a bottle of red had already been opened to breathe. It was an intimate scene, a romantic scene, a room ready not for business, but seduction.
Ana swallowed. She walked to the table, one hand on the back of a chair. When had she last had a meal like this, shared a meal like this? Never. The idea of what was to come filled her with a dizzying sense of excitement that she told herself she had no right to feel. She shouldn’t even want to feel it. Yet still it came, bubbling up inside of her, treacherous and hopeful. This felt like a date. A real date. She cleared her throat. ‘This all looks lovely, Vittorio. Somewhere special indeed.’
Vittorio smiled and closed the door behind him. They were completely alone; Ana wondered whether there was anyone else in the castle at all. ‘Do you live here alone since you’ve returned?’ she asked.
Vittorio shrugged. ‘My brother Bernardo and my mother Constantia are in Milan. They come and go as they please.’
His tone was strange, cold, and yet also almost indifferent. It made Ana wonder if he considered his brother and mother—the only family he had left—as nothing more than interlopers in his own existence. Surely not. Ever since her own mother had died, she’d clung to her father, to the knowledge that he was her closest and only relative, that all they had was each other. Surely Vittorio felt the same?
He pulled back her chair and Ana sat, suppressing a shiver of awareness as he took the heavy linen napkin and spread it across her lap, his thumbs actually brushing her inner thighs. Ana jerked in response to the touch, a flush heating her cheeks, warming her insides. She had never been touched so intimately, and the thought was shaming. He’d just been putting a napkin in her lap.
She supposed it was her lack of experience with men that made her so skittish and uncertain around Vittorio, hyper-aware of everything he did, every sense stirring to life just by being near him. That had to be it; nothing else made sense. This aching awareness of him was just due to her own inexperience. She didn’t go on dates and she didn’t flirt. She did not know what it felt like to be desired.
And you’re not desired now.
This dinner—this room—with all of its seeming expectations was going to her head. It was setting her up, Ana realized, for a huge and humiliating fall. She’d fallen before, she reminded herself, her would-be boyfriend at university had had to spell out the plain truth.
I’m just not attracted to you.
Neither was Vittorio. He wasn’t even pretending otherwise. She mustn’t forget that, no matter what the trappings now, Vittorio was not interested in her as a woman. This was simply how he did business. It had to be.
And so it would be how she did business as well.
‘Wine?’ Vittorio asked and held up the bottle. With a little dart of surprised pleasure, Ana realized it was one of Viale’s labels. The best, she acknowledged as she nodded and Vittorio poured.
He sat down across from her and raised his glass. Ana raised her own in response. ‘To business propositions.’
‘Intriguing ones, even,’ Ana murmured, and they both drank.
‘Delicious,’ Vittorio pronounced, and Ana smiled.
‘It’s a new blend—’
‘Yes, I read about it.’
She nearly spluttered in surprise. ‘You did?’
‘Yes, in the in-flight magazine on my trip home.’ Vittorio placed his glass on the table. ‘There was a little article about you. Have you seen it?’ Ana nodded jerkily. The interview had been short, but she’d been glad—and proud—of the publicity. ‘You’ve done well for yourself, Ana, and for Viale Wines.’
‘Thank you.’ His words meant more to her than they ought, she knew, but she couldn’t keep the fierce pleasure at his praise from firing through her. Ana had worked long and hard to be accepted in the winemaking community, to make Viale Wines the name it was.
A few minutes later a young woman, diminutive and darkhaired, came in with two plates. She set them down, Vittorio murmured his thanks and then she left as quietly as she had come.
Ana glanced down at the paper-thin slices of prosciutto and melon. ‘This looks delicious.’
‘I’m glad you think so.’
They ate in silence and Ana’s nerves grew more and more taut, fraying, ready to break. She wanted to demand answers of Vittorio; she wanted to know just what this business proposition was. She wasn’t good at this, had never been good at this; she couldn’t banter or flirt, and at the moment even idle chatter seemed beyond her.
It was too much, she thought with a pang. Being here with a devastatingly handsome man—with Vittorio—eating delicious food, drinking wonderful wine, watching the firelight play with shadows on his face—all of it was too much. It made her remember all the things she’d once wanted that she’d long ago accepted she’d never have. A husband. Children. A home of her own. She’d made peace with that, with the lack in her life, because there was so much she had, so much she loved and enjoyed. She’d thought she’d made peace with it, but now she felt restless and uncertain and a little bit afraid. She wanted again.
She had no idea why Vittorio—Vittorio, of all people, who was so unbearably out of her league—made her feel this way. Made her remember and long for those things. Made her, even now, wonder if his hair felt as crisp as it looked, or if it would be soft in her hands. If she touched his cheek would she feel the flick of stubble against her fingers? Would his lips be soft? Would he taste like her own wine?
Ana nearly choked on a piece of melon, and Vittorio looked up enquiringly. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, all solicitude, and she nodded almost frantically.
‘Yes—yes, fine.’ She could hardly believe the direction her thoughts had taken, or the effect they were having on her body. Her limbs felt heavy and warm, a deep, pleasurable tingling starting low in her belly and then suddenly, mischievously flaring upwards, making her whole being clench with sudden, unexpected spasms of desire.
She’d never thought to feel this way, had thought—hoped, even—she’d buried such desperate longings. For surely they were desperate. This was Vittorio. Vittorio Ralfino, the Count of Cazlevara, and he’d never once looked at her as a woman. He never would.
They ate in near silence, and when they were finished the woman came back to clear the plates and replace them with dishes of homemade ravioli filled with fresh, succulent lobster.
‘Have you missed home?’ Ana asked in an effort to break the strained silence. Or perhaps it wasn’t strained and she only felt it was because her nerves were so fraught, her body still weak with this new desire, desperate for more. Or less. She was torn between the safety of its receding and the need for it to increase. To actually touch. Feel. Know.
Vittorio seemed utterly unaware of her dilemma; he sat sprawled in his chair, cradling his glass of wine between his palms.
‘Yes,’ he replied, taking a sip. ‘I shouldn’t have stayed away so long.’
Ana was surprised by the regret in his voice. ‘Why did you?’
He shrugged. ‘It seemed the right thing to do at the time. Or, at least, the easy thing to do.’
