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He beat her to the water bottle by a mere hair’s breadth brush of their fingers. She snatched her hand away to place it on her lap where her nails curled into a skin-piercing fist while she concentrated on the sparkling water he was pouring into two wineglasses in the taut hope that he wouldn’t ask any more probing questions.
He didn’t. Being as astute as any red-blooded man deeply interested in the woman he meant to thoroughly seduce in the very near future, he realised her reply was her polite way of saying that she never knew her father.
So, with her mother gone, had she begun casting her eyes around looking for someone to fill the hole that had opened up in her life, and found the perfect substitute in a never-known father-figure like Edward?
It all seemed very plausible suddenly—forgivable even—though he had no intention whatsoever of going down that road simply because it would lead him away from what he was now wanting for too many reasons to count.
Not quite liking what that admission was saying to him, he picked up the wineglass and took a deep swallow—forgetting what was actually in the glass!
His expression was so comically disgusted that Natalia forgot to stay aloof and found herself laughing. ‘You didn’t have to have water just because I do,’ she gently pointed out.
‘I was trying to impress you with my temperance!’ he threw back accusingly. ‘And all you do is laugh!’
‘I don’t need impressing,’ she told him with the laughter still warming her eyes.
His own grew still. ‘Oh, yes, you do,’ he insisted, and watched her jump straight back behind her wall as the temperature between them came back to a steady simmer.
I’ll have you, Natalia Deyton, he vowed. By fair means or foul, I will have you…
CHAPTER FOUR
THE meal was a rather quiet affair after that, mainly because Natalia had put herself on guard against Giancarlo Cardinale’s irresistible charisma. But the food was surprisingly light and pleasant, which made her realise that he’d had more control over his Sicilian friend than he’d led her to believe.
He also controlled the small bouts of conversation they slid into, with what she read as his deliberate intention to keep the atmosphere light between them while they ate. So he talked, she listened, offered up a reply when it was absolutely necessary and in general tried very hard not to let herself become more fascinated with him than she was already.
But
it was difficult when the man himself was a fascination even without his smooth, quiet, deeply sensual voice washing over her like a hypnotist’s drone aimed to keep her trance-like.
Her eyes rarely left him so they missed very little: the way he lounged in his seat, the way he ate sparingly, the way he sipped at the half-bottle of crisp dry white wine he had ordered to suit his palate rather than the water…
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like to try some?’ he offered, tipping the bottle of wine towards her invitingly.
Natalia shook her head. They had reached the point in the meal where she was sitting over her empty plate with her elbows resting on the table and her glass suspended close to her mouth between her fingers. Her eyes had darkened, though she wasn’t aware of it, and there was a softer look about her which to him made her seem not of this world again.
Young, lovely, most definitely sexy, yet she gave off a conflicting aura of innocence. That aura bothered him, because it only helped to prove how good she was at projecting herself as something she wasn’t.
Like most seasoned liars, he grimly concluded.
‘A sip of white wine isn’t going to compromise your ability to function efficiently, you know,’ he heard himself snap in irritation.
Irritation at whom? he then asked himself. Her for being what she was or himself for wanting what she was?
‘I’ll fall asleep,’ she said, offering a light shrug of her narrow shoulders when he flicked a sceptical glance at her. ‘It happens,’ she insisted. ‘So I’ve learned to be careful.’
‘You were drinking champagne at lunch yesterday,’ he reminded her. ‘And I don’t recall you falling asleep afterwards.’ In fact she was too feisty if anything, he added silently.
‘Sipping sparingly at it,’ she corrected. ‘As I suspect everyone else was doing.’
‘Apart from the rather impassioned young man you were with, who seemed to be downing it rather—feverishly.’
‘Each to his own.’ She shrugged again, refusing to take the bait he was offering her.
He smiled. He watched her watch the smile materialise with the kind of concentration that set his juices flowing. ‘He fancied you like hell,’ he inserted softly. ‘And had to gulp champagne to stop himself making a grab for you.’
Her blue eyes began to flash a warning of anger. ‘If you noticed that, then you should also have noticed that I didn’t take him on,’ she pointed out.
‘With a face and a figure like yours, Miss Deyton,’ he derided, ‘you should never need to take any man on because they will do all the running for you.’
