Rival Attractions & Innocent Secretary(32)

Married five years.

Trying for a baby for four and a half of those.

IVF and injections and nasal sprays and tests and scans and egg retrieval.

And now she had to ring Paul and tell him, Evelyn had sobbed, had to  ring her lovely, lovely husband, who wanted a baby as much as she did,  and say that they'd failed to conceive through IVF for a second time.

Emma really didn't have to worry about saying the right thing, she  couldn't get a word in. Instead, she just sat there and listened and  poured water and offered tissues, and finally, when Evelyn had cried a  river, she seemed to remember where she was and who she was talking to.

'You've been so nice-I mean, after I was so cool with you.'                       
       
           



       

'It's not a problem. If I'm not the right person … '

'No, you see … ' Evelyn was wringing the tissue in her hands ' … it has  nothing to do with your experience or that you don't speak Japanese … '

'I know that now.'

'No, I mean-'

'I get it, okay? I admit, I assumed you must like him yourself, but … '

Emma giggled as Evelyn gave a watery smile and rolled her eyes. 'Not at  all-I'm just sick of training new assistants, only to have them leave  once he's bedded them. He's incorrigible, you know.'

'I know!' Emma groaned. 'He just asked me if I wanted to join him for  dinner in Paris.' Emma smiled. 'Maybe you should look for a male PA.'

'They'd fall in love with him too,' Evelyn sighed, then she blinked. 'You said no to Paris?'

'Absolutely.'

'You don't find him attractive?' she gasped.

'He's divine,' Emma corrected her. 'He's side splittingly beautiful and any woman who says otherwise is a liar.'

'So why did you say no?' Evelyn wanted to know.

'Because I know him,' Emma explained. 'Not Luca personally, but I grew  up amongst his type-I've read their rule book from cover to cover. I  grew up in an all-male household-an exceptionally good-looking all-male  household at that. '

'What about your mother?'

'She died when I was four.' Emma said, and there was nothing in her  voice that requested sympathy-she merely stated the facts. 'My brothers  are all considerably older than me … ' She gave a thin smile at the memory  of her childhood. 'And my father, well, a good-looking widower attracts  a lot of admirers-all wanting to change him, all assuming he's just  waiting for the next Mrs. Stephenson to come along-and he played them  all well.'

'Luca's a nice man,' Evelyn said, just a touch pink at her own  indiscretion in discussing her boss so personally. 'Beneath it all, when  he's not being horrible, he's a really nice man. Take this assistant PA  role that's currently being advertised-that's so I can cut back on my  travel and late work nights … he's great really.'

'So long as you don't love him,' Emma said. 'So long as you have  absolutely no intention or hope that one day you might change him … '

'You really do get it.' Evelyn blinked in wonder.

'I really do.' Locating her bag, Emma plonked it on her shoulder. 'I'd best get going.'

'And I'd better ring Paul.'

And it had been no contest-not for a second had she considered accepting  Luca's extravagant offer, but sitting in her pyjamas, eating her TV  dinner and watching the credits on her favourite show roll, the house  was too big and too lonely for one.

Lonely …

She had never admitted it, not even to herself.

Oh, she had friends and a job and was kept busy-but sometimes, sometimes  she wished she wasn't so wise, so cynical, so mistrusting where men  were concerned.

She reached for a magazine, skipped straight to the problem page and  read about other people's lives, other people's problems, and for the  millionth time in her life she missed her mum. Missed the chats that  would surely have happened about boys and men. Everyone else seemed to  find it so easy-her friends fell in and out of love, skipped from  relationship to relationship, and some were even getting married, or  moving in with their boyfriends.

Yet Emma felt as if she'd been left at the starting post.

Too embarrassed by her brothers' teasing, too scared of getting hurt,  she'd hid her first innocent crushes, had said no to dates in her  teenage years, envying how others found this dating game so easy and  just dived in and said yes.

Dear Barbara, she penned the letter in her head.

