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‘Right. O...kay,’ Darren responded, his tone a little bewildered. ‘I’m cool with it if you are. The restaurant is a couple of blocks away.’ He glanced at her heeled boots. ‘You don’t mind walking, do you?’
‘Not at all.’ She smiled and received a quick, appreciative one back. They fell into an easy stride, the conversation light and casual. It continued through a delicious meal at an Irish-themed bar and restaurant then out onto an even busier Manhattan street. ‘The first club is Downtown. I have VIP passes.’ He hailed a cab and helped her into it. Antonio took residence in the front seat, his burly presence making the cab driver blink hard before shrugging in defeat. Darren raised his eyebrows at her, and Carla couldn’t help but giggle.
Outside the exclusive Cuban nightclub, limos competed with flashy sports cars for attention. They were shown to a VIP section with plush gold velvet sofas and an unlimited supply of complimentary drinks. Vowing to stick to a two-drink threshold, Carla sipped her first drink slowly. Their easy conversation continued with Darren regaling her with stories of his childhood in Dublin. When the club owner came over to speak to him, she took off her jacket and went down to the edge of the dance floor. She smiled non-committally at a few interested glances, resolutely ignored the more pointed ones, then sighed in relief when Darren joined her a few minutes later.
‘So what do you think?’ He gestured to the club’s interior and dance floor.
The rich, slightly ethnic theme was sensual enough to evoke the spirit of Javier’s brand, while contemporary enough to appeal to the sophisticated urbanite.
She smiled. ‘I like the music, and I think the space will work well.’ During dinner, he’d expanded on the brief of work hard, play harder theme of the shoot, with the primary shoot being on the ice rink and the secondary at the nightclub.
Darren’s hand slid around her waist. ‘Want to try it out?’ He grinned.
Shrugging, she nodded. ‘Why not?’
They descended into the crowd to the tune of throbbing Cuban drums.
Laughing, she entered the fray, throwing her arms above her head partly to keep her wrist from being accidentally re-injured. Darren, a more than adequate partner, stayed close, his appreciative gaze dancing over her body every now and then. After two songs, the tempo changed to a slower, sexier beat. Darren danced closer, but still kept a respectable distance. Catching her forearms, he gently placed them on his shoulders, a small smile playing at his lips as he swayed in time with her.
‘You really are stunningly beautiful, you know that?’ he confessed in her ear.
She blushed, wishing away the sudden embarrassment and the slight discomfiting realisation that perhaps he was more interested in her than he’d let on. ‘Umm...grazie,’ she murmured.
He laughed, the careful hands he’d placed on her waist drawing her closer. ‘I love your accent. In fact I don’t think there’s a single thing about you that I don’t find—’ He froze suddenly, his eyes bulging as he swallowed hard. ‘Oh, hell,’ he muttered.
She blinked in surprise. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Carla.’
Her head whipped round at the barely repressed violence in the deep, low voice that curled over her shoulder.
Javier stood three scant feet away, his nostrils flared in volcanic fury as he stared at them. His chest rose and fell in rapid rhythm, his fists clenched at his sides. The emotions vibrating off him lent him an impossibly overwhelming aura, a fact that transmitted to the nearest clubbers, who’d stopped dancing and were openly staring.
Alarmed at his unexpected presence, she went to step away and stumbled. Darren’s hold tightened on her.
The growl that rose over the music had several people stepping away, more than a few of them making room and nudging each other as the threat of a salacious confrontation thickened in the air.
‘What are you doing here?’ she croaked.
He didn’t answer. His gaze remained fixed with naked intensity on where Darren’s hands rested on her waist. ‘If you value the use of your limbs, O’Hare, I suggest you remove your hands from her body. Right now.’
Darren released her with comic swiftness. ‘Mr Santino—’
‘Leave. Now.’
Outrage sparked within her. ‘Javier! You can’t do that—’
‘Take your hands off the man, Carla, so he can leave, or I won’t be responsible for what happens next,’ he snarled with a guttural tone that was barely coherent.
But she got the message.
She took her time, though, despite the quaking unfolding alongside the outrage, because she refused to be intimidated. Darren stepped away, his apprehension escalating as he swallowed hard again. He attempted to cast her an apologetic glance. Javier took a single step towards him and he changed his mind, turning in the opposite direction to disappear through the seething crowd.
Javier turned his bristling frame to her. ‘You have two minutes,’ he bit out.
She raised one brow, unwilling to admit the blood strumming urgently through her veins was in any way to do with his sudden dramatic appearance. That would hand him too much power over her. ‘Two minutes for what?’
‘To retrieve whatever you came here with. Or we leave without it.’
