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‘You seem cynical,’ Liza allowed.
‘I consider myself a realist,’ Fausto returned, and she laughed, a crystal-clear sound that seemed to reverberate through him like the ringing of a bell.
‘Isn’t that what every cynic says?’
‘And what are you? An optimist?’ He imbued the word with the necessary scepticism.
‘I’m a realist. I’ve learned to be.’ For a second she looked bleak, and Fausto realised he was curious.
‘And where did you learn that lesson?’
She gave him a pert look, although he still saw a shadow of that unsettling bleakness in her eyes. ‘From people such as yourself.’ She moved her knight—really, what was she thinking there? ‘Your move.’
Fausto’s gaze quickly swept the board and he moved a pawn. ‘I don’t think you know me well enough to have learned such a lesson,’ he remarked.
‘I’ve learned it before, and in any case I’m a quick study.’ She looked up at him with glinting eyes, a coy smile flirting about her mouth. A mouth Fausto had a sudden, serious urge to kiss. The notion took him so forcefully and unexpectedly that he leaned forward a little over the game, and Liza’s eyes widened in response, her breath hitching audibly as surprise flashed across her features.
For a second, no more, the very air between them felt tautened, vibrating with sexual tension and expectation. It would be so very easy to close the space between their mouths. So very easy to taste her sweetness, drink deep from that lovely, luscious well.
Of course he was going to do no such thing. He could never consider a serious relationship with Liza Benton; she was not at all the sort of person he was expected to marry and, in any case, he’d been burned once before, when he’d been led by something so consuming and changeable as desire.
As for a cheap affair…the idea had its tempting merits, but he knew he had neither the time nor inclination to act on it. An affair would be complicated and distracting, a reminder he needed far too much in this moment.
Fausto leaned back, thankfully breaking the tension, and Liza’s smile turned cat-like, surprising him. She looked so knowing, as if she’d been party to every thought in his head, which thankfully she hadn’t been, and was smugly informing him of that fact.
‘Checkmate,’ she said softly and, jolted, Fausto stared at her blankly before glancing down at the board.
‘That’s impossible,’ he declared as his gaze moved over the pieces and, with another jolt, he realised it wasn’t. She’d put him in checkmate and he hadn’t even realised his king had been under threat. He’d indifferently moved a pawn while she’d neatly spun her web. Disbelief warred with a scorching shame as well as a reluctant admiration. All the while he’d assumed she’d been playing an amateurish, inexperienced game, she’d been neatly and slyly laying a trap.
‘You snookered me.’
Her eyes widened with laughing innocence. ‘I did no such thing. You just assumed I wasn’t a worthy opponent.’ She cocked her head, her gaze turning flirtatious—unless he was imagining that? Feeling it? ‘But, of course, you judge on what you see.’
The tension twanged back again, even more electric than before. Slowly, deliberately, Fausto knocked over his king to declare his defeat. The sound of the marble clattering against the board was loud in the stillness of the room, the only other sound their suddenly laboured breathing.
He had to kiss her. He would. Fausto leaned forward, his gaze turning sleepy and hooded as he fastened it on her lush mouth. Liza’s eyes flared again and she drew an unsteady breath, as loud as a shout in the still, silent room. Then, slowly, deliberately, she leaned forward too, her dress pulling against her body so he could see quite perfectly the outline of her breasts.
There were only a few scant inches between their mouths, hardly any space at all. Fausto could already imagine the feel of her lips against his, the honeyed slide of them, her sweet, breathy surrender as she gave herself up to their kiss. Her eyes fluttered closed. He leaned forward another inch, and then another. Only centimetres between them now…
‘Here you are!’
The door to the study flung open hard enough to bang against the wall, and Fausto and Liza sprang apart. Chaz gave them a beaming smile, his arm around a rather woebegone-looking Jenna. Fausto forced a courteous smile back, as both disappointment and a very necessary relief coursed through him.
That had been close. Far, far too close.
