The Tycoon's Virgin. PENNY JORDAN

The fact that the politician had claimed that he had been set up had not convinced the jury who had found against him.

      ‘I wouldn’t be so sure about your reputation if I were you,’ Jeremy warned Leo nastily, glancing towards the paper as he spoke.

      Giving him a dismissive look, Leo left.

      

      Leo frowned as he walked into his suite. There was no way in a thousand years he was going to change his plans. He had worked too hard and for too long, building up his business from nothing…less than nothing, slowly, painstakingly clawing his way up from his own one-man band, first overtaking and then taking over his competition as he grew more and more successful.

      The Driscoll family company was in direct competition to Leo’s. Since their business duplicated his own, it was only natural that he should have to close down some of their four factories. As yet Leo had not decided which out of the four. But as for Jeremy Driscoll’s attempt to get him to back out of the deal…!

      Tired, Leo strode into the suite without bothering to switch on the lights. At this time on a June evening there was still enough light in the sky for him not to need to do so, even without the additional glow of the almost full moon.

      The bedroom wasn’t quite as well-lit; someone—the maid, he imagined—had closed the curtains, but the bathroom light was on and the door open. Frowning over such sloppiness, he headed towards the bathroom, closing the door behind him once he was inside.

      Giving his own reflection a brief glance in the mirror, he paused to rub a lean hand over his stubble-darkened jaw before reaching for his razor.

      Jeremy Driscoll’s bombastic arrogance had irritated him to an extent that warned him that those amongst his family and friends who cautioned that he was driving himself too hard might have something of a point.

      Narrowing the silver-grey eyes that were an inheritance from his father’s side, and for whose piercingly analytical and defence-stripping qualities they were rightly feared by anyone who sought to deceive him, he grimaced slightly. He badly needed a haircut; his dark hair curled over the collar of his shirt. Taking time out for anything in his life that wasn’t work right now simply wasn’t an option.

      His parents professed not to understand just where he got his single-minded determination to succeed from. They had been happy with their small newsagent’s business.

      His parents were retired now, and living in his mother’s family’s native Italy. He had bought them a villa outside Florence as a ruby-wedding present.

      Leo had visited them, very briefly, early in May for his mother’s birthday.

      He put down his razor, remembering the look he had seen them exchange when his mother had asked wistfully if there was yet ‘anyone special’ in his life.

      He had told her with dry humour that not only did his negative response to her maternal question relate to his present, but that it could also be applied indefinitely to his future.

      With unusual asperity she had returned that if that was the case then it was perhaps time she paid a visit to the village’s local wise woman and herbalist, who, according to rumour, had an absolutely foolproof recipe for a love potion!

      Leo had laughed outright at that. After all, it was not that he couldn’t have a partner, a lover, if he so wished. Any number of stunningly attractive young women had made it plain to him both discreetly and rather more obviously that they would like to share his life and his bed, and, of course, his bank account…But Leo could still remember how at the upmarket public school he had won a scholarship to the female pupils had been scornfully dismissive of the boy whose school uniform was so obviously bought secondhand and whose only source of money came from helping out in his parents’ small business.

      That experience had taught Leo a lesson he was determined never to forget. Yes, there had been women in his life, but no doubt rather idiotically by some people’s standards, he had discovered that he possessed an unexpected aversion to the idea of casual sex. Which meant…

      Unwantedly Leo remembered his body’s sharply explicit reaction to the woman he had seen in the hotel foyer as he had crossed it on his way to his meeting earlier.

      Small and curvy, or so he had suspected, beneath the abominable clothes she had been wearing.

      Leo’s mother did not have Italian blood for nothing, and, like all her countrywomen, she possessed a strong sense of personal style, which made it impossible for Leo not to recognise when a woman was dressing to maximum effect. This woman had most certainly not been doing that at all. She had not even really been his type. If he was prepared to admit to a preference it was for cool, elegant blondes. Most definitely not for delectably sexy, tousled and touchable types of women, who turned his loins to hotly savage lust and even distracted his mind to the extent that he had almost found himself deviating from his set course and thinking about walking towards her.

      Leo never deviated from any course he set himself—ever—especially not on account of a woman.

      With an indrawn breath of self-disgust, Leo stripped off his clothes and stepped into the shower.

      As a teenager he had played sports for his school, which, ironically, had done wonders to increase his ‘pulling power’ with his female schoolmates, and he still had the powerful muscle structure of a natural athlete. Impatiently he lathered his body and then rinsed off the foam before reaching for a towel.

      Once dry, he opened the bathroom door and headed for the bed. It was darker now, but still light enough, thanks to the moonlight glinting through the curtains, for him not to need to switch on the light.

      Flipping back the bedclothes, Leo got into the bed, reaching automatically for the duvet, and then froze as he realised that the bed—his bed—was already occupied.

      Switching on the bedside lamp, he stared in angry disbelief at the tousled head of curly hair on the pillow next to his own—a decidedly female head, he recognised, just like the slender naked arm and softly rounded shoulder he could now see in the lamplight.

      The nostrils of the proudly aquiline nose he had inherited from his mother’s Italian forebears flared fastidiously as they picked up the smell of alcohol on the softly exhaled breath of the oblivious sleeping form.

      Another scent—a mixture of warm fresh air, lavender and a certain shockingly earthy sensuality that was Jodi’s alone—his senses reacted to in a very different way.

      It was the girl from the foyer. Leo would have recognised her anywhere, or, rather, his body would.

      Automatically his brain passed him another piece of information. Jeremy Driscoll’s oily-voiced suggestiveness as he had tried to persuade Leo to go back on their contract. Was this…this girl the inducement he’d had in mind? She had to be. Leo could not think of any other reason for her presence here in his bed!

      Well, if Jeremy Driscoll dared to think that he, Leo, was the kind of man who…

      Angrily he reached out to grasp Jodi’s bare arm in strong fingers as he leaned across her to shake her into wakefulness.

      Jodi was fathoms-deep asleep, sleeping the sleep of the pure of heart—and the alcohol-assisted—and she was having the most delicious dream in which she was, by some means her sleeping state wasn’t inclined to question, wrapped in the embrace of the most gorgeous, sexy man. He was tall, dark-haired and silver-eyed, with features reassuringly familiar to Jodi, but his body, his touch, were wonderfully and excitingly new.

      They were lying together, body to body, on a huge bed in a room with a panoramic view of a private tropical beach, and as he leaned towards her and stroked strong fingers along her forearm he whispered to her, ‘What the hell are you doing in my bed?’

      Her brain still under the influence of her ‘fruit cocktail’ Jodi opened bemused, adoring eyes.

      Why was her wonderful lover looking so angry? Smiling sleepily up at him, she was about to ask him, but somehow her attention became focused on how downright desirable he actually