Page 118 of Modern Romance Collection February 2025, 1-4

No more prevarication.

‘Siena?’ He said her name again, his voice a little louder.

This time she stirred. She was waking, he could tell. She lifted her head, looking up at him. Her wanton hair tumbled around her bare shoulders as she raised herself on her elbow, eyes blinking as she focussed on him.

‘I have to leave now,’ he said. His voice was cool, matter-of-fact. ‘But for yourself there is no hurry. Please order breakfast when you will—it is all chargeable to the room.’

He did not wait for her to say anything—he did not want to hear it. What he wanted was to move on with his day. His schedule was full, and his first appointment—a breakfast meeting at a London club—imminent.

He walked from the room, his stride unhurried, picking up his briefcase as he went. He was booked to stay here tonight, but would not return till late. Then he would be flying back to Milan, where he was based.

And the night he had just spent would slip into the past.

He closed the room door behind him and headed for the elevator, his mind already going to the business meeting ahead of him. It was occupying all his thoughts. Putting the night that had passed behind him.

Siena lowered herself back down to the pillow, soft behind her head. She felt cold, suddenly, but did not pull the duvet higher.

She stared up at the ceiling.

Aware that her heart was thudding.

Aware that she was completely naked.

Aware that she had just spent the night with a man she had met only the previous evening. Aware of so much...

A sudden heat knifed through her.

Dear God, had she really done what she thought she had?

Her gaze went around the room. Luxuriously appointed. But then this was the Mayfair Falcone, so of course it was luxurious. As elegant and upmarket as the restaurant where she’d dined, with its famous chef and famous reputation and sky-high prices. As elegant as that swish party in one of the hotel’s opulent function rooms which her old school-friend Megan, whom she was staying with in London, had dragged her to, insisting she needed something fun and carefree and hedonistic after all she’d been through, and insisting, too, that she look the part for so glamorous and fashionable a venue.

So Megan had loaned her one of her own designer cocktail frocks, in mauve shot silk. It was a size too small, but Megan had said she’d looked a knockout in it, and then sat her down and done her hair and nails and make-up—far more extravagantly and glamorously than Siena was used to. Then she’d handed her a pair of strappy evening shoes with sky-high heels, thrust a satin evening bag at her and, looking a knockout herself, had piled them both into a taxi to whisk them from Megan’s flat in Notting Hill to Mayfair, to disgorge them at the Falcone.

‘It’s part work, part social,’ Megan, who was a high-flyer at a fancy PR company, had told her of the party she was taking her to. ‘And it’s just what you need after all these tough years. You put your life on hold—and, yes, I know why you did it, and applaud you for it—but now you’re starting your life again. Off to art school in the autumn—finally! Just like you always dreamt. And a flash bash like tonight’s will get you back into the swing of things. You haven’t had a social life for years!’

She’d squeezed Siena’s hand in the taxi, her voice sympathetic.

‘So let your hair down tonight! Be someone different—go crazy...indulge yourself. Who knows? Meet someone!’

As Siena sat back against the pillows, alone in the bed, alone in the room, a hollow opened up inside her and found a chill was replacing that flush of heat.

Meet someone...

Megan’s words echoed in her head, and the hollow inside her gaped wider.

Instantly he was in her vision. Just as he had been last night when, gingerly taking a glass of champagne from a passing server, she had been inadvertently jostled by someone, making her reverse sharply and step against another guest. She’d turned to apologise—and the apology had died on her lips.

She’d felt her eyes widen, her mouth open, colour flare.

The most lethal-looking male she had ever seen in her life...

He was tall, wearing black tie like every other male there, and as her eyes had gazed helplessly she’d registered dark hair, a narrow face, bladed nose, sculpted mouth and eyes...oh, eyes that were dark, and deep and—

‘I’m... I’m so sorry!’ Her voice had been breathless, because all the air had been sucked from her lungs.

For a second he had not responded. Then: ‘Not at all,’ he’d said politely.

It had been perfect English, but with a trace of an accent in it...something that had only added to her breathlessness.

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