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‘Never,’ she breathed immediately with self-protecting swiftness, with horror at his calm assurance. ‘Absolutely no way.’
She shook her head, even as her blood sizzled at his nearness. She tried to push free but it was futile against his strength. Eventually he let her go and only the wall at her back kept her from falling.
His eyes flickered down over her silk button down dress, her loose hair and plain earrings. ‘You’re dressed fine for dinner; stay here and enjoy an aperitif, we’ll be down in half an hour.’ And, with another swift, devastating kiss, he walked away and Alicia realized that everyone had left. She hadn’t even noticed. She turned around and the two launches bobbed with what seemed to be blissful unconcern on the gently lapping waters.
* * *
By the last evening of the week Alicia was a bag of nerves. This situation, which had started out as a result of her assumption that he was the father of Mel’s baby, had morphed into something else entirely. Something that had nothing to do with outside influences—something between them. Uniquely. And Alicia had nowhere to turn. Melanie was being cared for, was thriving in the new house with Paolo, who appeared to be the devoted fiancé. Yet that had an awful tendency of slipping from her mind completely, so consumed was she by this man. So consumed had she become, after a week of intimate looks, physical contact, but, as yet … no move to take her to bed.
And the awful thing was, it was all she could think about.
She looked at him now as he drove his car into the small nearby town. Behind them were a couple of luxurious people carriers conveying the guests. The breeze barely ruffled her hair and he drove with sure controlled mastery, those long fingers resting on the gear stick, very close to her leg. They were on their way to have dinner in that same hotel that she’d seen him emerge from only a week ago. And tomorrow they would travel to Cape Town.
She cast him a look and couldn’t keep it in any longer—what she’d found out earlier in a conversation with Patricia. Guilt clawed at her again, an annoyingly frequent emotion with this man.
‘Why didn’t you tell me what your plane was really being used for when it brought the clothes? I had no idea that it was bringing children from the orphanage in Milan to the lake for water sports.’
He didn’t turn to look at her and was silent for a long time. His jaw clenched and a muscle pulsed under the skin.
‘Dante—’
‘I heard you.’
‘So … why?’
He flicked her a glance and then looked back to the road. ‘I didn’t tell you because it’s none of your business what I use my aeroplane for.’
Hurt struck her with the precision of a tiny arrow. ‘I know. But I just … I wish you’d told me, that’s all.’ Her hands twisted in her lap.
He hated the fact that she had found out. It made him feel absurdly weak … exposed. He cast her a look and arched a brow. ‘Spare me the fake interest. The others might be taken in by the selfless aid nurse but I’ve no doubt you had an agenda. No doubt a man must have been involved—a rich doctor, perhaps? What happened—did it go sour? Is that why you came home and you and your sister schemed to make the best of a bad situation?’ he queried idly.
Alicia sucked in a breath. It was on the one hand so near to the truth and on the other so far removed from the truth that she saw spots appear before her eyes. Her anger, for once wasn’t hot and tumultuous; it was icy-cold and far stronger.
She turned to face him. ‘I take back what I said, for trying to be polite.’ She waved an agitated hand. ‘No doubt your apparent philanthropy is a highly calculated move to endear you to the public. Because, if you didn’t at least do that, wouldn’t you just be another rags to riches story? Another of the idle nouveau riche? No doubt your action gets you major kudos in our politically correct world. Especially here, with people you need to impress …’
The only sign that she’d got to him was his hands clenching on the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. And stupidly, she was already regretting her words; she knew it was a cheap shot. Patricia had waxed lyrical for nearly an hour earlier, telling her how involved Dante was with the street kids and orphans usually overseeing their activities himself, and that he was patron of numerous charities for street kids in nearly every city in Italy.
His voice when he spoke sent shivers of fear down her spine. ‘You’re right in one aspect Alicia.’
‘I am?’ she said hesitantly, all bravado gone.
‘Yes.’ He sent her a smile and it turned her blood cold. A large brown hand snaked out and gripped her bare thigh, shoving her skirt up roughly. Her immediate reaction was to take his hand off her leg; its effect had been violent. But he pushed her hand away easily.
He still drove, his concentration not gone for a second as that hand inched higher and higher. Alicia tried to clench her legs close together, but her instinct was to relax them. His hand was so high now that he grazed her panties and Alicia had to close her eyes at the awful wantonness of the picture she must present, and at the way she could feel herself start to throb down there. She gripped his wrist but that was worse, she could feel his pulse, his hair roughened skin.
Without her even realizing it, he’d pulled in to park outside the hotel with a smooth move and, before anyone approached them, he leant over, cupping her sex properly, intimately. He was dark, smouldering, intense. She couldn’t speak. She was on fire and he knew it.
‘Yes. You are right … all we need to focus on is this. Who cares what we do, what we are?’
She opened her mouth to speak, to say, Stop, I do care, and he halted her words by meeting her lips with a devastating kiss that was so incendiary that she could feel herself reacting, shamelessly wanting to push into his hand in a totally instinctive move. He pulled back, his eyes glittering, a mocking triumphant smile on his face. She coloured in shame, a vivid recollection of only a week before, the way he’d left that woman on the nearby steps coming back to taunt her.
‘And don’t even try to deny it any more. This is why you’re here, why I’m even indulging you or your sister at all.’
At that moment Alicia knew that she was in more trouble than she’d ever been in her entire life and that this man had the power to hurt her in a way that made anything that had gone before seem like nothing more than a teenage crush.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
ON THE DRIVE back to the villa after dinner, which seemed to have passed in an indecently short amount of time, there was no conversation. They had stayed for coffee after dessert and when everyone else, in various states of inebriation decided to go to the club downstairs, Dante had taken Alicia’s hand and led her outside.
