didn’t mean it to sound like you were hoping to pay me to have sex with you?’ His voice was filled with reproach.
Shame crawled up my spine. In that horrible moment I imagined I could actually sense his male pride putting up its fists.
‘I’m sorry...’
He waved away my apology with a dismissive sweep of his hand before I was even able to finish it. ‘Even if I do find you attractive, I wouldn’t stoop to sleeping with someone who thinks so little of me,’ he said, his voice dangerously low. ‘I think you should go home before you say something stupid to someone else here. They might not be as forgiving of your crassness.’
Before I could utter another word, he’d marched out of the room, leaving the sound of his disgust ringing in my head.
I was so humiliated I wanted to cry. I couldn’t believe I’d handled that so badly. Made such an utter mess of it. Because I had. A total mess. In fact, I don’t think I could have done a worse job at persuading him to help me.
Which was why I was absolutely astounded when I picked up a voicemail message from him the next afternoon asking me out for a drink.
Sandro
IT HADN’T BEEN the best of weeks.
First I lost out on buying an old dilapidated building in Shoreditch, that my friend Jon and I had intended to turn into affordable studio space for artists, to a grubby property developer. Then the pretty redhead from Maxim’s party treated me like some brainless piece of ass. That had been especially irritating, because when I’d first realised it was her at Harry’s place in Chelsea I’d actually been pleased to see her. The evening had been a bust up till that point. I’d found myself surrounded by the same familiar faces and boring conversations, so the sight of her had lit something inside me.
I’ve always been a sucker for redheads and when I’d spotted her at Maxim’s party—an event I’d been attending in my father’s place while he was away in Rome on important family business—I’d been intrigued by her air of sweetness. I could tell by the way she held herself that she wasn’t confident and worldly like the majority of the women there and it had made me want to take her away somewhere safe to protect her. And perhaps do other things too, if she’d been willing. She’s an attractive woman, after all. I’d particularly enjoyed the way her porcelain-pale cheeks had flamed with colour when I’d smiled at her.
I love making women blush. It gives me a real kick of pleasure. In fact, any instinctive physical reaction I can tease out of them gets me hot: accelerated breathing, a damp sheen of sweat on an upper lip, dilated pupils, a coquettish eyelash flutter. I love it all. Because I love women.
All women.
They’re such fascinating, exotic creatures.
And they usually love me right back.
So when she’d made it clear she thought I was just some man whore, it had really pissed me off. It had been obvious she wasn’t interested in me as a person when she’d asked me to take her virginity. I was just a throwaway cock she’d be using to fix a problem and I hadn’t been prepared to be treated like that. Her disrespectful approach had actually made me fucking furious, though I’d tried not to show it. I never show my real feelings to a woman, not any more—not when I know how it can strip you of your power and control—which is probably why, after I’d left her in that room, I’d gone downstairs, drunk half a bottle of whisky and ended up getting into a pointless fist fight with one of Harry’s friends over some stupid fucking comment he’d made about a woman I’d been talking to. I can’t even remember what it was now.
Normally I’d laugh off any kind of provocation, putting it down to jealousy or crossing someone’s path at the wrong moment, but added to Juno’s suggestion that I wasn’t the brightest spark in the fire, it had blown something inside me and I’d lashed out.
The moment I woke up this morning with a thumping head and a horrible sense that I’d overstepped a mark, I regretted the whole thing.
I regretted it even more when my father summoned me to his Knightsbridge house later that day and showed me just how far the consequences of my actions had reached.
‘This,’ he said, gesturing angrily towards his open laptop, ‘is unacceptable.’
The screen had a gossip article from one of the popular society pages on it. There was a picture of me with an ugly sneer on my face caught right after I’d punched Harry’s friend in the face. It made the whole incident look much more brutal than it had actually been—I’d been too drunk to do more than glance my knuckles off his chin—but the look on the guy’s face told another story. He looked afraid of me.
Shame sunk through my chest to nestle heavily in my gut. That wasn’t me. I’m not a violent person—quite the opposite, in fact. I’m a lover, not a fighter. But this picture said differently.
‘Well? What have you got to say for yourself? I thought you’d stopped fighting when you were a teenager,’ my father barked. ‘Your mother is distraught and the last thing she needs right now is more stress when she’s so busy helping to organise your brother’s wedding. The press has been calling me for a comment about it. I told them in no uncertain terms that that wasn’t going to happen.’
The good reputation of the family name is everything to my father. He lives and breathes it. And he expects me and my brothers to do the same. My oldest brother took this so seriously he’s now on the path to marrying into the highest echelons of Italian nobility—of which we are currently only lowly-ranking members—and my father is adamant that none of us does anything to jeopardise it. Our inclusion in his close family circle and all that comes with it depends on it.
‘It wasn’t as bad as it looks...’ I began to argue, but my father clearly wasn’t in the mood to hear excuses.
‘I want you to go back to Italy until this blows over. And I don’t want to see anything about you in the papers there either. Unless it’s a positive article. In fact—’ He moved to his laptop and scrolled down the page until he came to another photo. This one also had me in it, but this time I was smiling and brushing hair out of the eyes of a pretty redhead who was gazing up at me as if totally entranced by the intimate moment we’re sharing.
Juno.
My heart sank.
‘This one’s suggesting you’re having a relationship with the youngest Darlington-Hume girl,’ my father said, flashing me a questioning look.
My whole world started to tumble past my ears. She was one of Maxim’s daughters. I hadn’t realised. She’d looked so different from her sisters and she certainly hadn’t acted like a Darlington-Hume—a family my father holds in very high regard indeed. In his estimation, they’re the fucking essence of English high society.
And I’d basically told her to take a running jump when she’d asked me for help.
‘I wouldn’t call it a relationship,’ I replied carefully. I wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with this so I was treading carefully. I really didn’t want to be banished to Italy for long. I have important
