Dante repeated in disbelief.
‘There’s nothing I can do about the way my mother chooses to make her living,’ Topsy pointed out curtly. ‘Unfortunately, one doesn’t get to choose one’s parents.’
Dante studied her in silence with caustic cool.
‘Yes, I can already hear the wheels of your limited imagination cranking into motion,’ Topsy told him sourly, her generous pink mouth thinning with annoyance. ‘But no, I wasn’t dragged up in a sordid household by a depraved mother. Relax—no sob story of that sort is about to come your way. I was raised in a perfectly respectable home by my eldest sister and I only got to know my mother again recently.’
‘By the sound of it you should’ve kept your distance from her,’ Dante commented, watching the tip of her tongue flicking out to moisten her full lower lip, angrily registering the stirring of arousal at his groin as perspiration dampened his skin. He only had to look at that luscious mouth and erotic fantasy took over.
Topsy was tense but the pulse of sexual awareness was like a monster running amok inside her body. She was remembering the glory of that hard sensual mouth smashing down on hers, the wonderfully solid feel of his hard, muscular power pinning her against that wall, the indescribable delight of his fingers touching her intimately and finally the waves of wickedly wanton pleasure that had followed. Her knees trembled, her breathing fracturing. ‘Stop looking at me like that,’ she warned him stiffly.
‘You were telling me about your mother,’ Dante reminded her thickly, picturing her on his desk, splayed open and ready for him. He knotted his hands into fists of restraint and breathed in deep and slow, struggling to put a lid on his overactive brain and the images flying up there.
‘I needed some very important information from her,’ Topsy volunteered after a perceptible hesitation. ‘My sisters had warned me that she wasn’t to be trusted but I knew what to expect from her and I was prepared. If you want to get on the right side of my mother you have to bribe her. She said that if I stepped in for the employee who was sick and spent the evening with Jerome in her place, she would give me the information I needed. We made a deal and she understands deals. I know she was hoping that I would agree to take on other clients and work for her as an escort afterwards but I never had any intention of doing that. I’m not that stupid...’
‘What was the information?’ Dante queried, wondering if he could believe anything she told him because of course she would try to vindicate herself in any way that she could. Naturally she would swear that she had only ever worked one evening as an escort and had no plans to do so ever again.
‘That’s private.’ Topsy turned her face away from his hard appraisal, guilty colour mantling her cheeks as the movement made her long dark hair fall against her face and tumble in loose glossy curls round her tense shoulders. ‘That...isn’t for sharing.’
Especially not with a man who would happily use that information to slam another nail in the coffin of his dislike for Vittore. Dante would become even more hostile if something embarrassing from Vittore’s past were to surface to hurt or humiliate his mother.
‘I refuse to believe that you only worked one night as an escort,’ Dante drawled scornfully.
Topsy flipped back to face him. ‘There’s nothing I can do about that.’
‘I do not keep three mistresses,’ Dante told her in a roughened undertone, the denial wrenched from him without his seeming volition.
Topsy shrugged slim shoulders, face carefully nonchalant. ‘It’s nothing to me if you do.’
‘You were angry about it, gioia mia. I could see it in your face.’ Dante savoured his recollection of the moment. ‘Like me, you don’t share.’
‘The rumour must’ve started somewhere,’ Topsy replied, although she hadn’t meant to say something so revealing and cursed her unruly tongue. Now he would think she was angling for an explanation of that story.
Dante closed the distance between them, resting his hands on her narrow shoulders. ‘Once upon a time when I was very young and very randy I thought there was safety in numbers. Instead the combined demands of the three of them drove me crazy.’
His hands felt very heavy on her taut shoulders and her mouth had run dry because once again he had invaded her space. ‘I wasn’t jealous,’ she told him vehemently, recognising that that was what he was driving at and furious at the suggestion.
‘Neither was I, but the thought of you cavorting with Kusnirovich in that hotel suite outraged every skin cell in my body,’ Dante confided huskily, long fingers spreading to smooth the tops of her arms. ‘I can’t stand the idea of another man touching you.’
‘I’m not going to let you touch me,’ Topsy pointed out half under her breath, her lungs less than efficient with him so close. And she wanted to touch him back so badly that it literally hurt to deny herself.
‘Then say no now,’ Dante advised.
‘No...’ Topsy said flatly.
‘Louder and with more conviction,’ Dante urged mockingly, setting her temper on fire.
‘No, Dante no!’ Topsy shouted back at him furiously, wishing he would learn how to take no for an answer.
A loud knock prefaced the abrupt opening of the door. Dante swung round with angry words on his lips, intending to rebuke the offender, only to see his stepfather standing in the doorway with a frown of indecision stamped on his face. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt but I heard raised voices,’ Vittore declared. ‘Sofia was concerned when Topsy didn’t come upstairs.’
Dante vented a soft laugh. ‘We were arguing. I want to give her a driving lesson but she’s not sure she’s willing to trust me,’ he murmured smoothly.
Taken aback by the speed with which he had come up with the excuse, Topsy blinked rapidly. ‘Er...yes,’ she contributed, not one half as smooth as him in a tight corner.
‘If she doesn’t wish to learn to drive she doesn’t have to,’ Vittore commented. ‘It’s not important.’
‘I think it is,’ Dante overruled. ‘It would make her independent. She would be able to work much more efficiently if she could drive.’
‘Right...OK, I’ll take that on board,’ Topsy promised, moving towards the door, desperate to make her escape and willing to use Vittore’s arrival to facilitate it.
‘And there’s no time like the present,’ Dante quipped, drawing level with her, one determined hand pressing lightly to the base of her spine to guide her across the hall. With the other he withdrew his cell phone and instructed someone to bring his mother’s car out of the garage.
‘It’s a small and easily manoeuvred car,’ he remarked, walking her outside into the sunshine. ‘Perfect for the purpose.’
‘I don’t want to do this,’ Topsy told him grittily. ‘I don’t like driving and I don’t want you trying to teach me.’
‘All you need to do is concentrate and you can’t have got a doctorate in advanced maths without that ability,’ Dante countered with assurance.
Topsy chewed her lower lip in vexation. She had never felt less like getting behind the wheel of a car. Her
