Пэнни Джордан – The Parenti Marriage: The Reluctant Surrender (страница 2)
Protectively Giselle lifted her hand to her heart in an attempt to steady its increased beat. She must
His genes were not derived from any Anglo-Saxon ancestor, she was sure. Not with those arrogant, almost Roman Byzantine features, with that hint of cruelty stamped into them. No. His was an intensely masculine face—intelligent, educated, arrogant and elegant. The Mediterranean olive flesh was drawn smoothly against high cheekbones, a strong jaw, and the Roman strength of his nose. If it hadn’t been for his unexpectedly silver eyes she would have said that this was a man whose bloodline came from the darkest mists of time—from a race of men destined by birthright and their own strength to sweep aside all opposition to their will.
One blast from those grey eyes was like having a laser gun applied to her icy shield. This was a man with a capital M—all-male, all-powerful, a man who believed that his will, his needs and desires should be free to rove and take possession of whatever they and he wanted.
The shock of being confronted by him was definitely having a dangerous effect on her. Somehow her senses had managed to break through the mental chastity belt in which she normally locked them to behave like a group of hormone overloaded teenagers, all too ready to feast themselves on the banquet in front of them. Only of course she had no intention of allowing them to do any such thing. And she had years of practice in ensuring that they obeyed her, she reminded herself as she struggled to retain her air of icy uninterest.
She didn’t like him, Giselle decided. She didn’t like him one little bit. He was far too arrogant. And far too male for her own comfort. Was that why she didn’t like him? Because she knew instinctively that his brand of male sexuality was very dangerous to her and that she was not as protected from it as she knew she had to be? Of course not, she assured herself determinedly.
Saul studied the woman standing in front of him with a practised male gaze. Medium height, slim—although the combination of the almost uniform-like dullness of her black skirt suit, worn over a plain white shirt, and the fact that her clothes were cheap and ill-fitting, as though they were a size too big for her, made it impossible to judge accurately how feminine her body shape might be. Her blonde hair was drawn back tightly into a smooth chignon that revealed the delicate bone structure of her face, with its femininely pronounced cheekbones and luminous skin. The gold tips to her eyelashes revealed by the overhead lighting suggested that they were neither dyed nor covered in mascara. Some men might find her cool, touch-me-not Grace Kelly-type looks a sexual challenge, and be curious enough to see just how much applied male interest her ice would take before cracking, but he was not one of them. He liked his women subtly and seductively wanton and willing—not playing at being ice maidens so that they could demand their ice was melted.
However, even if she had been his type, right now his attention was focused on retribution rather than seduction.
‘Let me past,’ Giselle demanded, asserting herself in an attempt to remind herself of the reality of the situation.
Her sharp demand added to Saul’s impatient fury. She had stolen his parking space, and she was argumentative, stubborn, and refusing to admit that she was in the wrong. Her whole attitude made him want to put her in her place.
He wasn’t going to move, and she was going to be late. Determined to make her escape, Giselle stepped quickly to one side of him—but as she did so he reached for her, taking hold of her forearms in a fiercely hostile grip. She could feel their bruising pressure on her flesh, male and alien and burning away the layers of cloth between them, so that it was almost as though he was touching her bare skin. A shocking sensation seized hold of her body as powerfully as he seized hold of her, panicking her into curling her hands into fists that she wanted to beat against his chest.
‘Let me go,’ she insisted furiously.
Let her go? There was nothing he wanted to do more. She’d already caused him more trouble in five short minutes than he’d ever allowed any woman to cause him. He looked directly at her. Her face was white and set, her eyes burning with temper, her mouth…
Still holding her with one hand, he removed the other from her arm to reach up and very deliberately wipe the lipstick from her mouth with his thumb, as if in preparation to kiss her.
She stood frozen, shocked at the intimate gesture, and the moment stretched as their gazes locked. Unable to move, Giselle was stunned by the leap of sensation his gaze shifting to her mouth conjured within her, and with it the hunger to—to what? To lean in to him?
The sudden blaring of a car horn close to them had Saul releasing his prisoner, thrusting her away from him as he did so. What had possessed him? And what would have happened if they hadn’t been disturbed? he asked himself as Giselle took advantage of the interruption to run from him.
To Giselle’s relief he didn’t follow her to the lift—which thankfully was empty. In it, on the way up to her office, with her heart thudding and racing and her mind in turmoil, she had to force herself not to think about what had just happened but instead to focus on the reason everyone had been called into the office.
For the past two years—in fact virtually since she had joined the prestigious practice of architects—the firm had been working on a lavish and costly project for a Russian billionaire, which involved turning a small island he had acquired off the coast of Croatia into a luxury holiday resort for the very wealthy. The financial downturn had led to the project being put on hold, much to the dismay of the firm’s senior partners, but then late yesterday they had received news that the island had a new owner, in the shape of another billionaire—a very successful entrepreneur, who had seen the plans for the island and now wanted to discuss them.
This news had galvanised the senior partners into swift action. Everyone connected with the plans—no matter in how lowly a capacity—had been instructed to make themselves available after the preliminary early-morning meeting, in case the island’s new owner wished to discuss any aspect of the plans with them. The hope was that he would give the green light to the stalled project, but of course there was no guarantee of that. With the threat of potential redundancies looming over them, naturally the more junior architects, like Giselle, were keeping everything crossed that he would look favourably on the plans.
The lift had stopped at her floor. Giselle exited the lift and headed for the office she shared with several other junior architects—all of them male, apart from her, and all of them in their different ways determined to show both her and the senior partners that they were a better financial investment for the firm than she could ever be.
‘It’s all right,’ said Emma Lewis, their shared PA, as Giselle stepped into the office. ‘The meeting’s been put back an hour. Apparently the new owner has been unavoidably delayed.’
Giselle exhaled with relief and told her, ‘I thought I was going to be late. I had to come in my car, because I’ve got a site meeting this evening, and the traffic was appalling.’
Emma, thirty-four to Giselle’s twenty-six, and married to a surveyor who was working on a contract out in the United Arab Emirates, treated her juniors in much the same way as she did her two children—mothering them with fond affection and doing her best to break up any quarrels between them. Giselle liked her, and was very grateful for the support Emma gave her.
‘Where’s everyone else?’ Giselle asked Emma, only to groan and go on, ‘No, don’t tell me—let me guess. They’re all in the gents, trying to work out how to avoid any blame that might be handed out whilst claiming any plaudits that could be going.’
Emma burst out laughing.
‘Something like that, I expect. I’ll bring you coffee, and then I’ll tell you the latest I’ve heard about our possible new client.’
Giselle nodded her head, and tried not to grimace inwardly. If Emma had one fault it was that she was devoted to gossip magazines charting the lives of the rich and famous, and Giselle suspected that ‘the latest’ was probably going to be some kind of information she’d gleaned from the pages of one of those dubious sources.
Five minutes later, sipping her coffee whilst she listened to Emma, she knew that she was right.
‘I’d never have seen it if I hadn’t had to take Timmy to the dentist, because the magazine was months old, and I couldn’t believe it when I opened it and right in front of me was an article about Saul Parenti. You’d think he was Italian with that surname, wouldn’t you? But he isn’t. Apparently his family actually own their own