He wasn’t fooling himself that it would be easy. Louise might have been a useless maître d’, more interested in flirting with the customers than doing her job, but since then she’d carved out a brilliant career for herself in marketing and PR. Her client list included one of the most successful restaurant chains in the country. She knew everyone in the business. Everyone in the media. And her mother’s high society family gave her an in with the social elite. She was ‘A’ list.

She was also bright enough to know that Bella Lucia needed her a lot more than she needed Bella Lucia.

That he needed her a lot more than she needed him.

If the situation were reversed, if he were in her shoes, he knew he wouldn’t listen to one word she had to say until she was on her knees, begging.

He hoped, for his knees’ sake, that she wasn’t inclined to carry a grudge that far.

Fat chance, he thought, checking the time.

If he shifted himself, he should catch her leaving the office. It wouldn’t be so easy for her to ignore him face to face.

‘You are a wonder, Louise.’ Oliver Nash had waited while she locked up, walked her down to the street and now continued to hold her hand long after it had ceased to be the kind of handshake that concluded a successful meeting. ‘Are you going to let me take you to dinner somewhere special? So that I can thank you properly?’

‘You’ll get my account at the end of the month, Oliver. Prompt payment is all the thanks I need.’

‘One of these days you’ll make my day and say yes.’

She laughed. ‘One of these days I’ll say yes, you old fraud, and scare you half to death. Go home to your lovely wife.’

‘You know me too well,’ he said, then as he bent to kiss her cheek she saw Max leaning against his muscular sports car, watching them.

‘Dumped your toy boy for a sugar-daddy, Lou?’ he asked.

Louise was thankful that the shadows were deep enough to disguise the flush that had darkened her cheeks. Even now he only had to look at her, speak to her, be in the same room, to send a shiver of something dark, something dangerous, rippling through her body. To disturb the even tenor of her life.