But it had been a method of exchange which had quickly palled for him, which was why he hadn’t felt the need to bed any woman since he’d taken over as head of the Mafia from his father ten years ago.
Until Carla.
Leon had wanted her from the first moment he looked into her angrily flashing dark eyes.
He turned his head to look at her now from between narrowed lids. Why was she so different? She was undeniably beautiful, but it had to be more than that. Was it because she wasn’t a part of his world? Because she saw his role as capo dei capi as something that detracted rather than added to her attraction? She certainly didn’t display any fear of that position, as demonstrated by the fact she never held back from saying exactly what she meant to him.
“Now you’re the one lost in thought.” Her palm was warm against his chest as she drew his attention back to her. “In this room, there is just you and me. Leon and Carla. Who we are outside this room isn’t important.”
“No?”
“No,” she insisted firmly. “You—” She broke off as there was a loud banging on the door.
Leon recognized it as being a fist against the wood. “Yes?” he responded tersely, inwardly deciding whoever was on the other side of that door, interrupting when Leon was about to give Carla all the pleasure she could handle, was going to have his balls handed to him.
“I need to speak with you, Boss. Urgently.”
Leon’s annoyance faded at the sound of Jericho’s insistent tone and that firmly added “urgently.” It instantly put him on full alert.
“You’re to stay in bed until the doctor says otherwise,” he instructed Carla as he got out of bed to walk naked into the adjoining bathroom to collect one of the complimentary robes hanging behind the door. “I’ll send him in to you. No matter what the doctor’s verdict is on your condition, if I have to go out for a while you’re to remain here at the hotel until I get back,” he added distractedly as he left the bedroom.
One look at the grimness of Jericho’s expression and Leon knew he wasn’t going to like what the other man had to say.
He didn’t.
Chapter Seven
Carla felt irrelevant, forgotten, when Leon strode out of the hotel bedroom without so much as another glance in her direction.
As for him telling her to stay put…
She’d already been in bed for long enough. It was now time, despite what Leon might have decided to the contrary, that she took herself back to her own apartment. She might not be going to work for a couple of days, but she couldn’t stay here.
The slight swaying when she got out of bed confirmed that she wasn’t going to be able to go to work anytime soon, but that dizziness eased after a few seconds, reinforcing her decision to go home.
Leon obviously had enough going on his life—most importantly, discovering who had tried to shoot him yesterday, and why—without adding having to think about what to do with her into the mix. Mafia business took priority with a man like Leon, and Carla had no intention of lingering like some hanger-on waiting for him to notice she was still here.
She would just have to learn to live with the aching in her chest at the thought of not seeing him again after today. Hopefully, by the time Grace and Matteo had their first baby in a couple of years’ time and then invited them all to the christening, this time with Leon would have become just a memory to Carla and he would be someone she could meet socially and be polite to, but nothing more.
Although somehow, she doubted that was going to happen.
Leon simply wasn’t the type of man to be easily forgotten. Or, she would hazard a guess, forgotten at all.
“Papa isn’t going to be pleased that you’re disobeying his instructions and not doing what the doctor told you to do,” Natalia drawled, looking up from the fashion magazine she’d been idly flicking through, the moment Carla entered the main sitting room dressed in another one of the hotel’s complimentary white toweling robes. “Having spoken to the doctor myself earlier, I know the plan was for you to remain in bed for the rest of the day.”
“If I gave a damn about disobeying Leon or the doctor, perhaps I’d be worried,” Carla snapped.
Natalia grinned. “I knew I liked you.” She chuckled. “But seriously…” She sobered as she threw the magazine onto the coffee table in front of her. “It isn’t a good idea to go against Papa’s orders.”
“You know that from experience, hmm?”
“Oh yes,” Natalia answered with feeling. “And before he left, taking Kieran and Jericho with him, he was quite clear about what those orders were in regard to me and you. I’m leaving for the airport shortly to return to the States, accompanied by Killian, and you are forbidden from leaving this suite or the hotel.”
“Your Papa can kiss my—” Carla broke off abruptly, heat blooming in her cheeks.
“Just realized what you were about to say, hmm?” Natalia taunted before giving an “ew” grimace. “And I really, really don’t want to know what you and Papa do together in bed that might involve your ass.”
Carla’s discomfort increased. “Did you say Leon left the hotel?”
The younger woman nodded. “He had business to attend to.”
She remembered the bodyguard’s earlier insistence of needing to speak with Leon urgently. “Mafia business?”
The younger woman shrugged. “Something to do with yesterday’s shooting, yes.”
Carla’s attention sharpened. “Did they find the man who tried to shoot Leon?”
“I believe so.”
“What will they do to him?”
“Question him, initially.”
“And after that?”
“Now if I told you that, I’d have to instruct someone to kill you,” Natalia drawled, and then burst out
