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‘I want a word with you in private,’ Dante murmured curtly from the doorway.
‘Maybe later. I have some stuff to do for your mother,’ Topsy replied, shooting a lingering glance in his direction. Three mistresses, she was thinking helplessly. The surfeit of sex he was enjoying should surely have prevented him from demonstrating any interest in her. Yet it had not. His face was taut, faint colour edging his exotic cheekbones, his extraordinary eyes unusually bright below his winged brows. So beautiful, she reflected before she could suppress and kill that dangerous thought.
‘Now,’ Dante ground out like a feudal king demanding subservience.
Her chin lifting, Topsy stood her ground. ‘But—’
‘Now!’ Dante thundered back at her in full volume.
Topsy was so taken aback by the shattering charge of anger he radiated that her feet automatically made the turn for her and she moved towards him, her smooth brow furrowed with concern. ‘What’s happened?’
CHAPTER FIVE (#u95c271be-54f6-5730-b3ca-5097daaa36e0)
DANTE STEPPED BACK to allow her entry to the book-lined room and closed the door with an impatient hand. ‘I’ve received some disturbing information about you.’
Topsy backed away from him towards the window. ‘About...me?’ she exclaimed in astonishment at the claim. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘Jerome St Charles,’ Dante shot back at her. ‘He’s an old friend and a neighbour.’
Topsy was aghast. That name struck her like a slap on the face for, of course, she hadn’t forgotten that unforgettable evening, indeed wouldn’t ever forget the indecent lengths she had been forced to go to before she could persuade her mother to give her the information she sought. It occurred to her at that moment that life could be very random and unjust. What were the odds of that man being an old friend and an actual neighbour of the Leonetti family? How could she possibly be so unlucky? On the other hand, she had done nothing to be ashamed of with Jerome and, unless the man had lied about the time they had spent together, she had no need to defend herself or make pointless excuses.
Dante strolled closer, his keen gaze sharp as a laser beam on her tense and anxious face. ‘I see you recognise the name... Care to give me an explanation?’
‘I don’t have to explain anything I do to you,’ Topsy countered without hesitation. ‘As I said before, you don’t employ me, your mother does.’
‘You will not distress my mother with any reference to this conversation,’ Dante informed her harshly, his contemptuous attitude patent. ‘You will make an excuse, possibly concerning a family problem, and tell her that you are sorry but that you have to return to London immediately.’
Amber-brown eyes wide with wonder at that demand, Topsy stared back at him. ‘You’re asking me to resign from my job and just go?’
‘I’m not asking, I’m telling you to leave,’ Dante ground out. ‘You’ve worked as an escort. You’re not the sort of woman I want working for my mother!’
‘My goodness but you’re prejudiced,’ Topsy declared, her own temper rising. ‘Astonishingly prejudiced and narrow-minded for a man in possession of three mistresses! I would’ve assumed that a live and let live mentality would be more appropriate in your circumstances.’
Dante froze where he stood, eyes widening slightly and then veiling below thick black lashes. Dark blood outlined his hard cheekbones while his firm mouth compressed into an unsmiling line. ‘Where did you get that information from?’
Topsy flushed and made no reply. He hadn’t denied it anyway. Maybe she shouldn’t have thrown it but she had wanted to level the playing field. Why should she stand there being force fed his ethical objections when he himself was leading a far from moral life? ‘You’re a complete hypocrite,’ she condemned.
‘Mikhail Kusnirovich. He told you,’ Dante guessed, struggling for the first time in many years to get a hold on what felt like an ungovernable rage. Dante never ever allowed himself to be out of control.
‘If you’ve found out that I was meeting Mikhail in Florence, you’ve been spying on me,’ Topsy gathered, fierce resentment lancing through her soft brown eyes and hardening them. ‘What gives you the right to invade my private life?’
‘I have the right to protect my mother from a woman likely to cause her distress and embarrassment. And a woman who has worked as an escort and who responds to booty calls from Mikhail Kusnirovich is not an acceptable employee on my terms!’
So inflamed with anger that she was on automatic pilot, Topsy stalked forward and lifted her arm. ‘Don’t you dare call me a whore or malign Mikhail!’ she snapped back at him furiously.
