yearn that dissolved when the first note of the music rang out and suddenly she was being spun around the room in the most heavenly of arms.
For such a tall, muscular man, Valente danced with an elegance that made her dazed mind think he’d done this many times. His assured grace and utter control allowed her to relax into the dance and, as he spun her around the great ballroom, weaving seamlessly between the other dancing couples, she imagined herself as a princess from days gone by waltzing in the arms of her very own Prince Charming.
When the dance ended, Alessio kept tight hold of her. ‘One more,’ he murmured into her ear.
The rays from her answering smile beamed straight into his loins.
Impulse had driven him to ask her to dance. He’d spent the evening observing her, the desire to have her in his arms growing with every passing minute.
The compulsory ballroom dancing lessons he’d endured at his English boarding school were finally paying off.
‘Where did you learn to dance?’ she asked when they were on their third waltz, one set at a slower tempo.
‘As a child.’ Soon there would be no more need for evasion.
Her head tilted as she studied him. ‘What is it you do for Giannis Basinas?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘None of the hotel staff have heard of you.’ There was no accusation in the beautiful chocolate eyes, just a soft curiosity.
He pulled her a little closer. Their bodies were almost touching. She didn’t pull back. ‘Let’s just say I have known Giannis for many years.’
‘Is that all you will tell me?’
‘For now.’
A spark flared in her eyes. Its brilliance flashed through him. ‘Intriguing.’
He laughed but it was from discomfort rather than humour. Alessio knew this was the moment he should whisk her away somewhere private and tell her the truth, somewhere where they wouldn’t be overheard.
Forget waiting until the morning. He had waited long enough. Beth had passed every test he’d given her.
But he wanted to hold her in his arms for a few more dances first and savour the heady, erotic feeling flowing through his loins a little longer before the dilated softness flowing from her gaze turned into loathing.
The loathing wouldn’t last long, he was sure. Beth was too practical to be dictated to by emotions.
The dance ended without any further conversation, and the master of ceremonies took to the stage to announce that there would be a short break from the dancing for the fireworks display being held in the grounds.
‘Shall we?’ He held his arm out to her.
She smiled, nodded and tucked her hand through it.
They followed the crowd through the ground floor of the palace to the famed gardens. Alessio had only taken a few breaths of the warm night air when there was a tap on his shoulder.
He turned and inwardly cringed to find Richard, an old university friend, standing there.
‘Alessio Palvetti as I live and breathe!’ Richard roared, obviously steaming drunk. ‘How wonderful to see you! My God, man, how many years has it been?’
Not enough.
He felt Beth go rigid beside him.
‘Hello, Richard,’ he answered tightly.
‘I thought it was you,’ Richard shouted. ‘I said to my wife, look, there’s Alessio Palvetti. I must introduce you to her. She never believes me when I tell her we were at Oxford together.’
Richard’s words washed over him.
He met Beth’s frozen gaze. Her eyes were stark and wide. Slowly she extricated her hand from his arm and stepped back to wrap her arms tightly around her chest.
Alessio held her stare.
The first firework exploded in the sky.
Beth blinked then, turning as fast as the shooting rocket hurtling above them, fled.
* * *
Beth pushed her way through the crowd still spilling out into the gardens, the curses thrown at her as champagne was spilt in her wake nothing but a distant sound, the industrial fireworks showering the sky with luminescence melding with the drum beats exploding in her head.
Her lungs had cramped, fear fisting tightly in her stomach.
Back under the palace roof, she ran as fast as her heeled feet would carry her until she entered an unfamiliar room and spun around in panic.
She’d lost her bearings.
She covered her mouth with a shaking hand and forced herself to think. She had pored over the map of the palace for so many hours she knew it intimately but her brain had turned into stunned goo.
Think!
Instinct had her race to the door to the right of the room but it only led to another unfamiliar room.
Her instincts clearly weren’t worth anything. If they had been, she would have had an inkling that Valente wasn’t...was...
Oh, dear God, it had all been a lie.
Get to Dom.
She turned back and ran to the door to the left.
The palace’s proportions that she had found so awe-inspiring on her arrival had become a frightening warren. The richly decorated walls had gained faces, the masks on the few guests who’d stayed inside rather than watch the fireworks coming to life to laugh at her.
That feeling, that the whole palace was laughing cruelly at her naivety, was compounded when she finally found the stairs and tripped on the third step. One of her shoes fell off. She stumbled on, pausing only to remove her remaining shoe, climbing the stairs as fast as she could but somehow feeling as if time itself had slowed and that she was ascending a mountain that was fighting back, a lucid, waking nightmare.
The nightmare showed no sign of letting up when she finally reached the door to her suite. She’d left her bag in the staff room. Her door key was in it.
The door was locked.
She banged on it and kept on banging until it was opened by the nanny.
‘Where’s Dom?’ she gasped, uncaring of Miranda’s blatant disapproval at this loud disruption.
Was she even a real nanny or a stooge set up by Valente... Alessio?
‘Asleep.’
‘He’s here?’
‘Yes. He’s in his cot.’
But
