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‘My God, is this an example of that famous Highland hospitality, or is this Italian warmth?’
She watched his beautiful mouth tighten but instead of responding he adopted an attitude of silent superiority that had a red-rag effect on Anna.
In a calmer state of mind she would have known it was a dangerous road to go down, but she wasn’t calm. She was so angry she delivered the first, smartest, though not most sensible, thing that came into her head and challenged scornfully, ‘What’s your problem? Do I scare you or something?’
It didn’t even cross her mind that she might hit a nerve, or more likely his planet-sized ego, until his head reared back as though she had struck him.
He didn’t speak, he just reached out; he must have moved but she wasn’t conscious of it. Just of him touching the side of her face, his hand cupped over her cheek, just one finger actually in contact with her skin. The gentle whisper of movement a stark contrast to the violence of the emotions that shimmered in the electrically charged air.
She heard a noise but didn’t actually connect it to her gasp. Her eyes were closed, her chest was so tight that she stopped breathing as she struggled and failed to stop herself turning her face into his palm like a flower seeking sun. The feelings that churned in her belly were not light, they were dark and hot.
Then, just as her knees were giving, he pushed her away.
Anna took a staggering step back. He had taken two and he was standing feet away, not up close where she could feel the heat of his skin through her clothes. She suddenly shivered.
‘What was that meant to prove?’
He dragged a not quite steady hand down his jaw. Prove? Did she actually think he had put some thought into his actions? That he was following some logical process: press button A and...? The problem was she was pressing all his buttons and acting as if she didn’t know it.
The knowledge that he was acting like all those poor dumb losers he’d watched while he was growing up didn’t sit well with him. Those too were intelligent men who made fools of themselves over his mother. For her part, she was never intentionally cruel; she just saw what she wanted and went for it.
‘What the heart wants, Cesare...’
He could hear her now, see her little shrug in response to any hint of criticism. ‘What the heart wants, Cesare...’
His mother’s heart had been disastrously drawn to married men and it had remained miraculously unaffected when she walked away from her affairs. The same could not have been said for the men who fell for her. Cesare had always wondered if had just one time the tables been reversed, and she had been the one given a glimpse of paradise then dumped in the cold, she might have cleaned up her act.
It never happened.
And this woman was the same. But he wasn’t a victim. Not like his friend, Paul, who had nearly abandoned his wife for her.
Neither was he married. He was a free agent, and his heart was definitely not involved. He was, it might be argued, exactly the sort of man who might one day give this tempting little witch a taste of her own medicine. A man who stood in no danger of being sucked in by the sexy catch in her husky voice or the innocent hurt in those big blue eyes.
It was not an argument he was about to make. He wanted to keep the hell away from her. He wanted her out of his life.
The big blue eyes in question were at that moment angry, not hurt, as they connected with his. ‘I know you think I’m some sort of home wrecker...’ she stated, unwittingly tuning into his train of thought.
‘But actually I’m not.’ She stopped and thought, What am I doing? I don’t give a damn what he thinks of me...I don’t owe him any explanations. Better he think I’m a slut than Rosie, who isn’t here to defend herself. ‘That desperate.’
‘Desperate?’
‘Well, the only person around here that I could have my evil way with is you.’ She gave a laugh and waited but there was nothing, not even a flicker in his face.
The spark of uncertainty that moved at the back of her eyes morphed into something close to panic. He couldn’t have interpreted the comment as a proposition?
Mouth dry, she swallowed hard—could he?
‘And that isn’t, I promise you, going to happen.’
Her hasty husky addendum drew a smile that belonged to a predator at the top of the food chain. The butterfly kicks in her stomach became wild somersaults as Anna lifted her chin and tried not to act like a trapped furry creature.
‘Because you find me so physically repulsive?’ he suggested, with the silky confidence of a man who had never been knocked back in his life. More was the pity—it might have made him more human.
