style="font-size:15px;"> ‘We just had a sleazy encounter on a kitchen table in the middle of the night. What do you think?’ Jazz enquired saccharine sweet.
Vitale was receiving a strong impression that anything he said would be taken down and held against him. Sleazy? That single descriptive word outraged him. He swung on his heel, his lean, powerful body taut, and left the room and just as quickly Jazz wanted to kick him for giving up on her so easily. Her thoughts were a turbulent sea of conflict and confusion and self-loathing, sending her seesawing from one extreme to the other. No sooner was he gone than she wanted him back and she flung off the towel and climbed into bed, hating herself. It was so typical of Vitale to worry about the fact that he hadn’t used contraception. Now he would be waiting on that axe to fall and that was a humiliating prospect, even though it also reminded her that she hadn’t yet taken her daily pill. She dug into her bag and took it before switching off the light.
What was done was done and it had been amazing, she thought ruefully, but it was better not to think about that imprudent sudden intimacy that had changed everything between them. Now she was no longer thinking about Vitale as the boy he had once been, but Vitale, very much a man in the present and that switch in outlook disturbed her, made her fear that somewhere deep down inside her there was still a tiny kernel of the fourteen-year-old who had believed the sun rose and set on Prince Vitale Castiglione...
‘WOMEN MY AGE don’t wear clothes like this,’ Jazz was saying by late morning the next day, appalled by the vast collection of garments, all distinguished solely by their lack of personality. ‘I’m not your future wife or one of your relatives. I’m supposed to be only a girlfriend. Why would I be dressed like an older woman?’
‘I want you to be elegant,’ Vitale responded, unimpressed by her reasoning. He wanted every bit of her covered up. He didn’t want her showing off her shapely legs or her fabulous figure for other men to drool over. Recognising Angel’s appreciation of the beauty Jazz had become had been quite sufficient warning on that score. ‘I imagine you would prefer to show more flesh.’
That was the last straw for Jazz after a trying few hours of striving to behave normally when she did see Vitale between coaching sessions. Temper pushed up through her like lava seeking a crack to escape. ‘Where do you get all these prejudices about me from?’ she demanded hotly. ‘I don’t wear revealing clothes. I never have. And as you know I haven’t got much to reveal!’
‘You have more than enough for me, bellezza mia,’ Vitale breathed half under his breath, heat stirring at his groin as he thought about the delectable little swells he had explored the night before.
Jazz flinched and acted studiously deaf in receipt of that tactless reminder. He was no good at pretending, she recognised ruefully. ‘This stuff is all so bland,’ she complained instead, fingering a pair of tailored beige trousers with a curled lip. There was a lot of beige, a lot of navy and a lot of brown. He was even biased against bright colour. ‘If this is your taste, you certainly didn’t miss out on a chance of fame in the fashion industry.’
Vitale reached a decision and signalled the stylist waiting at the far end of the very large room. ‘Miss Dickens is in charge of the selections. By the sound of it, she will be ordering a more adventurous wardrobe,’ he declared, watching the slow smile that lit up Jazz’s piquant little face while smoothly congratulating himself on knowing when to ease up on exerting control. ‘But pick out something here to wear tonight.’
Jazz chose a fitted navy dress and shoes and lingerie as well as a bag.
‘Thanks!’ she called in Vitale’s wake as he left her alone with the stylist to share her own likes and dislikes.
His arrogant dark head turned in acknowledgement, brilliant dark-fringed eyes a fiery gold enticement, and desire punched her so hard in the chest that she paled, stricken that she could have made herself so vulnerable. Putting such pointless thoughts from her mind, she concentrated on choosing clothes and particularly on the necessary selection of a spectacular gown for the royal ball.
After asking for lunch to be served in her room she was free to go home and visit her family for a few hours, and it was a welcome break from the hothouse atmosphere of Vitale’s imposing London home. Her mother and her aunt were baking and Jazz sat down with a cup of tea and tried to feel normal again.
But she didn’t feel normal after she had put on the navy dress over the silk lingerie, her feet shod in hand-stitched leather sandals with smart heels. Although she had never bothered much with make-up she made a special effort with mascara and lipstick, knowing that that was one thing she did need that Vitale probably hadn’t thought about: make-up lessons.
‘No, I like you the way you are,’ Vitale asserted, startling her in the limo on the way out to dinner. ‘Natural, healthy. You have beautiful skin... Why cover it?’
Jazz shifted an uncertain shoulder. ‘Because it’s what women do... They make the most of themselves.’
Vitale studied her from his corner of the limo. She looked stunning, the dark dress throwing her amazing hair into prominence and emphasising her delicate figure and long slender legs. He willed his arousal to subside because he had made decisions earlier that day. He was going to step back, play safe, ensure that there was no more sex, no more blurring of the lines between them, but he only had to look at her to find his resolution wavering.
That had never happened to Vitale before with a woman. He had never succumbed to an infatuation, had always assumed that he simply wasn’t the emotional type. His affairs were always cool and sexual, nothing extra required or needed on either side. Naturally he had been warned since he was a teenager that he would, in all likelihood, have to marry for dynastic reasons rather than love and he had always guarded himself on the emotional front. What he felt for Jazz was desire, irresistible burning desire, and there was no great mystery about that when it was simply hormones, he told himself soothingly.
A current of discreetly turned heads and a low buzz of comment surrounded their passage to their table in the wildly exclusive restaurant where they were to dine. Vitale’s gaze glittered like black diamonds when he saw other men directing lustful looks at Jazz. For the moment, Jazz was his, absolutely his, whether he was having sex with her or otherwise, he reasoned stubbornly.
Jazz sat down, surveying the table to become belatedly grateful for Jenkins’s lesson in cutlery clarification. ‘So, tell me what you’ve been doing since you left school?’ she invited him cheerfully. ‘Apart from being a prince and all that.’
They talked about being students. Vitale admitted that banking had been the only viable option for him. He also told her that he had a house in Italy where he planned to take her before the ball.
‘For how long?’ she asked, her lovely face pensive in the candlelight, which picked up every fiery hue in her multi-shaded red mane of hair for his appreciation. ‘I like to see my mother regularly.’
‘A couple of weeks, no more. When this is over, after the ball—’ Vitale shifted a fluid, lean brown hand in emphasis ‘—I will pay for you to finish your degree so that you can work in your chosen field.’
‘That’s a very generous offer but you’re already covering quite enough in the financial line,’ she began in surprise and some embarrassment.
‘No. I tricked you,’ Vitale divulged, disconcerting her even more with that abrupt confession of wrongdoing. ‘My father is settling
