on the desk lamp and turning them to the light, examining the moulded silver settings before laying them carefully down again and going to stand in front of the open sketch book displaying her designs for future projects.
‘You have a certain talent.’ He turned to her, his hands on the narrow span of his hips. And then he lifted his impressive shoulders in a dismissive shrug. ‘Your grandfather tells me you sell your creations from a stall in a draughty, redundant church. You barely scrape a living.’
‘Don’t knock it!’ Cat’s eyes narrowed. How dared he dish out such a put-down? Her fingers curled into the palms of her hands, biting into the tender skin. Earlier she had wanted to kiss him; now she wanted to kill him! The effort of holding her temper in check made her words come out bitingly fast. ‘Everyone has to start somewhere. We’re not all lucky enough to be handed a ready-made thriving business empire at birth. One day I’ll have my own shop premises, a hand-picked team of craftsmen and women—’
‘When you get your hands on your inheritance?’ he slid in with insulting silkiness.
Cat’s face closed up. Had Gramps told him about her recklessly defensive message about selling those precious family shares to fund her own small business, thoughtlessly tossed out to stop him boring on about his wretched idea for an arranged marriage? Or had it been an astute guess?
Whatever, she had no intention of defending herself to this patronising monster. She didn’t want to get her hands on her inheritance, as he had callously put it, because it would mean that her beloved Gramps was no longer around and she couldn’t bear the thought of that.
Her green eyes glittering with emotion, she spiked out, ‘Please leave. Now!’
‘So soon?’ The indolent tilt of one dark brow, his aura of sophisticated and total command, was probably meant to intimidate her. It might have done, had she let it. She didn’t.
‘Can’t be soon enough! You know where the door is.’
Unnervingly, his dark eyes gleamed with amusement. ‘I also know I’m not leaving until we’ve thoroughly discussed your grandfather’s wishes. He is an old man, far from the country of his birth, estranged from his family. The least we can do is discuss the pros and cons of his suggestion. Even if we think it’s mad. Over coffee. This way?’
His dark head dipped towards the steep flight of wooden stairs that led to her living quarters. Cat ignored him. She bit her tongue to stop herself hurling verbal abuse at him as he mounted the stairs, arrogant self-confidence in every movement of his strong, supple body, then launched after him, kicking off her shoes and hiking her narrow, restrictive skirt above her knees.
Did he, too, think her grandfather’s scheme was crazy? Had he come all this way to humour a distant relative he had never met out of respect? Italians went a bundle on respect, didn’t they?
But the question flew out of her head as he reached the apartment well ahead of her, despite her best efforts in the scampering department. The door opened directly into her living room. She had left a table lamp burning and the room just looked like comfortable chaos. But when he found the main light switch and depressed it the room looked like a squalid hovel.
And Aldo, standing in the middle of the muddle, was so beautifully groomed and immaculate. The contrast made her cheeks flame with embarrassment. The velvet bow that had held her hair in check fell off. She heard it hit the floor behind her just before the riotous chestnut tangle tumbled around her shoulders. And she was still holding her skirt above her knees. She dropped the hem immediately and said starkly, ‘Coffee?’ and picked her barefoot way through to the tiny kitchen, avoiding the piles of trade magazines and glossies, the pile of curtains she’d laundered but hadn’t got around to re-hanging and the heap of work clothes she’d got out of before going through to shower and change earlier this evening.
When she was working, deeply engrossed in a new project, she forgot to be tidy, forgot everything. But no way would she explain or make excuses to this so obviously superior being, who probably had an army of servants to keep everything around him picture perfect plus one in reserve just to iron his shoelaces.
Thankfully, he didn’t follow her to the kitchen to sneer at the empty baked-bean tin with the spoon still in it. There’d been nothing else for breakfast because she’d forgotten to shop and the Belfast sink was over-flowing with unwashed dishes, but at least she did have decent coffee.
When she carried the tray through he had his back to her. He was studying the framed prints that broke the severity of the white-painted walls. Nudging aside a bowl of wilting roses, she set the tray down on the low table that fronted the burnt-orange-upholstered small sofa then stood very straight, dragging in a deep breath.
Time to get the show on the road. Throw Gramps’s stupid idea straight out of play and get on with the rest of her life. The old man would be deeply disappointed, she knew that, and would probably carry through his threat to disinherit her, but she could handle that.
‘So you think my grandfather’s idea of an arranged marriage is mad,’ she stated for starters, carefully keeping her voice level, non-confrontational as she waited for his robust confirmation of what he’d said earlier. And watched him turn, very slowly.
‘Not necessarily.’ His lean features betrayed nothing. ‘It was idle supposition on my part—on your behalf. Do you really think I would have come this far if I’d thought the idea had no merit?’ He strolled with an appallingly fluid grace to where she was standing. ‘Shall I pour, or will you?’
The question didn’t register. Cat’s mouth ran dry, her lips parted. She gasped for air; she felt she was being suffocated. From his attitude since they’d taken leave of her grandfather she’d drawn the conclusion that he’d been humouring the old man, had as little intention as she did of entering into an arranged marriage. Now it seemed the game was back on. It was a deeply terrifying prospect.
Though why that should be she couldn’t work out. No one could force her to marry anyone!
‘Your silence tells me you don’t care either way. About who should pour the coffee.’ A strange satisfaction threaded through his voice and curved his lips. Cat’s eyes went very wide as they locked on to that sinfully sexy mouth. Her own lips felt suddenly desperately needy and she was hot, much too hot; she could spontaneously combust at any moment!
The silence was stinging; it gathered her up and enclosed her with him, very tightly, and there was no escape. Her flurried gasp of relief was completely involuntary when he finally broke the awful tension and turned to pour the coffee.
Taking his own cup, he angled his lean body into one corner of the sofa, long legs stretched out in front of him, the sleek fabric caressing the taut muscles of his thighs like the touch of a lover.
Cat gulped thickly. Her thoughts were so wicked! She had to blank them, and when he glanced at the vacant space beside him and invited softly, ‘Shall we talk?’ she shied away, wrapping her arms around her trembling body, and had to force herself to say, ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ because the temptation to join him, sit intimately close, was enormous.
And very, very dangerous!
‘No? No opinions?’ he queried softly, his honeyed tone giving her goose bumps. The look in his eyes as they fastened on her hectically coloured face made her stop breathing. ‘Then I’ll give you mine, shall I?’
Cat forced herself to move, to give a slight, careless shrug before she picked her way over to a vaguely throne-like chair she’d picked up one Sunday
