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She gripped the titanium hand rims on the wheels of her custoh Nico stood on the other side, with a great slab of horizontal glass between them, she needed the comfort of the extra distance before she looked at him

Not, she told herself, because she wasn’t used to looking up at people Thirteen years in a wheelchair had accustoht, and she’d long ago reconciled herself to that aspect of her disability And although able-bodied people often thought of her as being confined to a wheelchair—as though the chair and not her paralysed legs were the prison—for Marietta the use of her ave her the freedom to work and travel To live her life with a level of independence any single, career-focused woman of thirty would wish to enjoy

But Nicolas César wasn’t anything like the people Marietta encountered on an ordinary day, and it wasn’t only his unique physicality that set him apart—wasn’t only the impressive breadth of his shoulders, the fact that he stood taller than most On par with her six-foot-four brother—or the fact that his dark trousers and close-fitting black shirt moulded the kind of lean, hard-ood fortune of strong, resilient genes Rather, it was the raer he exuded fro impression that here was a man few others dared trifle with—that made Marietta’s hormones sit up and take notice

Which irritated her enormously

Sexual attraction was a coht now—or ever, for that ue her pride smarted just to look at him

‘Are you not going to interrogate him?’ she asked, and her annoyance with herself—with that hot, inescapable lick of fee than she’d intended

Dark blue eyes thinned and settled on her, uilt instantly pricked her He was here to help because her brother had asked hi her first was no fault of Nico’s Unleashing her frustration on him was childish Unfair

He held her gaze, his silent, prolonged eye contact causing her skin to flush and her insides to squiruilt She didn’t look away and wasn’t sure she could even if she wanted to His eyes were such a dark,into theed beneath the surface of a vast, bottoer breathe

She opened hersos—but Nico spoke first

‘Bruno has cleared the staff at the florist’s shop and vetted the couriers they use There is no need for ate him’

That slight yet deliberate eate elevated Marietta’s disco at him, it wasn’t at all difficult for her to visualise Nicolas César in the role of interrogator—nor did she have any trouble ie fortheir deepest, darkest secrets to him Or both

At the saree of dark, potent netism would rarely, if ever, want for female companionship Women flocked to hibirds to nectar by his hard-edged looks and his big, powerful body

And that would be before he opened his mouth

Before that deep-tiht North American inflection, poured over theooey