Mia’s Scandal by Michelle Reid Read Free Book Online Page A

enticed the man she’d shared lunch with today to ask her out, if she’d put her mind to it?
    Her isolated life in Tuscany had not taught her anything about being a young independent woman living on her own in a big city. She’d lived all of her life with her aunt on a small hill farm five kilometres from the nearest village.She’d attended a tiny convent school for girls, and money had been so tight that even meeting her school friends in the nearest town on a Saturday to go shopping together had been beyond her meagre cash reserves.
    In her life to date, she’d had just two abiding influences. A wonderfully caring but ageing aunt she adored, and an even older man she kept house and cooked for who lived very much in a world of his own. And the worst part was that no matter how hard Oscar and his daughters had tried to bring her out of herself, she was still that quiet, shy and isolated country girl on the inside.
    She sighed, turning to face the room again with its bland walls and bland modern furniture and its television playing softly in the corner for company.
    I’m going to go out.
    The decision sparked out of nothing. It just hit her like a fever in her head and, before she knew it, Mia was striding out of the sitting room and into the bedroom. Ten minutes later she returned, dressed in a short dusky-lilac silk dress with a dipping neckline and tiny lace-cap sleeves. A hunt along the rail of hand-medowns had uncovered a fashionably complicated fitted black satin jacket she pulled on over the dress as she walked.
    And most important of all, her resolve to just get out there and do something was burning like a fire in her blood. Gathering up her purse she let herself out of her flat and crossed the plush creamy oval-shaped foyer to press the button to call the lift up to the top floor.
    She was going to find a restaurant and eat out for a change. Lots of cool independent people in London dined alone. She’d seen them doing it at the lunches Nikos had taken her to so why not go and do it herself?
    Brave Mia, she mocked, feeling tense tingles play havoc with her insides in direct opposition to the adventure she was about to embark upon. Because she wasn’t brave. Never had been. And if the lift didn’t arrive soon she was going to—
    The sound of a door opening behind her had her spinning about. Instantly her tingling insides crashed to a fizzing burn when she found herself staring at Nikos.
    It just was not fair that he had to pick this moment to leave his apartment, she decided as she stared at him in dismayed shock.
    He was wearing a formal black dinner suit that sat smoothly on his long powerful frame. A black silk bow tie sat perfectly symmetrical across the butterfly collar of his dress shirt. And his hair was still damp, as if he’d dressed quickly after showering now the hint of curlslay black and thick and glossy on the top of his well-shaped head. Every single inch of him looked strong and sleek and formidably exclusive. Her mouth ran dry and her heart started beating too fast as she flickered her gaze up to stare at his recently shaved jaw, then the sensual shape of his unsmiling mouth. And finally—finally she made contact with his eyes.
    He was looking back at her as if this accidental meeting had disconcerted him as much as it had done to her. Defensive tension stiffened her stance.
    ‘On your way out?’ he spoke first, smooth and cool and, Mia suspected, carefully pleasant.
    ‘ Sí, ’ she managed, unaware that her hands had clenched into fists on the ends of her arms held straight like sticks at her sides.
    He nodded, the floating veil of his eyelashes sweeping downwards before he turned to pull the door to his apartment shut.
    Fortunately the lift arrived then, giving Mia a good reason to drag her eyes away from him, though it made little difference, she realised a few seconds later, when the lift’s mirrored walls allowed her to watch him stride across the lobby and join her inside. The