I'm an attractive twenty-four-year-old, I have friends, a job, a busy life and I'm still a virgin.

Oh, and I just said no to a night in Paris with the sexiest man on earth.

She'd make letter of the week!

And though it was great to have come home to no messages from her  father's nursing home or new bills in the mail, all she felt was  deflated. She flicked off the TV, and for just a second she faltered.

A tiny, wobbly second, where she wished she were stupid, wished for that  impulse gene where men were concerned that had been so sorely denied  her.

Wished she'd just said yes to Luca's dazzling offer.

* * *

Luca flicked through the channels on the television.                       
       
           



       

Not that he was watching it. It was on all day for background noise for the dog, Pepper-not that the animal appreciated it.

The night stretched on endlessly and he stood there, rueing the fact  that he had been yawning and bored at eleven p.m. in Paris, but thanks  to the time difference was wide awake and thoroughly restless at five  minutes to midnight in London.

He should be exhausted, he had been up since five-but his head was  clicking like an abacus. Hemming's, a large shopping chain, had called  him in way too late to stop them from going under.

Except he could see a way to save them.

He grabbed a beer from the fridge and tried not to think about it, tried  to wind down-just fed up with all the travel, with the demands. Why did  everyone want an in-person-why couldn't they just settle for a  face-to-face on a screen in the meeting room?

Hell, an email would usually suffice.

Sex would be nice.

And there were plenty who would be willing.

But he couldn't be bothered to talk.

Couldn't be bothered tonight to even pretend to be interested.

His tie must have been soldered on, along with his cufflinks-because he had to put down his drink to deal with them.

And deal with Pepper.

He snarled at the ginger miniature poodle, who snarled back at him. He let him out on his vast balcony to do whatever dogs did.

His maid would see to it in the morning.

Martha, an ex-girlfriend, had, after a trip back to his home in Sicily,  decided to move in uninvited, and had conveniently forgotten Pepper when  Luca had asked her to move out-three years ago!

'You,' Luca said, wandering back to the fridge and selecting a few  choice morsels, 'are the most pathetic excuse for a dog I have ever  seen.'

He ripped a chicken leg off and gnawed it as he stretched out on his sofa, with Pepper quivering on the floor beside him.

'You're on a diet.' Luca reminded him. Half watching a detective show on  the television, finally Luca relented and threw some titbits to the  floor in reward for their new game-having recently found out that if he  changed the word 'Paw' to 'High five' the outcome was the same, only  much more satisfying.

It had been hellish breaking up with Martha-her tears and protests at  the unexpected end had been unprecedented-as over and over she had asked  how he could end something so good.

And she'd left Pepper-just hadn't taken him, sure that Luca would crack  and ring, would make contact-but what she hadn't truly realised was that  when Luca ended things, he ended them.

That Luca would rather deal with a senile, smelly old dog than face her again.

The detective show actually wasn't that boring …

Three minutes from the end of the final episode of the season, Luca decided it was something he might actually get into.

And then the credits rolled.

And he knew this was what Emma had been talking about.

Knew she was watching it too.

He just knew it. And he wished she'd said yes to Paris.





CHAPTER TWO


IT WAS a quarter to five on a Thursday afternoon and the entire staff of  D'Amato Financiers, excluding Emma, seemed to be abuzz with excitement.  As Emma walked back from a meeting with the manager of HR she could see  make-up, slyly in some cases and blatantly in others, being applied at  desks, and the general office area reeked of a clash of newly sprayed  perfume. Even the guys were at it-appearing from the men's room with a  generous dash of newly applied hair product and a glint in their eyes as  the end of the workday approached.

Thursday night in London, and it seemed everyone had plans.

Everyone except Emma.

She remembered with a pang when Thursday nights had heralded the start  of the weekend. When Friday morning had been spent huddled around the  coffee machine, dissecting the previous night.

She'd be lucky if she was out of here by seven and she had to visit her  father and she had to be back here by six the next morning, to meet with  Luca and then fly up for an eight-thirty a.m. meeting in Scotland.