The Italian's Secretary Bride Read Free

wanted.
    Slow or not, in an hour and a half you could sip quite a lot, and there wasn’t much else to do but sip as she sat conspicuously alone amongst the other people, or rather couples , dining in the exclusive New York hotel. It was at times like this a girl could be excused for thinking she were the only person left who wasn’t part of a pair. She felt a flicker of pain as she reached unconsciously for the gold ring that she had worn on a chain around her neck since the day her worried mother had confided she was afraid her daughter wasn’t letting go of the past.
    You’re young, Alice, and you know as well as I do that Mark would want you to get on with your life.
    Discovering its absence made her feel more undressed than the low-cut dress that had forced her to remove it tonight.
    With a pang Alice turned her head as the couple seated to her left touched fingers across the table. Not being a girl to dwell on the gloomy aspects of life, she reminded herself of the many benefits of not having a significant other.
    If she had a lover she would have to worry about the hedgehog style her hair adopted when she woke up in the morning. She could sleep on whatever side of the bed she wanted—and right now the bed she occupied was a rather spectacular queen-size.
    Roman was many things, she mused, but a stingy employer was not one of them. When she travelled with him it was always first class. She occupied a gorgeous room right next to his on the top floor.
    Alice looked at her empty glass and hazily considered the possibility that she had had too much to drink. But didn’t people who were drunk feel happy and carefree, prone to dancing on tables and breaking into song at the least provocation?
    Alice felt no inclination to do either.
    She had no illusions about it. At best the evening was going to be an endurance test of her self-control. The thought of spending a painful hour, or even two , trying to make polite conversation with someone who had enough ego in his little finger to sustain a small planet was something she was not looking forward to.
    And when it came to filling the inevitable awkward silences she knew better than to look to her dining companion for help. He’d just sit there looking bored in that aggravatingly languid way he had with those eerily penetrating blue eyes of his giving the unnerving impression he could read her thoughts.
    The irony of the situation didn’t escape her. An intimate dinner with a single man who was universally acknowledged as being not only wealthy and smart but also unbelievably good-looking would have had most women turning cartwheels and here was she acting as if Judgement Day had arrived.
    Of course most women, unlike Alice, didn’t know what a pain in the rear Luca O’Hagan actually was. Given the choice between root-canal work and dining by candlelight with her boss’s younger brother, Alice would have headed for the dentist’s chair every time.
    The problem was he was spoilt. Things came too easily to the man, she decided, staring broodingly into her empty glass, including female company, she thought disapprovingly. Perhaps, she mused, he might have been more tolerable if someone had actually ever said no to him. Having seen him in action personally, she wasn’t holding her breath! The title ‘babe magnet’ had never been more aptly bestowed.
    Her soft but determined chin rose to a decisive angle. She’d give him ten more minutes and then she was going to go back to her room to order a sandwich. Feeling a lot better for having made the decision, she caught a waiter’s eye and ordered another drink.
    At the same moment the voice of the maître d’ drifted across the room. ‘Your favourite table…’
    Alice’s fingers tightened around the stem of her glass and her slender back stiffened. Having worked for her millionaire boss for the past five years, she immediately recognised the warm