Summer Surrender: Capelli's Captive Virgin / Italian Boss, Proud Miss Prim / The Italian's One-Night Love-Child. Susan Stephens
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ignoring the insistent buzz of the telephone that was tucked in the pocket of his suit.
He should have been rejoicing. In one short meeting he’d gained another high-profile, influential client and, more to the point, he’d ripped him away from a rival law firm. Ruthlessly competitive, Alessio waited for the usual high that came from defeating an adversary, but this time there was nothing.
Instead his brain was dominated by a picture of a pair of troubled blue eyes and blonde hair so tightly secured at the base of her slender neck that not even a strand was likely to escape.
Control, he thought dryly. Lindsay Lockheart was big on control. She controlled her hair, she controlled her emotions, but most especially she controlled her little sister.
For a woman who made her living trying to modify human behaviour, Lindsay was appallingly naïve when it came to understanding the actions of her younger sibling.
He’d never met anyone so serious. She acted as though she were ninety, and yet he knew she was only in her late twenties.
He strode across the polished marble floor of the lobby, through the revolving glass door and out into the street where his car awaited.
As if conjured straight from his thoughts, there was Lindsay Lockheart. She was standing by his car wearing the same crisp white shirt and slim black skirt that she’d had on earlier, her small overnight bag clutched in her fingers. Her delicate chin was held at a certain angle and there was a hopeful look in her eyes that melted into anxiety as she saw that he was on his own.
His driver shot him a look of nervous apology and Alessio sighed, lifted a brow in sardonic appraisal and focused his gaze on her pale face. ‘If you want to spend more time conversing, then I’m going to have to bill you.’
She stepped towards him. ‘Has Ruby turned up?’
‘You are obsessed with your sister’s movements.’ He handed his case to his driver, noting the way her cheeks blanched. It was a strange sibling relationship, he mused. Just how far was Lindsay prepared to go for her wayward sister? And, more interestingly, why?
‘I love my sister,’ she said huskily, ‘and I won’t apologise for that. Nor do I intend to explain myself to you.’
‘A decision that leaves me quite weak with relief,’ Alessio confessed in a lazy drawl, his eyes drawn to the tempting thrust of her breasts through her perfect white shirt. ‘I can’t imagine anything more likely to challenge my attention span than a summary of your family history. So, if you haven’t come to bore me, why are you here?’
‘I was checking whether you’d heard anything. I thought she might have turned up to do her job.’
‘Sadly for Ruby, the answer is no.’
Her slim shoulders sagged slightly as he delivered what was clearly a very unwelcome piece of news. ‘Could you give her a few more minutes? Just in case?’
‘No,’ he said gently, ‘I couldn’t.’
She closed her eyes briefly and he saw that her lashes were long and thick, the skin on her eyelids as pale as the rest of her face. ‘Please—’ Her voice cracked and when she opened her eyes again there was desperation there. ‘I—I know we don’t agree on things, but this is really important to me. Is there anything I can do to stop you firing her?’
The wild and wicked side of him took over. ‘Come in her place.’
He made the demand in absolute confidence that she would refuse.
The way they lived their lives was diametrically opposed.
On the surface they clashed, conflicted and disagreed.
But perhaps the biggest discordance lay under the surface. The powerful pull of sexual attraction disturbed her and he had a strong feeling that the roots of that disturbance were to be found deeper than the obvious restrictions posed by her ridiculously idealistic belief system.
He knew there was no way that Lindsay would ever voluntarily put herself in his path, so when she responded with a shocked ‘I can’t do that,’ he shrugged, reflecting on the fact that being constantly right could border on the tedious.
‘Of course you can’t.’ He couldn’t resist goading her a little more. ‘To be trapped with me in a romantic Caribbean hideaway would be a completely unfair test of your willpower. I understand.’
‘You flatter yourself, Signor Capelli.’ Her voice shook and her cheeks had slightly more colour than they had a moment earlier. ‘I could lie naked in a bed with you and still have no trouble resisting you because I know you’re just not right for me.’
Alessio laughed, thoroughly enjoying himself. ‘Now that’s a challenge no red-blooded Sicilian could refuse.’
‘I wasn’t issuing a challenge,’ she said stiffly. ‘I was merely pointing out that the brain does actually play a prominent part in my decisions although I can understand that you, as a “red-blooded Sicilian”, might find that hard to comprehend since you obviously think with a very different part of your anatomy.’
And that particular part of his anatomy was currently making its existence felt in the most predictable way possible, Alessio acknowledged wryly. And given that Lindsay Lockheart had yet to discover the wonders of sex without emotional attachment, the only available solution to this particular attack of animal lust appeared to be a cold shower.
‘If you have so much faith in your mental discipline, why would you be afraid to come with me?’
‘I’m not afraid.’ Her chin lifted and suddenly the tension between the two of them reached screaming pitch.
‘You’re afraid, Lindsay,’ Alessio said softly, ‘and I’ll tell you why. So far, the only thing that has kept me from having sex with you is lack of opportunity.’
She was so deliciously easy to shock, he mused, watching as her eyes widened and hot colour poured into her cheeks.
‘That’s nonsense. We could have all the opportunity in the world and I still wouldn’t have—we wouldn’t—’ She swallowed. ‘The ability to think and use our brains is what separates us from animals. I’m in control of what I do.’
‘If you’re so confident about that, then come in your sister’s place.’
He could see a tiny pulse beating in her creamy throat as she struggled with the challenge he’d thrown into her path. ‘I can’t just abandon my life.’
‘You mean you don’t trust yourself to be on a Caribbean island with me and not have sex.’ He gave a slow, sure smile. ‘Be honest, Lindsay. You know that your logical approach to relationships is going to be worth nothing when we’re both naked. And you’re afraid to lose.’
‘Damn you,’ she whispered, her eyes sparking angrily. ‘Damn you for making this about us when it should be about my sister.’
‘If it was about your sister, then you’d come.’
The lawyer in him interpreted every expression that flickered across her face. Nerves, worry, stress, fear and something else that he couldn’t immediately identify—something much, much more complex than all the other emotions put together—
‘I can’t just drop my life at a moment’s notice.’
‘You’re worried that one of your clients might get divorced when you’re not looking and that would be bad for publicity?’
‘I don’t care about publicity. I don’t care about winning and losing. I care about people. I care about Ruby. And I’m not coming with you.’
Alessio was astonished by the depth of his disappointment.
Why should it matter to him? It wasn’t as if his bed was going to be empty.
There was no shortage of beautiful, sophisticated women desperate for his attention. Women