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“No.” She flashed him a look of curiosity. “Do you hit on all your customers?”
“Just the ex-models,” he said with a wink and a cheeky shrug.
“I’m flattered.”
r /> He laughed again. “I get off in an hour. Want to wait around and I’ll… give you a lift home?”
How simple it would have been to accept his offer. To put a band-aid over the pain that seeing Leonardo had ripped raw. “No.” She shook her head. “I can’t wait around an hour. I have to go.”
He opened his mouth to attempt another path of persuasion but she shook her head. “I’m really tipsy.” She pushed away from him. “Sorry.”
“You seem fine to me.”
“She said no.” Leonardo. Aurora froze, her body stiff.
“I heard her.” The barman lifted his hands in surrender. “I heard her.”
“Did you? Because I heard you attempting to change a very drunk woman’s mind.”
“Hey!” Aurora spun around slightly unsteadily. “I am not very drunk.”
His expression was thunderous, as he grabbed one of her arms. “Let’s go.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
“Do not make a scene, Aurora,” he muttered wearily. “By now the paparazzi will have been alerted to the fact that you and I are here. Let’s slip out quietly.”
She stared up at him, and again felt as though she was slipping back through time. “I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”
“Believe me, it’s mutual, but someone has to make sure you get home safe, and I don’t think it’s fair to expect my sister to leave her own celebration, do you?”
Aurora bit down on the snappy reply she’d been about to make. Her eyes drifted to Beatrice, who was happily engaged in conversation with Alec and Peter.
“No,” she conceded mutinously.
Leo nodded, his face without pleasure. He began to guide Aurora through the bar, pausing only to drawl to the bartender, “Don’t worry about it. Believe me, she’s a lot more trouble than she’s worth.”
Aurora lost her footing in surprise and hurt. Leonardo reached out and grabbed her around the waist, his fingers firm at her sides.
“Let me go,” she demanded, not able to meet his eyes.
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure, Aurora. As soon as you’re back at your apartment, I will be thrilled to walk away from you.”
Irrationally, tears sprang to her eyes and she blinked at them furiously. “You don’t need to take me to my apartment. Just help me find a cab.”
“Yeah, right. So you can lurch into another bar along the way? And then what? Another sleazy barman’s bed?”
A bright red Ferrari was parked on a double yellow line in front of the bar.
“Let me guess,” she snapped, walking with his help towards the car. “Yours.”
He compressed his lips. “Get in.”
She turned to face him, and Leonardo sucked in a deep breath. She might be a cold-hearted bitch, but she was, hands down, the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his life. Now, slightly softened by alcohol, with her signature hair left to fall as a silken blonde mane down her back, her blue eyes wide like saucers, and her lips pouted, he recalled what had first attracted him to her.
“Were you always such a dictatorial bastard?”
He tamped down on his frustration. “Yes. I think you used to like it about me. Get in.”
