he didn’t have a hair out of place, while she had to scrape a tangle of hair from her face and shove it back over her ears.
“How dare you?” she seethed. Her heart pounded and adrenaline shoved itself into her limbs, her nerves, until she felt as if she were wound so tight she would split at the seams. If his anger was a lit match, hers was a raging fire. “If anyone saw that, you’re in big trouble.”
“I doubt it,” he said. He leaned forward then, gray eyes glittering in the darkened car. “Now, tell me where you live, Holly Craig, and my driver will take you home. Much easier, no?”
Holly glared.
“Come, Holly. It’s late and you look tired.”
She wanted to refuse—but then she rattled off her address. What choice did she have? It was late, she was tired, and she needed to get Nicky from Mrs. Turner. If she had to let this man take her there, so be it. At least she would arrive far earlier than if she took the bus. And that would make Mrs. Turner happy, no doubt.
“Do you have a guilty conscience?” she asked when he’d given the driver the address.
He laughed. “Hardly.”
That stung, but she told herself she should hardly be surprised. He’d thrown her out without a shred of remorse, and then refused all attempts to contact him. Heartless man.
“Then why the sudden chivalrous offer of a ride home?”
His gaze slid over her, and her skin prickled with telltale heat. She gritted her teeth, determined not to feel even a sliver of attraction for this man. Before she’d met Drago di Navarra, she’d thought she was a sensible woman in control of her own emotions. He’d rather exploded that notion in her face.
And continued to explode it as her body reacted to his presence without regard to her feelings for him. Feelings of loathing, she reminded herself. Feelings of sheer dislike.
Her body didn’t care.
“Because I need you, cara mia.”
She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. He’d said something similar to her that night in his apartment. And she, like an idiot, had believed him. Worse, she’d wanted it to be true. Well, she wasn’t that naive anymore. Italian billionaires did not fall in love with simple, unsophisticated virgins in the space of an evening.
They didn’t fall in love at all.
“Sorry, but the answer is no.”
His long elegant fingers were steepled together in his lap. “You have not yet heard the proposition.”
“I’m still sure the answer is no,” she said. “I’ve been propositioned by you before, and I know how that works out for me.”
He shook his head as if he were disappointed in her. “I liked you better in New York.”
Her skin stung with heat. “Of course you did. I was a mouse who did whatever you told me to do. I’ve learned better now.”
And she was determined to prove it.
“You like being a cocktail waitress, bella? You like men touching you, rubbing up against you, thinking you’re for sale along with the drinks and the chips?”
The heat in her cheeks spread, suffusing her with an angry glow. “No, I don’t. But it’s just about all I’m qualified for.”
“And if I were to offer you something else? A better way to earn your money?”
Her stomach was beginning to churn. “I won’t be your mistress.”
He blinked at her. And then he laughed again, and she felt the hot, sticky slide of embarrassment in her veins. Oh, for pity’s sake. After the way the woman he’d been with tonight looked, did she truly think he was interested in her?
But he had been once. She hadn’t dreamed it. Nicky was proof she had not.
“Charming, Holly. But I don’t need to pay a woman to be my mistress. If I were to choose you for that...position...I am certain you would not refuse.”
Holly could only gape at his utter self-confidence. “It’s a wonder you bother with casinos when you have such bad instincts. I’m surprised you haven’t lost everything when you reason like that in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
“Dio,” he said, “but you are a stubborn woman. How did we end up in bed together again?” He didn’t wait for her reply. He nodded sagely as if answering his own question. “Ah, yes, that’s right. You were deceiving me.”
Shame suffused her at that mention of their night together. But she didn’t bother to deny it. He wouldn’t believe it anyway. “Clearly, you like your women to shut up and do as they’re told.”
“Which you seem to be incapable of doing,” he growled.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Tell me what you want so I can say no.”
His stare was unnerving. But not because it made her uncomfortable. More likely because she wanted to drown in it. “I want you to model for the Sky campaign.”
Holly’s mouth went dry. Sky was the signature fragrance from NC, the one she’d modeled for in New York when she hadn’t been able to tell Drago why she was really there. “That’s not funny,” she said tightly.
His expression was dead serious. “I’m not joking, Holly. I want you for Sky.”
“I did that already,” she said. “It didn’t work out, as I recall.”
He shrugged. “A mistake. One we can rectify now.”
The trembling in her belly wasn’t going away. It was spreading through her limbs, making her teeth chatter. She clamped her jaw tight and tried not to let it show. Thankfully, the car was dark and the lights from the city didn’t penetrate the tinted windows quite as well as they otherwise would have.
“I don’t think it’s possible,” she said. And it wasn’t. How would she go to New York with a three-month-old baby in tow? She didn’t think that was what Drago had in mind at all.
“Of course it is. I will pay you far more than you earn in that casino. You will do the shoot and any appearances that are needed, and you will be handsomely rewarded. It’s a win for you, Holly.”
She thought of her baby in his secondhand crib, of the tiny, dingy apartment she shared with Gabi. The air conditioner was one window unit that rattled and coughed so badly she was never certain it would keep working. The carpet was faded and torn, and the appliances were always one usage away from needing repairs.
It was a dump, a dive, and she would do just about anything to get out of there and take her baby to a better life.
But what if he didn’t mean it? What if he was toying with her? What if this was simply another way to punish her for not telling him the truth in New York?
She wouldn’t put it past him. A man who threw her out and then refused all contact? Who didn’t know he had a son, because he
