A Valentine from Harlequin

choked, surreptitiously wiping away a tear, which owed everything to humiliation and nothing to grief. “And in case no one’s ever told you this before, gentlemen don’t stoop to eavesdropping.”
    “This one does when a couple puts on a floor show such as just happened here. Furthermore, if the specimen who just slithered back inside is anything to go by, I suspect you wouldn’t know a gentleman if you fell over one.”
    He’d stepped into the bright glow spilling through the French doors by then, allowing Charlotte to get her first good look at him. The play of light and shadow on his face emphasized the sweeping curve of his dark eyebrows and lean, square jaw, and stippled his aristocratic cheekbones with the reflected imprint of lashes so long and dense, they ought to have been outlawed. Right on the heels of that observation, though, came another: that she knew him from somewhere—not well, but such a face was too striking to be easily forgotten.
    “Have we met—before tonight, I mean?” she asked. “You look…” Magnificent! Mesmerizing! Too devastatingly handsome to be real! “…familiar.”
    His smile, brilliant in the semigloom, shot a thrill of awareness from her throat to her thighs. “I’m flattered you remember. The recently-resurrected John Weatherby monopolized you so thoroughly, we barely exchanged a dozen words the only other time we found ourselves at the same party.”
    Of course! Memory flooded back: Barbados, early last fall, and her last off-shore assignment for her former employer; the grand old plantation house; the well-bred murmur of guests flocking around a banquet table set on a terrace; a velvet night sky spattered with stars. John, flattering her with his attention, overwhelming her with his charm…
    And this man, regarding her now with ironic amusement. Yes, she remembered him! His height and sheer physical presence had been enough to make him stand out from the crowd, even without the flock of hangers-on dogging him and inhaling his every word.
    That he’d noticed her had been unexpected. She’d happened to look up from some checklist or other to find him staring at her across the room and, just for a moment, everything else—the mob of people, the noise—had melted away and it had seemed there was no one else in the world but the two of them, connected in a glance so riveting she’d hardly known how to draw her gaze away. The next morning, he’d passed her on his way to the breakfast room and complimented her on the fine job she’d done the night before.
    “The banquet,” he’d said, “was a triumph. Whoever hired you deserves a medal.” His gaze had lingered on her face, drifted past her bare, sun-kissed shoulders and all the way down to her legs, then returned to dwell with unsettling intent on her lips. He’d cleared his throat, opened his mouth…and she’d been filled with a sense of expectancy, of elation.
    But before he could speak again, his followers had closed ranks around him. He must, she’d decided, swallowing her disappointment as they’d spirited him away, wield a great deal of corporate clout for them to guard him so diligently.
    “We met at the Jacoby Plantation,” she said now. “How could I have forgotten?”
    “You had a great deal on your mind. And we never were formally introduced.” He offered his hand. “I’m Paolo Angelli, and you’re Charlie.”
    “Charlotte,” she said. “Charlotte Fraser. I really don’t care for ‘Charlie.’”
    His fingers closed around hers. “Charlotte Fraser.” The syllables rolled off his tongue, rich and warm as Demerara sugar left melting in the Caribbean sun. “Well, Charlotte Fraser, wait until you’ve dispatched the deplorable Mr. Weatherby before you fall apart—unless you want to leave him with the impression that you’re still carrying a torch for him?”
    “Good grief, no!” She hiccupped, aghast at the idea. “That’s what makes this whole incident so absurd. If he wanted rid of me, he didn’t have to go to such extreme lengths. A simple ‘I’ve changed my mind about us’ would have sufficed. It’s not as if we were ever really engaged.”
    “He never gave you a ring?”
    “No. He died before things progressed that far. At least, I thought he did.”
    Paolo Angelli’s gaze scoured her face. “And were you terribly grief-stricken?”
    She averted her eyes and searched for the right words. She didn’t want to come across as cold and heartless, but nor did she