The Sexiest Man Alive. Sandra Marton

know, I know. You’re starved. You’re famished. And you’re incapable of doing a thing about it without my help.”

      Peter sat down, his green eyes fixed on her as she banged open the cabinet over the stove.

      “Sardine Soufflé,” she said. “How’s that sound?”

      Peter yawned.

      “Salmon Surprise? Bacon Bordelaise? Mmm, mmm, good.”

      Peter scratched his ribs.

      “Tuna,” Susannah said through her teeth. “You love tuna, Petey. You know you do.”

      Peter looked toward the window. Susannah could have sworn she heard him whistling.

      “All right,” she said grimly. “You win. Lobster and Shrimp Ragout, and you’d better remember this moment, Peter, because now you owe me one.”

      Peter turned and looked at her “Meowr,” he said in the sweetest voice any Persian pussycat had ever possessed. He jumped gracefully onto the counter and butted his furry head against Susannah’s chin.

      “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Susannah said wearily, but she smiled and kissed him right between his silky ears

      Whatever else happened today, at least she had Peter to come home to.

      

      The view from Matthew Romano’s suite in the new and elegant Manhattan Towers Hotel was, the concierge had assured him on checking in, spectacular.

      “Spe-tac-u-lair, Monsieur Romano,” was actually what the guy had said, in a gurgling French accent Matthew suspected to be about as legitimate as the Rolex watches hawked on the sidewalk a couple of streets over, but Matthew had nodded politely and said he was delighted to hear it.

      The truth was, he didn’t much care about the view. A man who’d built what the experts had taken to calling an empire in less than ten years was a man who spent a lot of time in hotel rooms. The rooms had improved as the Romano holdings had grown, but a hotel was still a hotel. Spe-tac-u-lair views, chilled Dom Pérignon, baskets of flowers and gold-plated bathroom fixtures couldn’t change that one whit

      Whatever a whit might be, Matthew thought, as he stood gazing out the window of his sitting room. It was still early, just a little past seven, but traffic already clogged Fifth Avenue Back home in San Francisco, most people would still be asleep...most people, but not the ones who earned their living from the sea.

      There were times he was still amazed that he wasn’t one of them. It was an honest way to make a buck but, even as a boy, he’d always suspected there was more to life. He hadn’t wanted to begin his day while the rest of San Francisco slept or to pull on clothes that smelled of crabs and fish and sweat no matter how many times you washed them And he sure as hell hadn’t wanted to work his butt off for barely enough money to pay the bills

      It was what his father had done, and his grandfather. It was what he’d been expected to do, too.

      The smile vanished. Matthew straightened, thrust his fingers through his dark hair and turned his back to the window and to the memories.

      All that was years behind him. He worked his butt off, yes, but he loved every minute of what he did. Someday, maybe, he’d want more. A wife. A family.

      But not yet.

      When he was ready, he’d find himself a wife. He knew exactly the kind of woman she’d be. Beautiful, of course, and serene. Eager to please. He could see himself coming home to her at night, kissing her, leaving behind the rough-and-tumble of business as he settled into his easy chair.

      His wife would be a calm haven in the stormy seas he sailed.

      He’d said as much once, to his grandmother. Nonna had rolled her eyes and reminded him that even though he towered over her now, that wouldn’t stop her from whacking him across the backside if he needed it. A calm haven? Mama mia, what was he? A rowboat? Such a woman would bore him to tears in a month.

      “A woman who can stand up to your Sicilian temper is what you need,” Nonna had said.

      Matthew grinned at the memory. His Nonna was right about most things, but she was wrong about this. Who knew what kind of woman he needed better than the man himself?

      “And you’re never going to meet the right woman if you don’t look for her,” Nonna had added, stamping her cane on the floor for good measure.

      Well, he was looking. Slowly, maybe, but still, he was looking.

      Matthew whistled as he strolled into the marble bathroom and turned on the shower.

      Why rush something so pleasurable?

      He shucked the boxer briefs he’d slept in, stepped into the stall, pressed his palms flat against the wall and bent his head. The water felt good, beating down on his neck and shoulders, and gave him time to think about the morning’s agenda.

      He smiled thinly. And what an agenda it was.

      He was really looking forward to his meeting with the definitely snide and probably incompetent Susan Something-or-other. Madison? Washington? Coolidge? A President’s name. Not that it mattered. Once it was on a severance check, Susan Whatever and her clever office memos would be history.

      What sort of woman wrote stuff like that about a man she didn’t even know? What sort of woman played games with one man and sent love and kisses to another?

      A woman who thought the sexual revolution meant she could have the best of both worlds. Susan Hoover figured she could make the kinds of cracks about men that she’d undoubtedly condemned men for making about women, but she saw nothing wrong with insisting on gender neutrality when the situation suited her.

      Matthew shut off the shower and reached for a towel. Oh, yeah. He had this broad figured out right down to the dotted line.

      He strode into the bedroom and put on a pair of white briefs and navy socks. Then he opened the wall-to-wall mirrored closet and reached for a pale blue shirt.

      The woman had made the most incredibly sexist comments about him, then done a one-eighty and blithely assumed she’d been passed over for promotion because she was female. And that was wrong. Dead wrong. Matthew had done a little research into CHIC It had given him everything the company had about her, and from what he could see, Susan Whatever was about as qualified to head a magazine as she was to write material for a stand-up comic.

      Which was why she had to go.

      His eyes narrowed as he zipped the fly of his customtailored gray trousers and slipped on the matching jacket.

      His decision had nothing to do with the stuff she’d said about him, that the women he dated were dumb or for calling him studly and brainless. Or for saying he figured he was the sexiest man alive.

      He wasn’t a vindictive man. It didn’t mean a thing to him that half his team had read the woman’s comments, that he’d heard the choked-back laughter at the next couple of meetings, that even now somebody on his staff would look at him and bite back a grin.

      “It doesn’t bother me in the slightest,” Matthew said briskly to his reflection.

      He snatched up his black leather briefcase, marched to the door, opened it and stepped into the hotel corridor.

      “Damned right, it doesn’t,” he muttered, and slammed the door after him, so hard that it rattled.

      CHAPTER TWO

      IN HER college days, before Susannah had centered her studies on English lit, she’d taken a very popular philosophy course.

      Professor Wheeler had made the round of all the talk shows with his theory of how to achieve happiness. Your successes and failures in life, he said, were dependent upon unwritten rules. Not the rules of physics, he’d add, with a condescending little smile, the ones that kept the earth from flying off into the sun or the polar ice caps from draining into