changed and you’re going to deny that you want me?’
She sighed. ‘I don’t think I’m a good enough actress to do that, Niccolò. But wanting you doesn’t automatically mean that I’m going to do anything about it. You must have women wanting you every day of the week.’
‘But we’re not talking about other women. What if I just wanted the opportunity to redeem myself? To show you that I am really just a…what is it you say?’ He lifted his shoulders and his hands in an exaggerated gesture of incomprehension. ‘Ah, yes. A regular guy.’
‘Of course you are.’ She laughed, in spite of herself. ‘Describing you as a regular guy would be like calling a thirty-carat diamond a trinket.’
‘Oh, come on, Alannah,’ he urged softly. ‘One dinner between a boss and his employee. What’s the harm in that?’
Alannah could think of at least ten answers, but the trouble was that when he asked her like that, with those black eyes blazing into her, all her reservations slipped right out of her mind. Which was how she found herself in the back of a big black limousine later that evening, heading for central London. She was sitting as far away from Niccolò as possible but even so—her palms were still clammy with nerves and her heart racing with excitement.
‘So where are we going?’ she questioned, looking at the burly set of the driver’s shoulders through the tinted glass screen which divided them.
‘The Vinoly,’ Niccolò said. ‘Do you know it?’
She shook her head. She’d heard about it, of course. Currently London’s most fashionable venue, it was famous for being impossible to get a table though Niccolò was greeted with the kind of delight which suggested that he might be a regular.
The affluence of the place was undeniable. The women wore designer and diamonds while the men seemed to have at least three mobile phones lined up neatly beside their bread plates and their gazes kept straying to them.
Alannah told herself she wasn’t going to be intimidated even though she still couldn’t quite believe she’d agreed to come. As she’d got ready she had tried to convince herself that exposure to Niccolò’s arrogance might be enough to kill her desire for him, once and for all.
But the reality was turning out to be nothing like she’d imagined. Why hadn’t she taken into account his charisma—or at least prepared herself for a great onslaught of it? Because suddenly there seemed nothing in her armoury to help her withstand it.
She had never been with a man who commanded quite so much attention. She saw the pianist nodding to him, with a smile. She saw other diners casting surreptitious glances at him, even though they were pretending not to. But it was more than his obvious wealth which drew people’s gaze, like a magnet. Beneath the sophisticated exterior, he radiated a raw masculinity which radiated from his powerful body like a dark aura.
They sat down at a discreet table but suddenly the complex menu seemed too rich for a stomach which was sick with nerves. Alannah found herself wishing she were eating an omelette at her own kitchen table rather than subjecting herself to a maelstrom of emotions which were making her feel most peculiar.
‘What are you going to have?’ asked Niccolò as the waiter appeared.
The words on the menu had blurred into incomprehensible lines and she lifted her gaze to him. ‘I don’t know. You order for me,’ she said recklessly.
He raised his eyebrows before giving their order but once the waiter had gone he turned to study her, his black eyes thoughtful. ‘Are you usually quite so accommodating?’
‘Not usually, no.’ She smoothed her napkin. ‘But then, this isn’t what you’d call usual, is it?’
‘In what way?’
‘Well.’ She shrugged. ‘You made it sound like a working dinner, but it feels a bit like a date.’
‘And what if we pretended it was a date—would that help you relax a little more?’
‘To be honest, it’s been so long since I’ve been on a date that I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like,’ she said slowly.
He took a sip of water which didn’t quite disguise the sudden cynicism of his smile. ‘I find that very difficult to believe.’
She laughed. ‘I’m sure you do—given your apparent love of stereotypes. What’s the matter, Niccolò—doesn’t that fit in with your image of me? You think that because I once took off my clothes for the camera, that I have men queuing up outside the bedroom door?’
‘Do you?’
‘Not half as many as you, I bet,’ she said drily.
They were staring at one another across the table, their eyes locked in silent battle, when suddenly he leaned towards her, his words so low that only she could hear them.
‘Why did you do it, Alannah?’ he questioned roughly. ‘Wasn’t it bad enough that you were kicked out of school for smoking dope and playing truant? Why the hell did you cheapen yourself by stripping off?’
The waiter chose precisely that moment to light the small candle at the centre of the table. And that short gap provided Alannah with enough time for rebellion to flare into life inside her.
‘Why do you think I did it?’ she demanded. ‘Why do people usually do jobs like that? Because I needed the money.’
‘For what?’ His lips curled. ‘To end up in a poky apartment in one of the tougher ends of town?’
‘Oh, you’re so quick to judge, aren’t you, Niccolò? So eager to take the moral high ground, when you don’t have a clue what was going on in my life and you never did! Did you know that when my mother handed in her notice, she never found another job to match that one—probably because the reference the school gave her was so grudging. Did you know that they got all their clever lawyers to pick over her contract and that she lost all her rights?’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What kind of rights?’
‘There was no pension provision made for her and the salary she got in lieu of notice was soon swallowed up by the cost of settling back in England. She couldn’t find another live-in job, so she became an agency nurse—with no fixed contract. I had to go to a local sixth-form college to take my exams and at first, I hated it. But we were just beginning to pick ourselves up again when…’
Her voice tailed off and his words broke into the silence.
‘What happened?’ he demanded.
She shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does.’
Alannah hesitated, not wanting to appear vulnerable—because vulnerability made you weak. But wasn’t anything better than having him look at her with that look of utter condemnation on his face? Shouldn’t Niccolò da Conti learn that it was wise to discover all the facts before you condemned someone outright?
‘She got cancer,’ she said baldly. ‘She’d actually had it for quite a long time but she’d been ignoring the symptoms so she didn’t have to take any unnecessary time off work. By the
