Happy Mother's Day! by Sharon Kendrick

better listen to what he wanted to say?
    Aisling chewed the end of her fountain pen. ‘Won’t you send him in?’ she asked.
    She put the receiver down and sat with the tension building up inside her. There wasn’t even enough time to look in the mirror she carried in her handbag, nor to put on some lipstick—and, besides, it was only a short journey from Ginger’s office to her own.
    What if he caught her prettifying herself and thought shewas trying to lure him into another sexual encounter? Aisling shuddered as—like someone caught in a bad horror film—she watched the door open and her heart sank.
    For this was the man they called
Il Tigre
at his most threatening, looking just as she imagined his animal namesake might look the moment before it pounced.
    Gianluca closed the door behind him, but he didn’t move. Just stood there, looking at her with a hostile black gaze—which was making her feel like some helpless innocent who had strayed into his path.
    So don’t
let
him make you feel that way.
    But it wasn’t easy under the circumstances—not when her heart was leaping against her ribcage in reaction to the muscular body and the shadowed beauty of his face—which was so still that it might have been carved from some dark stone. How could someone look so different? she wondered. It seemed a lifetime ago that those hard lips had been soft and responsive as they kissed her—yet it was only a few short weeks.
    She tried to compose her face into some appropriate expression—but what was appropriate, in the circumstances?
    ‘Hello, Gianluca,’ she said as calmly as she could manage.
    He didn’t return the greeting, just leaned back against the door, his hands moving down to rest on his hips, a movement Aisling tried not to react to, which wasn’t easy since, not only was it vaguely intimidating—it also meant that he thrust his hips forward in a way that was completely provocative as well as evocative. And, oh, the memories came flooding back in all their glorious, golden beauty.
    She swallowed, remembering images that she had been trying to block—of his eyes, tight-closed with pleasure.The way he had breathed something exultant at the moment of his climax and the warm feel of his naked body next to hers. ‘This is a … surprise.’
    ‘Really?’ he clipped out. He was angry. Correction. He was
furious
—with a strength of feeling he was neither used to, nor liked—and he hadn’t quite worked out what was causing it. Was it because she had taken control of the situation by her sudden and totally unexpected disappearance? Or because he had been shocked to find she had gone, leaving his bed without a single word—leaving him lying alone amid the rumpled sheets as if he were just some kind of
stud!
    Yet the sight of her was making him ache, even though in theory it should have done the very opposite—because the woman who had writhed beneath him and slid all over him had disappeared, making him half wonder whether he had imagined the whole episode. Like a shooting star viewed in the night sky—brilliant yet so dazzlingly brief.
    Gone was the floaty hairstyle and the foxy jeans—and back in place was one of her mannish suits with her dark hair so tightly pinned back that she might as well have had it shaved off.
    ‘Is this how you always behave?’ he demanded. ‘Don’t you usually hang around to say goodbye to your lovers, Aisling—or do you consider orgasm as a kind of farewell as well as the little death which the French always use to describe it?’
    ‘Shh! Please—keep your voice down!’ The words were out before she could stop them andAisling’s gaze darted nervously towards the closed door, praying that Ginger didn’t have her ear pressed to it. ‘I don’t want anyone to hear.’
    ‘You don’t want anyone to hear?’ He gave a mocking laugh of derision, but also a mental note of her vulnerability, and what had provoked it. ‘You mean you haven’t told your secretary you’ve