love, it would be grubby sex!’ Topsy snapped bluntly. ‘And I’m worth more than that!’
Dante frowned, green eyes radiating resolve while his face took on a sardonic edge at her use of that insulting label, ‘grubby’. ‘How much more?’
‘You really don’t give up easily, do you?’ Topsy framed, her mouth still tingling from his touch, but his bold determination was starting to intimidate her because he was like a guided missile locked onto target. ‘It’s just we really would be wasting each other’s time.’
‘I don’t do grubby, cara mia,’ Dante whispered. ‘I want you to waste my time.’
‘My goodness, I’m so tired I can hardly stay awake!’ Topsy lied in dismay, carefully screening her mouth as though she were yawning in a last-ditch effort to conclude the confrontation.
‘Tired?’ Dante repeated, unimpressed, but he retreated a disconcerted step.
Mercifully he had moved just enough to unblock the door and Topsy flipped round and opened it fast. ‘Night, Dante!’ she called over her shoulder and sped off fast.
Dante swore and not under his breath. She was a tease, nothing but a tease, he reckoned furiously. Maybe it was an act, designed to lure him in deeper and increase his desire for her. He could not remember when a woman had last knocked him into pursuit mode. In fact he could not recall ever having to pursue or persuade a woman. He needed a cold shower. He flicked a glance at the empty bed and cursed again. Jeans...similar or complementary characters? Superficial, ruthless, mercenary? Self-evidently, she was a nutcase. Furthermore, ruthless was a compliment, not a personality trait worthy of censure. He had had a narrow escape, he told himself impatiently, and if she was playing some childish girlie game with him, she would soon discover that she was indeed wasting her time for he wasn’t that desperate. She exasperated him. He headed for the cold shower with anger in his glittering eyes. There was a world of women out there, beautiful, sophisticated women, who didn’t talk rubbish, insult him or lead him on only to change their minds at the last possible moment.
* * *
Having climbed into her comfortable bed, Topsy checked the list in the back of her diary that she had written when she was eighteen and trying to make sense of the almost incomprehensible dating scene at university. She had never fit in, never met her soul mate but had truly believed that he was out there somewhere. Dante met only one of her listed requirements: he was clever. But clever wasn’t quite the right word, she reflected ruefully: conniving and unscrupulous came closer to how she would have described him. And she had no regrets, she told herself urgently. She was much too sensible to surrender her virginity to a male who only awakened her hormones and didn’t give a damn about her.
A little voice in the recesses of her less scrupulous conscience pointed out speciously that Dante was very probably very good in bed and would almost certainly make a great first lover. After all, it wasn’t as if she were looking for love or commitment, so perhaps it was a little unjust to blame him for a flaw she suffered from herself. Some day she would fall in love and want commitment, but she imagined that day was very far away and she fiercely suppressed that dangerous little voice in her brain.
Tomorrow, she would be lunching with Mikhail, who was as devious and manipulative as any Machiavelli when it came to delivering what would please her sister Kat most. Topsy knew she would have to keep her wits about her and make sure that she stood her ground.
THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Dante used the back stairs to return to his bedroom after a heavy workout session in the basement gym. On edge after a restive night, a freezing-cold shower and the conviction that he had been manipulated by some means he had yet to identify, he was not in a good mood. Almost more infuriatingly when he had finally risen early to concentrate on work instead, he had discovered that she had been correct about that figure being wrong in the file. Yet she had only glanced at the page! How could she possibly have recognised a mistake that fast? He was about to stride through a doorway when he heard Topsy’s distinctive voice and Vittore’s, both of them talking in low voices somewhere out of his view.
‘I can’t make it today,’ Topsy was telling the older man. ‘I should have told you last night but I couldn’t mention it in front of Sofia.’
‘Of course not. We’ll have to go to Florence some other day.’ Dante’s stepfather sighed. ‘As long as Sofia doesn’t realise what we’re up to, we have nothing to worry about.’
‘Would she be annoyed?’ Topsy prompted.
‘Are you joking?’ Vittore groaned. ‘After the last time, she said she’d kill me! I have to get it right this time.’
While Dante hovered with a frown, the voices died away as the couple retreated. What the hell was all that about? His original notion that Topsy might be involved with his stepfather had dwindled, but after that cosy exchange suspicion ran rampant through him again. Why were Vittore and his wife’s secretary whispering in corners? Why were they meeting up in Florence in secret? How could that be innocent? What had to be hidden from his mother? After the last time, she’d kill me! A previous act of infidelity, Dante decided in disgust. Was that what Vittore had been referring to?
He did not like to think that his mother would even consider forgiving and forgetting such a betrayal, but he could not overlook the fact that she had spent many years married to a man who had forced her to close her eyes to his infidelity and accept it. His parent could be slipping back into that unfortunate pattern, refusing to see the truth that this time around she had no reason to feel that she had no choice but to accept such behaviour.
* * *
It was ten minutes to midday and Topsy was dressed for lunch in Florence, her curvy figure simply clad in a green sundress with shoestring straps. Tense though she was, Vittore had contrived to put a smile on her face. That cliché about try, try, try again when you got it wrong might have been specially coined for Sofia’s husband. Vittore wanted to give his wife a piece of jewellery that she would actually like and wear and, since Vittore had a natural love of bling and sparkle while Sofia preferred plain and elegant, her bridegroom had repeatedly got his gift choices wrong. That was why Topsy was to accompany Vittore to the design studio to choose a piece that her employer might genuinely appreciate for her birthday.
Topsy joined Sofia to briefly discuss the floral arrangements for the fancy-dress ball and then headed downstairs, stiffening as the ancient bell over the massive gothic front door rang noisily and checking her watch: it was five to twelve. When she saw the hulking bodyguard on the step, she recognised him as Danilo, the head of Mikhail’s security, and, while she wondered if the forbidding older man had been sent to collect her in an effort to daunt her, her soft mouth firmed.
‘Where’s your luggage?’ Danilo enquired with a frown.
Topsy’s heart sank. Had she misunderstood Mikhail? Was he expecting her to simply pack up and go home with him to London? Her chin came up. ‘I’m coming back here after lunch. I’m not leaving.’
Danilo made no comment, which didn’t surprise her because he was not a chatty man. He stood out on the step instead wielding his mobile phone and talking in Russian, undoubtedly checking up on his employer’s expectations.
As she lifted her handbag from the hall chair where she had left it earlier she saw Dante poised in the doorway of his study, lean, strong, dark face taut. At the sight of him, her heart jumped as though someone had closed a hand
