Modern Romance March 2021 Book 5-8 by Carol Marinelli (desktop ebook reader txt) 📗

He moved like an athlete with his smooth, deliberate motions. His beautifully tailored clothes only emphasized how well made he was.

He paused where the spring sun was streaming through the break in the curtains and shoved his hands into his pockets. The action strained his trousers across his firm behind.

Amy was not an ogler. Men of all shapes, sizes and levels of wealth paraded through her world every day. They were employees and clients and couriers. Nothing more. She hadn’t completely sworn off emotional entanglements, but she was exceptionally careful. Occasionally she dated, but even the very nice men who paid for dinner and asked politely before trying to kiss her had failed to move her.

Truthfully, she didn’t allow anyone to move her. She preferred to keep her focus on her career. She’d been taught by an actual, bona-fide teacher that following her heart, or her libido, or that needy thing inside her that yearned for someone to make her feel special, would only leave her open to being used and thrown away like last week’s rubbish.

But here she was acting like a sixth-former biting her fist because a particularly nice backside was in her line of sight. Luca wasn’t even coming on to her. He was just oozing sex appeal from his swarthy pores in a passive and oblivious way.

That was ninja-level seduction and it had to stop.

“I’m asking you to reverse the build,” Luca said. “Give me a scandal instead of making one go away.”

She dragged her attention up to find him looking over his shoulder at her.

He cocked his brow to let her know he had totally and completely caught her drooling over his butt.

She briefly considered claiming he had sat in chewing gum and gave her hair a flick, aware she was as red as an Amsterdam sex district light. She cleared her throat and suggested gamely, “You’re in the wrong part of London for cheap disgrace. Possibly hire a woman with a different profession?”

He didn’t crack a smile.

She bit the inside of her lip.

“A controlled scandal.” He turned to face her, hands still in his pockets. He braced his feet apart like a sailor on a yacht, and his all-seeing gaze flickered across her blushing features. “I’ve done my research. I came to you because you’re ideal for the job.”

Whatever color had risen to her cheeks must have drained out of her because she went absolutely ice cold.

“Why do you say that?” she asked tautly.

His brows tugged in faint puzzlement. “The way you countered the defamation of that woman who was suing the sports league. It was a difficult situation, given how they’d rallied their fans to attack her.”

Amy released a subtle breath. He wasn’t talking about her past.

“It was very challenging,” she agreed with a muted nod.

She and her colleagues-slash-best friends, Bea and Clare, had taken on the case for a single pound sterling. They’d all been horrified by the injustice of a woman being vilified because she’d called out some players who had accosted her in a club.

“I’m compelled to point out though—” she lifted a blithe expression to hide the riot going on inside her “—if you wish to be ruined, the firm we were up against in that case specializes in pillorying people.”

“Yet they failed with your client because of your efforts. How could I even trust them?” He swept a dismissive hand through the air. “They happily billed an obscene amount of money to injure a woman who’d already been harmed. Meanwhile, despite winning, your company lost money with her. Didn’t you?”

His piercing look felt like a barbed hook that dug deep into her middle.

Amy licked her lips and crossed her legs. It was another muscle memory move, one she trotted out with men in an almost reflexive way when she felt put on the spot and needed a brief moment of deflection.

It was a power move and it would have worked, buying her precious seconds to choose her words, if she hadn’t watched his gaze take note of the way the unbuttoned bottom of her skirt fell open to reveal her shin. His gaze slid down to her ankle and leisurely climbed its way back up, hovering briefly on the open collar of her maxi shirtdress, then arrived at her mouth with the sting of a bee.

As his gaze hit hers, his mouth pulled slightly to one side in a silent, Thank you for that, but let’s stay on task.

It was completely unnerving and made her stomach wobble. She swallowed, mentally screaming at herself to get her head in the game.

“I would never discuss another client’s financial situation.” She would, however, send a note to Bea advising her they had some confidentiality holes to plug. “Can you tell me how you came by that impression, though?”

“Your client was quoted in an interview saying that winning in the court of public opinion doesn’t pay the way a win in a real court would have done, but thanks to Amy at London Connection, she remains hopeful she’ll be awarded a settlement that will allow her to pay you what you deserve.”

Every nerve ending in Amy’s body sparked as he approached. He still seemed edgy beneath his air of restraint. He dropped a slip of paper onto the coffee table in front of her.

“I want to cover her costs as well as my own. Will that amount do?”

The number on the slip nearly had her doing a spit take with the air in her lungs. Whether it was in pounds sterling, euros, or Russian rubles didn’t matter. A sum with that many zeroes would have Bea and Clare sending her for a cranial MRI if she turned it down.

“It’s...very generous. But what you’re asking us to do is the complete opposite of London Connection’s mission statement. I’ll have to discuss this with my colleagues before accepting.” Why did Clare have to be overseas right now? Starting London Connection had been her idea. She’d brought Amy on board to get it off the