overflow assistant looked up, a quizzical smile on her face. Grace couldn’t tell if the other woman recognized her or not. They’d met a handful of times in the cafeteria and once when Grace had attended a meeting with Marco.
She pushed the memory aside- the way his hand had landed in the small of her back as he’d ushered her into the offices they’d gone to was burned into her memory.
“I need to see Mr Dettori. It’s urgent.”
The assistant smirked, as if to say, ‘isn’t everthing?’ But she picked up her phone and connected a call, presumably to Marco’s office.
A moment later, she replaced the handset. “Go through.”
Grace nodded, the documents tight against her chest as she moved.
Her heart was rabbiting wildly in her chest. She knocked at the door, despite the fact Marco was obviously expecting her.
“Come in.” The words rang with impatience. Her anxiety trebled.
Grace had been in his office before and yet the sheer scale of it robbed her momentarily of breath. An enormous corner position with glass on two sides and part of the ceiling, she could see Rome in all its glory, spread far beneath her. She looked up and noted the white trails of airplanes that criss-crossed the clear blue sky.
“Mr Dettori,” she said, barely able to meet his eyes. Not because she felt guilty, though she did. But because they were the kind of eyes that could sting you. Dark brown, almost black, with a rim of gold at the very edge. His lashes were thick and curling, and though he was tanned, he had a few dark freckles across his nose. It was a nose that had, at one time, been straight and patrician but that was now wobbled in the middle by a break in his past. She had imagined it to be a football accident, or perhaps skiing. Something glamorous, for certain. Nothing so pedestrian as the way Grace had broken her arm – by falling down a flight of three steps when she’d had her nose in a text book.
“Grace, I have told you many times. My name is Marco. Use it.”
“Marco,” she nodded, daring a glance at his face now. “I have to speak with you urgently.”
He stood from behind the desk, unfurling his height with no apparent realization of how he affected her. His strength was barely contained by the suit her wore. A suit she liked to imagine him without.
God, don’t think about that! Not now!
Grace cleared her throat as though it might clear the dangerous images thick in her mind and paced towards his desk. There was a hell of a lot more at stake than her dangerously sexy imaginings.
“Are we not speaking?” He teased, his smile crinkling his cheeks, showing that delicious dimple beneath his stubbled chin, and lining his eyes.
Her stomach lurched.
“I made a mistake.”
He arched a brow. “You? You do not make mistakes.”
The little kernel of praise caused her pulse to hammer, hard and fast in her veins. She tucked it aside to analyse later. To plant like a seed and water with attention, letting it flourish in her heart.
He was right. She didn’t make mistakes.
“Apparently I do,” she lied. She handed him the papers and watched as his eyes read the name at the top.
“I don’t understand. These were couriered this morning. I’ve just spoken to Leonardo. He delivered them himself.”
“He’s taken the wrong papers,” she groaned. “I had them side by side on my desk and I must have given him the wrong ones. He’ll have the contracts for the Barcelona deal.”
Marco swore softly under his breath. “He will have given them by now.”
“I know.” Anguish was thick in the word. “So the big confidential purchase is not going to be confidential and it’s all my fault. What can I do? How can I fix this?”
She was too distraught to see the admiration that coloured his gaze.
“It is salvageable,” he reassured her, rubbing a hand over his chin and reaching for his desk phone with the other. He snatched it off the cradle and spoke in rapid-fire Italian.
Grace was fluent, but in that moment of torpor, she couldn’t keep up. He placed the phone back down and then dropped the papers to his desk, his eyes meeting hers.
“You don’t need to look as though I’m going to throw you from the window,” he said gruffly.
But Grace was so disappointed in herself – true, it had been Maria’s mistake but Grace should have checked again! She should have given Leonardo the files! Tears stung her eyes and she had to bite down on her lower lip to stem their flow.
A thick growl from Marco’s throat drew her attention, but looking at him only made her feel worse.
“Come here,” he said impatiently.
She shook her head. “I’m fine. It’s … It was my fault.”
“Si. It was your fault.”
Surprise had her spinning away from him, staring towards the door of his office. What a fool she’d been. She should have controlled this! If he told her to leave immediately, she wouldn’t be surprised.
His hands on her shoulders was the last thing she expected. And her emotions were already unscrewed, the lid off, revealing pure feeling just inside of her.
“We all make mistakes, Grace.” The way he said her name made her flush with need. “Fixing them is what matters.”
And gently, so gently that her heart began to beat only for him, he turned her in the circle of his arms, drawing her to his broad chest and stroking her back.
“This is not worth your tears.”
“But the bank’s reputation,” she sobbed, giving into her fears now. “We pride ourselves on providing an unfailingly confidential service…”
“And it should be,” he agreed. “But this is a simple error to repair.”
“It is?” She lifted her face, looking up into his eyes.
It was a mistake. His mouth was right there at her eye height and suddenly, all she could think of was kissing him. Being kissed by him. She moved to step backwards but his eyes held a droll challenge and he laughed softly.
“You are afraid of me,” he said softly.
“I’m … I’m disappointed in myself for making such a stupid mistake,” she corrected.
“That is not what I mean.” He lifted a hand and ran it down the length of her hair. “You are afraid of how you feel about me.”
“What?” Her eyes locked to his but she didn’t attempt to move away. She surrendered to where she stood. The way it felt to be in his arms, hard against his warm, firm body.
“You think I haven’t noticed the way you look at me?”
She swallowed, her eyes huge in her face, and she thought of Steve. Steve she’d broken up with right before coming to Italy. Steve who wanted to marry her. Steve she had never felt even a hint of desire for like she did this ruggedly-handsome Italian billionaire.
