Her favorite lacy nightgown hung on the door. She slipped the silky garment over her head and turned to look into the mirror. She supposed she should feel chagrined at the stupid decision to get drunk. Perhaps she should feel disgust at what she’d experienced last night with him.
Amazingly, she didn’t feel anything except a bright new hope.
Jerk he might be and a total playboy, but Vico Mattare had done her a huge favor and yanked her off her pedestal. She might still be a lady, but underneath, she was all sexy siren.
She grinned at her image in the mirror.
Without a doubt, he’d make her life miserable at work and he’d try to use this to his advantage in the war raging between them. Who cared? She’d ignore him until he flitted off to another one of his millions of women.
Then she could focus on all the changes she wanted to make in her life.
Padding down the hall, she walked into the bedroom and flipped the blinds closed. The room turned into a warm, dark cocoon. Exactly what she needed right now. She groaned in relief as she slid under the cool covers. She would sleep this away, take the weekend to wallow in blissful nothingness, and then focus on banishing Vico Mattare from her memories and from her business.
By Monday, she’d be ready.
Ready to defeat him in the boardroom.
Already having forgotten him in the bedroom.
Chapter 3
Fury.
Not an unfamiliar feeling. In fact, at one time in his life, it had been about the only feeling he ever experienced.
Fury at his teachers who labeled him stupid.
Fury at his family’s poverty.
Fury at his father for dying.
Vico tapped his fingers on the boardroom table in front of him. The room was empty. He’d come here to settle in, settle down. In a few moments, the major stockholders would file in for their weekly Monday-morning meeting. Major stockholders including one Ms. Lise Helton.
Who had treated him like a puttana maschio. A male whore.
Her behavior three nights ago could not have been any more insulting than if she’d left a pile of pound notes on his bedside table. She’d begged him—begged him!—to take her with a winsome smile that had almost stolen his heart. But then, she’d leapt out of his bed as soon as he slept without a word about what had passed between them.
Purposefully, he steepled his fingers in front of his mouth and breathed.
Slowly. In and out.
The red-hot fury simmered back into his control.
No woman had ever, ever walked out on him after sex. No woman had ever, ever treated him like an animal fit for only one thing. And no woman would ever, ever be allowed to get away with such behavior. The battle with Lise Helton was no longer professional. Now a very, very personal battle lay between them.
A vendetta.
He laughed softly under his breath. Just like old times.
Awakening to an empty bed, after the best sex he’d ever had, had been disorienting at first. He’d still smelled her quiet scent on the pillow, still inhaled the salty aroma of their lingering sex on the sheets. Aroused and aggravated, he’d leapt out of bed, intent on finding her and bringing her back to where he wanted her.
He’d prowled through his entire home, yet he’d known. Known in his gut as soon as he’d awakened.
She’d left.
Left him as if discarding a used toy. Left him before he could witness her defeat, witness her embarrassed realization she’d slept with a peasant.
Not only slept. Seduced.
Lise Helton had not only treated him like puttana maschio, she’d also deprived him of his victory. His rightful victory over her aristocratic disdain.
Now, in this silent boardroom, rage blinded him in a scarlet haze. It choked in his throat, burned in his gut exactly as it had at that moment two mornings ago. The rage cut into him like one of the many knife blades he’d used in his youth. It sliced and ripped at his pride.
She’d left him because she had her well-bred fiancé to go back to. She had no use for a dirty savage, no need for him other than the basic one of sex.
The woman was a lying cheat. No lady. No one a person could trust.
Not someone a man should obsess over.
Vico’s jaw tightened into a knot.
She didn’t know what she’d unleashed. The Princesse thought she dealt with a raw barbarian, a smiling gigolo. A man not fit to kiss her shoes, much less her mouth.
That. That of all the talons digging into his pride was the worst. The woman hadn’t even kissed him, had she? She’d taken him, used him, let him slake her thirst for sex, but not once had she touched his mouth with hers. Not once had he tasted the essence of her.
Because she thought he wasn’t worthy.
Vico grabbed the pen lying by his laptop. His fingers tightened around it until they went white. He sucked in another breath and tried to wrap his anger into his fist and forget everything else.