Sicilian Nights Omnibus Read Online Free PDF Page A

exuded an air of male virility that aroused within her a raft of unfamiliar and complex emotions that undermined and weakened her. There was something about the way he turned his head, the look in the slate-grey eyes and the shape of his wholly male mouth that disrupted her ability to think logically and forced her to keep looking at him.
    ‘You see, this way I shall have complete control over both the situation and you, without having to face any future comebacks—or indeed the kickbacks your sex has a less than lovable habit of demanding.’
    ‘If you don’t like the demands your girlfriends make on you then I would suggest that the fault lies with you and your judgement, and not my sex as a whole. There are any number of heterosexual women who don’t ask for, or expect or even want anything from a man.’
    ‘You’re wrong about that. All women want something—either materially, emotionally or physically, and very often all three. Whereas all I want from you is your presence at my side in public as my partner, your recognition that in future there will be no relationship of any kind between us, and your complete silence on the whole subject—publicly and privately.’
    ‘Not much, then,’ Leonora muttered under her breath.
    But he must have heard her, because he gave her a coldly arrogant look and told her, ‘Set against your brother’s future career, I would have said that it is not very much at all. Merely your absolute obedience to my will and to the instructions I shall give you for one single evening.’
    ‘Like I said—that’s blackmail,’ Lenora was objecting, before she could stop herself.
    ‘You may choose to see it as blackmail. I on the other hand see it as a justifiable claim for compensation from a person who has knowingly deprived me of something that is mine by right—in this case the skills of my employee, your brother.’
    ‘I’m just as qualified as Leo—in fact I’m more qualified.’
    ‘Maybe so, but you were not my choice of pilot. Now, as I was saying, if I am to refrain from sacking your brother then I shall require your complete obedience to my will.’
    Her complete obedience to his will? Leonora opened her mouth in a furious hiss of disagreement, and then closed it again as she remembered Leo.
    There was one thing she had to say, though—one stand she had to make.
    Holding his gaze, she told him bluntly, ‘If this complete obedience to your instructions has anything to do with any kind of sexual activity then I’m afraid that Leo will have to lose his job.’
    Alessandro looked at her in disbelief.
    ‘Are you seriously suggesting that you think I am sexually propositioning you?’ he demanded haughtily.
    Leonora stood her ground.
    ‘Not necessarily. I’m simply letting you know what I won’t do.’
    She had surprised him, Alessandro admitted. He was so used to women throwing themselves at him, practically begging him to take what they were offering, that it had simply never occurred to him that a woman like this one—so desperate to get a job with his airline that she was prepared to risk doing something that was both illegal and dangerous—would baulk at the thought of offering him sex. But patently that was exactly what she was doing, and he could see from the tension gripping her body that she meant what she had said.
    Something—curiosity, male pride, his deep-rooted inherited Leopardi arrogance—Alessandro did not know which—spiked into life inside him, hard-edged and determined to make its presence felt. He shrugged it aside. Some ancient macho instinct had been aroused by her challenge—so what? He was mature enough, sophisticated enough, well supplied enough with all the sexual companionship he needed not to have to take any notice of it.
    ‘Good. And now I shall let you know that you will never be asked. My standards in that regard, as in everything else in my life, are very high. You do not come anywhere near meeting them.’ His smile was cruel and