“I…”
“We will fix this,” he nodded in the direction of his desk. “And then you will join me for dinner. Okay?”
She knew she should say no. No to what he was suggesting – not dinner. They both knew that was just a prelude to what would come next. The only kind of relationship Marco Dettori was interested in. The horizontal, short-lived kind. Immensely satisfying, completely transient.
“Have you been so busy looking at me that you have not noticed I’m looking right back?”
And then, his lips captured hers on the small gasp of surprise, his mouth pressed against hers in a silent question at first.
A question she answered emphatically, by bringing her body against his, meshing her lips to his as though she were adrift on a storm-ravaged sea and he was her sole chance of survival.
She kissed him with every ounce of need that had perforated her soul from the first day they’d met. She kissed him as though he was the only man on earth.
He curved his hands around her back, holding her to him and she rolled her hips in an invitation she wasn’t conscious of issuing. She lifted up on tiptoes so she could tangle her fingers in his hair and hold his head right where she needed him.
She tasted his growl as he issued it, low and hoarse, it rumbled through her, obliterating any last vestige of concern that perhaps she was doing something completely, utterly foolish. His hands found the fabric of her blouse, pulling at its looseness, freeing it from the restriction of her waistband.
His hands, surprisingly coarse, brushed her smooth hips and she broke the kiss to gasp in surprise. His touch was so right! Her body zinged with silent acceptance of his command over her. He stared at her – the same fever burning his blood as ran through Grace’s.
“You are so soft,” he said, chasing her mouth once more, his tongue daring her to disagree. She didn’t.
She would agree with anything and everything he said in that instant.
But there were the contracts; the need to fix them. She knew she should say something. To remind him of the urgency of why she’d come to his office. But then his hands roamed higher, stroking the flesh on her sides, holding her on the edges of her bra, and his thumbs launched an assault on her nipples, stroking across them as though he had every right.
And he did.
She arched her back, whimpering in her throat. She tilted her head back right as he dropped his mouth, finding the sensitive flesh just below her jaw, teasing it with his tongue, then running higher, to her earlobe. He sucked it, flicking it hungrily and she was putty in his hands. He stepped and she anticipated, shadowing his moves, mirroring them, until her butt connected with the hard edge of his desk and he reached down, his hands cupping her arse and lifting her, settling her on the surface and spreading her legs so he could stand between them.
He fit perfectly, the hardness of his arousal making her whimper. Her hands splayed across his shirt front but he kissed her, pressing her back so she connected with the desk. Something sharp was beneath her. She winced and Marco reached behind her, flinging his keys onto the floor.
“Sorry,” he said, pulling at her legs to bring her closer to him as his body folded over hers, and his lips kissed her again, demanding everything she had to give.
He dominated her in every way and she couldn’t quite believe how perfect it felt. But there were the contracts.
And she had messed up – she had to be the one to fix it. She turned her head away, pushing her hand against his chest with determination now. “We can’t do this.”
She felt him stiffen, his whole body frozen at her urgent command.
“No?” He spoke silkily though, as if he had no concern about her pronouncement.
“We have to deal with this.” She reached behind her head, dragging her fingertips over the papers with true regret.
His eyes followed her touch but then he smiled.
Her whole body responded with a lurch.
“Yes.” He nodded, but he brought his mouth back down to hers and his fingers found the buttons of her shirt, separating the top three before her sluggish brain could register the act. His fingers cupped her breasts and he straightened so he could watch her, stare at her, take in every detail. From her smooth skin to her lacy cups, to the way her breasts were full and rounded. And then his fingers gripped the lace of one cup and dragged it downwards, revealing the creamy flesh and pink aureole. His fingers found her nipple and traced it, his eyes locked to her chest as though she were the definition of magic.
“There is no time now for what I want,” he said with regret, dropping his mouth lower, dragging his lips across her sensitive flesh. He flicked her nipple with his tongue.
“And what’s that?” She was emboldened to ask, but the words trembled out of her on a sigh.
“Oh, I want to make you scream with pleasure,” he said simply. “I want to make sure you never forget me.”
And then, he dragged her legs closer again, so the strength of his erection was right there against her feminine heart and she was lost to the power he swirled around her. “Do you know where I live?”
She shook her head, but his lips found hers, kissing her hard, pressing her head back against the desk.
“I have a house on Via Dottore,” he said. “You will know it when you arrive.”
It was madness, surely. Madness to even think of going to her boss’s house for the purpose of being made love to. Madness to sleep with him knowing she’d be on a flight the next day, bound for her normal life in Chicago.
But if she didn’t?
The whisperings of regret already lashed her spine.
She couldn’t not go. It would destroy her. She would wonder forever.
“What time?”
He smiled against her lips. “I will be finished by four. Come as soon as you can.”
His hands found her breasts once more and she arched her back as he moved his touch over her, sending her into a spiral of desire. “I have a going away party…”
“Believe me, mine will be more fun.”
She laughed, but it was a husk of disbelief. “I can’t not go to my own party…”
He brought his mouth lower, flicking her nipple, and then lower still, teasing the flatness of her stomach until goosebumps covered her body.
“I will make it worth your while,” he promised, and she writhed beneath him, saturated by the pleasure he was so easily stirring within her.
In all her life she had never felt even a hint of this need.
How could she not chase it all the way down the rabbit hole to its inevitable conclusion?
Still, her team had worked hard on organizing her party. She wasn’t supposed to know the details, but she’d been erroneously copied in on a planning email and therefore she did know and she couldn’t bear to let them down.
“I’ll come after,” she promised, tangling her fingers in his shirt and pulling her closer, lifting up to kiss him.
“You’ll come before, during, after and again and again, I promise.”