shall we say?—I believe refraining from addressing me as “Mr Danti” in that superior tone would be a good way to begin.’
She raised her brows in what she hoped was a querying manner. ‘Our past acquaintance…?’
Gabriel’s mouth thinned. ‘Do not play games with me, Bella!’
She shot him another glance before looking sharply away again. ‘I wasn’t sure you had remembered we’d met before…’
‘Oh, I remember,’ he growled.
She swallowed hard before speaking. ‘As do I—Gabriel,’ she conceded tightly.
He gave a humourless smile. ‘You had absolutely no idea I would be here tonight, did you?’
Those eyes flashed deeply purple at his mocking tone. ‘Why should I have done? Dahlia’s name is Fabrizzi.’
‘Her mother, my aunt Teresa, is my father’s younger sister,’ Gabriel supplied evenly.
Bella’s mouth twisted. ‘How sweet that you flew all the way from Italy to attend your cousin’s wedding!’
Gabriel’s mouth thinned at her obvious mockery. ‘I no longer live in Italy, Bella.’
She looked startled. ‘You don’t?’
Gabriel shook his head. ‘I spend most of my time at the Danti vineyards about an hour’s drive away from here, but I also have a house right here in San Francisco.’
Bella could easily guess exactly where in San Francisco that house was!
She and the rest of her family had gone for a tour of the city earlier today, and part of that tour had been through an area known as Pacific Heights, where the houses were grand and gracious—and worth millions of dollars!
‘Do you like living in America?’ she asked curiously.
Gabriel shrugged. ‘It has its—advantages.’
Bella just bet that it did! She also couldn’t help wondering if Gabriel’s move to America didn’t have something to do with the fact that Janine Childe, the woman Gabriel had once been in love with—perhaps was still in love with?—now lived in California, too…
‘Have you now finished with the polite exchange of information?’ Gabriel asked.
Bella forced her gaze to remain level on his. ‘What do you want from me, Gabriel?’
What did he want from her? That was an interesting question, Gabriel acknowledged grimly. Until he had arrived at the party earlier, and seen Bella across the room as she chatted with the young woman he now knew to be her sister, Gabriel would have liked to believe he had cast Bella from his mind after that single night together. But having recognised her instantly, he knew he could no longer claim that to be the case…
If anything, Isabella Scott was even more strikingly lovely than she had been five years ago, maturity having added self-assurance to a beauty that had already been breathtaking. Her violet eyes were still as stunning as ever, her hair was still long and the colour of ebony, but styled now in heavy layers so that it swung silkily against her cheeks and her throat, before cascading wildly down the length of her back. And the close fit of her violet gown revealed that her waist was still delicately slender beneath the full thrust of those perfect breasts…
What did he want from her?
He wanted not to have noticed any of those things!
His mouth set in a grim, uncompromising line. ‘What do you have to give, Bella?’
Her gaze was searching as she eyed him warily, and Gabriel knew that Bella would see that he, at least, was visibly much changed from their last meeting.
The darkness of his hair was styled several inches shorter than it had once been, but the scar that ran the length of his left cheek—a constant reminder, when Gabriel looked in the mirror to shave each morning, of the guilt he carried inside—was a much more visible reminder of how much he had changed in the last five years.
Was Bella repulsed, as Gabriel was himself, by the livid ugliness of that scar?
‘What do I have to give to you, in particular?’ Bella repeated incredulously. ‘Absolutely nothing!’ she scornfully answered her own question.
Gabriel’s hand moved instinctively to the jagged wound that marred his cheek. ‘That, at least, has not changed,’ he rasped coldly.
Bella eyed him frowningly. Why was he looking at her so contemptuously? He was the one who had seduced her only because the woman he had really wanted—the beautiful supermodel, Janine Childe—had told him their relationship was over, and that she was involved with one his fellow Formula One drivers.
That Formula One driver had been Paulo Descari. Killed in the crash that had occurred only hours after Gabriel had left Bella in his bed.
Janine Childe had tearfully claimed at the time that Gabriel had deliberately caused the accident out of jealousy, because of Paulo Descari’s relationship with her.
While not convinced Gabriel would have deliberately caused that crash, five years later Bella still cringed whenever she thought that being on the rebound had been Gabriel’s only reason for spending the night with her.
So how dared Gabriel now look at her with such contempt?
‘I’ve changed, Gabriel,’ she told him pointedly.
‘For the better?’
Bella frowned. ‘What the—’
‘Did you ever marry, Bella?’ Gabriel cut icily across her protest, his mouth twisting derisively as his dark gaze moved over the bareness of her left hand. ‘I see not. Perhaps that is as well,’ he added insultingly.
Bella took an outraged breath. ‘Perhaps it’s as well that you have never married either!’ She came back in just as cutting a tone.
He gave a humourless smile. ‘Perhaps.’
‘I don’t think the two of us sitting here exchanging insults is in the least harmonious to Brian and Dahlia’s wedding tomorrow, do you?’ she challenged.
Bella’s heart sank every time she thought of attending that wedding.
She had been looking forward for weeks to this trip to San Francisco. But meeting Gabriel again, knowing he was going to be at the wedding tomorrow, too, now made it an ordeal Bella didn’t even want to attempt to get through.
But she had no idea how to get out of it, either…
Gabriel watched the emotions as they flickered across Bella’s beautiful and expressive face, taking a guess at the reason for her look of trepidation. ‘Your parents and brother are here for the wedding also?’
‘Yes,’ she confirmed quietly.
He gave a ruthless smile. ‘And they, like your sister just now, have no idea that the two of us have ever met before.’ It was a statement, not a question.
‘No,’
