sexually magnetic men who exuded the kind of confidence and charisma Dante Allegri did without even trying. I might as well have been a mouse, trying to impress a lion.
I breathed in the delicious aroma of the food as I concentrated on choosing a selection but, as my mouth watered and my stomach grumbled, I’d never felt less like eating.
I picked a few dishes from the lavish array of French cuisine—which I noted was plentiful enough to have fed me and my sister for a week—only to find myself entranced by the play of his strong capable hands as he ladled the fragrant samples of delicately spiced fish and lightly steamed vegetables, the rich gratin and colourful salads onto a gold-rimmed fine china plate.
He had wide callused palms and long fingers and blunt, carefully clipped nails. His skin looked darkly tanned against the pristine white cotton of his shirt. He’d lost the tuxedo jacket several hours ago but before serving me he had rolled up his shirt sleeves, giving me a disturbing view of the corded muscles in his forearms, the sprinkle of dark hair, as he placed my plate on the table.
He proceeded to serve himself a large helping, then sat down opposite me. He lifted a bottle of wine out of the ice bucket set next to the table and uncorked it in a few efficient strokes, then tipped the bottle towards my glass.
‘Some wine? I assure you this white goes well with Argento’s skate au beurre noir.’
Drinking probably wasn’t a good idea, but with my heart battering my chest at approximately five hundred beats per second I had to do something to slow it down, so I nodded.
He poured me a shallow glass, not enough to get me drunk, I realised with relief, but as he served himself I noticed the bottle’s label. A Mouton Rothschild Blanc from the turn of the new century. I took a generous gulp to hide my surprise, letting the fresh, delightfully fruity taste moisten my dry mouth.
I wondered why he hadn’t boasted about the wine, which I knew sold for thousands of euros a bottle, because one of the many things we had been forced to do after my mother died, to pay off her debts, was auction everything in her wine cellar.
‘Buon appetito,’ he said, nodding to my plate before picking up his own cutlery.
I scooped up a mouthful of buttery fish and creamy potatoes, but I could barely taste it as I swallowed. He was still watching me. Assessing my weaknesses, I was sure, with that focused, intensely blue gaze as he devoured his own food.
‘Where are you from, Miss Spencer?’ he asked finally. He leaned back in his chair and lifted his wine glass to those sensual lips.
I watched him swallow and took another sip from my own glass as I gave up trying to eat the food and attempted to come up with a convincing answer.
Unfortunately I hadn’t prepared for this eventuality, having convinced myself Allegri wouldn’t even be in the house tonight.
‘A small town north of Chantilly. Lamorlaye,’ I said, mentioning a town close enough to Belle Rivière that I would know the details, just in case he knew the area too.
‘You’re French?’ His eyes narrowed as his brows rose up his forehead. ‘And yet you speak English without an accent.’
‘I’m half-French, half-British,’ I clarified, my heartbeat stuttering under that inquisitive gaze. I knew it was always best to keep as close to the truth as possible, because then it was harder to get caught out in a lie, but I didn’t want to give him information that might make it possible to track me down after I won tonight’s game... If I won tonight’s game.
The jolt of panic had me taking another sip of my wine to calm the nerves that were jiggling around in my stomach with Argento’s skate.
‘I live most of the year in Knightsbridge,’ I said, plucking the most expensive area of London I could think of out of thin air. ‘But the city is so stifling at this time of year,’ I continued, lying through my teeth now to put him off the scent. I needed to sound urbane and cosmopolitan and a little bored to keep up the pretence that I was a rich heiress amusing herself for the summer. ‘So I prefer to stay at my parents’ estate in Lamorlaye from May to September... The social scene in Chantilly is so much more exclusive and refined than Paris, and our chateau has a pool and a tennis court and a cinema so I can keep in shape and entertain myself when I’m not socialising or making flying visits to Monaco, or Cannes, or Biarritz.’
‘You don’t work?’ He sounded both suspicious and unimpressed.
I slipped my hands off the table and rested them in my lap, rubbing the calluses on my palms I’d been hiding all evening. The last thing I wanted him to know about was the night-time cleaning jobs I’d taken on in the last year—along with the accountancy work I’d been doing for local businesses ever since my mother died four years ago. If he knew how desperate I was to win this game, it would only make me easier prey.
‘Work’s so overrated, don’t you think?’ I said. ‘And anyway, I’d hate to be tied down like that. I’m a free spirit, Mr Allegri. I much prefer the danger of riding my luck at the roulette table or the excitement of calculating my odds during a game of Texas Hold ’Em than shackling myself to a boring nine-to-five job,’ I continued, the lies floating out of my mouth like confetti at a high society wedding—the sort I’d only ever seen in magazines or on the Internet.
His frown lowered and for a split second I thought I’d overdone the rich airhead act. He had to know I wasn’t an idiot from the way I’d played so far. But then the crease in his brow eased and a cynical, knowing smile curved those wide sensual lips. But while my panic at being caught in a lie downgraded, what I saw flicker across his face for a split second had my heart bouncing back into my throat.
Disappointment.
When he spoke again, his voice rich with condescension, I was convinced I must have imagined it. Surely, like all the rich men I’d ever met, he preferred his women pretty and vacuous—the way my mother had always taken great pains to appear when trying to attract a new ‘protector’.
‘From the way you play poker,’ he said, faint praise evident in every syllable, ‘I’d say your time has been very well spent.’
Picking up my glass, I toasted him with unsteady hands. ‘Touché,’ I whispered, repeating the provocative phrase he’d uttered earlier, in an attempt to sound more confident and provocative.
He toasted me too and knocked back the last of his wine. But when his gaze fixed on my face again, while it still prickled over my skin, ablaze with an intense, focused desire that still disturbed me on so many levels, something crucial had been lost—his regard for me as a worthy opponent and an intelligent woman. He was looking at me now as an object of desire and contempt, not as an equal. The way all my mother’s ‘protectors’ had always looked at her.
Anxiety and inadequacy twisted in my stomach, wrestling with the confusion and longing that was already there. I tried to dismiss the feeling of regret that he despised me now.
It was stupid to care what he thought. I wasn’t here to impress him. I was here to win this game by whatever means necessary. And who was he to judge me anyway? A man who had made his fortune by ruthlessly exploiting the addictions of poor, deluded fools like my brother-in-law until they forgot about everything that mattered. And betrayed everyone who loved them.
I pushed the contempt I felt for myself and this necessary charade onto him. If I looked at it that way, Dante Allegri was as much to blame for my family’s disastrous
