The Italian Billionaire's Secretary Mistress by Sharon Kendrick

the end of the road. They didn’t sell the kind of high-end range of the market stuff he was used to—but they did stock croissants which tasted pretty good when you heated them up in the oven and served them with a dollop of cherry jam.
    Angie gave a little sigh of contentment as she nestled down into the pillow. This morning she had been feeling close to despair and ready to start looking for a new job to get her away from the influence of her boss, and now…
    Now?
    She snuggled down even further. Now she felt as if the world had come alive with a powerful kind of magic.
    What a difference a few hours could make.

CHAPTER FIVE
    A MOTTLED ceiling swam into view and Riccardo quickly shut his eyes. But when he opened them again the ceiling was still there. And so was…so was…
    So was he.
    He held his breath for a moment as he realised that there was someone in the bed next to him and then he went cold when he remembered just who it was.
    Angie!
    Events from the previous day came flooding back in a dark and unwelcome tide. Giving her the dress. The Christmas party. Wine plus jet lag plus not very much supper. That damned dress! And then…then he had brought her home here and ravished her—and she had wholeheartedly let him.
    His heart hammered in his chest as he lay there, dead still in the smallest bed he had slept in since child-hood—until he could risk turning his head without waking her.
    Without the dress she looked less like the siren of last night and much more like the Angie he knew—though without her hair tied up. Her head was slumped back against the pillow, her face was flushed and the duvet had fallen down so that he could see one rosy little nipple.
    Horror ran through him as his worst nightmare was realised.
    He was lying naked in bed with his secretary!
    For a moment he let his mind stray down tracks which would soon be out of bounds. The memory of her soft skin. Her unfeigned delight at his touch. The way she had kissed him—as if she had just discovered kissing for the first time. Resolutely he blocked the erotic recall.
    Now what?
    Gingerly, he began to edge one thigh towards the edge of the bed when he felt her stir beside him and instantly he stilled.
    ‘Morning,’ she murmured throatily.
    Riccardo froze. She had that besotted note in her voice—a breathy kind of worship he recognised only too well. Women always used it after they’d had sex with him and there didn’t seem to be a thing he could do about it. He turned to look down at her, steeling himself against that puppy-eyed look she was directing up at him. Because it wasn’t her fault she was feeling that way; women were conditioned to react differently from men—everyone knew that. Give them a couple of orgasms and they started imagining all kinds of crazy notions. But with a little careful handling—those notions could be quickly consigned to the dust heap. And he needed to handle this very carefully indeed because he respected Angie.
    As his secretary!
    ‘Morning.’ His smile was brief and perfunctory and—most important of all—non-committal. The kind of smile he might give if he was a couple of minutes late to a board-meeting. Leaning over, he planted a light kiss on the tip of her nose. It contained just the right amount of careless affection for her to be reassured that he didn’t think too badly of her—but without giving her any false hope that this might be leading anywhere. Because it wasn’t—and the sooner she understood that, the better. He pushed the duvet away and swung his long legs out of the bed, which hadn’t seemed at all cramped last night—but which now felt like a tiny cage of a place.
    Angie looked at him. ‘You’re not getting up?’
    ‘I need the bathroom.’
    Angie smiled. Of course he did. And how very intimate that sounded. ‘It’s down the—’
    ‘I think I can probably find it by myself,’ he offered drily.
    He didn’t seem at all fazed by his nakedness and Angie lay there and