One Night with her Italian Boss by Trish Morey

5

Dante’s mouth stilled and lifted from her throat, the exploration of his hungry hands arrested. ‘What did you call me?’ In the momentary respite, Mackenzi found reserves she’d never known she had and spun herself away, dragging her skirt back down to her knees in the process. ‘What do you expect? Your caveman tactics may have got you to where you are in business, but you can leave them behind when it comes to the bedroom.’

His nostrils flared, and his hands balled into fists at his hips. ‘Have you forgotten,’ he uttered through teeth tightly clenched, ‘that it was you who turned up naked in my bed? And it was you who agreed to become my mistress? And now you think you have a choice?’

She tossed him a throwaway shrug, the merest concession to the truth of his assertion. Because she had agreed to become his mistress, and she was as good as his—lock, stock and barrel. ‘I never agreed I’d like it.’

His eyes gleamed dangerously, as if she’d just issued him with some kind of challenge. ‘I promise you, if enjoyment is what you’re after, you’ll get it.’ Once again he moved closer, with his wild-looking eyes, and his breathing building, every bit as ragged as her own, when a knock at the door halted his progress.

‘Miss Keogh?’ the hesitant voice called uncertainly, the handle turning fruitlessly as their visitor found the door locked. ‘The meeting... The staff are waiting.’

Dante still held her eyes prisoner, and yet for the first time she felt like she’d won some kind of battle against this man—if only a battle to gain some time. She turned on a smile designed to reflect her small victory as she called out, ‘We’ll be right there.’

How she made it through the meeting, she didn’t know. Especially when Dante announced that Mackenzi would be stepping down from her direct-managerial position and be ‘assisting’ him with his deliberations while he assessed the credentials of the hotel. Every pair of eyes suddenly turned her way.

What must they all be thinking? There would be talk, she had no doubt—from the waitress at breakfast who’d heard his dig about her being in his suite, to the clerk who must have been wondering why voices were raised and her office door locked, from everyone here questioning her less-than-immaculate hair that she’d twisted and shoved a clip into before heading for this meeting. She could see the questions in their eyes. She could feel the heat of her own self-damning response as colour flooded her cheeks.

But then he announced that until a decision was made it would be business as usual, and she’d seen their attention turn back to him and their curiosity turn to relief. The relief that the axe they’d been expecting hadn’t yet fallen, and that their jobs were safe, at least for now. She was almost happy that she’d made the decision she had.

Almost.

Until someone asked how long the process would take, and Dante tossed off a careless, ‘A week, maybe two,’ bringing home how little hope she had of changing his mind, bringing home how little she was worth. Two weeks at the most to make him realize the value of Ashton House before he discarded her. Two weeks where he would use her, peel her like an orange, devour her and spit out the pips.

He glanced at her then, his eyes like deep, dark pools of promise, and she shuddered at what she saw there: desire. Need. Hunger.

Her body responded in kind, her breasts firming, the fire in her belly sending flames licking dangerously lower, building an inexorable head of steam inside her.

How long would he wait to take her again? He’d already shown he was a man with a powerful appetite for sex. She’d thwarted him once by escaping from his room while he’d slept. She’d evaded him the second time by insulting him and halting him in his carnal tracks. But how long could she avoid the inevitable? How long could she hold him at bay?

How long did she really want to?

One week, maybe two, was all he’d estimated she’d last. After the sexual awakening she’d had last night, the extraordinary feelings unleashed within her, somehow one to two weeks didn’t seem anywhere near enough.

‘Pack your things,’ he told her once the last question had been answered and the staff had dispersed and returned to their duties, relieved that they still for now had duties to return to.

‘Excuse me?’

‘We’re leaving. After lunch.’

‘But you didn’t say anything about—’

‘I have a business to run. I need to be where my business takes me.’

While you can be my mistress anywhere.

The unspoken words hung in the space between them, as cold and hard as a slap in the face. If he’d wanted to make their respective positions more clear, he couldn’t have done a better job. But she’d agreed to this. He’d typecast her as a whore, and so far, even if reluctantly, she was living up to his expectations.

