should have remembered. She always has stuff for me to do here but I didn’t want to wake her up so early to ask.’ Topsy pushed her knuckles against her pounding brow as if she could force logical thought back into being again.
‘This is the original home of the Leonetti Bank founded centuries ago by one of my ancestors.’ Dante paused outside a tall sandstone building that bore all the hallmarks of ancient Florentine architecture. ‘I started work here when I was twenty-one and a few years later we centralised operations in Milan and donated the building to the city to become a museum.’
‘Twenty-one? You were young. Didn’t you ever want to be something other than a banker?’
‘What I would be was set in stone on the day of my birth,’ Dante informed her drily. ‘My father would have allowed nothing else and, fortunately for me, I inherited the Leonetti business gene and the affinity with numbers. You still haven’t told me how you managed to spot the error on that document the other night.’
Topsy flushed. ‘I could just see that it was wrong.’
‘But you only saw that document for seconds.’
‘I can’t help it if my brain works like a computer sometimes,’ she admitted soft and low, uneasy with the subject of the high IQ that had made her a gifted child and an even more gifted adult. ‘Where are you taking me?’
He walked into the lively and very busy little medieval streets between Via Maggio and Piazza Pitti, the artisan quarter of workshops. It was like stepping back in time as she walked past studios displaying the wares of bookbinders, violin makers, metal workers, sculptors and cobblers. Topsy was enchanted because it was a taste of Renaissance Florence as only a local could have shown her. She had spent several mornings wandering round the city with a guidebook in a never-ending crowd of equally studious tourists until after a while the sights began to blur and intermingle and her brain went into overload mode.
In a design studio she chose a pretty enamelled photo frame for Kat in her sister’s favourite colours and frowned in surprise when Dante attempted to pay for the purchase.
‘It isn’t for me, it’s a gift for my eldest sister,’ she commented as she politely refused to allow him to buy it for her.
He had more success when he bought her a lemon ice cream, so rich and creamy and smooth in texture that she loosed a helpless moan of delight as the icy concoction engulfed her taste buds. Dante lifted a napkin and dabbed at the tip of her nose and the corner of her mouth where ice-cream stains lingered. ‘You’re worse than a child for making a mess, carissima mia.’
Mesmerised by his flashing smile of amusement at her clumsiness, she looked up at him, amber eyes unusually serious. He could hurt her and only the night before that fear had held her back but now that pronounced caution felt more like an excuse for not living than truly living and she was regrouping, hungry for new experiences and wildly curious about him and what he could make her feel.
‘We’ll go for lunch now,’ Dante decreed.
‘I should be getting back to work,’ Topsy protested.
‘My mother isn’t expecting you back. She has friends joining her for lunch,’ he told her.
He walked her back to a Bugatti Veyron surrounded by a small crowd of admiring teenaged boys. He pressed a banknote into the hand of the tallest youth, thanked him for taking care of his car and tucked Topsy into the passenger seat.
‘Where’s the Pagani?’ she finally asked stiffly.
‘In a workshop for the foreseeable future.’ Dante groaned out the admission and cast her a glimmering sidelong glance. ‘You’re a menace.’
‘At least nobody was hurt,’ Topsy parried, a flush on her cheeks. ‘Where are we going for lunch?’
‘You’ll see.’
Her attention fell on a lean, powerful thigh encased in denim and she dragged it away again, struggling to get a grip on the weird, wild promptings assailing her. She might be curious but she wasn’t foolish. Nothing was going to happen between her and Dante unless she allowed it to and she was in too much control to make that mistake, she told herself urgently. Her head was all over the place; one minute she wanted him, the next she was telling herself that she had to resist him.
‘So, where did you go with Vittore this morning?’ Dante asked casually.
‘He wanted my advice about a gift he’s buying for your mother’s birthday,’ Topsy admitted, since she saw nothing wrong with sharing that.
‘Why would he need your advice?’
‘Because he always gets it wrong.’
‘Wrong?’ Dante pressed. ‘How?’
‘Vittore likes bling.’
A husky laugh of understanding unexpectedly sounded from Dante. ‘I can see that that would be a problem.’
* * *
About half an hour later when they were in familiar countryside, he drove up a winding mountain road and, turning into a stony lane, he switched off the engine. When she looked at him in surprise, he shrugged and said lightly, ‘I’m afraid we have to walk from here.’
Topsy climbed out into the sunshine and hung over the door, enjoying the view of the forested slopes and the city now far in the distance. ‘Where are we?’
‘On the edge of the Leonetti estate.’ Dante emerged from the boot gripping a substantial picnic basket and he tossed her a rug to carry.
Topsy gave him a startled glance. ‘We’re picnicking?’
‘I think the food will be a cut above the usual picnic. Though I say it myself, my chef is unbeatable.’
Topsy anchored the rug uncertainly beneath her arm. ‘I didn’t think you were the picnicking type.’
‘Blame yourself. I needed a good reason to put on jeans,’ Dante quipped, striding off into the cover of the trees and leaving her to follow the rough trail through the long grass.
Her figure-hugging cotton dress rode up her thighs as she broke into a stride in an effort to keep up with him. She smoothed it back down, breathless in the heat, perspiration beading her brow. ‘Wish you’d warned me. I’m not really dressed for the occasion.’
‘I know but I wouldn’t have missed that outfit for anything, carissima mia,’ Dante confided. ‘Clinging to your truly spectacular curves that dress is a show stopper.’
It was a grey stretchy cotton dress teamed with a colourful scarf but he made it sound like something else entirely and she flushed, unaccustomed to such masculine candour. Spectacular curves? She had long envied her siblings’ whippet-slim frames. Clothes hung on her sisters as though they were elegant models while Topsy’s infinitely fuller figure was much more of a challenge to dress.
‘Why...a picnic?’ Topsy asked, drawing level with him in a clearing below a spreading mature chestnut tree as broad in proportion as a bus. Beyond the clearing the ground fell away steeply into dense woods but the view over the quiet valley was amazing.
‘I thought
