The Italian's One-Night Consequence

Leo, at least, would appreciate her choice of clothing, since they came from the same side of the tracks.

Feeling more buoyant, she pushed open the door to the trattoria and looked around, hoping she’d arrived before he had because then she could have a drink to steady her nerves, and also hoping that she hadn’t, because to arrive early might suggest that she was desperate for male company. More than that—desperate for his company.

Nursing a drink at the very back of the restaurant, Leo had spotted her immediately. How could he not? The entire restaurant had spotted her at roughly the same time. Every male head swung round. Mouths fell open. In fairness to her, she didn’t seem to notice any of this as she peered around her, squinting into the semi-lit depths of the trattoria, which was noisy, packed and uncomfortable.

In a room full of pale faces her honeyed tan stood out, as did her hair, flowing in a wavy mane over narrow shoulders almost down to her waist. Leo half stood and she walked towards him, weaving a path through the crowds until she was right in front of him.

‘Been here before?’ he asked, and when she shook her head he nodded and scanned the room. ‘Do you think we’ll be able to have a conversation or should we resign ourselves to shouting?’

‘It’s cheap and cheerful. And I hear that the food’s good.’

She slipped into a chair and tried not to drink in his masculine beauty. She’d just about managed to convince herself that he couldn’t possibly be as striking as she remembered, but he was even more so. He radiated a dynamism that made her shiver with awareness, and his exotic colouring only added to the potent appeal of his good looks.

Very quickly Maddie had a glass of wine to calm her nerves, even though common sense told her there was nothing to be nervous about.

Certainly he was sticking to the script. If his original dinner invitation had set her antennae onto red alert, actually being here with him was doing the opposite, dispelling any misgivings she might have been harbouring about his intentions.

He was charm itself. He chatted about the many countries he had visited—which made sense because he was obviously a guy who lived for the present and absorbed whatever adventures life had to offer. It was something she really admired. He was witty and insightful, and she found herself laughing out loud at some of his anecdotes, barely noticing the antipasti he had ordered for them to share.

‘I envy you,’ she said truthfully as plates were cleared, glasses refilled and bowls of pasta placed in front of them. ‘I’ve never got to travel. I would have loved to, but my mum and I barely had enough to make ends meet and we would never have been able to afford it. I guess it’s a lot easier when you only have yourself to consider, and I suppose you could always pick up jobs here and there to pay your way...’

‘I do try and get myself an honest day’s work when I’m abroad,’ he said, almost uncomfortably. ‘Tell me why you’ve run away from Australia.’

The abrupt change in the conversation caught Maddie off-guard and she stiffened—her natural response whenever she thought about her past. What would this complete stranger think were she to tell him the truth? He might be an adventurer, living off the land and shunning responsibility, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be judgemental if she were to share her story with him.

The whole of her story.

Maddie found that she didn’t want him to think badly of her. ‘Whoever said anything about running away?’ she hedged lightly, winding long strands of spaghetti around her fork and avoiding eye contact.

Leo raised his eyebrows wryly. He sat back and gave her the benefit of his full attention, which was enough to make her blush furiously.

Her glass-green eyes drifted to his forearms, strong and muscled and sprinkled with dark hair, and she wondered what it would be like to be touched by them, to have his hands roam and explore her body. Her heart picked up speed and she licked her lips, panicked by the way her body was insisting on slipping its leash and running wild.

‘Well,’ Leo drawled, his voice a low murmur that made the hairs on the nape of her neck stand on end, ‘looking at the facts: you’re on the other side of the world, without a network of fellow travelling friends, and working in a job that can’t really be classed as career-building. You haven’t mentioned anything about studying, so I’m thinking that’s not relevant. Which leads me to think that you’re running away from something. Or someone. Or both.’

Maddie laughed, but the tide of colour in her cheeks was more vibrant now. ‘My mum died,’ she said, twirling the stem of her wine glass and then pausing as he filled it with more wine. ‘I’d spent some time looking after her. It was very unexpected. Bad luck, really. She broke her leg, and it was a very complex break, but it should have been okay.’ She blinked furiously. ‘Unfortunately the operation turned out to be a fiasco. She was confined to hospital for much longer than anticipated and then she needed a great deal of further surgery. Every time she felt she was back on her feet something would go wrong and back she would have to go.’

‘How old were you when all this happened?’

‘Just before my twentieth birthday,’ Maddie admitted.

‘Must have been tough.’

‘Everyone goes through tough times.’ She brushed off any show of sympathy because she was close enough to tears already. But she could see sympathy in the deep navy eyes resting on her and that was weird, because her very first impression of him had been of a guy who was as hard as nails.

Something about the predatory way he moved, the cool, lazy self-assurance in his eyes, the arrogant set of his features... But then being wary of the opposite sex, suspecting the worst before the worst could happen, had become a way of life for her.

‘You must have,’ she said lightly, blushing. ‘Gone through rough times, I mean? Or at least had one or two hairy encounters! Isn’t that part and parcel of being a nomad? A side effect of living life as an adventurer?’

Leo was enjoying the tinge of colour staining her cheeks. Australia. Hence the golden hue of her skin. Next to her, the other women in the restaurant seemed pale and anaemic.

