took a deep breath and her flagging confidence rallied. She couldn’t let Mamie down.
She secured the antique earrings weighing down her lobes then adjusted her grandmother’s diamonds across her collarbone and, with all the terrified dignity of Marie Antoinette approaching the guillotine, made her way to the Grand Ballroom.
Paolo Donatelli surveyed the charity benefit his mother had begun hosting on an annual basis when his father had still been alive. Whichever country they happened to occupy in December became the location of a White Tie Ball complete with full orchestra, champagne fountains and a midnight supper. The Donatellis could then retreat to Italy for a family Christmas confident they’d done their duty by the local economy, their position in society, and the cause du jour.
His mother rarely left home in winter these days, but Paolo strove to do her credit by continuing the tradition abroad. In his hypercritical opinion, he’d pulled off one of the most successful events to date. If there was a flaw, it was the lack of a proper wife to be his hostess, not that anyone would dare say so. If his cousin Vittorio had an opinion on the subject, he wisely kept it to himself. And Paolo was working on repairing that deficiency. Isabella Nutini was his companion tonight and she was nothing if not proper.
He nodded an acknowledgment when Isabella excused herself to the powder room, thinking she could easily repair more than one blemish in his life. She was Italian, not one of these mixed-breed Americans as his first wife had been. Isabella had been raised Catholic and so treated marriage with the respect it deserved. She seemed to have a grasp on concepts such as loyalty and duty to family—something he saw in very few people these days, man or woman.
Best of all, aside from the requisite level of physical attraction and a modicum of intellectual interest, he felt little for her. He was a man of very deep emotions and controlling them was a daily struggle. Best to have a wife who wouldn’t put him through an emotional wringer. As long as she provided him the children he required and did not shame him before his family, Isabella was ideal.
“Your date left you and now so will I,” Vittorio said with cheerful insolence. “Excuse me, cousin, while I seduce my future wife.”
Italian heritage and male curiosity demanded Paolo catch a glimpse of the female that had drawn another man’s interest. He turned his head and—
A pendulum of suppressed sexual need that he’d pushed far into his subconscious swung through him and exploded, nearly bringing him to his knees in a rush of heat and primitive hunger. Paolo slapped his hand onto the ruffled front of Vittorio’s shirt, freezing him in place. Iron hardened in his arm while his gaze swept like a raptor, ensuring no one else dared approach her before he locked onto her again and took in the vision of her.
She’d gained back a few pounds, but her cheekbones still stood out under eyes that were wide and overwhelmed as she searched the crowd. Despite her height, she projected an intrinsic vulnerability that struck him the way it had when he’d entered the house of Ryan Bradley’s family in Charleston. His protective instincts rose like hackles, but she wasn’t nearly as helpless as she appeared. Lauren Bradley knew how to take care of herself. Like most women, she turned on the damsel-in-distress act to get what she wanted.
Ryan has disappeared, Paolo. No one will tell me anything. Please help me.
She had known how to get right at his heart, plucking at his deep allegiance to his friend despite playing them off against each other for years. With one phone message, she’d invited him onto an emotional roller coaster that had taken him weeks to recover from. A man in his position couldn’t afford inner turmoil. She ought to understand and respect that, but she was too self-involved.
Dio! She was beautiful, though. He vaguely took in a dress of white silk swirled with pearlescent design. A slash of dark purple was tangled over creamy shoulders and pale arms, but his gaze ate up the other details: the swell of her pale breasts, the hourglass shape nipped at the waist and flared to wide hips that had cradled his like they’d been made to lock together the way they had. Her neck had been a slender arch under his rapacious mouth, her ears so sensitive his breath on them had made her quiver. And those lips, those plump, edible lips had roamed his chest and abdomen and—
“Are you forgetting you brought a date, Paolo?” Vittorio’s voice held the same amused mockery Paolo had heard all too often from family after his marriage had fallen apart. How could you not have suspected it wasn’t yours?
Lauren Bradley had the ability to make him miss certain things and overlook the rest. Shame rose to burn his cheeks, mixed with embarrassment and anger. She’d seduced him into another dishonorable position and he would never forgive her for it.
“That’s Mrs. Bradley. Off-limits. To everyone,” he ground out, finally dropping the hand that had warded off his cousin. “Scusa,” he added from between clenched teeth, loathe to approach her, but what choice did he have?
Vittorio flicked him a speculative glance. Paolo ignored it, admitting to nothing. Everyone had wanted to know what had happened when he had stolen Lauren from the Bradley household and taken her to his penthouse on top of the Donatelli Bank Tower in Charleston.
Nothing, he’d lied.
He never lied, especially to family. Lauren had brought him to this level of disgrace and now she had the nerve to turn up at the grandest event his family sponsored. To gloat? To push him a few rungs lower than he already stood in his own estimation? Where did she find the audacity to dress like royalty and parade herself into public barely three months into mourning a man regarded by the nation as a saint?
Her searching gaze found him, causing an unwanted zing of electric excitement to pierce him. Instantly he was transported to the darkened bedroom and the rumpled bed. He felt again the ever-expanding brush of skin on skin as they struggled to peel away each other’s clothing, neither willing to break the kiss or stop touching the other. His blood heated and a weighted sensation tugged in his groin. Everything he’d suppressed and forced himself to forget rushed back with renewed power, exalting him with a conqueror’s strength and spirit even as it sickened him to want her like this.
Unceasingly. Uncontrollably.
While on her side, her plumped breasts rose as she caught and held her breath. Her shiny lips parted. She was a precocious little Bambi, wide-eyed and pinned by what looked like apprehension, so damned defenseless-looking, but it was an act. A trick to trip him up and bring him to heel. She wanted something and he wouldn’t like it, that he was sure of.
They moved toward each other like drifting flotsam pushed by a tide then halted. He was able to see the subtle things now. The uncertainty trembling in her thick lashes, the way she forced her chin up because facing him wasn’t easy. Good. She ought to be burning in self-hatred the way he had been doing since betraying his personal code and his closest friend.
She lifted a hand in a way he’d surreptitiously watched her do a hundred times, but there was no tendril to tuck behind her ear. Dio! He should have noticed it first, not last.
“What the hell have you done to your hair?” he growled.
Lauren self-consciously touched the fine wisps Enrique had left against her neck, habitually about to apologize for daring to think she had the right to cut her own hair.
Fortunately she was too dazzled by the sight of Paolo to speak at all. He was not a man who needed a white tuxedo to impress, but the one he wore added elegance and power to an already gorgeous man. His hair was on the darker side of brown, thick and threatening to curl. His olive skin held the remnants of a
