beautifully accented voice had a smile in it, one that was echoed in the curve of his lips. But those deep blue eyes had a cooler, assessing expression in them that made her feel uncomfortably like some specimen laid out on a microscope slide.
‘Or, rather, start.’
He straightened up fully and it was only then that she realised just how tall he was, the way he had bent to his task disguising the long, lean frame that was approaching three inches taller than hers, even in the four-inch heels.
‘My name is Dario Olivero,’ he said, holding out a hand in a formal greeting that seemed ridiculous after that enclosed moment of heightened intimacy they had just shared. His voice sounded strangely rough, as if he was speaking from a dry throat.
‘Alyse Gregory...’
She followed his lead, her voice almost failing her as she slicked her tongue over suddenly parched lips in an attempt to moisten them, and watched his intent blue gaze drop to watch the betraying movement. She could have sworn that the corners of that beautifully shaped mouth curled up slightly in response and it seemed to her that it was the sort of smile that might appear on the face of a tiger when it realised that the deer it had its sights on was tremblingly aware of its presence.
But even that thought fled from her mind when he took her hand in his and held it, strong and warm and shockingly exciting. It was as if no one had ever held her hand before. At least not with this sizzling burn of contact, the shockwaves of heat that seemed to spread out from every tiny point of contact, burning along her nerves straight to the most feminine centre of her body. The sensations, the thoughts this created felt positively licentious, indecent in such a public place and with someone she had only just met.
They were also the sort of sensations she had never felt before. Never this fast, this strong, for a man who was almost a complete stranger.
But at least now she knew his name. And she’d heard of Dario Olivero of course. Who hadn’t? His vineyards and the superb award-winning wines they created were known the world over.
‘Alyse...’ he said, and his tone made her name into a very new and very sensual sound, curling the two syllables around his tongue and making them seem almost like a caress. But the look in his eyes still seemed to contradict the soothing sound. The clear dark blue had sharpened, focused strangely just for a moment, then his face relaxed again and he turned on a brief blinding smile.
* * *
Alyse Gregory. The name echoed round inside Dario’s head. So this was Lady Alyse Gregory. He had been told that she was to be at the ball—it was the only reason he had endured the boredom of the evening so far, though it had amused him to watch the other guests, see their false smiles, the air kisses that made no contact, meant nothing at all.
Way back, he would not even have been able to cross the threshold here, let alone mix with this titled and moneyed crowd. If he’d tried, he had no doubt that he would have been shown the door. The back door. A door he’d had plenty of experience of when he’d been in charge of deliveries for the Coretti winery, the place that had given him his first job and set him on the road to success.
Perhaps once he might have been given entry as Henry Kavanaugh’s bastard son, if his father had ever acknowledged him. Just the thought brought a sour taste into his mouth. If he had ever hoped for that then tonight the hope was completely erased from his mind. Tonight he was here, accepted, welcomed as himself. As Dario Olivero, owner of the hugely successful vineyards in Tuscany, exporter of the wines that the wealthy and powerful fought to have on their tables at events like this...
A man who had made his own fortune. And of course money talked.
But that wasn’t what had brought him here tonight. Instead he’d wanted to meet one woman—this woman.
‘Hello, Alyse Gregory.’ It took an effort to iron out the note in his voice that revealed the blend of satisfaction and surprise that flooded through him.
He’d expected her to be beautiful. Marcus certainly wouldn’t be seen at a huge social event like this with anyone who was less than supermodel material, even if she did have the title that both the Kavanaughs, father and son—legitimate son—believed to be so important.
But this Alyse Gregory was nothing like Marcus’s usual run of women. She was tall, blonde, beautiful—that much was true. But there was also something different about her. Something unexpected.
She was far less artificial than the sort of painted sticks Marcus liked to be photographed with. She had curves too—real curves, not the silicone-enhanced bosoms flaunted by Marcus’s last but one model of the year. Those moments spent mopping the wine from the creamy skin exposed by her neckline had set his pulse thundering, his trousers feeling uncomfortably tight. The scent of her body, blended with a richly floral perfume, had risen from her skin to enclose him in a scented cloud that made his senses spin. And the moment that a small, glistening drop had slid down into the shadowed valley between her breasts had dried his mouth to parchment so that he had had to swallow hard before he could give her his name.
He was on the verge of making a complete fool of himself, holding on to her fine, long-boned hand for so long. The smile that had come to her lips was wavering, and he could feel the tension in her fingers as if they were hovering on the edge of being snatched away.
‘Forgive me...’
‘Hello, Dario...’
The two sentences clashed in mid-air between them, and the sudden release of tension made them laugh, even if a little edgily. When he released her hand he was surprised to see that she still held it up just for a moment, suspended between them, not quite breaking the contact. But a second later she had dropped it to her side again, looking round for the bag he had placed on the table moments before.
‘Thank you for coming to my aid.’
‘I was coming towards you before that.’ He couldn’t hold back the truth.
‘You were?’ Her blonde head went back slightly, green eyes looking up into his face, a small, puzzled frown creasing the smoothness of her brow.
‘But of course...’
The smile he gave her now was much more natural, so that he could feel the spark of awareness in her before her own lips curved in response.
‘And you knew it.’
‘Did I?’
She was going to back away from it; the sharpness of the question told him that. That, and the sudden lift of her chin in defiance, the firming of that full, sensual mouth. She was going to deny that stunning, fiery spark of awareness that had flashed across the width of the huge room in the moment that their eyes had met. An awareness that had pushed him into action, moving towards her before he had even recognised what was happening or stopped to think, in a way that was totally out of character. He was not the sort of man who acted on impulse; he never made a rash move. Everything was thought out, the last detail finalised—‘i’s dotted, ‘t’s crossed. He was known for it. It was what he’d built his reputation—and his fortune—on: that total focus, the white-hot attention to detail.
And yet here he was, standing before a woman he had seen from across the room, simply because he had been unable to do anything else.
He didn’t even have the excuse that she was the woman he’d come