‘So where are we going?’

‘First to Melbourne. Then onto Auckland. I have a deal to close. It can’t wait any longer.’

If he was trying to impress her with his hectic schedule, it wasn’t working. ‘I suppose we should be flattered you took the time to come here at all.’

He looked at her levelly, the eyes that just a few minutes ago had set fire to her blood now glacial cruel, and laced with rapier-sharp pain that was almost tangible. ‘This was personal.’ Then he blinked, and when he reopened his eyes whatever she’d seen there had gone. She might even have thought she’d imagined it, if she hadn’t still felt the effect of that cold, unseeing stare at her very core.

He pulled a card from his wallet. ‘Call my PA. She needs your details.’ He hesitated. ‘You have got a passport?’

She allowed herself a smile, almost wishing she hadn’t. Wouldn’t that put a spanner in his works? But it would also put a spanner in hers. No matter what she thought of him, the hotel would have no chance at all if she couldn’t fulfil her end of the bargain. And, for her own selfish reasons, this was one bargain she was determined to fulfil. But be damned if she was going to roll over with her legs in the air—even if that was what he expected. ‘It would be a bit hard to trail after you as your mistress otherwise.’

His eyes chilled once again. ‘You wanted a lifeline for your precious hotel. You got it. So don’t make out you don’t get anything out of this. We leave at two. Be ready.’

He turned to go, a man on a mission, leaving her shaking in his wake.

‘Do I have a choice?’ she called after him.

He looked back over his shoulder at her. ‘No.’

The fog was starting to lift as she pulled her ancient car into her even more ancient driveway, tiny patches of blue colouring the sky in places. Ahead of her emerged the misty outline of the old stone house. She pulled up in the old stables that now served as a garage and checked her watch. It had been a slow trip home, but she had just enough time to ask Mrs Gepp next door if she could feed Misty for the next however-long, dust off her passport, call her parents and get some clothes together.

She dropped her head down onto the steering wheel, suddenly realising what she was doing. Now the adrenaline was gone and shock was setting in. In the space of the last twenty-four hours she’d managed to have mind- blowing sex with the boss, discover her beloved hotel was about to be destroyed, lose her job, and promptly become her boss’s mistress. Just another day at the office.

Oh God, what was happening to her?

Running on empty, feeling heartsick, she forced herself from the car even though the thought of firing up the ignition and heading somewhere else—anywhere else— seemed far more attractive. She’d agreed to this, so how could she get out of it now? And how could she walk away from the hotel’s one chance of survival? She knew she only had a slim chance, if that, but knowing Dante if she ran now he’d probably close the hotel tomorrow.

So she had to focus. She had to deal with it. Even calling on the memories of great sex, unexpectedly great sex that had told her she wasn’t as cold as she’d feared—great sex she wouldn’t mind engaging in again—even with those memories and needs she knew she must have been insane to agree to this.

So instead she shoved her doubts aside, and tried to focus on her list. Lists she could deal with. Lists she could tackle.

Getting the cat organised was the easiest.

The phone call to her parents was the hardest. How to avoid informing her parents of the fact you’d been made redundant today, and yet were going away ‘on business’, was harder than she’d imagined. She hated lying to her parents, even by omission, but there were some things that shouldn’t be shared.

Especially when they asked about the hotel and whether she had any idea what the new owner had planned for it. She’d known they would ask, and she squeezed her eyes shut. Her parents had been married at Ashton House. They had happy memories, spending each and every anniversary in the restaurant, reliving old memories with their friends. ‘It’s still up in the air,’ she told them in all honesty. ‘Maybe soon we’ll have good news.’ And she crossed her fingers and hoped that was true.

Half an hour later she’d accomplished the first three items on her list and was staring into her open wardrobe doors contemplating the last, Misty doing lazy figure-eights around her ankles and purring as if she didn’t have a care in the world.

Unlike Mackenzi.

