Love Islands: Red-Hot Sunsets. Jane Porter

as transparent as glass and that in itself was an unusual enough quality to hold his attention. The tough career women he dated knew how to school their expressions because, the higher up the ladder they climbed, the faster they learned that blushing like virginal maidens did nothing when it came to career advancement.

      ‘Can’t pay well,’ he murmured.

      ‘That’s not the point!’

      Lucas had turned his attention to his computer and was very quickly pulling up the file he had on her, which he had only briefly scanned before he had scheduled his meeting with her. The list of favourable references was impressively long.

      ‘So,’ he mused, sitting back and giving her his undivided attention. ‘You work for me for the pay and you work as a teacher for the enjoyment.’

      ‘That’s right.’ She was disconcerted at how quickly he had reached the right conclusions.

      ‘So the loss of your job at my company would presumably have a serious impact on your finances.’

      ‘I would find another job to take its place.’

      ‘Look around the market, Miss Brennan. Well paid part-time work is thin on the ground. I make it my duty to pay my employees over the odds. I find that tends to engender commitment and loyalty to the company. You’d be hard pressed to find the equivalent anywhere in London.’

      Lucas had planned on a simple solution to this unexpected problem. Now, he was pressed to find out a bit more about her. As a part-time worker, it seemed she contributed beyond the call of duty, and both the people she answered to within the company and external clients couldn’t praise her enough. She’d pleaded her innocence, and he wasn’t gullible enough to wipe the slate clean, but a more detailed hearing might be in order. His initial impressions weren’t of a thief who might be attracted to the lure of insider trading but, on the other hand, someone with a part-time job might find it irresistible to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity, and Duncan Powell represented that unexpected opportunity.

      ‘Money doesn’t mean that much to me, Mr Cipriani.’ Katy was confused as to how a man whose values were so different from hers could make her go hot and cold and draw her attention in a way that left her feeling helpless and exposed. She was finding it hard to string simple sentences together. ‘I have a place to myself but, if I had to share with other people, then it wouldn’t be the end of the world.’

      The thought of sharing space with a bunch of strangers was only slightly less appalling to Lucas than incarceration with the key thrown away.

      Besides, how much did she mean that? he wondered with grim practicality, dark eyes drifting over her full, stubborn mouth and challenging angle of her head. What had been behind that situation with Powell, a married man? It wasn’t often that Lucas found himself questioning his own judgements but in this instance he did wonder whether it was just a simple tale of a woman who had been prepared to overlook the fact that her lover was a married man because of the financial benefits he could bring to the table. Although, he’d seen enough of that to know that it was the oldest story in the world.

      Maybe he would test the waters and see what came out in the wash. If this had been a case of hire and fire, then she would have been clearing out her desk eighteen hours ago, but it wasn’t, because he couldn’t sack her just yet, and it paid to know your quarry. He would not allow any misjudgements to wreck his deal.

      ‘You never thought about packing in the teaching and taking up the job at my company full time?’

      ‘No.’ The silence stretched between them while Katy frantically tried to work out where this sudden interest was leading. ‘Some people aren’t motivated by money.’ She finally broke the silence because she was beginning to perspire with discomfort. ‘I wasn’t raised to put any value on material things.’

      ‘Interesting. Unique.’

      ‘Maybe in your world, Mr Cipriani.’

      ‘Money, Miss Brennan, is the engine that makes everything go, and not just in my world. In everyone’s world. The best things in life are not, as rumour would have it, free.’

      ‘Maybe not for you,’ Katy said with frank disapproval. She knew that she was treading on thin ice. She sensed that Lucas Cipriani was not a man who enjoyed other people airing too many contradictory opinions. He’d hauled her in to sack her and was now subjecting her to the Spanish Inquisition because he was cold, arrogant and because he could.

      But what was the point of tiptoeing around him when she was on her way out for a crime she hadn’t committed?

      ‘That’s why you don’t believe what I’m saying,’ she expanded. ‘That’s why you don’t trust me. You probably don’t trust anyone, which is sad, when you think about it. I’d hate to go through life never knowing my friends from my enemies. When your whole world is about money, then you lose sight of the things that really matter.’

      Lucas’s lips thinned disapprovingly at her directness. She was right when she said that he didn’t trust anyone but that was exactly the way he liked it.

      ‘Let me be perfectly clear with you, Miss Brennan.’ He leaned forward and looked at her coolly. ‘You haven’t been brought here for a candid exchange of views. I appreciate you are probably tense and nervous, which is doubtless why you’re cavalier about overstepping the mark, but I suggest it’s time to get down from your moral high ground and take a long, hard look at the choices you have made that have landed you in my office.’

      Katy flushed. ‘I made a mistake with Duncan,’ she muttered. ‘We all make mistakes.’

      ‘You slept with a married man,’ Lucas corrected her bluntly, startling her with the revelation that he’d discovered what he clearly thought was the whole, shameful truth. ‘So, while you’re waxing lyrical about my tragic, money-orientated life, you might want to consider that, whatever the extent of my greed and arrogance, I would no more sleep with a married woman than I would jump into the ocean with anchors secured to my feet.’

      ‘I...’

      Lucas held up one hand. ‘No one speaks to me the way you do.’ He felt a twinge of discomfort because that one sentence seemed to prove the arrogance of which he had been accused. Since when had he become so pompous? He scowled. ‘I’ve done the maths, Miss Brennan and, however much you look at me with those big, green eyes, I should tell you that taking the word of an adulterer is something of a tall order.’

      Buffeted by Lucas’s freezing contempt and outrageous accusations, Katy rose on shaky legs to direct the full force of her anger at him.

      ‘How dare you?’ But even in the midst of her anger she was swamped by the oddest sensation of vulnerability as his dark eyes swept coolly over her, electrifying every inch of her heated body.

      ‘With remarkable ease.’ Lucas didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I’m staring the facts in the face and the facts are telling me a very clear story. You want me to believe that you have nothing to do with the man. Unfortunately, your lack of principles in having anything to do with him in the first place tells a tale of its own.’

      The colour had drained away from her face. She hated this man. She didn’t think it would be possible to hate anyone more.

      ‘I don’t have to stay here and listen to this.’ But uneasily she was aware that, without her laying bare her sex life, understandably he would have jumped to the wrong conclusions. Without her confession that she had never slept with Duncan, he would have assumed the obvious. Girls her age had flings and slept with men. Maybe he would be persuaded into believing her if she told him the truth, which was that she had ended their brief relationship as soon as she had found out about his wife and kids. But even if he believed that he certainly wouldn’t believe that she hadn’t slept with the man.

      Which would lead to a whole other conversation and it was one she had no intention of having. How would a man like Lucas Cipriani believe that the hussy who slept with married guys was in fact a virgin?

      Even Katy didn’t