скачать книгу бесплатно
The mutinous expression lightened and Arianna threw her arms around her father before taking off and running back in the direction of the castle, her half of Maddie’s sandwich still clasped in her hand. To Maddie’s surprise, and no little apprehension, the Conte made no move to follow his daughter, remaining in the glade and fixing Maddie with an inscrutable look.
With an inward sigh she put her own half-sandwich back in its bag. The cook had stuffed it full of mozzarella, rocket and sun-dried tomatoes; there was no way of eating it in any kind of dignified way, and Maddie needed all the dignity she could muster in front of this man.
‘It’s a lovely day.’
Small talk? Seriously. ‘Yes.’ Not the most articulate of responses, but all that expensive education teaching Maddie etiquette hadn’t prepared her for how to answer when a man said one thing, but his body language said something quite different. Dante Falcone was ramrod-straight, gaze fixed firmly on her, looking more as if he was about to deliver a lecture rather than discuss the weather.
Deliver a lecture or devour her whole. Maddie curled her hands into fists, refusing to give in to the urge to smooth her red skirt down, but she couldn’t help recalling what happened to girls in red who talked to wolf-eyed strangers in the woods.
Oh, what big eyes you have...
‘Would you be kind enough to accompany me on a short walk? There is something I would like to discuss with you.’
Maddie tried not to give her half-sandwich a longing look. She wanted to sit, eat and just be, not go for what was bound to be an excruciatingly uncomfortable walk. She had spent less than two hours in Dante Falcone’s company and in those two hours he had deliberately embarrassed her, she had embarrassed herself, she’d been borderline rude several times. Why would she put herself through a second dose of that?
‘Please,’ he added. And then he smiled. And that changed everything.
The smile transformed Dante Falcone’s face, softening the sharp, lean edges, transforming the saturnine look into something warmer, something Maddie wanted to get close to, his good looks no longer remote, statue-like, but flesh and blood and all the more attractive for that. Desire, new, hot and heavy, flooded through her, drying her throat and taking all capacity to think and reason away.
She reached for words, any words, but found none. Instead she nodded as he turned away towards a path she hadn’t yet explored, supremely confident that she’d follow him. And she did, her feet powerless to disobey.
‘You speak Italian very well.’
That was ironic; right now she could barely manage English. ‘I went to a finishing school near Geneva. We spoke mostly French and Italian there.’
Maddie sensed rather than saw the rise of his elegant brows. ‘And what brought you into event management?’
‘I kind of fell into it,’ she said carefully, but the Conte didn’t react, merely waited for her to carry on and reluctantly she did. ‘I grew up in a house a little like the Castello Falcone.’
‘I see.’
There was no condemnation in the words, but Maddie couldn’t help bristling. People often assumed that she’d spent her time floating around like some Jane Austen heroine, arranging flowers and making calls and considering it work. She straightened her shoulders, matching her pace with his. She was proud of what she had achieved. It would be nice if someone else was too.
Вы ознакомились с фрагментом книги.
Для бесплатного чтения открыта только часть текста.
Приобретайте полный текст книги у нашего партнера:
