Read A Valentine from Harlequin for Free Online Page A

were surrounded by others, he silenced her with another kiss, this one so darkly intoxicating that she quivered. “Hush,” he said against her lips. “I’m nothing like him. Do you really think that, having let you slip through my fingers six months ago, I’m about to risk my carefully engineered second chance by telling you lies now?”
    “ Engineered? ” Unnerved, she stared at him. “Are you saying you knew I’d be here and arranged this meeting? Is that what you meant when you said you had everything choreographed down to the last detail?”
    He shrugged again, a continental lifting of one broad shoulder she wished she didn’t find so attractive. “Not exactly, but word travels quickly in my circle of acquaintances. I knew weeks ago that Gerald intended to hire you to organize this party, that my name would be on the guest list, and that the man who’d monopolized your time in Barbados had moved on to greener fields.”
    “Pastures,” she said distractedly. “It’s ‘moved on to greener pastures.’”
    “Such a strange tongue, this English. I must teach you Italian, the true language of love.”
    “Now just hold your horses, Paolo—!”
    He interrupted with a laugh she could only compare to the slow trickle of warm molasses running from a hot spoon. “As I said, a strange language. But if horses are what it will take to win you, I’ll give you horses.”
    Clinging rather desperately to her dwindling sense of survival, she protested. “Stop talking like that! You could be married with eight children, for all I know. And I could have a husband—”
    “But you don’t,” he said calmly. “You wouldn’t be here in my arms and allowing me to kiss you if you had. And anyone here can vouch that I have neither a wife nor children. However, if you prefer to hear it from my parents and sisters—”
    “I don’t know even your parents and sisters!”
    “You will, cara. Very soon. I shall take you to our family villa overlooking the Adriatic Sea to meet them.”
    “I don’t think so! In your own way, you’re just as devious as John, pretending we met here by accident when, in fact, you’ve been stalking me from a distance for months.”
    “Keeping track, perhaps, but never stalking.”
    “Call it what you like, it adds up to the same thing.”
    “It was necessary for both our sakes,” he said reasonably. “You needed time to establish yourself as an independent entrepreneur, and I needed assurance that you’d recovered from your brief infatuation with Weatherby before I declared myself.”
    “You’re very sure you’ll have things your way, aren’t you, Paolo Angelli? What are you going to do if I don’t fall in with your plans—throw me over your shoulder and carry me off to your cave?”
    “I’m no Neanderthal, Charlotte. If I’ve presumed too much, I apologize and will, of course, withdraw from the picture.”
    He paused, giving her time to consider before she framed a reply. The music slowed to a stop. Couples started drifting back to their tables. Finally she and Paolo were the only two left on the dance floor and still she hadn’t answered. She stared at the front of his dress shirt and tried to be sensible. To behave like a mature, intelligent woman.
    “Well, Charlotte? Have I misread the signs? Shall I thank you for the dance, escort you off the floor, and disappear from your life for good?”
    She met his gaze. His eyes, blue as his Adriatic Sea, smoldered with fire. As for his mouth…oh, a woman could weave a lifetime of dreams around that mouth! “Everything’s happening too quickly, Paolo,” she whimpered. “You’re asking for too much.”
    “I’m asking you to take a leap of faith,” he said. “To join me on a journey that stands a very small chance of coming to nothing but is far more likely to lead to a future together. I won’t tell you I love you or that I want to marry you. Not yet. Not until I’m ready to say the words and you’re ready to hear them.