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I laughed. ‘Because that is what I was born to be,’ I replied, the familiar insult one which had not bothered me in years. My wealth and success had insulated me from the brutal indignities of my childhood—which was precisely why I had worked like a dog to escape them.
Edina stormed off, but she was instantly forgotten as my gaze tracked back to the girl in red, still dancing alone on the other side of the ballroom. But then one of my reserve drivers—Jack Rogers, a young man with a promising future on the track—swung in behind her and rested one hand lightly on her hip to whisper something in her ear.
She glanced over her shoulder, startled, but then sent him a shy smile.
Fury burst in my chest—bright and brittle and incandescent—galvanizing me to storm through the crowd towards them. Rogers’s bright future was about to crash and burn if he didn’t take his hands off her. Because I had just decided, tonight, the girl in red would be mine...
CHAPTER TWO
Then...
Jessie
‘DIDTHELADYask you to put your hands on her, Rogers?’
My head swung round at the gruff comment, to find Renzo Camaro standing in front of me, glaring at the guy behind me.
The shock to my system was swift and predictably chaotic—even though I’d been busy ignoring him all evening and concentrating on enjoying myself. But nowhere near as swift as the speed with which the hand that had been cupping my hip disappeared.
‘Hey, Mr Camaro, great party,’ the guy stuttered. ‘I didn’t know she was yours.’
‘She’s not!’ I announced, finally finding my voice, as my outrage caught up with the ripple of awareness which had blindsided me. How dare the two of them talk about me as if I wasn’t even there.
And how could Camaro look even more gorgeous when he was behaving like a caveman. And why was he?
Before I could consider either of those questions though, or get a handle on my reaction, the guy behind me was gone, scared off by his boss. Something about that bugged me even more. Was every woman here just supposed to be part of Camaro’s smorgasbord of available bed partners? I could still remember in far too much detail the kiss he’d planted on the supermodel Edina Grant earlier. What had happened to her?
The music the DJ was playing shifted down a notch, into a slower and sexier R&B tune. Camaro stepped closer, his lips quirking in a wry smile as he looked at me,reallylooked at me.
My breath clogged in my lungs. Annoyingly.
Why was his attention so intoxicating? When he was behaving like a jerk?Again.
‘What is your name?’ he asked, as his bold gaze swept over my features.
I opened my mouth, to blurt it out. But then I realised, I didn’t want him to know who I was. I didn’t want him to put me together with the mousy tomboy who he’d never noticed before. Tonight, I had decided to be someone else... And somehow I seemed to have succeeded, because he had never looked at me before with interest in his eyes.
‘Why do you want to know?’ I asked provocatively, deliberately avoiding his question.
‘Isn’t it obvious?’ he murmured, confusing me. But then he stepped even closer, so close I could see the flecks of gold in his irises, and smell the scent of luxury soap, clean man and a subtle, expensive cologne. His gaze lifted to the chignon I had spent an hour arranging, and I was suddenly aware of the sweaty tendrils which had escaped during the hours of dancing and now clung to my neck.
My cheeks heated at the thought of how dishevelled I must look.
But instead of disdain, what I saw in his eyes was approval as his gaze returned to mine. ‘Why will you not tell me your name?’ he asked again.
His voice was so husky it seemed to reverberate at my core. Then he lifted his hand and ran his thumb down the side of my face and over the mask. His touch was light and fleeting, but the brief contact was electric. I jolted back. He laughed at my transparent reaction, his chuckle rough with amusement, and arrogance. And more of that intoxicating approval.
Before I could come up with a plausible reply he added, ‘If you have crashed this event, I have no intention of asking you to leave.’
‘Good to know,’ I murmured, feeling brutally exposed and wary now, as well as impossibly aroused. How had he got the upper hand so quickly? And why had the hot stone returned to throb and ache in my abdomen, when I’d spent the evening convincing myself it was a freak reaction never to be repeated?
I sent up a silent prayer of thanks for the mask—which at least afforded me some protection from that all-seeing gaze—and my weird reaction to it.
He laughed again. ‘So youarea party crasher.’
I frowned back. ‘I’m not sure what’s so amusing.’
‘Believe me,Principessa,’ he said, the regal Italian title rolling off his tongue like an endearment, and disturbing me even more. Had he read my mind earlier, when our gazes connected? Did he know for one brief moment I had kidded myself I was a princess? But then he added, ‘If you knew how I have been unable to take my eyes off you all evening, you would know what is so amusing...’
