‘But it is!’ she insisted. ‘My credit card! My name on the bills! I know you can’t have a leg tostand on. I just need time to check that out with a lawyer or something, but…’

‘Or we could bring in the police and let them decide.’

‘Or I could change my divorce plea.’ Angie went in for the kill, because she had nothing else left

to fight him with. ‘And go for half of everything you own, citing your adultery with Nadia!’

Leonardo heaved in a breath.

‘Go for it,’ he invited, his fabulous bone structure hard as nails now, ‘and I will have your brother

arrested. Make no mistake about it. This is called a stalemate, Angie, in case you have not yet

worked it out.’

What it was, Angie thought, was Leonardo throwing down the gauntlet between them. He might

as well have slapped her with it, hard in the face!

Dropping the pen, she stepped back from the desk with a jerk. ‘So why have you brought me

here if you are not prepared to negotiate with me?’ she demanded in a hurt, bewildered voice.

Her long, slender frame so taut that it trembled, her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at

her sides, she might sound bewildered and hurt, but she still had enough spirit left in her to fling

back her head, Leonardo noted dryly as, within the circle of light from the overhead desk light,

he watched her shimmer like a firecracker about to go off.

Without needing to think about his answer, he went with his instincts and strode around that light

pool until he was standing directly in front of her…towering over her as intimidating as hell.

‘I brought you here for this,’ he murmured ever so succinctly, lifting up one of his long fingered

hands to rest it warm against her throat.

‘Don’t you dare!’ she seethed, knowing what was coming.

Oh, he dared. Angie tried to push him away, but Leonardo had that covered. He planted his

other hand on the base of her spine and drew her inexorably against him. Anticipation as to

what was about to happen sent fiery sparks showering down over Angie’s flesh. Everything

about him was big and hard and familiar, like making contact with something precious she’d lost.

‘I hate you,’ she whispered in a last ditch attempt to save herself.

He just hit her with one of his mocking smiles because he knew…oh, how well he knew…what

she was really fighting.

Then he wasn’t smiling. He was parting his lips and bringing them down into burning contact

with hers. She stiffened her whole body and trembled in her determination to feel nothing. She

tried…tried not to give any kind of response. But then he made that slow, sensuous glide with

his tongue across her lips, and on the back of an unforgivable shiver of pleasure she

surrendered. She surrendered like a fool with no brain and let her lips fall apart in an invitation

he accepted with the hot, stabbing thrust of his tongue.

She drowned in that kiss for a full thirty seconds. She let him drive her wild as the natural

firecracker living inside her went off with passionate force. It spun her back into a world she had

tried so hard not to remember…the feel of him, the glorious taste, the urgent trampling heat of

desire he could create inside her so quickly, which flung her from icy with hatred to hot with

desire without a gap in between. Her fingers clawed up his shirt-front, making him shudder as

her nails raked flesh covered only by the thinness of his shirt, then winced when they dug like

talons into the back of his neck.

Leonardo jerked his head up. Gatinho,’ he muttered.

The little cat inside Angie purred with angry triumph, then went for the kill with a lethal precision

he really should have been ready for. She sank her teeth into his full and pulsing sexy lower lip.

With a grinding growl of reaction he bent her into such an acute arch that she cried out. The

next thing she knew he was kissing her so deeply she lost the ability to do anything else but

cling. Her heart went crazy, another anxious, helpless moan sounded deep in her throat, and

her breasts were crushed against his chest now, their dusky pink tips stirring and tightening to

sensitive pinpricks. If it hadn’t been for her coat he would have felt them. As it was he just

kissed her until she gave back with a melting urgency she was thoroughly ashamed of even

while she couldn’t stop herself from doing it.

Leonardo drew back his head and looked down into the dazed shimmer of her eyes, then at her

full, hot, pulsing mouth. With a sensual arrogance he lowered his head again to slide his tongue

across its quivering width. Angie released a helpless little whimper. He repeated the stroke and

finished it with a deeply erotic tangling with her tongue before he lifted up his head again.

Smouldering dark eyes burned a cruelly implacable look down at her, ‘This,’ he said, ever so

softly, ‘is your only negotiating chip, minha doce. Take it or leave it.’

Then, with a coolness that stunned Angie into a deep freeze, he put her away from him, stepped

around her, and strode for the door.

Reeling around to watch him go, every inch of his long, powerful body in such perfect harmony,

Angie cringed inside with the flaming heat of her own humiliation for being so weak as to let him

do this to her.

‘To listen to you anyone would think you were lily..white and perfect,’ she flung after him shakily.

‘But you were unfaithful to me, Leonardo. Does that count for anything with you?’

Leonardo stilled on

the threshold, the breadth of his shoulders revealing only the slightest hint of a tense twitch. ‘It

counted for something twelve months ago, when you deserved an explanation and redress from

me but refused both. Now it is too late. I will give you neither. So take my advice and get over it,

Angie. This is a different time, with different issues. Get a grip and move on.’

Get a grip and move on …?

Angie released a strangled little laugh that made those shoulders hunch a second time as he

continued out of the room.

‘Get a grip and move on’ from the sight of the man you loved, heart and soul wrapped in the

arms of another woman? Not in this lifetime…or even in the next life, come to that. He’d broken

her heart. He’d wrecked her ability to believe in herself.

The first time she’d met Leonardo had been at a London fashion shoot. Tall, dark, just too

gorgeous to be real. She’d automatically assumed he was one of the brooding male models

turning up for the shoot. It was a few minutes later when Emily Brones, an exotic dark Brazilian

model, went to wind herself around him and she realized that he must be the latest lover Emily

had been going on about like a fluttery love sick bird.

‘Don’t you know who he is?’ another model had whispered. ‘That’s Leonardo Moreira da Costa,

the most gorgeous, sexiest, richest playboy bachelor out there!’

And he’d been staring directly at Angie as if Emily wasn’t standing there, showering his

handsome face with kisses. Leonardo had lost his chance to make an impact on her right there

and then. She had no time for smooth, self obsessed love rats who thought nothing of eyeing up

other women while his current lover poured adoration over him with an enthusiasm he obviously believed he deserved. And anyway, she’d already had too many other things to think about

without adding the unexpected problem of the swift, unwanted hot flare of attraction she’d

suffered as her eyes had made contact with his.