a minute she would take this warmth, use it to defrost her blood and re-energise her deflated body and soul, and then she’d insist she was fine, give his cloak back and try to find her way home.
‘Is there someone you can call?’
‘I don’t have my phone.’ She looked down at the mask in her hands, feeling stupid.
‘Can I call someone for you?’ he asked, pulling a phone from a pouch on his belt.
For a moment Rosa felt a glimmer of hope. But only for a moment. Because Chiara’s phone number was logged in her phone’s memory, but not in her own. She shook her head, the tiny faint hope snuffed out. Her Carnevale was over before it had even begun.
‘I don’t know the number. It’s programmed into my phone, but...’
He dropped the phone back in its pouch. ‘You don’t know where this party is?’
Suddenly she was tired. Worn out by the rollercoaster of emotions, weary of questions that exposed how unprepared and foolish she’d been. This stranger might be trying to help, and he might be right when he assumed she didn’t know where the party was—he was right—but she didn’t need a post-mortem. She just wanted to go back to her apartment and her bed, pull the covers over her head and forget this night had ever happened.
‘Look, thanks for your help. But don’t you have somewhere to be?’
‘I do.’
She cocked an eyebrow at him in challenge. ‘Well, then?’
* * *
A gondola slipped almost silently along the canal behind her. Fog swirled around and between them. The woman must be freezing, the way she was so inadequately dressed. Her arms tightly bunched the paper-thin wrap around her quaking shoulders, but still she wanted to pretend that everything was all right and that she didn’t need help.
‘Come with me,’ he said.
It was impulse that had him uttering the words, but once they were out he realised they made all kinds of sense. She was lost, all alone in Venice, and she was beautiful—even more beautiful than he’d first thought when she’d peeled off her mask. Her brandy-coloured eyes were large and cat-like in her high-cheekboned face, her painted curved lips like an invitation. He remembered the sight of her naked shoulder under the cloak, the cheap satin of the bodice cupping her breast, and a random thought amused him.
Sirena would hate her.
And wasn’t that sufficient reason by itself?
Those cat-like eyes opened wide. ‘Scusa?’
‘Come with me,’ he said again. The seeds of a plan were already germinating—a plan that would benefit them both.
‘You don’t have to say that. You’ve already been too kind.’
‘It’s not about being kind. You would be doing me a favour.’
‘How is that possible? We’d never met until a few moments ago. How can I possibly do you any favour?’
He held out his forearm to her, the leather of his sleeve creaking. ‘Call it serendipity, if you prefer. Because I too have a costume ball to attend and I don’t have a partner for the evening. So if you would do me the honour of accompanying me?’
She laughed a little, then shook her head. ‘I’ve already told you—this is a costume. I wasn’t waiting to be picked up.’
‘I’m not trying to pick you up. I’m asking you to be my guest for the evening. But it is up to you, Rosa. Clearly you planned on going to a party tonight.’
He eased the mask from where she held it between the fingers clutching his cloak over her breasts and turned it slowly in his hands. She had no choice but to let it go. It was either let him take it or let go of the cloak.
‘Why should you miss out on the biggest night of Carnevale,’ he said, watching the way her eyes followed his hands as he thumbed the lace of her veil, ‘just because you became separated from your friends?’
He could tell she was tempted—could all but taste her excitement at being handed a lifeline to an evening she’d all but given up on, even while questions and misgivings swirled in the depths of her eyes.
He smiled. He might have started this evening in a foul mood, and he knew that would have been reflected in his features, but he knew how to smile when it got him something he wanted. Knew how to turn on the charm when the need arose—whether he was involved in negotiations with an antagonistic foreign diplomat or romancing a woman he desired in his bed.
‘Serendipity,’ he repeated. ‘A happy chance—for both of us. And the bonus is you’ll get to wear my cloak a while longer.’
Her eyes lifted to meet his—long-lashed eyes, shy eyes, filled with uncertainty and nerves. Again, he was struck by her air of vulnerability. She was a very different animal from the women he usually met. An image of Sirena floated unbidden into his mind’s eye—self-assured, self-centred Sirena, who wouldn’t look vulnerable if she was alone in six feet of water and staring down a hungry shark. A very different animal indeed.
‘It is very warm,’ she said, ‘thank you.’
‘Is that a yes?’
She took a deep breath, her teeth troubling her bottom lip while a battle went on inside her, then gave a decisive nod, adding her own tentative smile in response. ‘Why not?’
‘Why not indeed?’
He didn’t waste any time ushering her across the bridge and through the twisted calles towards the private entrance of the palazzo gardens, his mood considerably lighter than it had been earlier in the evening.
Because suddenly a night he hadn’t been looking forward to had taken on an entirely different sheen. Not just because he was going to give Sirena a surprise and pay her back for the one she had orchestrated for him. But because he had a beautiful woman on his arm in one of the most beautiful cities in the world and the night was young.
And who knew where it would end?
ROSA’S HEART WAS tripping over itself as the gorgeous man placed her hand around the leather of his sleeve and cut a path through the crowds, and her feet struggled to keep up with his long strides.
Vittorio, he’d told her his name was, but that didn’t make him any less a stranger. And he was leading her to a costume ball somewhere, or so he’d said. But she had no more detail than that. And she had nobody and nothing to blame for being here but a spark of impulse that had made her abandon every cautionary lesson she’d grown up with and provoked her into doing something so far out of her comfort zone she wondered if she’d ever find a way back.
‘Why not?’ she’d said in response to his invitation, in spite of the fact she could think of any number of reasons.
She’d never in her
