The Boss's Christmas Seduction: Unlocking her Innocence / Million Dollar Christmas Proposal / Not Just the Boss's Plaything. Lucy Monroe

laughing and smiling at his every word.

      From the first moment when Ava had met Vito Barbieri when she was sixteen there had been a buzz when their eyes met. It had taken her more than a year to reach the conclusion that he felt that buzz too but that he was fighting it tooth and nail. He had never said a word out of place and had been careful to stay out of reach and treat her more than ever like a little girl. But more than once she had been conscious of his eyes on her and the burn of satisfaction that minor triumph had given her had merely encouraged her to visit the castle when Vito was in residence. That he could be attracted to her and never do anything about it had not once crossed her mind as a possibility. It didn’t matter how often Olly warned her that she was wasting her time dreaming about Vito. As long as Ava was aware that the attraction was mutual she had cherished the hope that eventually he would succumb.

      With hindsight that insouciant confidence of hers made Ava recoil in mortification. How could she ever have truly believed that Vito might date her? The daughter of one of his employees, whose father lived with his family near Bolderwood Castle? His little brother’s best friend? An eighteen-year-old still at school studying for her final exams with no experience and no decent clothes? Unfortunately, the depth of her obsession with him had ensured she ignored all common sense when he was around.

      Her whole family had attended that party. Ava had worn a silver shift dress, cut down from a maxi that her sister, Gina, had put out for recycling. Somehow there had never been money to buy new clothes for Ava. The dress had been simple, even modest, and she had been careful with her make-up and her hair, keen neither to shock nor repel. She had seen Vito watching her from the doorway while she was dancing with the children she was helping to look after at their separate party in another room. Needing to stoke her confidence, she had been drinking, something she was usually more careful not to do, always fearful that her mother’s weakness might some day turn out to be hers as well.

      Ava no longer remembered when she had first appreciated that her mother was different from other mothers. She had often come home from primary school and found her mother out for the count on her bed. But then Ava’s had never been a happy home because her parents fought like cat and dog. Furthermore, her mother had always been distant with her. And with a father who called her ‘Ginger’ if he called her anything, even though he knew how much it hurt her feelings to suffer that hated nickname in her own home, she had never suffered from the illusion that she was a much-wanted child. A full ten years younger than her eldest sister, Bella, Ava had often wondered if she was an unplanned accident resented by both her parents for neither of them had ever had any time for her.

      But for all that she had loved her mother, Gemma Fitzgerald’s death while Ava was in prison had been a severe shock and source of grief for she had long hoped that as she got older she might finally forge a closer relationship with her parent. In her teens she had realised that her mother had a serious problem with alcohol and was sober only in the morning, getting progressively drunker throughout the day on her hidden stashes of booze round the house until she was usually slumped comatose on the sofa by early evening. Ava’s father and sisters had studiously ignored Gemma’s alcoholism and done everything they could to cover it up. Divorce had been mentioned but never rehabilitation until the night her mother was caught driving while under the influence by the police and her father’s punitive rage had known no bounds when the incident was reported in the local paper. Gemma had lost her licence and gone into rehab, returning home from the experience pale, quiet and mercifully sober.

      Having noticed Vito watching her the night of the Christmas party, Ava had decided to take the bull by the horns, a decision that she would live to regret. She had tracked Vito down to the quiet of the library where he was standing by the fire with a drink in his hand. Tall, darkly beautiful and powerful, he had riveted her from the minute she walked through the door.

      ‘What do you want?’ he had demanded edgily.

      Ava had perched on the side of the desk in a way that best displayed her long shapely legs and put her directly in front of him. As she had carefully adjusted the hem to a decent length she had felt his eyes on her as hot as the flames in the fire and excitement had filled her like a dangerous drug urging her on. ‘I want you,’ she told him boldly, no longer content to only offer lingering looks and encouraging smiles in invitation.

      Vito treated her to a brooding look of derision that dented her pride right where it hurt most. ‘You couldn’t handle me,’ he countered drily. ‘Go and find some boy your own age to practise your wiles on.’

      ‘You want me too,’ Ava responded doggedly for, having started, she found it quite impossible to retreat with dignity and she stabbed on regardless with her suicidal mission to make him finally acknowledge what she believed already lay between them. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t notice?’

      ‘It’s time you went home and sobered up,’ Vito retorted with scorn. ‘This conversation is likely to embarrass you tomorrow.’

      Ava continued to stare at him with unconcealed longing, her blue eyes languorous, her soft pink mouth pouting in reproach at his refusal to match her honesty. ‘I don’t embarrass that easily and I am well over the age of consent.’

      ‘Your body might be but your brain is way behind,’ Vito riposted, shifting closer in a fluid step that made her heart race. ‘Go home, Ava. I don’t want this nonsense.’

      ‘I would be much more fun than any of those women I’ve seen you bring back here!’ she challenged. ‘I’m not the clingy type.’

      Vito stopped dead right in front of her. ‘I’m not looking for fun. You’ve got nothing I want … and a little word of warning. Most men prefer to do their own chasing. Your in-my-face approach is a complete turn-off.’

      Colour flamed into Ava’s cheeks at his blunt rejection of what she had to offer. She snaked off the desktop in a surge of temper and wrapped her arms round his neck to prevent him from backing away from her. ‘I do not turn you off,’ she argued vehemently, gazing up into his dark golden eyes, which were spectacular in the firelight. ‘That’s a total lie! Why won’t you tell the truth for once?’

      ‘Ava …’ Vito groaned in frustration, reaching up to detach her hands from his neck.

      But before he could do so she stretched up and kissed him with every atom of craving she possessed. The muscles in his lean, strong body turned rigid and then he suddenly crushed her lips under his, his tongue spearing hungrily down into the tender interior of her mouth to make her literally shudder with excitement and a blissful sense of coming home. That single kiss was like dynamite to her self-control. With an eager gasp of response she melted into him, bones turning to mush under the onslaught of the piercing hunger gathering low in her pelvis. A door opened but she didn’t hear it, reacting only when it slammed shut again.

      ‘Vito … for heaven’s sake, what are you doing?’ Olly yelled in dismay. ‘Let her go!’

      Vito thrust Ava away roughly from him, the distaste on his face unmistakable. ‘You’re a calculating little tease … and you won’t take no for an answer.’

      ‘I’m not a t—’

      Olly closed his hand round her forearm. ‘Time to go home, Ava. I’ll drive you.’

      Ava’s head swivelled, her furious eyes pinned to Vito’s shuttered face in condemnation. ‘How dare you call me a tease?’ she launched at him as a sense of humiliation engulfed her, for she had made her last desperate move and he was still rebuffing her, resolutely refusing to acknowledge the sense of connection between them.

      For the very first time in the immediate aftermath of that encounter Ava worried that her feelings were entirely one-sided. Was it possible that a man could be attracted to a woman without actually wanting to act on it? The same way people could admire a painting in a museum without needing to own it? That humiliating realisation came crashing down on Ava like a big black storm cloud. Her last recollection of that evening was of rushing down the steps of the castle in floods of tears with Olly chasing after her, urging her to calm down. The image that came next in her memory was waking up in hospital with a mind that was a terrifying blank, the