light-coloured eyes flicked sideways to Carlo, and sure enough he was smiling, merely a lazy curl at the corners of that sexy mouth, a slight glint of patronising amusement deep in the dark depths of his magnificent eyes. Enough to tell her, quite explicitly, that he was seeing her as a child who was not yet, not quite, boring him.
Trying to check an emotion that was nearer to rage than melting adoration, she murmured something about seeing him later and headed for the door. She’d show him, she fumed, closing the panelled wood with unnecessary force. She’d show him she wasn’t a slightly amusing child!
Venetia was fully aware that she drew men’s attention wherever she went, that admiring male eyes followed her on the street, in restaurants, at parties. And she knew that the few chaste kisses she’d allowed her carefully vetted escorts were not nearly enough for them, that they were greedy for much more. So what right had Carlo Rossi to look at her as if she were barely out of nappies!
He was, however, she had to concede as she stamped across the panelled hall that was fragrant with the scent of roses from the sprawling, picturesque garden, more of a man than most. He was everything that the escorts her father permitted were not. He was cultured, sophisticated, older—and dangerous.
Venetia shivered as something as wicked as it was scary lapped the length of her spine then churned around in her stomach. Carlo Rossi was like rare brandy after tepid cocoa!
Moreover, she could remember her father trying to work out the age of the cousin’s son he hadn’t seen since he’d worn short trousers. Thirty-one or -two. And he wasn’t married, she knew that much, so he would hardly have got to that age without notching up more female conquests than was decent—not with his brand of heart-shattering looks, he wouldn’t!
And his chosen female companions would not be teenagers—God, how she hated that twee appellation! They would be poised, as sophisticated as he, intelligent, independent women who didn’t have appetites any navvy would be proud of, who dressed impeccably, in the best of taste, and were discreet enough not to leave a mountain of frivolous shopping cluttering up the floor space. Women who didn’t screw their hair back in a plait, who wouldn’t be seen dead in washed-out jeans and baggy T-shirt.
If only she had known she was about to be pole-axed by the very sight of him, she would have shot upstairs to change into something more alluring and released her waist-length hair and brushed it until it resembled a fall of jet-black silk, she mourned, her confidence deserting her for the first time in her life, leaving her feeling uncharacteristically unsure of herself, and quite miserable.
But the untidy mound of classy carriers and boxes did something to restore it. She had practically cleaned out her allowance, but she had bought some utterly delicious things! And she had plenty of time before dinner to make herself over, appear before him at her most glamorous. She had always managed to get whatever she wanted before, able to twist her doting father round the end of her little finger.
And she wanted Carlo Rossi.
And she would get him, too!
Without any help from her father, because this was something she would enjoy doing all by herself!
She was halfway up the stairs, boxes sliding this way and that as she desperately clutched at them with carrier-laden hands, when she met Mrs Potts coming down. A short, comfortably curved woman, her placid nature allowed her to take any crisis in her stride. She had become Venetia’s father’s housekeeper after her mother’s tragic death, and as soon as Venetia had begun to talk she had named her Potty, and it had stuck.
‘Let me help.’ Potty took the teetering layer of boxes and headed back up the stairs, dumping them on Venetia’s crimson satin-covered bed. ‘Been spending another fortune, by the look of it.’
‘You know I can’t resist.’ Venetia disregarded the token grumble in the older woman’s tone. Like Venetia’s father, Potty was a push-over; she had learned to twist them both around her tiny fingers before she’d begun to toddle. ‘Besides, I found the most fantastic dress.’ She opened one of the larger boxes and fished out a slither of black silk. ‘What do you think? Isn’t it just the sexiest thing you ever saw? And isn’t it fortuitous? Just the thing to knock Carlo’s eyes out!’
‘Looks more like a petticoat, if you ask me,’ the housekeeper disapproved. ‘Scarcely decent. And that cousin of yours is far too old and sensible to take any notice of what you wear. So don’t waste your efforts. Now—’ having said her piece, she turned back to the door ‘—how about a nice cup of tea and a slice or two of my chocolate cake? You can have it in the kitchen and tell me what else you’ve wasted your father’s money on while I do the veggies for dinner.’
Just for a moment, Venetia was sorely tempted. No one made chocolate cake like Potty did, and she’d enjoy a good gloat over her varied purchases, and lunch did seem a long time ago... But, ‘No, thanks, Potty. I’ll just get this lot unpacked and take a bath,’ she resisted firmly.
At the moment, her figure could justifiably be described as luscious, but if she didn’t curb her appetite she could end up as just plain fat! She smiled seraphically into Potty’s astonished face and turned to do her unpacking.
If falling in love could give her the will-power to turn down the offer of great wodges of deliciously wicked chocolate cake then love had to be, as many a ballad-maker had proclaimed, a sweet miracle indeed!
But it had its serious side, too, and could frighten her a little if she let it, she admitted as she luxuriated later in a lavishly scented bath. She knew she’d been pampered and petted all her life, but when her father did put his foot down he really meant it, and no amount of wheedling and coaxing on her part would make him change his mind.
Which was why her dates had been limited, her escorts carefully vetted. And, coupled with her expensive education at a girls’ convent school where the nuns’ zealous strictness had meant that even the most inventive and headstrong of the pupils had not been able to step out of line for one moment, Venetia was woefully inexperienced, her sexuality a complete mystery.
Nothing had prepared her for the way Carlo Rossi made her feel, for the way her heart twisted and leapt inside her when she looked at him, performing acrobatic somersaults even when she only thought of him!
And the sweet-sharp melting sensation which was afflicting her entire body right now as she lay in the warm water picturing their next meeting, when she would appear as a sensual woman and not as a pigtailed, over-large schoolgirl, was totally new to her, ragingly exciting and definitely a little frightening.
Not even Simon Carew, her most regular escort, who made his sexual interest in her plainer than most when they were alone together, had come near to rousing these deliciously wicked sensations within her.
Simon, at twenty-five, was sharp as a needle and undeniably attractive in his blond Anglo-Saxon way. Recently promoted to the position of her father’s personal assistant in the family-owned wine, shipping and retail business, he was her usual escort to those parties and first nights her father had no inclination to attend.
Her father trusted Simon completely. He would have forty fits if he knew how often his blue-eyed boy had tried to seduce his precious daughter.
What he didn’t understand was that she could take care of herself, that she’d had no trouble deflecting Simon’s amorous advances. She just wasn’t interested, not even when he’d mentioned marriage, and had told him so. And she certainly wouldn’t dream of telling her father where Simon’s interests lay, because his duties as escort would have ceased at once, leaving her kicking her heels at home while
