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Her eyes gleamed with triumph. She was hardly aware that there was a party happening outside—that her party was happening outside. She had been vaguely aware of a couple of people entering and leaving the kitchen, but they hadn’t interrupted them. An earthquake couldn’t have interrupted them.
It was just like when she was young—when sharing the same space as him could hold every fibre of her being captive. She was fixated by the dark, dangerous charisma in his glittering eyes.
It was strange to think that she could just reach out and touch his chest. Accordingly, she had her arms resolutely folded, and her knuckles were white from the pressure of her fingers biting into the soft flesh of her upper arms.
‘Well…maybe you’re right,’ Alessandro drawled softly. ‘Maybe the wise thing is to hold out until the search for the perfect mate is successful. Of course, there’s always the chance that a person could grow old waiting….’
‘It’s a risk,’ Megan told him airily.
‘A risk you’re willing to take?’
Megan had a moment of discomfort as she pictured herself getting older and older in the pursuit of Mr Right, until she was a shrivelled up old woman, living on her own, with only a cat for company. She came from a close family unit and had never doubted that she would marry, be happy, have kids—just like her sisters and her parents.
‘If it means never settling for second best…’
‘And what went wrong with those guys, Megan? The witty, thoughtful ones? Why did they fail to measure up? Maybe your standards were a little too high. Do you think that was it?’ He smiled slowly. ‘Or maybe I set an impossible benchmark….’
‘You…you are the most conceited, arrogant…’
‘Yes, yes, yes—but you still haven’t answered me….’
Victoria was probably looking at her watch, her eyes darting round in search of him as she tried to avoid the ministrations of the pushy football coach. But Alessandro was hostage to this intense, disquieting conversation. Megan’s eyes were blazingly angry, but that didn’t faze him. In fact, he wondered how he could have forgotten how passionate and vibrant she was by nature.
‘What’s there to say? Your benchmark was an upwardly mobile, soon-to-be-a-multi-millionaire guy without a conscience. Fair to say that it’s a definite plus if I meet a man who doesn’t live up to that sterling example.’
‘Upwardly mobile?’
‘What would you prefer, Alessandro? Ambitious to the point of ruthless?’
‘Better.’
‘You really mean that, don’t you?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with ambition, Megan, and you knew that about me when we were going out. Don’t tell me that you saw me sitting in front of books, chasing a Masters degree for the sheer hell of it?’
‘No, but at least you were more fun then. Did you get your Masters in the end?’
Alessandro’s face was taut with displeasure. It had been a long time since anyone had dared be so outspoken with him. In fact, he thought grimly, he couldn’t think of anyone else who had ever dared be so outspoken with him—even before he had made his millions and attained his position of invincibility.
‘Well?’ Megan recklessly flirted with danger, every pore of her being alive to his presence and the heady effect of those glittering dark eyes. ‘Are you still in there? Don’t tell me that magnificent brain of yours has suddenly decided to hibernate…’
There was a part of her that was very much aware of the quicksand on which she was leaping up and down, but it was a very small part compared to the part that was relishing the feeling of subjecting him to a little criticism on his life choices, considering he had been so blasé about criticising hers.
He’d hate to be thought a bore. It had always been his most incisive put-down—the one word by which he would casually dismiss someone, out of his sphere. In the past, any lecturer referred to by him as a bore had stood the uncomfortable risk of being subjected to Alessandro’s verbal wordplay—and Alessandro had never lost even then, even as a young man in his twenties. And now any colleague he considered a bore simply became invisible.
‘You are getting out of your depth with this conversation, Megan,’ Alessandro gritted. His eyes flickered to her, to the cup she was still holding. ‘Maybe it’s time you called it a day.’
‘I’ve had two cups of punch! I don’t think I’ll be keeling over any time soon.’
‘Two cups too many, judging from your wild antics with the football coach who may not be your lover but might be within your sights. Is he?’ Alessandro gripped her arm and jerked her towards him.
