So she’d turned her back on him and hadn’t let herself glance that way again until she was surehe had left, with Emily still clinging to him, blissfully unaware that she’d just been insulted by the very man she was no doubt about to go to bed with.

Within hours she’d made herself forget all about him. So when he’d called her at her hotel that

same evening and introduced himself it had taken her several seconds to connect with the

name.

‘I would like to take you to dinner,’ he expressed, in a dark accented voice that oozed with the

sensual self confidence that she was about to jump on his neck with gratitude and delight.

She told him bluntly where to stick his invitation and cut the connection. When the flowers

arrived ten minutes later she returned them with a note.

Let’s get a couple of things straight, Mr Costa. I don’t go out with love-rats and I don’t cheat on

my colleagues. Take my name and number out of your little black book and don’t contact me

again.

‘da Costa,’ he corrected lazily by telephone the next day. ‘And little black books became

obsolete with the arrival of the BlackBerry.’

‘And I’m running late for my flight to New York,’ she responded, before cutting him off once

more.

She’d done the full fashion circuit and was right here in London before they met up again. She

and Emily had not crossed paths since the last London shoot, so when the other model arrived

for London Fashion Week Angie was already on her guard, expecting Leonardo to appear at

any moment. She spotted him front of house, sitting next to Carla, and she seethed all the way

down the runway and back up again…because she could feel his dark eyes lazily undressing

her from the flimsy scrap of multi-coloured silk she was wearing as if he had the right. But what

really disturbed her was the thought that she’d probably been undressed like that a thousand

times before without ever noticing.

Making the clothes look fabulously sexy and alluring was her job. Full-stop. She didn’t want to

feel Leonardo’s eyes doing that to her. She didn’t want to know she could be susceptible to any

man’s glance.

After the show he arrived backstage with Carla on his arm. Smooth and sleek, and infuriatingly

sure of himself, he used the only person Angie could call a friend to assure a formal introduction

between the two of them. When he wanted them to, Leonardo’s charmingly polite manners could melt an iceberg. Shame it was spoiled by Emily, who came to wind herself around his other arm like a slinky dark sex kitten with a hot siren’s smile.

Angie was actually happy to have her mobile phone burst into life, with her brother’s

headmaster on the other end of it informing her Alex had been taken to hospital after a brawl

with another pupil had knocked him out. She made hurried excuses and rushed out of the

reception, her attention fixed on finding a taxi that would take her to Hampshire.

Leonardo appeared at her side as she was begging a black cab driver to make the journey.

‘Come on.’ He took hold of her arm. ‘My car is parked over here. I will take you.’

The beginning of the end of her resistance to him, Angie thought now with a bitter wry smile.

The breathtaking patience with which he’d dealt with her prickly hostility even as she’d let him

drive her all the way to the hospital local to Alex’s school. The way he’d waited patiently while

she’d checked that her brother was not at death’s door and dealt with his censorious

headmaster because her brother had apparently started the brawl.

Limp as a rag by the time they’d started the journey back to London again, and in a snappish

mood, she’d reminded him that he’d left Emily standing back in London.

‘Emily and I have not been an item since I first saw you,’ he’d stated coolly. Then, with a

deliberate change of subject, ‘Tell me about your parents. Why are they not here to deal with

your brother? ‘

And that had been it. For some reason Angie still could not figure that quietly serious question

had ended her objections to him. For the first time since she’d taken responsibility for Alex she’d

found herself pouring it all out on that car journey back to London. By the time he’d seen her

safely inside her Chelsea apartment she had already been halfway infatuated by his quiet

manner and his seriously disturbing charm.

Angie sighed, narrow shoulders hunching inside her coat as she slumped down onto the edge

of Leonardo's desk and stared down her long legs at her flat-shoed feet. Within a week he had

been her lover. Within three months he’d asked her to marry him. Within a year all her

rose-tinted dreams had lain broken…more than broken…shattered by a sequence of

nightmarish events she still found impossible to think about, though the hurt they’d inflicted

refused to hide away with the thoughts.

‘Take off the coat.’

Lifting up her head, Angie was not quick enough to cover up those feelings her memories

brought back. She hurt. And he was lounging there, at ease in the doorway, arms

folded across his shirt-front, eyes slightly narrowed, watching her steadily.

In charge.

She dragged her eyes away from him. ‘When I look at you I see Emily,’ she told him bleakly.

‘When I look at you I see a blind, stubborn woman,’ he drawled back. ‘Stop fighting me, Angie,’

he then said flatly. ‘Your year-long sulking time is up. Accept it.’

Sulking? He dared to think she was merely sulking?

‘I just don’t want to be in your life any more! ‘Hating that she was revealing even this one small

glimpse of vulnerability to him, Angie shot away from the desk.

‘But you will be in my life again,’ Leonardo returned, smooth as glass, ‘because, meu querida,

baby brother expects you to do whatever it is I want you to do.’

He was challenging her to deny it. To call his bluff. In one dark corner of her agonised feelings

Angie even suspected that he wanted her to walk away.

Power games, she recognised. Not with her this time, but with Alex. He wanted her to leave her

brother to face up to his crimes for himself.

‘I don’t even understand why you want me back.’ She was genuinely mystified by that. ‘It’s not

as if you enjoyed living with me the first time around.’

His mouth gave a twitch. ‘You had your good moments.’

Angie uttered a low husky laugh. ‘You can get good sex anywhere, Leonardo, and without

having to put up with the hassle of a pain-in-the-neck wife breathing all over your guilty

conscience.’

‘I don’t have a guilty conscience.’

‘Well, you should have!’ she flared. ‘You took Emily to bed. You had great sex with her. The

newspapers were full of how good it was. So don’t you dare stand there and admit to me that

you don’t feel guilty about it when it was me they ridiculed because I could not keep my husband happy!’

‘Well, did you…keep me happy? ‘

Seeing the arched eyebrows which accompanied his calm counter-charge, Angie saw no

hint…not even a glimpse of a hint…of regret in his hard, handsome face.

She pulled in a breath, feeling an unwanted pressure building up in her chest. No, she had not

kept Leonardo happy. But when had he bothered to make an effort to make her happy?

He’d complained about her job commitments. He’d complained about Alex. Every decision she’d

had to make about her brother he had opposed. When she’d tried to make him understand her