Claiming His One-Night Child. Jackie Ashenden

About the Publisher

       CHAPTER ONE

      AS ONE OF Europe’s most notorious playboys, Dante Cardinali was used to waking up in strange beds. He was also used to beautiful women standing beside said beds and looking down at him. There had even been a couple of instances where he’d woken up with his wrists and ankles still cuffed, the way they clearly were now.

      What was unfamiliar was the barrel of the gun pointed at his head.

      Dante had never been a man who cared over much about anything, but one thing he did care about was himself. And his life. And the fact that the beautiful woman standing over him was holding a gun in a very competent grip.

      The same beautiful woman who’d been in the VIP area of his favourite Monte Carlo club and with whom he’d spent some time...talking...because he hadn’t been in the mood for seduction—something that had been happening to him more often than not of late. It was a worrying trend if he thought about it too deeply, which he didn’t. Because he didn’t think about anything too deeply.

      Whatever. He couldn’t remember how long he’d spent talking to her, because he couldn’t remember full-stop. In fact, he couldn’t remember much at all about the evening and, given his current situation, it probably meant he’d blacked out at some point.

      What he did remember was the beautiful woman’s piercingly blue eyes, fractured through with silver like a shattered sky.

      Those eyes were looking at him now with curious intentness, as if she was trying to decide whether or not to shoot him.

      Well, considering his wrists and ankles were cuffed and he wasn’t dead already, it meant there was some doubt. And if there was some doubt, he could probably induce her to give in to it.

      He could pretty much convince anyone to give in to anything if he put his mind to it.

      ‘Darling,’ he drawled, his mouth dry and his voice a little thick. ‘A gun is slightly overkill, don’t you think? If you want to sleep with me, just take your clothes off and come here. You don’t need to tie me to the bed.’ He frowned, his head suspiciously muzzy but beginning to clear. ‘Or put something in my drink, for that matter.’

      The woman’s cool gaze—she had told him her name but he couldn’t remember it—didn’t waver. ‘I don’t want to sleep with you, Dante Cardinali,’ she said, her icy tone a slap of cold water on his hot skin. ‘What I would like very much is to kill you.’

      So. She was trying to kill him and she was very serious.

      He should probably be a little more concerned about that gun and the intent in her fascinating eyes, and he definitely was. But, strangely, his most prevalent emotion wasn’t fear. No, it was excitement.

      It had been a long time since he’d felt anything like excitement.

      It had been a long time since he’d felt anything at all.

      He stared at her, conscious of a certain tightening of his muscles and a slight elevation in his heartbeat. ‘That seems extreme.’

      ‘It is extreme. Then again, the punishment fits the crime.’

      The barrel of the gun didn’t waver an inch and yet she hadn’t pulled the trigger. Interesting. Why not?

      He let his gaze rove over her, interest tugging at him.

      She was very small, built petite and delicate like a china doll, with hair the colour of newly minted gold coins, falling in a straight and gleaming waterfall over her shoulders. Her precise features were as lovely as her figure—a determined chin, finely carved cheekbones and a perfect little bow of a mouth.

      She wore a satin cocktail dress the same kind of silvery blue as her eyes and it looked like silky fluid poured over her body, outlining the delicious curves of her breasts and hips, skimming gently rounded thighs.

      A lovely little china shepherdess of a woman. Just his type.

      Apart from the gun in his face, of course.

      ‘What crime?’ Dante asked with interest. ‘Are you Sicilian by any chance? Is this a vendetta situation?’ It was a question purely designed to keep her talking, as he knew already that she wasn’t Sicilian. Her Italian held a cadence from a different part of the country and one he was quite familiar with.

      The sound of the island nation from where he’d been exiled along with the rest of the royal family years and years ago.

      The island nation of which he’d once been a prince.

      Monte Santa Maria.

      ‘No.’ Her tone was flat and very definite. ‘But you know that already, don’t you?’

      Dante met her gaze. He was good at reading people—it was part of the reason he was so successful in the billion-dollar property-investment company he owned with his brother—and although this woman’s cool exterior seemed completely flawless he could see something flickering in the depths of her eyes. Uncertainty or indecision, he couldn’t tell which. Interesting. For all that she seemed competent and in charge, she still hadn’t pulled that trigger. And if she hadn’t done it now, she probably wouldn’t.

      He’d seen killers before and this woman wasn’t one. In fact, he’d bet the entirety of Cardinal Developments on it.

      ‘Yes,’ he said, discreetly testing the cuffs on his ankles and wrists. They were firm. If he wanted to get out of them, she was going to have to unlock them. ‘Good catch. I love an intelligent woman.’

      She took a step closer to the bed, the gun still unerringly pointed at his head. ‘You know what I love? A stupid man.’

      Her nearness prompted a heady, blatantly sexual fragrance to flood over him, along with bits and pieces of his memory.

      Ah, yes, it was all coming back to him now—sitting in his club in Monte Carlo, this pretty little thing catching his eye and smiling shyly. She’d been innocent and artless, a touch nervous and, despite her strongly sexual perfume, when she’d said it was her first time in a club he’d believed her.

      He hadn’t been in the mood for small talk but, as he hadn’t been in the mood for seduction, and there had been something endearing about her nervousness, he’d sat beside her and chatted. He couldn’t remember a single thing about that conversation other than the fact that he hadn’t been as bored as he’d expected to be, as he so often was these days.

      He was not bored now, though. Not in any way, shape or form.

      She was looking at him coolly, like a scientist ready to dissect an insect, no trace of that shy, nervous woman he’d talked to in the club. Which must mean that it had been an act. An act he hadn’t spotted.

      Oh, she was good. She was very good.

      His heart rate sped up even further, the tug of interest becoming something stronger, hotter.

       Are you insane? She wants to kill you and you want to bed her?

      Was that any surprise? It had been too long since he’d had any kind of excitement in his life, too long since he’d had anything like a challenge. The closest he’d come to interesting had been when his older brother Enzo had married a lovely English woman and Dante had been tasked with making sure Enzo’s son behaved himself. A shockingly difficult task, given the boy had already decided that Dante was less uncle than partner in crime.

      Dante had had to spend at least a week afterwards in the company of various lovely ladies simply to recover.

      Marriage and children were not the kind of excitement he was after. They were too restrictive and far too...domestic for his sophisticated tastes.

      Though, given the state of his groin, if a lovely woman could