He shrugged, adept as always at evading any sort of real sharing. ‘Sisters? Brothers?’ he asked. ‘Anyone out there for you when your mother was ill?’

‘Just me.’ Maddie realised that somewhere along the line food had been eaten and plates cleared away. She couldn’t remember when exactly that had happened. ‘My mother was from here, actually...’

‘Ireland?’ Startled, Leo caught her eyes.

‘As a matter of fact, she was.’

Maddie wondered what he would think if she told him that she was the owner of the very store he had been busy criticising only hours before. He didn’t look the type to scare easily, but men could be funny when it came to women being higher up the financial pecking order than they were.

‘Hence you’re returning to your motherland...?’

‘I thought it made sense. I wanted to get out of Australia after...after everything...’

Leo didn’t say anything, but his gaze was penetrating.

The waiter had approached, asking them what they’d thought of their meal, pressing them to sample some dessert but they both politely declined, asking only for the bill.

Maddie reached into her rucksack, withdrawing a wallet and extracting notes.

‘What are you doing?’ he asked with a frown.

‘Paying my way.’ Maddie looked at him, surprised at his reaction to what she thought was perfectly obvious.

‘When I go out with a woman I foot the bill,’ Leo asserted.

She stiffened. ‘Not this woman. I pay my half. That way I’m in no one’s debt.’

‘The price of a cheap Italian meal doesn’t put you in my debt.’ Leo tossed a handful of euros onto the silver platter—enough to cover the meal with an overly generous tip.

‘Have you never met a man who knows how to treat a woman?’ he asked, rising to his feet.

Maddie thought of her ex-boyfriend. Adam had loved paying for things for her. Flowers, chocolates, expensive meals out—but with the lavishing of gifts had come the manacles of control, the compulsion to turn her into something he wanted. And underneath all that had been his superiority—thinking that by making her into his doll he was asserting ascendancy over her, owning her.

But she’d remained the girl from the wrong side of the tracks, and sure enough that was something that couldn’t be buried under gifts and presents. Inevitably she’d learned a valuable lesson in the perils of ever thinking that someone rich and well-connected could ever be anything but condescending and manipulative.

Anyway, all those wildly expensive gifts had made her feel horribly uncomfortable, and she certainly didn’t like the idea of Leo or anyone else paying for her. As she had found to her cost, there was no such thing as a free lunch.

‘Are you asking me if I’ve ever met a man who knows how to reach for his wallet and buy me pretty baubles?’ She slapped a few euros on the table. The waiter was going to be very happy indeed with the extravagant tip coming his way. ‘Because if that’s what you’re asking then, yes, I have. And it didn’t work out for me. Which is why I prefer to keep things simple and pay my way.’

She stood up, and Leo shrugged, but his deep, dark eyes were assessing and thoughtful.

‘Far be it from me to tear someone away from her closely held principles,’ he murmured.

They headed outside, walking in the balmy summer air in no particular direction.

Except with some surprise Maddie realised that her legs were somehow moving towards the honeycomb of streets where her grandfather’s house was. It was on the outskirts of the city centre and, whilst the location was to die for, the house was not nearly as grand as some of the others and was in a state of disrepair.

The old man, so she had been told by her solicitor, had gradually downsized over the years, more and more as his healthy income had been whittled away to next to nothing, lost in gambling dens and crates of whiskey.

Maddie had wondered whether the absence of his only child had perhaps fuelled that spiral of despair, which had made her even more motivated to accept the challenge that had been bequeathed to her.

She stole a sneaky glance at the towering, over-the-top, sex-on-legs guy next to her and suddenly felt ashamed that she had snapped at him for trying to be a gentleman when in all likelihood he couldn’t afford it any more than she could.

‘Sorry,’ she apologised sheepishly. ‘You hit a sore spot there.’

Leo paused and looked down at her, holding her eyes with his, his expression speculative.

Her body trembled as she gazed back up at him, her eyes undoubtedly betraying her want.

‘I’ll be on my way,’ Leo murmured, breaking eye contact to stare up the road which was still as busy now as it had been hours previously. New York was not the only city, it would seem, that never slept.

‘Leo...’ Maddie breathed.

She wanted him. She didn’t know whether it was because she was lonely or because the unexpected stirring of attraction had reminded her that she was still young after all. Maybe he had unlocked some realisation that she couldn’t remain a prisoner of her past for the rest of her life.

Or maybe he was just so damned sexy that she simply couldn’t resist the pull of raw, primal lust.

Two ships passing in the night, she thought...

‘Do you want me to kiss you?’ Leo asked on a husky murmur, still not touching her.

‘No!’ Thank goodness they had managed to find themselves in a quiet corner of the otherwise busy street.

‘Then you need to stop looking at me like that.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like you want to eat me up...like you’d like me to eat you up.’

‘Leo...’

‘We’re both adults,’ Leo delivered on a rough undertone, ‘so I’ll be honest. You’re spectacular-looking and I want you more than I can remember wanting any woman for a long time. I want to touch you. I want to taste you...everywhere. But I don’t do long-term and in this instance we’re talking a one-night stand. A one-night stand to remember, but still a one-night stand. If you don’t like that, then walk away, Maddie.’

