CHAPTER THREE

      “FORGIVE ME FOR saying so, sir, but you do not seem yourself.”

      Mauro Bianchi, dissolute playboy and renowned billionaire, looked over at his assistant Carlo, and treated him to a fearsome scowl. “You are not forgiven.”

      Not because his assistant was not wrong in his observation. No. Mauro was not himself, and had not been for the past three months. He could not pretend he didn’t know why. He did.

      He was held utterly captive by memories of a bewitching redhead, and a stolen hour in his private suite of rooms.

      By the way she had run from him, leaving him holding her shoe.

      And by the discovery he’d made when he had gone back to his bedroom.

      The blood left on the sheets.

      It was entirely possible the woman had started her period, he supposed.

      Also… Also a possibility that she had been a virgin. Though he could not fathom a virgin speaking as boldly as she had.

      A virgin going back to a man’s room for sex, and only sex.

      And she had said there was someone waiting for her at home.

      He was captivated by the mystery of her, by the erotic memory of her, and nothing he did allowed him to shake it.

      Apparently his staff was beginning to notice.

      Certainly, the paparazzi had.

      Wondering why he’d yet to turn up anywhere with a new woman on his arm, and there was endless speculation about that.

      Some even suggesting that he might be in a real relationship, rather than just engaging in one of his usual transient sexual dalliances.

      Of course, the press could not be more wrong.

      His bed was cold and empty. And Mauro Bianchi could not remember a time in his life when that had been true before.

      As soon as he reached sexual maturity, he’d not been alone unless by his own choosing. As a homeless boy, he’d found quite handily that if he were to seduce a woman who did have a bed, he could get not only sex but a nice place to stay.

      He had never been shy about using his body. It was one of his many tools. Something that could bring him profit and pleasure, and why not?

      He behaved thus even still.

      But since his encounter with Alice. Alice Steele, who he knew was not real. He had searched high and low for women bearing that name who resembled her even slightly. Women who resided in England, and then indeed anywhere, and none fit her description.

      As he suspected, her name was not real.

      She was like a ghost. And the only thing he had to assure himself that she had been real at all was the shoe.

      The shoe that sat on his nightstand. Not the act of a man who was in his right mind. Not at all. But knowing that did not entice him to change it.

      He didn’t feel in the mood to be in his right mind. That was the problem.

      He was in the mood for her. Hungry for her.

      He’d told himself he’d never be hungry again. Never want without having.

      She’d forced him into that position and it made him feel…

      Powerless.

      Which was a foolish thing. He was a man at the top of the world. At the top of his field. She was… She was nothing. Just a woman in a club. He was a man who’d risen from the slums of Italy in defiance of his father, a man who had been rich and titled and had wanted nothing to do with his son.

      On the far wall, between the windows that overlooked a view of Rome below, news was playing on the TV. He always had news on. It was imperative that he keep up with world events, and he was well able to absorb information without giving it his full attention. His ability to multitask another part of his storied rise to success. His aptitude for numbers, and investments, and indeed for picking places that would become the hottest locations in terms of real estate and trends, had made him incredibly wealthy.

      That required him to work constantly, and to pay attention to a great many details at once.

      Of course, he could pay people to do much of the day-to-day things now, but still, if he didn’t have a lot of input he was bored easily.

      Without a female in his bed for the past three months he was growing intensely bored and incredibly bad tempered.

      But no one appealed to him. None at all. None save…

      Suddenly, a flash of red hair caught his attention and he gave his full focus to the TV, where a woman was sitting in a private-looking room, pale legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded in her lap. She was dressed incredibly demurely. Her red hair was pinned into an elegant bun, her butter-yellow skirt falling below her knees, her high heels sensible and sedate.

      She looked so very like the woman—his woman—from three months ago, and yet like a different creature entirely.

      She was regal in her posture, her every movement elegant, each slight turn of her head intentional.

      “Sir,” Carlo said.

      “Shut up,” Mauro said, grabbing the remote and turning the TV up.

      She was speaking, but it was in a different language, something like Norwegian, but slightly different, and he didn’t speak it either way. They were not putting up subtitles on the screen, but the news commentators were going over the top in his native Italian.

      “Queen Astrid von Bjornland issued a statement today to her people, that she is about to embark on an unusual path for a woman in her position. The queen is pregnant, it seems, and is determined to raise the child alone. Invoking an old