‘So, what do mistresses wear?’ she asked her feline friend, but Misty just rolled onto her back and wriggled. Mackenzi sighed. Whatever they wore, she was sure the paltry contents of her closet were hardly going to make the grade.

She rifled past her spare uniforms, wrote off the shirts and casual trousers she reserved for days off working around her property, and located her couple of pairs of good trousers. One of them would do for travelling. She was just selecting a handful of tops to go with them when she found it: her one concession to glamour. The little beaded-black dress sat pristine in its dry-cleaning bag where it had been since its last outing a couple of years ago. The jet beads winked at her from the depths of her wardrobe. It could do with a run around the park.

She added it to the small pile on her bed, pushing Misty, who’d decided that the action was all happening on the bed, to one side in the process before locating shoes, underwear and accessories. Then, in a spike of perverse logic, she packed her thickest flannelette pyjamas. She still wasn’t sure about this whole ‘sex’ thing. The memories from last night were still too raw and unprocessed in any logical way—at least flannelette would be reassuring until that happened.

Finally she changed out of her uniform into black trousers and a soft knitted top and stashed the rest of her things in a small suitcase. Her mistress wardrobe, such as it was. It would have to do.

There was the crunch of tyres along the driveway, followed by a spray of gravel, as whoever it was came to a sudden halt.

Misty looked up at her enquiringly from her place on the bed and blinked one eye. ‘Don’t ask me,’ she told the cat as a car door slammed shut. But the way her heart had lurched told her it was him, even before anyone started pounding on her front door, even before she made it down the passageway and pulled open the solid-timber door, to find six-foot- four of barely concealed rage disguised as a man.

Yet even having sensed bone-deep that it was him didn’t lessen the impact of seeing him in the flesh. He was so large, his stance so physically domineering, with his hands on hips and his eyes so wild, that it took her breath away.

He scowled. ‘They said you’d gone.’ It was an accusation.

Mackenzi regarded him with as much disdain as she could muster, and still it wasn’t enough to help her meet his gaze and bear the impossible weight of those damning eyes. And, worse, it was nowhere enough to ignore the sexual pull of this man. Her senses drank him in like a drug, her memories coiled around her like a promise. Damn him!

‘And so I had,’ she fired back in exasperation. ‘What of it?’ She wheeled away from the door, heading for the kitchen. Heading anywhere that might take her away from this man.

Misty met her there, curling against her calves once more as she reached into the pantry for a can of cat food. She dipped one hand to pet the cat, and then turned to find him standing behind her, a wall of man. Her heart was hammering so loudly it was no wonder she hadn’t heard him follow her, but finding him so close now sent her pulse into orbit.

‘I tried to call you. Your phone was off.’ Another accusation. What the hell was his problem?

She shook her head, as neatly she sidestepped around both him and the island bench, trying to think calmly. She had a man, a virtual stranger, in her kitchen—a powerful man with some kind of grudge against the whole world in general, and right now against her in particular. Why was he so angry with her? Because they’d had sex? Well, she wasn’t crazy about the idea either. The sex had been good, but the source definitely left something to be desired.

She took a deep breath and pulled out the cutlery drawer, giving a wistful look at the knives before picking up a spoon. ‘I didn’t. It’s just—’

‘I tried to call. Your phone was off!’

She popped the ring pull and ripped off the lid, metal scraping metal, the sound mirroring her grating nerves, before the smell of sardines and tuna assailed her nostrils, threatening her churning stomach. ‘My phone is on. It’s just the hills, they sometimes block the signal.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘And you’re insane. You show up here like Rambo, all guns blazing, and for what? Did you think I was trying to run away or something?’

‘Were you?’

She scoffed. ‘I wish. And do you think anyone would blame me? But no, we had a deal, remember? I do, even if it was a deal I was blackmailed into.’ She tossed the lid into the sink for now and plunged the spoon into the silver- and-pink mixture.

‘A deal,’ he said, ‘that you agreed to.’

He was standing between her and Misty’s bowl, so she circled to the left, keeping the timber island between them.

