Unlocking her Innocence. Lynne Graham
Distaste filled Vito at the mere idea of wearing someone else’s clothing.
Recognising his reaction, Ava turned pale with chagrin. ‘Look, the last time I was free I was eighteen and wearing Goth clothes. I’ve grown out of that and I couldn’t turn up here to work in a pair of old jeans.’
Vito pulled his wallet out, withdrew a wad of banknotes and extended it to her. ‘Buy yourself some shoes,’ he told her drily.
Ava was aghast at the gesture. ‘I can’t take your money.’
‘You’re planning to refuse your salary?’
‘No, but that’s different,’ she argued. ‘It’s not personal.’
‘This isn’t personal either. You might try to sue us if you have an accident and you’re not much use to anyone round here when you can’t walk properly,’ Vito fielded without hesitation as he reached for the document, eager to get her back out of his office. ‘And you’ll probably be doing a lot of walking.’
‘What are you talking about?’
He handed her the sheet of paper and the money together. She was close enough to pick up on the spicy scent of his cologne and note the flexing of lean strong muscle below his shirt as he leant forward, compensating for the height difference between them. At over six feet tall, he towered over her five feet four inches. All too readily, however, she remembered the warm, solid feel of his muscular chest below her palms and she stiffened defensively. When he came close, she still wanted to touch him; it was that simple. Guilt assailed her when she thought about the way she had once behaved in his radius.
‘It’s my Christmas list for the associates we give presents to. Karen Harper will issue you with a company credit card and you will follow the suggestions and go out and gather them all up. OK?’ Vito spelt out shortly, his smouldering gaze pinned to the damp pink pout of her mouth.
What was it about her that ensnared him? Vito wondered in frustration, feeling the tight heaviness and drag of response at his groin. While she seemed naively unaware of her own sexual power he was all too aware that he found everything about her, from that peachy mouth to the tightness of her blouse over her full round breasts and the fit of her trousers, ridiculously tempting. He wanted her. He wanted to bed her so badly it almost hurt to think that he could never have her and the very thought of that shocked him afresh. It had been so long since a woman affected him on a visceral level. The last time had been with her, in fact, and that bothered him, bothered him in a way he didn’t appreciate being bothered. No, he definitely didn’t want her under his feet during his working day.
Ava looked up at him in surprise and clashed involuntarily with scorching dark golden eyes of such stormy beauty she could hardly breathe. A tingling sensation ran through her, tightening her nipples like a sudden blast of cold air, although there was nothing chilly about the well of heat building low in her pelvis.
‘You want me to go shopping?’ she queried disbelievingly. ‘But I’m not a girly girl.’
‘Nevertheless if you want to retain employment here you will do as you are told,’ Vito countered drily.
Ava flushed and nibbled at the soft underside of her lower lip, the tip of her tongue slicking out to ease the dryness there, while she swallowed back the spark of temper he had ignited. His innate dominance and self-assurance had always set her teeth on edge. His way or the highway, she got that message loud and clear and it was nothing new to her. She was used to rules now, accustomed to respecting the pecking order to stay safe. That she should have to do the same thing to stay employed should not be a surprise.
‘Don’t do that with your mouth … and don’t look at me like that,’ Vito chastised.
Look at him in what way? If the look had been inappropriate, she had been unaware of the fact and her chin came up at a mutinous angle. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He dealt her an unimpressed scrutiny, dark eyes brilliant and shielded by his lush lashes. ‘Don’t play the temptress with me. Been there, done that.’
In the state of tension she was in that insolent warning was the tipping point. Lashed by memories of the humiliation he had once inflicted on her, Ava flushed as incandescent rage lit her up like an internal fireworks display. ‘Let’s get this straight now, Vito,’ she bit out furiously. ‘I’m no longer that silly infatuated girl you once called a tease! I’m a whole lot wiser than I used to be. You’re like a lot of other men—you don’t take responsibility for your own behaviour.’
‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’ Vito shot back at her rawly, unprepared for that sudden attack.
‘I’m not some fatally seductive Eve, whom no poor male can resist. What happened that night wasn’t entirely my fault. You came on to me, you kissed me because you wanted to, not because I somehow made you do it!’ Ava shot back with angry emphasis, blue eyes star-bright with condemnation. ‘Deal with your own share of the blame and don’t try to foist it on me!’
Wrath blasted through Vito like a cleansing flame, wiping away every other complex reaction that she stirred. That fast he wanted to kill her and it was not the first time she had done that to him. He had dealt with the blame a long time ago but that did not alter the fact that she had used her body around him like a lethal weapon, deliberately stoking the kind of desire that no principled adult wanted to experience in a teenager’s radius. It had been a recipe for disaster and had it not been for the car crash that had followed he would have remained satisfied by the outcome of their confrontation. But while he had tried to nip the situation in the bud Ava’s fiery temperament had ensured that it had blown up in his face instead.
‘I have no intention of discussing the past with you,’ Vito delivered crushingly. ‘Go buy the shoes and start on the Christmas list, Ava.’
It was a direct order and she was tempted to ignore it when every fibre in her body was still primed for battle. She wanted to defend herself, she had never got the chance to defend herself against his cutting allegations because Olly had interrupted them. But as she had reminded him she was no longer the teenager who had once found it almost impossible to control her emotions. She breathed in slow and deep and, giving him a look that would have daunted a lesser man, she turned round and headed for the door.
‘Yes, you have grown up,’ Vito remarked silkily, having the last word.
Her teeth clenched, her slender hands curling into tight fists but her spine stayed straight and her mouth firmly closed. Deep down inside she might want to scream at him, shake him … kiss him? The shock of that stray thought cooled her temper as nothing else could have done. Although she had got over her crush on him a long time ago, she had also spent the last three years in an all-female environment, forced to repress every sexual instinct, she reasoned impatiently. It was hardly surprising that exposure to a male of Vito’s stunning good looks and high-powered sexuality, not to mention the memory of how she had once felt about him, could now make her vulnerable. So, take a chill pill, she urged herself impatiently, you’re only human and he’s the equivalent of toxic bait to a rat. He might have spectacular packaging but he also had a brain like a computer in which actual emotion had very little input. Even at eighteen she had appreciated that Vito’s fondness for his little brother was the sole Achilles’ heel in his tough and ruthlessly maintained emotional armour. She had not required Olly’s warning to appreciate that she and Vito were chalk and cheese in every way that mattered. Money and success mattered way more to Vito than people. He kept other human beings at a distance and rarely allowed anyone into his inner circle or his private life. She did not count his affairs in that category for, according to what she had witnessed on the sidelines of his life, more sex than feeling was involved in those relationships.
Karen Harper was just replacing the phone when Ava entered her office and she wore an expression like a cat facing a saucer of sour cream. ‘Company credit card, right?’ she checked icily.
Ava nodded and presented the Christmas list. The brunette gave it a cursory glance. ‘You appreciate