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His platinum gaze scanned her face. ‘You’re not leaving.’
Unable not to challenge the confidence in this statement, she lifted her chin. ‘Oh, and why is that?’
Talk about an own goal. She lowered her lashes and thought, Never ask a question when you don’t want to hear the true answer. He had to know that she spent each moment of each day anticipating a glimpse of him with as much dread as longing; the only thing she hated more than seeing him was not seeing him.
Fully expecting to hear him expose her weakness, because he had to know, she was shocked to hear him say something quite different.
‘You wouldn’t leave Angel in the lurch. You have too many principles.’ His wolfish grin flashed, humour warming the metallic hardness of his eyes. ‘And anyway you’re way too stubborn.’
Cesare found her ability to bring a fight-to-the-death mentality to even the most innocuous discussion one of the most irritating and exhausting things about her, but then Anna, if that was her name, did manage to press all his buttons, frequently at the same time.
Given her irritant status a sensible man would have responded to her threat to leave with a sigh of relief, but then a sensible man, Cesare conceded, would not have allowed her to become an obsession. The word was not, he realised, an exaggeration. Dio, the sooner he took this woman to bed, the sooner he might get, not just his life, but his mind back! He had no idea yet where she fitted into this story but the important thing was she had not been Paul’s mistress. So he knew who she wasn’t, but not who she was.
‘Don’t be so sure,’ she muttered, trying not to be ridiculously pleased by the back-handed compliment and trying not to inhale too obviously his warm, male, musky fragrance, but he smelt so good!
‘Right now explanation.’
The clipped instruction made her blink. ‘What?’ Anna asked, struggling to focus thanks to the brown thumb now stroking the sensitive inside of her wrist. Ironically he didn’t even seem to be aware he was doing it, while the contact was sending sharp breath-stealing electric thrills through her entire body.
‘Explain to me why you pretended to be someone you are not.’
She got the strength from somewhere to tug her hands free. Experiencing a stab of disappointment when he didn’t attempt to retrieve them, she folded them in her lap and shuffled her bottom to the far end of the sofa.
The gesture drew a brief wry smile from Cesare, but his eyes remained intent and unsmiling on her. Face turned to him in half profile, exposing the smooth curve of her cheek and the elegant line of her long neck, at times like this she frequently brought to mind one of those Degas dancing figures, combining sinuous, sensuous promise with an almost ethereal quality, but she was warm to touch with an earthy sensuality that no painting could reproduce.
‘I’m exactly who I said I was—Anna Henderson.’ Her eyes flickered to him and then she felt her anger slip quickly away again. There had been occasions recently when she had lost sight of that fact, times when she had caught herself asking, Is this me?
There were moments when the woman who had caught the sleeper from London just a short time ago seemed like a stranger, one who had felt a lot more sure of things than she was.
‘You have never had an affair with Paul.’
The accusation in his voice made her turn her head sharply, causing her hair to whip across her face. Blowing the gleaming strands from her cheek, she tucked them impatiently behind her ears.
‘So this is the mind they liken to a steel trap in action? Wow, I’m overcome with admiration.’
He arched a sardonic brow and drawled, ‘Sometimes, Anna, your efforts to derail a discussion are pretty pathetic.’
The boredom in his voice brought a flush to her cheeks. ‘Not unlike your selective amnesia. I never said I’d had an affair with him,’ she reminded him bitterly. ‘That was all your idea.’
‘An idea you did nothing to dispel.’ The furrow in his brow deepened as he recalled the level of genuine animosity in her voice when he had mentioned Paul’s name, yet it was now clear they were strangers.
‘You’ve obviously never met Paul, so how come you had such a strong reaction when I mentioned his name?’
‘You mean like you do, I jump to conclusions?’ She shook her head, sidetracked from the question by her feelings of angry resentment. ‘You know, I really do believe that you take some sort of twisted pleasure in thinking the worst of me,’ she accused, remembering all those occasions when his eyes had held contempt when he had looked at her. Though his contempt was easier to cope with than the... She lowered her eyes, swallowing hard. Even the memory of his burning stare could make her insides shudder.
