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

a stock keep-the-client-happy smile, saying a very unconcerned, “I’ll risk it.”

It was cheeky enough to grate, mostly because it lit an urgency in him, one that warned him against letting her get away. He started to tell her that when he said something, he meant it, but she was already gone.

Amy fled the suite. She had reached the limit of her ability to pretend she was cool with all of this and desperately needed to bring her pulse under control, especially after what had just happened.

What had just happened?

She had found an excuse to escape his overwhelming presence, dragged on her jacket, glanced at Luca, and a crackling surge of energy between them had nearly sucked her toward him like a tractor beam pulling her into an imploding sun. For one second, she’d thought he was going to leap on her and swallow her whole.

Much to her chagrin, she was a teensy bit disappointed he hadn’t. In fact, she was stinging with rejection at the way he’d so quickly frozen her out, as if he hadn’t handpicked her to make his worst nightmare come true.

As if she’d been obvious in her attraction toward him and he’d needed to rebuff her.

As if she had consciously been issuing an invitation—which she hadn’t!

She was reacting on a purely physical level and was mortified that it was so potent. So obvious. She didn’t understand why it was happening. Even before all her PR management courses, she’d had a knack for being dropped into a situation that demanded swift, decisive action and turning it around. Now it was her day job to create space for clients to freak out and sob and come to terms with whatever drama might have befallen them. She was adept at processing her own reactions on the fly, but today she was shaking and wishing for a paper bag to breathe into.

Luca was the diametric opposite of everything she’d ever encountered. He wasn’t a boy from the council flats who’d stumbled into stardom and didn’t know how to handle it. He’d been raised to be king. He was a man of impeccable reputation who wanted her to engineer his fall from grace. Instead of his looks and wealth and privilege getting him into trouble, he needed her to make that happen for him. I want you, he’d said.

He’d made it sound as if he saw her as exceptional at what she did, but there was that niggling fear deep in her belly that she’d been chosen for other, bleaker reasons.

Even as she was texting Clare and Bea from the lift, informing them she was leaving town with an important new client who’d offered a “substantial budget,” she was stamping her feet to release the emotions that were accosting her.

There was no tricking herself into believing Luca Albizzi was a client like any other. He wasn’t. Not just because he was a king. Or because he radiated more sex appeal than a whole calendar of shirtless firefighters. He was...magnificent.

He was causing her to react like a—She pinched the bridge of her nose, hating to admit it to herself, but it was true. She was behaving like damned schoolgirl.

That would not do. She was older and wiser than she’d been back then. Infatuation Avenue was firmly closed off. Men were no longer allowed to use her very natural need for affection and companionship as a route to taking advantage of her. Besides, he was a client. Their involvement had to remain strictly professional. It would, she vowed.

As the lift doors opened, Clare texted back that she would run things remotely. Bea promised to email their boilerplate for the contract. Neither protested her disappearing, darn them for always being so supportive.

Amy hurried to the boutique. Thankfully, she was blessed with a body that loved off-the-rack clothing. It took longer for the woman to ring up her items than it did for Amy to yank them from the rod. She didn’t need to buy a toothbrush. She always kept the grooming basics in her shoulder bag since she often had to freshen up between meetings.

She was catching her breath after racing down the stairs to the car park when the lift bell rang. Luca’s bodyguards stepped out. One checked as he saw her hovering, nodding slightly when he recognized her. An SUV slid to a halt, and Luca glanced at her as he appeared and walked across to the door that was opened for him.

“I didn’t believe you could find what you wanted in less than an hour.” His gaze dropped to the bag she swung as she hurried toward him. “Your ability to follow through on a promise is reassuring.”

“Reassurance is the cornerstone of our work. I’m not being facetious. I mean that.” She let his bodyguard take her purchases and climbed into the vehicle beside Luca, firmly ignoring the cloud of the king’s personal fragrance, which may or may not have been a combination of aftershave, espresso and undiluted testosterone.

Whatever it was, it made her ovaries ache.

As the door shut and the SUV moved up the ramp into the daylight, Amy withdrew her tablet from her satchel, determined to do her job, nothing more, nothing less.

“I was going to look up some background information unless you’d rather brief me yourself?”

He pressed the button on the privacy window, waiting until it was fully shut to ask, “How much do you know about my family?”

“Only the—” She pursed her lips against saying sketchiest. “The most rudimentary details. I know your father passed away recently. Six months ago? I’m very sorry.”

He dismissed her condolence with an abbreviated jerk of his head.

“And your mother has been gone quite a bit longer?” she murmured gently.

“Twenty years. We were eleven.” The flex of agony in his expression made Amy’s attempts to remain impervious to him rather useless.

“That must have been a very hard loss for you and your sister. I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you,” he said gruffly, and something in his demeanor told her that even though