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Giancarlo felt as if his skin were being lifted off his flesh by a rash of fury. For in the face of never producing a grandchild of either sex with the death of Marco, Edward, it seemed, had decided to pass the watch on to his mistress! Not even his wife of twenty-five loya
l, faithful years—but his bloody mistress!
And she keeps it stuffed in a box with a load of worthless trinkets, he then added contemptuously. What does that say about the real person she is? he asked himself. If it means so little to her, then why the hell hasn’t she sold it and made herself a tidy profit out of Edward’s love?
‘I’ll have it fixed for you,’ he offered.
‘No!’ she almost shrieked in her urgency. Then tried to calm herself. ‘I t-tried once, but they said it w-would cost too m-much.’
I just bet they did, he thought grimly as he sent her horror leaping when he casually flipped the watch into his pocket. ‘Let me try,’ he offered. ‘I know someone who takes great delight in restoring old watches…’
‘I’d rather keep it exactly as it is,’ she said, needing to moisten her lips as she held out her hand. ‘In f-fact it means too much to me to w-want to risk letting it out of my sight.’
‘I’m not going to lose it for you,’ he assured. ‘Just get it—’
‘No, Giancarlo!’ she snapped—in more ways than vocally, he noted cynically as she made a sudden dive towards his pocket in her desperation to get the watch back! ‘Give it to me! Please—!’
His response was to lift her up by the waist and drop her down on the bed, then to follow her. ‘Make me,’ he taunted, feeling anger flip him over into some other place entirely that literally set his teeth on edge. His eyes were hot, his body hard and—God help him, but he wanted her!
Wanted her so badly that it took him by storm.
His only consolation to that, he supposed later when he stood beneath the ice-cold jet of the shower, was that she had been affected as badly as he.
But when he came back into the bedroom, he found his clothes waiting for him on the neatly remade bed—and the watch was no longer in his pocket…
Natalia didn’t know why he had brought them here. Glancing around her, she tried very hard to see what the attraction was in the most fashionable and therefore busiest restaurant in London right now.
After the small, more intimate places he had taken her to before, this place felt brash and noisy and over the top with its trendy decor and its trendy people all greeting each other with trendy kisses wrapped up in super-trendy smiles.
Why? she wanted to know. What is supposed to be so different about tonight, that he decided to bring me to a place like this?
You know why, the mocking little answer came back, sending her stress levels inching up another couple of notches. The man is straining at the leash with boredom while he waits to find out if he’s going to be let off the hook by you.
Suddenly she wanted to be sick…
If she got any paler she would probably pass out! Giancarlo thought grimly as he fielded yet another greeting from someone whose name he didn’t even remember.
They ate fashionable food from fashionable plates, with London’s fashionable set milling all around them, and he hated every minute of it even while he kept his social smile in place, and pretended this was just what he wanted.
But it wasn’t. Hell—he didn’t know what he wanted any more! She tied him in knots, he admitted, glaring at her sitting there across the table from him looking so damn beautiful in her sparkling black dress that made him think of the black underwear she was probably wearing, and with her hair like silk against her shoulders—and that cheap gold watch, which reminded him of another watch, circling her slender wrist.
And he didn’t like the way other men were eyeing her up, he added to his list of grievances, though she didn’t seem to notice, he had to confess.
In fact, she couldn’t look more unimpressed with a place if she tried to be!
Or maybe it was him she was unimpressed with, he pondered with a sting that made him snatch up his wineglass. Did the urbane sophisticate in the bow-tie and the dinner suit, who drew the flattering attention of all the other sophisticates here, not reach her at all?
When was she going to give him the answer? he added on a restless shrug of his black-silk-covered shoulders that showed how Natalia Deyton was beginning to get under his skin in more ways than he wanted to deal with! She gave him nothing and he gave everything! he decided with an arrogance that tried to completely ignore that what he was getting from her was exactly what he’d aimed for!
Edward’s mistress becoming his mistress. Nothing more, nothing less.
On paper he supposed he was a step or two up from a man who was twice her age and married with it, he allowed with a bitter kind of wit.
Though even he couldn’t afford to give out Fabergé heirlooms as payment for services rendered! And—hell, he grimly extended on that theme. If he—Giancarlo—had found it easy enough to take her from Edward, then what was to stop her moving on as easily if a bigger catch came along?
An answer to one specific question, he reminded himself with a burning flash of his eyes in her direction. Yes or no, Natalia? he questioned silently. Surely she had to know something by now…?
He wanted out, she just knew he did. He was feeling so trapped by their situation that he was barely managing to contain his frustration with it any longer. She was going to have to let him off the hook. Yes or no to the question that was burning holes in both their heads. She was going to have to set him free, then disappear. It was the only thing for her to do even if the very idea was making her feel positively nauseous…
