Catering to the Italian Playboy Read Online Free PDF Page B

your peon. Granted an I-can’t-run-this-business-without-you-peon, but a peon all the same. And because I know it drives you crazy.” Felicity snickered then pinned her with her best no-nonsense look. “Don’t you dare change the subject. I need details. Lots and lots of details.” She sighed dramatically. “Since my love life is zilch, I can at least live vicariously through yours.”
    “There’s nothing to tell.” Sophie bit her lip and slid into the seat across from Felicity. She’d known her friend long enough to know she wouldn’t let it go. Felicity was like a dog with a bone when she set her mind to it. “We’re working his party next week. End of story.”
    “End of story, my foot!” Felicity rolled her eyes heavenward and shook head. “I want to know why he couldn’t take his eyes off of you and why you seemed as nervous as a cat on tightrope the whole time he was here. What gives?”
    He couldn’t take his eyes off of me? The thought shouldn’t have thrilled her but it did. Not that she’d noticed; she’d been too busy worrying about whether or not he remembered her not-so-ladylike behavior six years ago.
    “I’m waiting. You’re not getting out of here before you tell it, so you may as well get started.”
    “I – we met at a bar a few years ago.”
    “And?”
    “We had a one night stand.” Sophie lifted her shoulders in an it-didn’t-mean-anything shrug. But it did. It meant a lot. A one night stand. God, it sounded so awful just voicing it out loud.
    “You?” Felicity snorted loudly, disbelief flashing in her wide brown eyes. “A one night stand? Get out of town!”
    “It’s true. I’m not proud of it, but it happened.”
    “Did he remember you?”
    Sophie shook her head. “I don’t think so. He didn’t say anything if he did.”
    “Did you?”
    “What? Say anything? Of course not!” Sophie felt her cheeks heat up like one of the lobsters she boiled for her Lobster bisque. Humiliation was not on her to-do list today. Like she was going to walk up to him and ask if he remembered her jumping his bones a few years back.
    As if!
    “Why not? I would have.”
    “Because Maximus Rinaldi is one of the wealthiest men in the world and he can have any woman he wants.” The tabloid pictures she’d seen over the years popped into Sophie’s head. Brunettes hanging on his arm one month. Redheads the next. Blondes somewhere in between.
    Just like her father.
    Sophie’s stomach constricted. Her father’s philandering ways had been the nail in her mother’s coffin and the hatchet to their family. At nineteen Sophie had walked away from it all. At twenty-five she still couldn’t forgive that man – her father – for destroying their family.
    And Max appeared to be cut from the same mold.
    “Max is a playboy with a different woman in every city.” Sophie tightened her chin. She refused to be New York’s layover.
    “Well it looked to me like he wants you. Maybe one night wasn’t enough for him.” Felicity grinned. “And he sure is delicious. Maybe you two could–”
    “Absolutely not!” Sophie jumped to her feet. “I made one mistake. I don’t intend to repeat it.”
    “Okay. Okay.” Felicity held up her hand. “Don’t shoot the messenger. I was just saying. Anyway I still can’t picture you, Miss Prim and Proper, having anything as scandalous as a one night stand. And picked him up in a bar too. Unbelievable.” Felicity laughed. “Will wonders never cease?”
    “It wasn’t a bar. Well it was, but nothing sleazy. It was the one in the hotel where I was staying after my mother died.”
    Felicity’s smile vanished. She jumped up and flung her arms around Sophie in a tight hug. “Oh, Soph. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it was during that horrible time. No wonder you don’t want him to remember it.”
    “No I don’t. And I’d prefer to forget it too.”
    Except she never would because she had a pair of stormy gray eyes and a shock of dark hair waiting for