car searching for a plausible excuse. She was supposed to be flirting with him, making him think she was available for a quick fling, not quaking like someone standing on a fault line. ‘About the ball. I don’t want to let my father or the company down. It’s my first time representing them at such a prestigious event.’ Which was actually true; ordinarily that responsibility alone would be reason enough for her nerves.
The warm proprietorial palm settled over her leg, and gave her knee a quick squeeze, touching her again in a way that made her feel owned.
‘My name is Dario.’ His jaw clenched and she noticed the bunched muscle, twitching. Was it possible she was affecting him as much as he was affecting her?
The thought thrilled her on some visceral level, but disturbed her more.
The possibility of playing him at his own game was almost as terrifying as the endorphins careering through her for the first time in her life.
‘We are on a date, remember,’ he murmured.
‘Thank you for agreeing to escort me,’ she said, finally remembering her manners. ‘It was nice of you.’
‘Nice?’ He seemed amused and surprised by the suggestion. ‘Not many women have accused me of that.’
She could well imagine. ‘My father really appreciated you doing us this favour.’ More than De Rossi would ever know. Hopefully.
‘There is nothing to appreciate,’ he said, cryptically. ‘I only do favours when I expect something in return.’
‘What do you expect from me?’ she said, then realised how suggestive it sounded a moment too late. ‘I don’t mean...’ she stumbled. ‘I just...’
‘I expect nothing from you, Megan.’ He cut into her rambling denials with the skill and precision of a surgeon wielding a scalpel. ‘I did this favour for your father.’
Those staggeringly blue eyes studied her, the knowledge in them unnerving her even more. Sensation skittered down her spine, making her breath seize in her lungs, the car’s interior now devoid of oxygen. Did he know the real reason her father had asked him to escort her tonight? Was this charade already doomed to failure?
‘Don’t look so terrified, cara,’ he said, and she tried to school her features not to give away her fear.
‘I promise not to bite. Unless you want me to,’ he said, before touching the intercom button to inform the driver to proceed.
Pinpricks rioted over her skin as the car whisked away from the kerb and she imagined those straight white teeth nipping at all her most sensitive places.
She forced a smile, attempting to shake off the sensual fog he seemed to weave around her so effortlessly.
This was going to be the longest night of her life. Her physical reaction to him was too intense, too overwhelming. How was she supposed to survive an evening in his company without telling him every one of her secrets?
DARIO DE ROSSI WATCHED AS his date finally appeared from the bathroom on the far side of the ballroom. That was the third time in the last hour that she’d deserted him to go to the powder room. And freshen up, as she’d put it.
She didn’t need freshening up. Her dewy skin was lightly flushed, the colour riding high on those apple cheeks, on the rare occasions when she’d been close enough for him actually to see her face. And when she wasn’t in the powder room, she was engaged in the most vacuous of conversations with everyone but him, her light breathy laughter making every pulse in his body stand on high alert.
She was not what he had expected.
He had known, of course, the second that Lloyd Whittaker had approached him in the club yesterday morning and asked him to escort his daughter to the ball, that the request was part of the man’s last-ditch attempt to save his company. The fool had finally realised who was buying up his stock and had probably thought throwing his daughter at Dario would soften the blow. It wouldn’t be the first time a business rival had believed that he could manipulate Dario through his enjoyment of the opposite sex—or believed the garbage written about his love life in the tabloids. Giselle’s recent hissy fit in The Post hadn’t helped in that regard.
It also certainly wouldn’t be the first time a powerful man had used and degraded a woman he was supposed to love and protect.
The brutal flash of memory had his gut twisting sharply. He took a sip from the bottle of Italian lager the hosts had imported especially for him and waited for the sensation to pass, while he watched Megan Whittaker make her way towards him.
She took the most circuitous route through the crowd, he noted, stopping to talk to a series of her father’s acquaintances, every one of whom, Dario observed as his fist plunged into the pocket of his trousers, seemed to think it was okay to look down her cleavage.
The dress—plunging low enough at the neckline to leave not nearly enough to the imagination—had made his heart slam into his throat and dried up every molecule of saliva in his mouth when she’d walked down the hallway of her apartment. And quite literally taken his breath away when she’d eased onto the seat of the limousine and revealed a mile of toned, tanned thigh. Which had to be an optical illusion, because the woman, despite all those impressive curves, didn’t even reach to his collarbone in her ice-pick heels.
He downed the last of the beer, and dumped the empty bottle on a passing waiter’s tray, deciding that he’d let Megan off the leash long enough.
He’d only agreed to this date out of curiosity. Because he was bored. He’d wanted to see what foolishness Whittaker had planned—especially as he had remembered the daughter from a tedious event a month ago that he’d attended with Giselle. Strangely he had remembered her eyes, that deep intense green had captivated him, but only for a moment, before she’d ducked her head. She’d avoided him for the rest of the evening. So he’d found it amusing that Whittaker had decided to push her into his path tonight. To do what exactly? Seduce him into releasing his stranglehold on a company her old man had been running into the ground for years?
The idea was so preposterous he had been convinced it couldn’t actually be true. That such an apparently inexperienced girl should be used for such a purpose seemed beyond even Whittaker’s ability to mismanage the situation. But he’d decided to play the scenario out, mostly for his own entertainment. He’d had no date for the ball, Megan Whittaker had already intrigued him, and he would enjoy proving that he was not the barbarian her father obviously assumed him to be. He was perfectly capable of resisting the charms of any woman—even if he hadn’t had one in his bed for over a month.
But then his date had surprised him. Stunned him even. And he didn’t like to be surprised, much less stunned. She was nervous, yes, and had an artlessness about her, which might have been why he had considered her so inexperienced a month ago, but beneath that was an awareness, a physical response to him that was so intense and unguarded it had done a great deal more than simply captivate or intrigue him.
He didn’t like it. He hadn’t expected to want her. Or certainly not this much.
But now he had to decide what to do about it.
If Whittaker had sent her on some cock-eyed mission to seduce
