Annie's Secret. Carole Mortimer

persistence in suggesting that they had met before.

      ‘Will you be remaining at the hotel for long?’ he asked curiously.

      ‘The weekend only,’ she replied curtly. ‘But I’m here on business and expect to be kept very busy, so I doubt that we will have a chance to meet again,’ she added firmly.

      She so obviously hoped that they would not meet again, Luc acknowledged.

      Interesting.

      Having taken over as head of the family business empire four years ago following his father’s near-fatal heart attack, Luc was accustomed to being hotly pursued by women intent on becoming his wife or, failing that, his mistress. Whereas this woman could not have shown her lack of interest in him any more clearly.

      Which only increased Luc’s own interest in her. An interest he intended pursuing, with or without her cooperation…

      He gave a determined smile. ‘I would not be too sure of that, if I were you.’

      Once again she blinked, her creamy throat moving convulsively as she swallowed before speaking. ‘Just talking to you has already made me late for a meeting.’ She gave a pointed look at the slender gold watch on her wrist.

      He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Then a few minutes more will not make any difference, hmm?’

      The woman shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I dislike tardiness, in myself as well as others.’

      Luc knew she was not in the least sorry. In fact, she couldn’t wait to get away!

      The fiery snap in her stunning eyes, and the stubborn set of her chin, told Luc that she had no idea how her obvious determination to get away from him only increased his interest rather than diminished it.

      ‘In that case, I will say goodbye. For now,’ he added softly.

      ‘We will not meet again, signore,’ she insisted, the delicate colour that entered her cheeks now due to temper rather than embarrassment at her previous rudeness.

      Luc found himself giving her one of his rare smiles. ‘Fate has a way of deciding these things for us, I have found.’

      Fate had already led Annie into behaving completely irrationally in this man’s company once, and she had no intention of putting that temptation in her way ever again.

      Yet, if anything, this Luc was even more devastatingly attractive than the man Annie had met before. There was a hard ruthlessness about him now, a haughty remoteness, that challenged as much as it beguiled.

      As for his smile…!

      Those moulded, sculptured lips had pulled back briefly over white and perfectly straight teeth, in a familiar wolfish smile that, although fleeting, had nevertheless made Annie’s heart pound harder and louder.

      Despite everything, she realised with horror that she was still attracted to him!

      Her mouth firmed. ‘I really do have to finish this call.’

      Luc’s mocking humour faded as he recalled that she had been talking to someone called Oliver when they had collided a few minutes ago.

      A man named Oliver, who, from the lack of rings on her long and slender fingers, had not yet made a public claim on this woman, despite the fact that she’d huskily assured him that she loved him too.

      He nodded abruptly. ‘I too am late for an appointment.’

      The woman’s smile was saccharin sweet. ‘Then I really mustn’t delay you any longer, must I?’

      This woman needed to be put across someone’s knee, and her bottom firmly spanked, Luc decided ruefully. Her bare bottom. Her lush and curvaceous bare bottom.

      It was an erotic image that flowered and grew in Luc’s mind and caused his thighs to throb and harden as he became fully aroused—something that hadn’t happened to him in years at just the thought of making love to a specific woman.

      Luc had spent years rebuilding his family’s wealth and business empire. Four long years when he had allowed no other distractions, least of all an interest in a woman, to interfere with those plans.

      Attractive as this woman was, Luc very much doubted that she would hold that interest for very long either. But her prickly nature indicated a passion that might prove fun while it lasted.

      ‘Signorina.’ He inclined his head in farewell, secure in the knowledge, in the pleasure, of her presence at Lake Garda for several more days at least.

      Annie held her breath as she watched Luc’s long and arrogantly confident strides until he turned left at the end of the hallway, leaning weakly back against the wall of the hallway once he had disappeared from view.

      Dear God!

      How had this happened? Why had it happened?

      It had happened for the simple reason that her father, newly fired with a desire to guide the lives of his wayward daughters into less notorious and hopefully more worthwhile channels, had decided that Annie was to take a more active role in the Balfour business empire by attending this management course!

      Her protest that she had no interest in taking on a more high-profile role in her father’s management team hadn’t seemed to matter a jot to him. As the only one of Oscar’s eight daughters who actually worked for him, usually at the office complex at Balfour Manor, Oscar had just overridden all of Annie’s objections by threatening to sack her.

      Annie had known that he had meant that threat too. That Oscar was absolutely adamant in his decision that it was time—past time—that all of his daughters went out into the world to find themselves and what they really wanted out of life. Even if the majority of them, Annie included, went kicking and screaming!

      Which brought Annie back full circle to her presence here at this glamorous hotel set on the shore of beautiful Lake Garda in Italy.

      A hotel at which Luc, her ex-lover, was obviously also a guest…

      Chapter Two

      ‘SO, signorina, you have found time from your busy schedule to relax after all.’

      Annie’s heart jolted in her chest just at the sound of that sexily familiar voice, and she was grateful for the dark glasses that shielded the expression in her eyes as she looked up to see Luc standing beside her. She had been hoping for a little peace and quiet as she lay on a towel on the sand of the private beach in front of the hotel.

      But she would obviously get no peace today. The man was gorgeous. Decadently. Wonderfully. Indecently. Lethally gorgeous.

      Luc had been vitally and excitingly handsome when Annie had met him all those years ago, but the skimpy pair of black bathing trunks that were all he wore now showed an added toughness to the lean and muscled contours of his body.

      His skin had always been the colour of mahogany. But his shoulders were wider, and more muscled. A light dusting of dark hair covered a chest and washboard abdomen. His hips and thighs were lean and powerful, and those black bathing trunks seemed to emphasise rather than disguise the telling bulge between those spectacular thighs.

      Thighs that Annie had once been intimately familiar with…

      She sat up abruptly, her manner instantly defensive as she glared up at him from behind her brown sunglasses. ‘Are you following me?’

      Luc felt only amusement at the accusation. Knowing that the flush of heat on her cheeks, and the way her nipples had hardened against the material of her blue bathing costume, was due to physical awareness rather than the angry indignation she wished to convey.

      In truth, he’d had no idea she was even on the beach when he decided to indulge in a swim before his meeting later this afternoon. But as he had stood on the warmth of the sand looking for a place in which to place his towel, he had spotted that familiar chestnut-coloured hair that had seemed to glow a deeper auburn in the warmth of the midday