together, she was the consummate professional again and didn’t show it.
‘I’ll be out for the next couple of hours,’ he said as he surged by. ‘Would you arrange a car to pick us up downstairs?’
‘Certainly, Mr Silvagni. By the way, your father rang again. I told him you were in conference.’
He stopped dead in his tracks, allowing Opal the opportunity to slip from his arm and retrieve her folio from the chair where she’d left it earlier.
‘Did he leave a message?’
‘He wonders if you’re free Thursday evening in Rome. He and your mother have met a charming young woman they’d like to introduce you to.’
A noise like a deep snarl emanated from his throat.
‘Do you have a message for him?’ Deirdre asked.
‘No. I’ll deal with it later.’ Then he turned to Opal and held out his hand towards the lift and she fell into step alongside him. She glanced back over her shoulder and caught an uncharacteristic thumbs-up Deirdre sent her way. Thank you, she mouthed back.
He followed her into the lift, his size dwarfing hers in the reflection from the highly polished mirrors lining the interior. She turned to face the door, expecting Domenic to do the same, but he continued to face the back of the lift—and her—as the car hummed downwards. Her eyes sought anywhere to look but at him, and they sought refuge by studying the recession of numbers, which was altogether too slow for her liking.
But even avoiding his face, there was no escaping the raw heat of his proximity, the frank assessment of his gaze. Her body could feel it and responded, her skin tingling, her breasts firming, even as her eyes attempted to deny it. Even his scent, masculine and woody, seemed to taunt her. Try to ignore me, it mocked.
There was no ignoring him. But she could still show how unimpressed she was. Another time maybe she might have been intrigued, might have been attracted by the intense magnetism this man projected.
Another time and another man. But not now, not with Domenic Silvagni. Never with a playboy.
‘How old are you?’ he finally asked.
Her eyes snapped back to his. So that was what all the close inspection had been about. He’d been studying her for age lines. Given the adolescents he was used to dating, he was no doubt none too familiar with those.
‘Is that relevant?’
‘Twenty-four? Twenty-five?’
She straightened her spine, kicked up her chin. ‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-two.’
‘Oh.’ Her indignation evaporated in the realisation she’d been churlish. He was only asking her age after all. It wasn’t exactly privileged information. ‘I was twenty-six in June.’
He arched one eyebrow high. ‘And neither married nor engaged. Why is that?’
Self-consciously she covered one hand with the other, even though it was patently already too late.
‘Maybe I have a boyfriend.’
‘And do you? I wouldn’t be surprised. You are a disarmingly beautiful woman.’
She felt the heat rise to her face and stared at the numbers—twenty-eight, twenty-seven—willing them to speed up before her cheeks were as red as the lights flashing their progress. ‘Disarmingly beautiful’—what kind of a backhanded compliment was that? But there was no way she was going to ask.
Instead she said, ‘I can’t see what that has to do with the sale of Clemengers.’
He spun back against the wall of the lift, head raised to the ceiling. ‘You’re right. This isn’t your problem.’
For a moment she was confused. Then realisation sank in. ‘The phone call,’ she said.
He nodded. ‘The phone call. My father thinks I should be married. My mother makes it her career to interview every finishing-school graduate or European princess she comes across.’
Opal was reminded of the women photographed with Domenic. Clearly neither finishing-school graduates nor princesses. So what did he expect? His parents were no doubt concerned he’d end up hitched to one of those photo opportunists. In spite of herself, she felt a smile flirt around the corners of her mouth. ‘I can see how that might be a problem—for someone like you.’
Her words snagged into him, their ragged edges scratching barbs across his consciousness. But if she expected that to put him on the defensive, she was very much mistaken. Notwithstanding his family connections, he hadn’t got to where he was by rolling with the punches. That was something Ms Clemenger was going to have to learn.
He swung around and took a step closer, cramping her up against the back of the lift before dropping an arm each side of her to the brass handrail. She was trapped.
He saw the fright flicker in her widening eyes, the spark of alarm that glowed red in their greenish-blue depths, and was glad. ‘Someone like me? That sounds very much like some kind of put-down, Ms Clemenger.’
But even as he waited for her response, something else happened in her eyes. The momentary flare cooled, a sheen of varnish turning them hard and cold and unreadable.
‘Opal,’ she said, only a touch shakily around the edges even though he could see the tightening white-knuckled grip on her folio, held up as a barrier between them. ‘I said you could call me Opal.’
In spite of himself, he liked the way she said her name. Liked the way her mouth opened and then pouted to form the ‘p’, widening once more until her pink tongue brushed her top teeth over the ‘l’. There was something very sexy about the way her lips made that word. Come to think of it, there was something very sexy about her lips, period.
If only her eyes gave the same message.
‘Opal,’ he said, his lips curling but a few centimetres from hers. ‘You wouldn’t try to put down the man who was thinking about saving your business?’
This time her eyes met his savagely. ‘And here was I thinking I was offering a solution for yours.’
He smiled. Those lips were so close he could just about reach over and sample them. ‘That’s not how it sounded to me.’
Now he had her nervous, her eyes darting from side to side, searching for escape almost as if she could read his mind. Her tongue flicked out, moistened her lips before darting back in.
‘So maybe you weren’t listening,’ she said, her eyes fixed on the wall to his left.
‘Oh, I’ve been listening,’ he crooned, ‘and watching, and wondering.’
Without Opal turning her head, her eyes found his before fleeing to fix on the wall once more.
‘Wondering what?’
He dropped his head even closer. ‘Whether that mouth tastes as good as it looks.’
He dipped his
