The Reluctant Surrender. Penny Jordan

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      CHAPTER ONE

      AS SHE turned into the underground car park, shared by the architectural practice she worked for with several other businesses in the same modern block, Giselle saw a car reversing from one of the precious spaces. Quickly she turned the wheel of her small company car against the arrows, driving up an exit lane, her brain and body automatically focusing on getting to the empty space before anyone else spotted it. She only realised as she swung round the end of the exit lane and up to the space that an imposing, expensive, polished sports car, with an equally imposing, expensive and polished, far too harshly good-looking man at its wheel, was stationary just down from the space. He had obviously been waiting for the space’s occupant to leave.

      He looked at her, his expression one of arrogance mingled with open male disbelief. For a second she hesitated, her resolve almost failing, but then she saw how his glance moved deliberately from her face to her body, as though she was a piece of merchandise he was looking over and then rejecting, and a spurt of pure female fury had her turning into the spot for which he had been waiting.

      She could see the cold savagery of the look he was giving her, and lip-read the words, What the hell—? as they were formed by the sensually chiselled hard male mouth as she swept past him, her whole body shaking, her hands damp with perspiration as she clung to the wheel.

      It wasn’t just because his arrogance had infuriated her that she was doing this. This morning she’d received an unexpected call asking her to get to the office early, to be present after the senior partners’ meeting. She could not afford to be late; necessity overruled and squashed the guilt she would normally have felt at her lack of good road manners. Then he had given her that look—that assured, arrogant, hateful glance at her body—that had said so clearly exactly what kind of man he was: predatory, callous, completely fixated on his own desires and needs.

      Her need for the parking space was far greater than his, Giselle told herself. She had to be in the office—fifteen minutes ago. He, on the other hand, looked the sort who normally had a driver to attend to such mundane things as parking his car.

      Inside the car, she started to change her driving shoes for her office heels. The sound of an engine revving furiously made her exhale in relief. He had obviously driven away—at high speed and in high dudgeon, no doubt.

      Having moved his car a few yards, to let another vehicle pass him, Saul Parenti stared with furious disbelief at the thief who had just taken his parking spot. The fact that this deed had been commited by a woman added insult to injury. Saul had the blood of generations of powerful men running through his veins—men in control, in authority, absolute rulers—and right now that blood was running very hot and fast indeed. Saul would never have described himself as a misogynist, far from it—he liked women. He liked them a lot. But generally speaking the place where he liked them most was in his bed—not in a parking spot for which he had been waiting with a patience that went against his nature.

      With no other parking space available, he parked swiftly to one side, obstructing two vehicles, and switched off the car engine. He pushed open the door, unfolding his muscular six-foot-four length from the driving seat of his car.

      Giselle was unaware that her theft was about to be challenged until she was out of her small car. Making the short walk from the car park to the lift that would take her up to the office was the time she normally used to get her professional mask firmly in place—the one that hid the fact that she disliked the male interest so often directed at her at work. Because of this she was too involved in adopting her cloak of defensive hauteur—straight back, straight-ahead focus, and a lift of her chin that said she was untouchable—to be aware of the danger until it was too late and she was forced to rock back on her heels in mid-stride or risk walking straight into the man standing between her and the exit.

      ‘Not so fast. I want a word with you.’

      His English was excellent, and somehow slightly at odds with his darkly male looks.

      Well, she certainly did not want to exchange any words with him. Giselle stepped past him, and then gasped in outraged shock when he blocked her, stepping closer to her, until she felt as though each breath was filled with the raw masculine smell of him—all dark, erotic mastery spiked with something sharper, like the touch of a velvet glove spiked with hidden danger.

      ‘You’re in my way,’ she told him as she fought to keep and sound cool—not realising the dangerous opening she had given him.

      ‘And you are in my parking spot,’ he retorted.

      That