‘I always promised myself that I would never have a one-night stand,’ Maddie said, by rote, but her body was certainly not walking away. Indeed, it was staying very firmly put.

Leo shrugged, holding her gaze.

Confusion tore through Maddie, because she wasn’t lying. She’d never been a one-night stand kind of girl. From a young age her looks had attracted attention, and she had learned very fast that attention from the opposite sex more often than not bypassed the important stuff—like getting to know her, giving her credit for having a brain and seeing beyond the fact that she was, in Leo’s words, ‘spectacular-looking’. Adam had only served to cement those lessons in her head.

But...

But, but, but...

‘Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?’ she hazarded.

Leo’s eyebrows shot up. He refused to let her hide behind the cup of coffee scenario. ‘You want me. And I want you. I’ll accept the offer of coffee, but I’m not interested in a push-pull game of one step forward followed by two back.’

‘Nor am I.’ She tiptoed forward, filled with a sense of heady daring, and brushed his perfect mouth with hers.

CHAPTER THREE

AFTER A BRISK walk away from the city centre, they found themselves in a tree-lined avenue filled with mansions.

‘I don’t live in one of these.’

Maddie didn’t look at him as she said this but her cheeks were flaming red. She wasn’t lying, but she was uncomfortably conscious of the fact that she had played fast and loose with the truth.

She consoled herself with the obvious justification that launching into a garbled, long-winded explanation about inheritances and distant relatives was not relevant, given they were not going to be in one another’s lives for longer than this one night.

Which brought her full circle, questioning what she was doing. A one-night stand? Her proud, stubborn, fiercely independent mother would have had a heart attack on the spot, because she had drummed it into her only child that you had to choose carefully when it came to giving your body to someone else.

‘You’ll make mistakes,’ Lizzie Gallo had told her daughter, ‘but it’s still important to go into every relationship thinking it could be the one.’

Reflecting now on that advice, Maddie had to concede that her mother might not have ended up where she had, if she’d a one-night stand with Maddie’s father rather than running away with him, only to be abandoned the second he realised that the fortune he’d banked on Lizzie’s father providing wasn’t going to be coming his way.

Disinheritance in the name of love hadn’t been his thing. He’d stuck around just long enough to determine that there was going to be no reconciliation between daughter and rich daddy, and then he’d scarpered.

‘But I gave it my all,’ her mother had said, in one of her rare moments of honesty—because Lizzie Gallo had never been someone to moan and look backwards. ‘And, for me, that was the main thing. You climb into bed with someone for a few hours and, believe me, you won’t feel great when you climb out of it so that you can do the walk of shame back home.’

Well, that, Maddie reflected, sneaking a sidelong glance at the virtual stranger who had somehow managed to ensnare her into jettisoning all her principles, had not exactly served her well when it came to Adam.

She’d thrown herself into her relationship with Adam and given it everything. She’d been so in love with the idea of being in love that she’d missed all the warning signs of a relationship that had been made anywhere but in heaven.

This time... This time she knew what she was getting into. No girlish fantasies and romantic daydreams about Prince Charming only for Prince Charming to turn out to be Mr Toad. She was with a guy who wasn’t interested in laying down roots and who’d made it perfectly clear what he wanted.

She felt the bloom of longing between her legs and swallowed down a rush of powerful excitement.

The houses they were passing now were getting smaller and finally, at the end of the elegant road, she swung up the only drive that was unkempt.

‘Not what I expected.’ Leo glanced at the edifice of what must once upon a time been a rather charming cottage but now looked like something from the Land that Time Forgot.

‘What did you expect?’

Maddie unlocked the front door and pushed it open into a hallway that was worn, but still carried the hallmarks of the house it had once been. A flagstone floor, an old-fashioned wooden umbrella stand, a sturdy banister leading upstairs, and worn paintwork with great big discoloured patches from where she had removed dark, lugubrious paintings.

‘Something a little less...imposing...’

‘Does that bother you?’

‘Why should it?’

She’d turned to look at him and Leo could not resist the urge to touch, to feel the smoothness of her cheeks. He ran an exploratory finger over her striking cheekbones and then outlined the contours of her full mouth. When she shivered, he smiled with undisguised hunger.

‘I don’t know how you do what you do to me,’ he murmured, trailing his finger down towards her tee shirt and stopping just where the shadow of her cleavage began, ‘but all I want to do right now is rip those clothes off you and take you right here, right now...’

Maddie’s breath caught in her throat and she unconsciously arched her body up, so that her small, high breasts pushed towards him in a bold invitation for him to touch.

It was clear she wanted him—so badly that it was a physical ache—and her whole body shuddered as he slipped his hand underneath her tee shirt and then cupped her breast briefly, before tugging the lacy bra to one side so that he could feel the softness of her skin and the tightness of her nipple.

Positioning himself in front of her, Leo reached under the shirt with both hands, pushing up her bra completely to free her breasts, all the while keeping his eyes firmly pinned to her face, because he was absolutely loving the mesmerised hot burn of desire in her bright green eyes.

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