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“My name is Orlando Rossi, and I own this hotel....”

For once Orlando Rossi was being modest. Charlie had known who he was from the moment his bodyguards had frog-marched her into his apartment. And all for sketching a caricature of their boss, a drawing, Charlie noticed now, that had a place of pride in the center of his desk.

The man couldn’t be anyone else. Who else in Venice possessed such arrogance, such striking good looks? Who else was as cursed as this man with a coldness that chilled her to the marrow?

* * * Did this young woman really think she could steal his image without his authority? He guessed her next move would be to approach some tawdry journal and sell it.

How the financial papers would love that! Billionaire property developer Orlando Rossi reduced to a cartoon. He’d be a laughingstock!

At first it pleased him to see her tremble. So she should. There were more than enough scam artists and pickpockets in Venice waiting to fleece an unwary tourist, and he had relished the opportunity to bring at least one of them to book. But before he decided her punishment, he would find out more about her; whatever else he was, he wasn’t a bully.

The anger inside him was battling with a more primitive desire to protect and defend. Why? Because he was accustomed to sophisticated women who cruised the glamorous world he inhabited like sharks looking for their next meal, and this girl was little more than an urchin in her cutoff jeans and flimsy top.

But though he might be revising his opinion that she was just another gold digger, he noticed with interest that her green eyes held defiance, plus the set of her chin and that luscious red hair promised fireworks.

She wasn’t as young as he’d first thought. Probably late twenties. And though her build was slight, her breasts were full, which gave him an instant tug of arousal.

“Sit down,” he instructed.

He resented the preliminaries and wanted them over with so he could take her to bed. When he drank her excited cries into his mouth, she would lose that defiant look. “Tell me your name,” he spoke more gently to prepare the ground.

“Charlie,” she answered him, scowling.

“Charlie?” He angled his head, waiting for the surname, thinking of the moment when he would stroke and pleasure her in preparation for sinking deep. “Charlie Bennett,” she told him, tight-lipped. “And I want to call the British Embassy right now! You can’t—”

“What did you say?” he interrupted.

“You can’t hold me here—”

“Not that—your name?”

“You heard me.”

Her recovery was so rapid it astounded him. “Is this some sort of joke?”

Her jaw firmed as she looked at him. “No joke, Signor Rossi. We’ve been in contact for some time. My name is Charlie Bennett, and I work as an art conservator in—”

He cut her off with an impatient gesture. “Don’t be ridiculous! You can’t be Charlie Bennett. That’s impossible!”

to be continued…..



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