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Now he was rich so many people petitioned him.
But Dante had never thought Alicia would do so.
She was the one person who had appeared on the stage of his life without resentment or agenda. The one person whose trust he hadn’t had to pay handsomely for.
Until now.
But it wasn’t just curiosity as to what she wanted that was winning.
How could it still be good to see her, even when he knew it was a ruse?
And he might have been being a little facetious, but she reallydidlook incredible. The pale green was perfect with her olive skin, and he’d instantly noted her bare, toned calves. She still wore no make-up—none. Her shape wasmore... More breasts, more hips, even more appealing, and incredible was still the correct word.
‘Actually,’ Dante said, ‘while you’re here, could you open all the drapes? I might as well see the sunrise now that I’m up.’
He watched as she set to work and he could feel her silent fury even as she tried to quash it and attempt a recovery from her little outburst. ‘It’s so early...’ she said.
‘It’s the time I specified.’
‘No...’ She let out a little false laugh. ‘I mean six a.m. is not the best time for conversation.’
It was the only time he’d misread her.
An easy mistake—for how could he have guessed that she was merely angling for a coffee invitation when it was as if he could see images of them together flickering on the walls and ceilings? When with each turn of the kaleidoscope he was shown another intimate moment they’d shared.
With such potent energy coursing between them, unseen and yet so tangible, Dante assumed her plan was first to seduce and then to ask for whatever it was she wanted.
His response was world-weary. ‘Am I supposed to ask at this point what six a.m.isthe best time for?’
‘I just meant that there are better times in the day to converse.’
‘Did you, now?’
‘Yes,’ Alicia said, evidently waiting for him to remember his Sicilian manners. And as she tied the final sash she made one last attempt to engineer the conversation. ‘It really has been ages...’
‘Since when?’ Dante asked.
‘Since we last saw each other. It was at your mother’s funeral, I believe.’
Not the best seduction line, Dante thought, and was about to give a slight scoffing laugh and call her out when he forgot his own rules. And it was Dante now who veered from the script.
‘That wasn’t the last time we saw each other, Alicia.’
Alicia straightened, and then fiddled unnecessarily with the privacy curtains as he spoke on.
‘Are you forgetting what happenedafterthe funeral?’ he asked. ‘When we took shelter from the blood rain?’
‘No...’ Alicia croaked.
‘Before that we swam, though,’ Dante mused, and though his voice was low and soft it was not meant to soothe her, but to inflame her as he added, ‘If I remember correctly.’
‘I’m not sure...’
‘I am,’ Dante said. ‘Though of course we didn’t actually swim...and we politely didn’t mention what occurred beneath the water.’
She stood with her back to him. ‘Thesciroccomakes people crazy.’
Alicia felt dizzy, and was suddenly desperate to flee. She’d been playing with fire, she realised, a long-smouldering fire that was now starting to flame.
