engaging in this banter with her.
‘I’m here on a journey of discovery.’
The whimsical statement teased her into asking, ‘Where are you from?’
‘Italy.’
She studied his face; smooth olive skin, definitely a Roman nose, and that sensual mouth seemed to have Latin lover written all over it. His being Italian was not surprising. As she started sketching his features, she commented, ‘If you wanted a taste of Venice, surely it would have been much easier to go there.’
‘I know Venice very well. My mission is of a more personal nature.’
‘You want to find yourself?’ she tossed at him flippantly.
He laughed. It gave his striking face even more charismatic appeal. Jenny privately bet he was a devil with women and wished she could inject that appeal into his portrait, but the vibrant expression was gone before she could even begin to play with it on paper. The sparkle in his eyes gave way to a look of serious intent—a look that bored into her as though determined on penetrating any defensive layer she could put between them.
‘I came for you, Isabella.’
His soft and certain use of her friend’s name shocked her into staring at him. How could he know it? She signed her portraits Bella, not Isabella. Her mind reeled back over this whole strange encounter with him; the fact that he didn’t fit her kind of clientele, his too-acute observation of her, his curiosity about her work, the personal questions. A sense of danger clanged along her nerves. Was she about to be unmasked as a fraud?
No!
He thought she was Bella. Which meant he hadn’t known her friend. He must have got the name from one of the stall-holders who knew her as Isabella Rossini. Was he playing some supposedly seductive pick-up game with her? But why would he?
‘I beg your pardon!’ she said with as much indignation as she could muster, hating the idea of him digging for information about her, and thinking he could get some stupid advantage from it.
He gestured an apology. ‘Forgive me for not being more direct in my approach. The estrangement in our family makes for a difficult meeting and I hoped to ease into it. My name is Dante Rossini. I’m one of your cousins and I’m here to invite you back to Italy for a reunion with all your other relatives.’
Jenny was totally stricken by this news. Bella had told her she had no family. There’d been no talk of any connections in Italy. But if there had been an estrangement, perhaps she’d never heard of them, believing herself truly orphaned by the plane crash which had killed her parents. On the other hand, was this man telling the truth? Even if he was, how would Bella have responded to it? No one from Italy had cared about her all these years. Why bother now?
Fear fed the burst of adrenaline that drove her to her feet. Fear chose the words that sprang off her tongue. ‘Go away!’
That jerked him out of his air of relaxed confidence.
Jenny didn’t wait for a response to her vehement command. She slammed down the stick of charcoal, ripped the half-done portrait off the easel, crumpled the sheet of paper up in her hands and threw it in the waste-bin to punctuate an emphatic end to this encounter.
‘I don’t know what you want but I want no part of it. Just go away!’ she repeated, her eyes stabbing him with fierce rejection as he rose from the chair, suddenly taking on the appearance of a formidable antagonist.
‘That I cannot do,’ he stated quietly.
‘Oh, yes you can!’ Her mind wildly seized on reinforcements. ‘If you don’t I’ll go to the forum management, tell them you’re harassing me.’
He shook his head. ‘They won’t act against me, Isabella.’
‘Yes, they will. They’re very tight with security.’
He frowned at her. ‘I thought you knew the Rossini family owns all the Venetian Forums. That you chose to buy one of our apartments here in Sydney because of the family connection.’
Her mind completely boggled. Had Bella known this? She had never mentioned it. And what did he mean … all the Venetian Forums? Was there a worldwide network of them? If so, the Rossini family had to be mega-wealthy and no one was going to take her side against this man. She was trapped on his territory.
‘I’ve already spoken to the management here about you,’ he went on. ‘If you need them to identify me, assure yourself that I am who I say I am, I’m happy to accompany you to the admin office …’
‘No! I’m not accompanying you anywhere!’ she almost shouted at him in panic.
Her raised voice attracted the attention of passers-by, including Luigi, the photographer, who dropped his hustling for clients to stroll over and ask, ‘Having trouble here, Bella?’
She couldn’t rope him in to help her, not against the man who had the management in his pocket. Luigi depended on his job here. The two men were eyeing each other over—both macho Italian males—and the bristling tension told her neither one of them was about to back down.
‘It’s okay, Luigi. Just a family fight,’ she said quickly. He would understand that. Her experience of working in the forum had taught her that all Italian families got noisy over a dispute and were best left to themselves to sort out the problem.
‘Well, tone it down,’ he advised. ‘You’ll be scaring customers away.’
‘Sorry,’ she muttered.
He shrugged and moved off, tossing an airy wave at Dante. ‘Make him take you to lunch. He looks as though he can afford it. A bit of vino…’
‘Excellent idea!’ her nemesis agreed. ‘I’ll help you pack up, Isabella.’
He turned and collected the folding chair he’d been sitting on before Jenny could say a word. She felt totally undermined by his arrogant confidence, helpless to fight the situation, yet desperate to escape it. He wasn’t family to her, and what had seemed a harmless deception—a temporary lifeline that would help her and not hurt anyone—was turning into a murky mess that she didn’t know how to negotiate.
‘Why turn up now? Why?’ she demanded of him as he carried the chair over to where she stood beside the easel.
‘Circumstances change.’ He flashed that smile again. At close quarters it probably made every woman go weak at the knees and Jenny was no exception. Dante Rossini had megawatt sex appeal. ‘Let me explain over lunch,’ he added, his dark-chocolate eyes warm enough to melt resistance, his voice a persuasive purr.
Her spine tingled. Her heart pounded in her ears. Her mind screamed danger. No way could she give in to the charm of the man. If she didn’t somehow extricate herself from this situation, it would lead to terrible trouble.
‘You’re too late,’ she blurted out. It was the truth. Bella was dead. But she couldn’t reveal that. ‘I don’t need you in my life. I don’t want you,’ she threw at him, wildly hoping he would accept that his mission was futile.
‘Then why set yourself up in the Venetian Forum?’ he shot at her, his eyes hardening
