CHAPTER ONE
‘THIS is really not a good idea, Paul!’
Luccy glared up at him as he pinned her against the wall in the hallway outside the hotel restaurant where she had earlier wined and dined him and another senior executive from Wow magazine.
Time was when Luccy would have been the one taken out to dinner, but there were too many excellent fashion photographers out there nowadays, all of them hungry for work. With only one prestigious contract with PAN Cosmetics, a subsidiary company of the mega-big Sinclair Industries, to recommend her—a contract that she couldn’t be sure would be renewed in three months’ time when a photographer like Roy Bailey had decided he also wanted it—Luccy badly needed this assignment with Wow if she didn’t want to be reduced to taking photographs of babies and weddings.
But she certainly didn’t need the assignment with Wow—with anyone!—badly enough to go to bed with one of its senior executives to get it.
Admittedly, Paul Bridger, the younger of the two men, had made several suggestive remarks to her during the evening—despite the fact that he had also mentioned having a wife and two children at home in Hampshire. However, Luccy had thought she had fended off those remarks without too much injury to pride on either side and both men had excused themselves after the meal with the promise that they would be in touch.
Except Paul had doubled back and was now propositioning her after she’d left the restaurant having paid a huge restaurant bill Harper-O’Neill Ltd could ill afford.
‘Oh, come on,’ he cajoled now as he pressed closer. ‘You know you’ve been giving me the come-on all evening.’ Paul smiled confidently as he moved his thighs suggestively against hers.
Luccy inwardly squirmed with distaste. What she should do was slap Paul’s face and tell him exactly what she thought of him! What she had to do, in order not to cause a complete scene in a public place, was put an end to this situation as quietly and quickly as possible…
She gave what she hoped was a light-hearted little laugh as she pushed him away playfully. ‘I really don’t think your wife would approve, do you?’
Blue eyes narrowed in a face that wasn’t unattractive—just married! ‘My wife isn’t going to know about it. Or is she?’ he added suspiciously, his hands now painful on her shoulders as he pinned her even more firmly against the wall.
Luccy moistened suddenly dry lips. ‘That depends—’
‘On what?’ Paul snarled.
‘Excuse me…?’
Luccy’s face flamed with embarrassment as she realised that she and Paul were blocking the hallway outside the restaurant, and one of the other diners was now waiting to go past them.
Luccy gave him a quick glance, noticing the man’s height first, as he was well over six feet. He was probably aged in his mid-thirties, with styled overlong dark hair, and eyes of piercing silver-grey, the suntan—and attractive American drawl—stating that he originated from much warmer climes than England in this wet and overcast June. His black, expensively tailored evening suit and snowy white silk shirt emphasised the broad width of his shoulders, as well as his muscled chest, slim waist, powerful thighs and long, long legs.
The slightly disgusted expression in that piercing grey gaze as it swept over Luccy and Paul wasn’t exactly encouraging. But, Luccy decided quickly, she could deal with that later—right now she needed rescuing!
‘David! How lovely to see you again!’ She gave the man a glowing smile as she took advantage of Paul Bridger’s momentary distraction at the interruption to duck under his arm and step away from him, moving to link her arm with the tall American’s. ‘Paul was just leaving. Weren’t you, Paul?’ she added pointedly.
‘I—’ He blinked, scowling darkly as he looked from Luccy to the tall man who stood so arrogantly disdainful at her side. ‘Yes, I was just leaving,’ he snapped, shooting Luccy one last narrow-eyed glare before striding down the hallway towards the front entrance of the hotel.
Luccy’s legs felt strangely weak once Paul had gone, and for a few seconds all she could do was cling to the arm of the man now standing beside her. A man she had never seen before in her life!
A man who now looked down at her with raised brows. ‘“David”?’ he asked dryly.
Luccy gave an apologetic grimace. ‘I’m really sorry about all that. A—a work colleague who got out of hand,’ she explained—although she seriously doubted, from Paul’s last glaring look, that she would ever get any work with Wow magazine now! ‘Er—do we know each other?’ she added. For some reason, the man looked vaguely familiar to her.
As far as Sin was aware he had never met this woman before. He would most certainly have remembered if he had!
Sin had been sitting alone at his table by the window in the hotel restaurant earlier when he’d seen this young woman enter, his attention snared as he’d watched her pause briefly in the doorway to look around the full restaurant before making her way decisively to the table where two men had sat talking together. Sin’s mouth had tightened with displeasure as he had acknowledged that his wasn’t the only male gaze drawn to the sensual sway of her hips as she walked.
She was probably aged in her late twenties, about five eight in height, Sin would have guessed, with very long silky black hair that gleamed with midnight-blue lights as it swung softly onto her shoulders and curled down the long length of her spine. The deep blue of her eyes was surrounded by long, long lashes of the same ebony colour, her skin a perfect unblemished magnolia, her nose small and straight, and the fullness of her lips glossed the same vibrant red as the knee-length dress she wore. High breasts and that sensuous sway of her hips as she walked seemed to give the impression that was all she was wearing!
Sin’s gaze had continued to be drawn to her throughout the evening as she had conversed animatedly with the two men as they ate their meal. He didn’t usually stare at women he had never met, but there had been something about this woman, something that had drawn his gaze back to her time and time again. Not that it had been his intention of approaching or talking to her, but then he hadn’t been the one to approach or talk to her now, had he?
He shrugged. ‘Maybe you recognise me from the restaurant?’
Luccy nodded. Now that he mentioned it, she did remember seeing him sitting alone in the restaurant when she’d arrived earlier; with his looks it was impossible not to notice him! But with her future on the line Luccy had dismissed him from her mind as she had focused all of her attention on the two executives from Wow.