She crouched down low, spooning the seafood into the bowl. Misty stood guard until she’d finished, glaring at their unwelcome visitor, her tail pointing directly into the air, until Mackenzi stood up and Misty relaxed enough to gobble down her food.

So he’d found her gone, hadn’t been able to raise her on her mobile and had decided she’d changed her mind. ‘You really thought I’d done a runner, didn’t you? So, true to form, you had to do the caveman thing and come drag me back to your cave again. How sweet. I didn’t realise you cared.’

Fury, white-hot and bitter, surged through his veins. Yes, he’d been angry when he’d discovered her missing from the hotel—especially when he’d discovered how far away she lived. He hadn’t been overly worried that she’d reneged on their deal and run away, though. She needed this deal more than he did. But, when he hadn’t been able to reach her on her mobile, the doubts had crept in.

She tossed the tin in the recycling bin and moved back towards the sink, and he surprised her by moving in her path, his large hands hot around her arms. The spoon dropped from her hand, clattering on the terracotta-tiled floor. ‘You want to see a caveman? I could take you right now,’ he said. ‘I could bend you over this damned bench you keep hiding behind and finish what I started before.’

Her eyes widened, her breath hitching up a notch telling him that it was more than shock that prompted her reactions. Her face was flushed, her breasts strained against the knit top and her nipples budded oh, so temptingly—but it was her eyes that gave her away, green eyes that flared with passion and barely repressed sexual need. Oh yes, she wanted this too.

The pink tip of her tongue emerged, moistening her top lip, and he watched it, fascinated. ‘And wouldn’t that just prove my point?’ she said, her voice shaky and a little breathless.

Dante stepped her back until the island bench stopped her, then placed his hands beside her, imprisoning her in the space between his arms. ‘Right now,’ he whispered, his voice low and gravelly, ‘I don’t give a damn about your point. Because right now...’

He saw a moment’s panic in those green depths, but it was just as quickly swallowed up in the flames that followed it. Flames of desire. For all her bluster, for all her ‘caveman’ rhetoric, she couldn’t wait to start work as his mistress, in his bed or out of it. Even now he could sense her will buckling as her body prepared to make him welcome. Already she would be wet and slick and hot for him. He smiled and dipped his head lower, liking the way she angled her head in readiness for his kiss, her lips slightly parting. She probably didn’t even realise she was doing it.

‘Right now,’ he repeated, his lips hovering bare millimetres from hers, ‘we have a plane to catch.’

Mackenzi blinked, confusion warring with a certain disappointment in her eyes as he pushed himself away. ‘Have you packed?’

She battled to gather herself, making a play of picking up the spoon and wiping at the floor where it had landed, keeping her face averted even though it was too late for that. He’d already seen the twin slashes of red that branded her cheeks. ‘Of course I’ve packed,’ she told him, in a voice that was a shadow of its former argumentative self. ‘But you said we didn’t have to leave until two.’

‘Change of plans. We’re flying out of Adelaide now, not driving, and going straight through to Auckland tonight. That’s why I was trying to call you. Are you ready? Said all your goodbyes?’

She sniffed, ignoring his questions. ‘I’ll get my bag.’

‘So you live alone?’Dante asked her halfway during the short flight to Melbourne.

They were the first words he’d spoken to her for what seemed like forever; his laptop and papers were spread out all around him, keeping him fully focused until now. She preferred it when he was fully focused on his work. It was easier to pretend that she was cool about this whole mistress thing, easier to pretend that it was just another day in the office.

She put down her novel, thankful that the wide business- class seats at least afforded her a degree of separation from him that she wouldn’t have had in economy class. Not that she could imagine Dante slumming it in cattle class. He’d have trouble folding his long body into the constraints of one of those seats, for a start.

‘You were there at the house,’ she said at last. ‘Did you see anyone else?’ He’d followed her into her room when she’d retrieved her case—he’d raised an eyebrow at the size, or lack of it. And she hadn’t missed his eagle- eyed appraisal of her house, taking it all in, searching for something—evidence of cohabitation? ‘It’s just me and Misty.’

