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She saw him almost immediately. His back was to her but she’d know him anywhere. Her own body, traitor that it was, seemed to throb in response. Her blood felt heavy in her veins and her heart started thumping even as she tried to negate the effect. But that tall, powerful physique was so intimately familiar—the arrogant tilt to his head, the black hair cut short, close to his skull. The straight spine. She had traced that bare spine with her fingers as she’d arched underneath him. She could remember the salty taste of his skin, the way he’d filled her so completely that—
Cara stumbled. How could she get through this?
Among the people he stood with was the other man from the photograph, as intimidatingly gorgeous asVicenzo and undoubtedly as rich. This was a rareified world. She quashed the flutter of fear that told her to turn and run and pushed forward, every step bringing her closer and closer to Vicenzo Valentini.
Vicenzo felt a prickling at the back of his neck. A hint of danger the moment before the snake strikes. He stifled the urge to turn, telling himself he was being ridiculous. But then Caleb halted mid-sentence, Maggie looked to Vicenzo’s right, and an evocative scent teased his nostrils. It was clean and had the unmistakable tang of musky rose. It was very distinctive and very recent in his memory banks. Already his body was responding violently, in a way he hadn’t felt in…weeks. The shocking realisation hit him hard.
With the strangest feeling in his chest he turne
d his head, and there stood Cara Brosnan, staring straight up at him with those huge hazel-flecked green eyes. Her lashes stood out lush and black against the paleness of her skin. Not an ounce of make-up. Time seemed to stand still for a long moment as they stared at each other. His body’s response ratcheted up about a thousand notches.
He heard Maggie ask curiously, ‘Do you know this woman?’
Everything slammed back into Vicenzo—everything this woman had been responsible for. He reacted from a place of deep shock and something that felt suspiciously like guilt. His instinct was to lash out. He denied the response she was evoking with every fibre of his being and drawled easily, ‘No, I don’t believe I do.’ And then he turned away from her and back to Caleb and Maggie, who were looking from him to Cara with undisguised interest.
Vicenzo wasn’t in the habit of not being able to face unpalatable truths. He never shied away from confrontation. And yet right here, right now, for the first time in his life he was reacting with such force to an emotion he didn’t want to explore that he was effectively sticking his head in the sand. The utter ignominy of this made him even angrier.
Cara blinked stupidly for a few seconds. She simply could not believe that he had done that. Denied her very existence. Rage boiled upwards and she started to shake uncontrollably. She’d had all sorts of plans for coming in here and being cool, calm and articulate—but now she knew that was out of the window.
She was barely aware of the other couple standing there as she marched purposefully round to stand right in front of Vicenzo. The look in Vicenzo’s eyes was explicit. It said Don’t even dare. Well, she did. She had to.
Her voice shook but she was beyond caring. ‘How dare you pretend not to know me?’
‘Brosnan!’ Vicenzo’s voice was like the crack of a whip, stinging her skin.
Cara smiled triumphantly, even as every part of her shook so badly she didn’t know how she remained standing. ‘If you don’t know me, then how do you know my name?’
A pulse beat hectically at Vicenzo’s temple. Cara knew she only had the element of surprise for another few seconds at the most. She turned to face the other couple, barely taking them in even as she thought, This man is a colleague of Vicenzo’s. If she could damage his reputation, even just a bit…
A hush had fallen in the crowd around them. ‘Did you know that two months ago your friend here was in London with me?’ Cara pointed a shaking finger at her chest.
She took a deep breath. ‘He deliberately set out to—’
Her words were cut off as pain lanced her upper arm. She realised that Vicenzo had gripped it and was forcibly moving her away and through the crowd, propelling her easily, as if she weighed little more than a feather.
She opened her mouth, and as if reading her mind his head turned. Fierce eyes glared at her. ‘Not another word, Brosnan.’
The crowd parted like the Red Sea, and suddenly they were through the main door of the ballroom, held back by an open-mouthed waiter. Before she knew it Vicenzo had marched her over to a secluded corner in the lobby and brought her to a stumbling halt in front of him. Cara was breathing harshly, and immediately brought a hand to her arm, rubbing it distractedly. The fact that his eyes dropped there for a moment and his cheeks flushed was no comfort.
‘You didn’t have to manhandle me out of there like a two-year-old.’
One brow shot up, and Cara quailed slightly. She’d never seen him look so furious. And how was it that she could be so aware of his devastating appeal in the traditional tuxedo? If anything, he was even more handsome than she remembered, and it skewered her like a knife to be so aware of him after his contemptible treatment of her.
‘Oh, no? And what would you have had me do? Let you blurt out the sordid truth? That you were responsible for—’
‘Stop it!’ Cara hissed desperately, suddenly overwhelmed at facing him at such close proximity. Where he’d held her burned like a brand.
He stood tall, crossing his arms. He was huge and forbidding. ‘What are you doing here, Miss Brosnan?’
‘What are you doing here?’ she counter-attacked, trying to buy time, knowing full well the reason why he was there. Her anger was fast dissolving into a mass of churning confusing emotions now she was faced with him.
‘I have business here. Not that it’s any concern of yours.’
Cara took in a shaky breath and looked away for a second. She was here now. She had to do this. This was what she had come for. He had to know what he had done.
She looked up at him and forced herself to stand tall. ‘Well, I have business here too. With you.’
Vicenzo stepped close to her and watched her reaction. Her eyes widened and her cheeks flushed rose. Her scent teased his nostrils again, and yet she obviously hadn’t come to beguile. In fact he was surprised she hadn’t been stopped at the door, she was so casually dressed. It took a will greater than he possessed not to let his eyes drop down her body, taking in the high swells of her breasts. He had a vivid memory of cupping one breast, of how it had fitted into his palm perfectly and how the tight tip had felt under his thumb. And the taste of it. How it had firmed and puckered even more under his tongue.
