Far From Perfect Read Online Free PDF Page A

reaction.
    Which obviously, he wasn’t going to get. Maledizione! She was so poised and in control nowadays. Far more buttoned up than she once was. He wondered sourly if associating with dull, safe men had suppressed her natural wild streak as well as her sometimes fiery temper.
    If so, it was high time he rescued her from that, even if only for the duration of a temporary arrangement.
    “On the contrary, I’m completely serious.” He allowed Anna to extricate her hand from his, half fearing that she might wipe her fingers on her fetching silky dress to wipe his touch away. She didn’t, but her eyes were still wary. “I’ve never been more serious in my life,” he added.
    Those green eyes, once so hot and full of passion, narrowed. “Well, in that case, I think you’re completely mad.”
    Feeling the stirrings of anger and frustration, Nick still had to admire her measured, even tone. Her control, and the way she skirted around derision but didn’t descend to it, had a startling and very visceral effect on him. He imagined what it would be like to crack such control, in bed, and make her moan.
    Careful. Stay cool. Maintain your own control, man.
    It was hellishly difficult though, when suddenly and painfully, he wanted her more than he’d ever done before.
    “Why would you say that?”
    Projecting nonchalance he wasn’t feeling, he lounged back against the upholstery, the thinking part of his mind trying the time-honored trick of focusing on figures, balance sheets, fiscal projections. Anything rather than fly back to that night at the Villa Rosa and the heat and scent of their coupling in his bedroom.
    Which would make him hard again.
    Anna laughed. Nervously? Feeling perverse, Nick hoped so.
    “We’ve barely seen each other for four years, Nick. Isn’t it going to look a bit peculiar if we’re suddenly engaged?” She seemed calm, but at the same time, she was rubbing obsessively at the edge of one of her fingernails, as if intent on a flaw in her shimmering rosy nail lacquer. “Not to mention the fact we’ve both been seeing other people.” She paused, pursed her lips for a moment. “Quite a few other people in your case.” Impatiently, she abandoned the fingernail as if she’d just realized she was exhibiting a poker tell. “And as I remember the last time we were actually alone together, in what could generally be termed an intimate situation, we didn’t part all that well, if you remember?”
    “How could I forget?”
    Base machismo surged in his gut, slipping its leash. She was fraying around the edges just a bit, he could tell, and suddenly a deep, pain-soaked part of him was glad of a reaction in her rather than the cool self-possession.
    But when a veil of soft pink blush gathered across her porcelain cheekbones and developed across her throat and her cleavage, his own composure began to fracture. Her beautifully rounded breasts rose and fell beneath the thin fabric of her delicate eau de nil silk and lace dress, pure provocation as she clearly fought for equilibrium.
    On his feet without conscious thought, he resumed his pacing. He didn’t want her to look at him too closely and see his erection. It was much easier for women, if they were aroused it wasn’t as obvious, and that gave them an advantage. How could he work through the justification of his plan, especially when it was so vaguely thought out in his own mind, if he was sporting a raging hard-on and she was looking at it?
    I should have known this would happen. I got stiff looking at her picture, how in God’s name could I avoid it seeing her for real, touching her skin, smelling her scent?
    At the window, Nick stared out into the damp garden and composed himself. They’d have to get past that night at villa. Their elephant in the room. It was no good thinking they could go on ignoring what had happened. Perhaps they’d been fools to blank it from their lives for so long?
    Especially as it was the most defining event of his