Chasing Summer: Date with Destiny / Marooned with the Maverick / A Summer Wedding at Willowmere. Abigail Gordon

and handsome as the devil, he was no doubt all smooth charm to most of his women customers, yet right from their initial meeting, or soon after she’d been introduced as Mrs Diamond, the restaurateur began treating her with a cold, almost exaggerated formality that had made her seethe inside. She had learnt to feel nothing but contempt for those people who classified her on sight in that predatory female category including women who married older men for money.

      Yet, oddly enough, Salome found a perverse pleasure in their frequent visits to Angellini’s, taking pride in not showing her antagonism to this narrow-minded, prejudiced man. Quite deliberately, she would give him a sweet smile and then be extra-attentive and flirtatious with Ralph, revelling in the feeling that she was throwing the Italian’s unwarranted derision right back in his face.

      He, however, found it very hard to hide his feelings, her presence always putting a tight, sour look on his face. Though this didn’t mar his undeniable male beauty. The man’s Latin ancestry had produced the sort of dark, brooding looks that women drooled over: strong, sculptured features; piercing black eyes; lustrously wavy black hair; a cruelly sensual mouth; and an elegant, arrogant grace that turned a dinner-suit into a lethal weapon.

      Not that Salome drooled. The underlying antagonism she felt for him made her totally immune to his powerful sex appeal. There could have been a time when his brand of overt virility might have turned her head—she’d been as silly as the next young girl at sixteen and seventeen. But by the time she’d met Ralph, a few weeks short of her nineteenth birthday, she’d been cured of the irrationality of her adolescent hormones once and for all. Ralph’s dignified maturity and lack of sexual aggression had been like a breath of fresh air to her.

      True, she’d been initially worried by his age, but he had been a very determined man and had courted her with an old-fashioned respect and decency that she’d found both captivating and highly flattering. Heavens, here was this multi-millionaire, handsome, intelligent, powerful, who could have any woman he wanted. And he had wanted her!

      Of course she hadn’t known his secret back then... Still, even if she had known all along, Salome believed she still would have fallen in love with him. He had made her feel so very, very special, right from the start. Michael Angellini, however, never made her feel special, she thought, swinging angry eyes up to him. He never evoked anything in her except a simmering fury.

      As was the case right now.

      ‘Yes, it’s me.’ Her tone was curt, her words clipped. ‘What is it you want?’ she demanded. ‘How did you get up here anyway? Oh, no! Don’t tell me you live in the other penthouse?’ The building was so large that the top floor had been divided into two huge luxury penthouses.

      He sucked in an indignant breath, expanding his considerable chest beneath the pale blue sweater he was wearing. ‘I’m afraid so,’ he admitted with cold civility. ‘I was out on my balcony just now, and thought I heard someone scream out. Naturally, I was concerned. Of course, I didn’t realise you were in here, Mrs Diamond. I thought this was your ex-husband’s apartment.’

      The implication was quite clear. Anyone else, and he would come to the rescue. But she could scream her head off and he wouldn’t turn a hair.

      ‘This happens to be my apartment now,’ she told him tartly, before she realised what the man had actually said. Cursing herself for her stupidity, she slipped off the chain and pulled open the door. ‘You’ve seen Ralph recently, have you?’ she demanded, uncaring now if they liked each other or not. If this man had some information about Ralph, then she wanted it. Here at last she might find some answers.

      Her visitor looked startled, his black eyes flashing astonishment as they flicked over her face. ‘You’ve been crying!’ he said, almost accusingly.

      Now it was Salome who was taken aback. For she had already forgotten her recent tears. ‘Yes... no...I...’ Damn it all, what was the matter with her? Did she have to go all helpless and confused, just because he was shocked to find that a calculating bitch like herself could cry?

      ‘Does it matter?’ she flung at him. He blinked. ‘All I want to know is when was the last time you saw Ralph?’ she went on, her tone urgent.

      He gave her a long, assessing look before speaking. ‘A few weeks ago.’

      ‘Do you mean at the restaurant or here?’ she persisted.

      ‘You were with Ralph the last time he came to the restaurant, and that was well over a year ago.’

      ‘Oh...’ She frowned and chewed her bottom lip. ‘It was here, then?’

      ‘Yes. We run into each other occasionally. But what’s this all about, Mrs Diamond? Surely you’ve been in touch with your ex-husband personally if this penthouse is now yours?’

      ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘I haven’t...I...’ The lump gathering in her throat appalled her. The last person in the world she wanted to break down in front of was this man. ‘I haven’t seen Ralph for fourteen months,’ she finished in a strangled voice.

      Sympathy did strange things to Michael Angellini’s face. It made him almost human. His mouth softened. And his eyes, which were usually as hard as flint, melted to a liquid ebony, washing over her with a look of surprising warmth and pity.

      And then he did something else that stunned Salome. He touched her.

      Oh, it wasn’t an intimate, or a bold caress. He merely reached out his hand to curve lightly over one shoulder. But it seemed to burn a hand-print on the skin beneath her dress. She froze, her eyes widening, her lips parting slightly.

      ‘I think, Mrs Diamond,’ he was saying, his hand tightening before releasing her tingling flesh, ‘that you could do with a drink. You seem very stressed. Why don’t you come along to my place, where I can get you something to settle your nerves?’

      Salome stared at this man whom she had always detested, unable to get her mind off her response to his touch. Surely it couldn’t have been a sexual response? Surely not!

      ‘Are you all right, Mrs Diamond? You look...odd.’

      ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ she snapped in confusion.

      A single dark eyebrow lifted and those black eyes hardened again. ‘Of course,’ he drawled. ‘Well, would you like to have a drink with me? Or would you rather be by yourself?’

      Salome gave the darkly handsome face a hurried once-over, and was comforted to see she now felt nothing. Nothing at all! She sighed with relief. It had been shock, that was all, shock that her long-time foe had extended an unexpectedly sympathetic hand. No doubt she was susceptible to sympathy at the moment.

      But the thought insinuated that he might have misinterpreted her reaction to his touch, and might even now be sizing her up as easy meat for his bachelor bed. The incident with Charles that morning had shown her that a man didn’t have to like her to lust after her.

      ‘You don’t have to feel obliged to accept,’ he said curtly as he noted her swift frown. ‘I won’t be offended in the slightest. I merely thought you looked like you could do with some company for a while. Believe me, I do realise you have never found my company to your liking in the past.’

      Salome bristled. ‘What came first,’ she bit out, ‘the chicken or the egg?’

      He stared at her for a moment, then laughed, drawing her gaze to his dazzling white teeth and the attractive dimple in his chin. But there was no laughter in his eyes. They remained as hard and cold as ever. For some reason this annoyed her even more than usual.

      ‘I think, perhaps, that I will take a rain-check on the drink,’ she said with an icy hauteur that belied her agitated pulse-rate.

      The laughter died on his lips, his strong jaw clenching tightly. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ he grated out. ‘All I’m suggesting is that we have a drink together. Not another damned thing!’ Looking away, he ran an angry hand through his hair. ‘I’m not a masochist,’