‘So who’s Richard?’

Oh God, they were back to this. But then Dante Carrazzo didn’t strike her as the kind of man who’d like to share. ‘Nobody. A man I knew once. A friend.’

‘A lover?’

She almost laughed. Richard had fancied himself as a lover, that was true, even if she’d never lived up to his expectations. Then she remembered the too-easy smiles, the too-easy charm—the too-easy hurt—and she frowned instead. ‘For a time, I guess you could say that.’

‘What happened?’

‘He lied to me. Simple as that. He lied to me about something important and I could never trust him again.’

‘What did he lie about?’

This time she did allow herself a laugh, a self-deprecating laugh, bitter and short. ‘He was married. The whole time he was with me, he had a wife and two kids tucked away in Sydney. Little surprise he went away on business a lot. He obviously told his wife the same thing.’

He said nothing for a while, and she was beginning to think she’d bored him rigid with her pathetic recollection. ‘You thought I was Richard last night.’

‘Did I? I can’t imagine why.’ And that, at least, was the truth. Richard had been an adequate lover; he’d certainly thought so. He’d gone through the mechanics of sex with a textbook precision she had no doubt he employed in every facet of his MBA life. But, for all his charm, good looks and easy smiles, he’d failed to get her pulse racing, just as he’d never once blown her world apart.

She was an ice queen, he’d told her. He loved her, he’d told her—another lie—but she had a fundamental problem and she was lucky she had him to help her through it.

Coming after a first ill-fated romance, she had started to believe he was right.

Until last night, when Dante had blown her away, and kept threatening to do again every time they were alone together.

What was it about this man with dark, turmoil-filled eyes, who bullied and forced her into a deal she had no idea he’d even honour? A man who taunted her unmercifully, who threatened her with sex on a kitchen bench-top and then deprived her of the same.

Cheated her of the same.

Surely she should hate a man like that?

It was a kind of hate, she told herself. A simmering resentment for all that he had done and all that he had assumed. The scene in the kitchen played over again—the anticipation, the sheer depths of disappointment when she’d all but offered herself to him and he’d walked away. Oh yes, a blistering resentment for all that he hadn’t done.

Less than twenty-four hours after one chance bedroom encounter, one bedroom awakening, and her body was practically begging for more of the same. She couldn’t even kid herself she was only interested in sleeping with him for the lifeline it gave the hotel. Not any more.

Damn the man; she’d take the lifeline, but she also wanted what he could offer her.

And she wanted it bad.

The pilot’s voice sounded over the intercom, informing them that they’d started their descent into Melbourne. The first leg of their journey was nearly over. Dante packed away his laptop and returned to his reports, saving her from any more questions but unable to save her from her thoughts.

Dante’s investment manager, Adrian Stokes, met them at the airport. A tall, pigeon-chested man with sandy, receding hair, he gave her a curious once-over like she was no more than some shell someone had collected on a beach. And then he proceeded to ignore her. Which suited her just fine. The two men obviously wanted to discuss business, so it was an easy decision to swap seats so the two of them could spend the entire next leg to New Zealand plotting whatever corporate uber-plan it was they were hatching.

It was easier sitting apart, her headphones delivering a constant supply of her favourite country-ballads over the drone of the engines. She stole a glance across the aisle, saw their heads bowed together in fervent conversation, Dante’s long fingers wrapped around a fountain pen, his expression serious. It was easier, and she knew she should feel relieved. Yet part of her missed that almost electric sensation that accompanied his proximity, part of her missed the energy he radiated, the sizzle on her skin when they touched, the danger.

If she’d ever wondered what it meant to be a mistress, now she knew—having had his attention to herself for almost an entire day, only then to find herself being shoved aside to make way for his business associate, someone who could help him build his fortune to even greater heights. She was an indulgence. A diversion. Merely one or two weeks of down-time entertainment for a busy empire-builder.

The same one or two weeks she had to convince him not to close down Ashton House.

