is my own.’
His eyes narrowed, and she had to resist an instinct to let hers skitter away.
A shrill burring made her jump, and she said foolishly, ‘That’s my phone.’
Careful not to rise too hurriedly this time, she went to the hallway to lift the receiver. ‘Yes?’
Zito stood regarding her through the open door while she tried to give her attention to the caller. ‘Yes, Leon.’
Wrenching her gaze from Zito’s inimical stare, at the corner of her eye she saw him swing round and disappear from her line of sight.
‘Saturday?’ Roxane forced herself to concentrate. ‘Yes, it is short notice. Wait while I get my diary.’
She dug it from the bag she’d left by the phone. ‘You do mean Saturday next week? What kind of party? If it’s black tie formal…’
Leon assured her it wasn’t. An impromptu welcome home, he said, for a son returning from overseas with his new fiancée. ‘A family affair. About a hundred guests.’
‘Just an intimate little gathering?’ Roxane felt sorry for the unknown young woman. ‘So the relatives get to cast their eyes over the bride-to-be?’
‘It could lead to more introductions. These people are some of Auckland’s best-known socialites. I hope you’re free to supervise as well as make the arrangements?’
Roxane’s own social life was low-key and intermittent. ‘I’ll be there on the night,’ she promised.
‘I know I can rely on you.’
Silly to feel a glow of satisfaction at the banal words, but when she returned to the little sitting room after hanging up, her lips were curved in pleasure.
Zito was standing at the long old-fashioned window. He faced her as she paused inside the door, and his eyes didn’t match his casual tone when he spoke. ‘Boyfriend?’
She didn’t have a boyfriend, but the suggestion made her hesitate before answering. ‘Business.’
‘Business?’ he repeated sceptically. ‘At this time of night?’
‘It’s not that late.’ She checked her watch. Just after nine.
Zito brushed that aside. ‘Saturday night—a party? An intimate party. Did you really need to consult your diary, or was that just to keep him on his toes?’
‘You’re being absurd.’
He came away from the window. His eyes were obsidian, glowing with a dark fire, his high cheekbones outlined with dusky colour under his natural tan. ‘Absurd, am I?’
‘Yes!’
Maybe it was the fierce contempt in her tone that stopped him, just a few feet from her. Certainly it was the first time she’d ever stood up to him like this.
‘So who is this bride-to-be?’ he shot at her. ‘You? Because if so, you’ve forgotten a small detail, haven’t you?’
Roxane was so astonished she laughed.
And saw again, with a surge of strange triumph, that she’d unsettled him. She had never seen Zito wrongfooted so many times in the space of—what? Half an hour?
It was a peculiarly heady sensation.
Tempted to let him retain his hasty assumptions, she decided that would be unnecessarily childish. Crisply, she informed him, ‘That was my boss. We organise and cater events, mostly for corporates and big business, but he was asking me to make the arrangements for a private welcome home and engagement party for a client’s son.’
Zito stared at her as if trying to decide whether she was telling the truth, then he sank abruptly onto the nearby couch and bowed his head, his fingers combing through the black strands, and muttered something she couldn’t catch.
After a small hesitation Roxane sat in one of the armchairs facing him. Knees and ankles pressed together, she folded her hands in her lap. Capable hands, the nails allowed to grow just over the tips, and glossed with clear satin polish. Ringless hands. Hastily she covered the left one with her right.
When she looked up Zito was leaning against the couch cushions, looking disgruntled, his long legs sprawled in front of him. ‘I’ve been stupid tonight,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘Clumsy and stupid.’
Startled by the admission, Roxane didn’t argue, regarding him warily.
His eyelids drooped as his gaze lowered to her mouth, and then without haste traversed her body, making her skin prickle pleasurably in reluctant response. ‘I should have caught up and stopped you after you got off that bus,’ he said.
‘Instead of scaring me witless?’
‘When did you know it was me?’
When he’d called her ‘darling’ in his unforgettable, dark-melted-chocolate-and-brandy voice, that she’d always imagined held a trace of his Italian ancestry, although he was a second-generation Australian.
‘Just before I hit you,’ she told him.
He laughed. She remembered that he’d laughed then too, although the slap must have hurt.
Old emotions stirred, treacherously. Against the quickening in her blood she curled her hands, gripping one inside the other.
To quell the memories she said, ‘What were you doing in Ponsonby Road, anyway? For that matter, what are you doing in Auckland?’
‘We’re thinking of opening a New Zealand branch of Deloras. I was dining at GPK.’
‘Checking out the possible competition?’ Zito’s grandfather had arrived in Australia as a penniless assisted immigrant, and worked as a dishwasher and kitchen hand until he opened his own small restaurant, and then another, and another. Over the years the family business had become a multi-million dollar Australian institution.
And now they were planning to expand across the Tasman Sea and conquer the New Zealand market?
‘Combining business with…pleasure,’ Zito said.
Her skin tightened. ‘You were with a woman.’
Of course he hadn’t been eating alone. And of course his companion had been female.
‘A woman I won’t be seeing again.’
‘I’m not surprised, if you left her flat in the middle of a meal.’ The waspishness of her voice was simply on account of his unusual lapse of manners, Roxane assured herself. She had no right to be jealous. And of course she wasn’t. ‘What on earth did you say to her?’
‘I apologised, gave her some money for the meal and a taxi, and said I’d phone her in the morning.’
Poor woman. Roxane very nearly laughed. ‘You’ll be lucky if she accepts the call.’
‘I’ll send her