She’d been a fool today, pushing him away, insulting him at every opportunity and testing his limits, thinking this was all about her. It wasn’t, not in the wider sense. She was just the vehicle. Because it was about saving Ashton House, and if she couldn’t win this man over in bed how could she ever expect him to relent about the fate of the hotel?

Damn it all, she might only be his mistress, but that didn’t mean she was without influence.

One or two weeks of opportunity.

And she wouldn’t waste another minute of it. Starting right now.

She turned her head, caught his eye this time, held it, and smiled.

He was halfwaythrough outlining their strategy for tomorrow’s meeting with Quinn when he saw her. He paused, confused when for once she didn’t look away and bury her face in her book. Confused even more when she smiled. What was that about?

‘Dante?’

He looked back at Adrian, who was staring at him, frowning. ‘You were saying?’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Where was I?’

‘She’s kind of pretty,’ Adrian conceded, throwing a glance Mackenzi’s way, and clearly ready for a change of topic. ‘Even though she could do with a nose job.’

Dante frowned. He didn’t think her nose was that bad. Kind of cute, in a way.

‘Her name sounds familiar,’ Adrian added.

‘It should. She’s the ex-manager of Ashton House.’

Adrian’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Ah, she’s a woman.’

‘Very much so.’

Adrian grinned. ‘And so she agreed to come along for the ride, given she was going to lose her job when you shut the hotel anyway?’

‘Not quite. Mackenzi was quite vocal in her objections to me closing down the hotel. I made a deal with her—if she’d come with me, I’d think about changing my mind.’

Adrian’s smile widened, his eyes glinting as if he’d been let in on a delicious secret. ‘You told her you’d think about it?’

It was Dante’s turn to smile. ‘That’s about the size of it.’

‘But you’re not going to change your mind about Ashton House, are you? That’s never going to happen.’

Dante took one last glance at Mackenzi, now engrossed again in her novel. He could almost feel sorry for her— almost. Then he turned his attention back to the figures. ‘Not a chance.’

It was one in the morning by the time they landed in Auckland, closer to two by the time they’d disembarked and cleared customs, and another hour more by the time the stretch limousine had deposited them all at their hotel and they’d checked in. With the time difference, it was really closer to her midnight, but after a broken night’s sleep last night, and a day fraught with tension today, Mackenzi’s sleep-deprived body could easily have accepted the time as a fact. In any one else’s presence.

Even Adrian’s non-stop tale of matters at ‘Carrazzo central’—his pet name for the Melbourne head office— during the ride into the sleeping city hadn’t dulled her senses. In fact it had only sharpened her resentment of the man, as he’d pointedly ignored her throughout. She wondered if Adrian was an MBA. She didn’t like him already.

Then Adrian was gone, and there was something about being led through the hushed hallways of a sleeping hotel, being led to their suite—the suite in which she would properly become his mistress—which made nonsense of the hour and honed her senses to wide-eyed wakefulness.

Would Dante expect her to commence her duties tonight, having found her a bed like she’d demanded? After experiencing his sensual tug on her most of the day, a tug that had threatened to bring her undone at least twice, she didn’t doubt it.

The porter ushered them into their suite, but instead of the bed she’d been expecting to confront there was a lounge, large and plush and rich with sateens and velvet upholstery. A dining room for eight adjoined it, the table set with a massive floral centrepiece. A room to one side served as an office. At the far side of the suite lay the master bedroom—the size of a generous suite itself. The super king-sized bed piled with pillows dominated the spacious room, a tray on the table alongside bearing an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne and two crystal flutes.

But it was the bed her eyes returned to.

She gulped. A person could get lost in a bed that big. Then she looked at Dante, directing the porter with their bags, and changed her mind. She’d never be lost with him alongside. She trembled at the prospect. What would it be like to share his bed? To go to bed with him at night and wake up to him in the morning? How would it feel to have his body nestled against her own?

Soon she would find out.

She crossed to the large bank of windows and opened the net curtains, revealing the lights of the city in all their glory. Dante saw the porter out. She heard the door to their suite and finally, once again, they were alone.

At last!