A hand like an iron vice clamped round her wrist to prevent her from delivering the slap she intended. ‘Keep your hands to yourself,’ Dante growled soft and low before dropping her fingers again in a gesture of scorn.
The vibration of his accented drawl seemed to hit a sensitive spot somewhere deep down inside Topsy and she quivered in treacherous response, eyes flying wide to connect with his as sensual shock engulfed her. Something about the way he looked at her called up a deep driven response within her. Regardless of how she felt about it, her wretched body was awakening and suddenly awash with sensations she would have done anything to deny. Her breasts were swelling, the heat of awareness surging to her feminine core. An intoxicating mix of shame and mortification gripped her that she could still be so susceptible to him. ‘That wasn’t what you were saying last night!’ she launched back at him accusingly.
‘Last night I didn’t know that I was dealing with a practised little tart,’ Dante fielded grimly.
‘Whatever turns you on,’ Topsy quipped unevenly, tensing at the straining tightness of her nipples and the warm feeling of sensitivity pulsing like a taunt between her thighs. The atmosphere in the room was as thick and suffocating as the quiet before a thunder storm. ‘And although it is absolutely none of your business, I was not acting like a whore with Mikhail. I know his wife and his children well—I was having lunch with him and catching up on news.’
Dante dealt her an unimpressed appraisal. ‘I don’t believe you.’
Topsy moved towards the door. ‘That’s your prerogative.’
‘You’re not leaving...I haven’t finished with you yet,’ Dante objected vehemently.
‘But I’ve finished with you!’ Topsy said sharply, yanking the door wide to make her escape.
Before she could guess what he intended, Dante wrenched the door from her grasp and slammed it loudly shut again in her face. Shocked by that very physical intervention, Topsy flipped round and leant back against the door, needing the temporary support of the solid wood against her spine. She looked up into scorching green eyes that glittered like stars, so bright against his darker skin. He was seething and he couldn’t hide it. ‘Underneath the bankers’ suit, you’re not Mr Cool at all, are you?’ she murmured in helpless fascination.
‘Not when it comes to protecting my family,’ Dante traded without apology.
‘You’re crowding me,’ Topsy told him, because he was inside her space, way too close for comfort, the familiar scent of his hot male body distracting her when she could least afford to be distracted.
‘Deal with it,’ Dante grated unhelpfully.
‘No, you deal with your temper,’ Topsy advised, shooting straight from the hip. ‘Exactly what did Jerome tell you about me?’
‘That he hired you as an escort and you went out for a meal. He recognised you from a newspaper photo that was taken of you with my mother and decided that it was his duty to speak up.’
Topsy rolled her eyes in mockery, wishing he would back off, wishing he weren’t so domineeringly tall that he made her feel like a ridiculously undersized freak. It was one more way in which they were a poor match: her list of desirable male attributes specified a male no more than nine inches taller. It would be more comfortable for her to be with someone closer to her own size. Her sisters’ husbands were all tall and whenever she disagreed with any of them she carefully kept her distance, having always understood that her diminutive height almost invited a bullying approach.
‘You seem quite unconcerned by what Jerome told me,’ Dante noted in a low gritty drawl. ‘But my mother would be very much shocked.’
‘I think Sofia would be shocked if she thought I’d slept with him, but not that I once dined out with him in a public place,’ Topsy countered drily.
Dante stared down at her radiating frustration. ‘That’s not the point. He paid for your company.’
‘And that’s all he got. Don’t make it sound like I acted like a hooker,’ Topsy urged, big brown eyes increasingly defiant. ‘I worked as an escort for only that one night.’
Dante finally took a step back and she breathed again, peeling her spine off the door, shrugging her taut shoulders to loosen their tension. ‘Do you really think I’m going to believe that you only did it once?’ he derided.
‘You obviously want to think the worst and that’s not being fair to me,’ Topsy complained, sliding past him in a sudden movement that took him by surprise and walking back over to the window where there was too much space for him to corner her again. ‘I went out with Jerome that night as a favour for someone. His usual companion was off sick and I was her replacement. It was totally above board and unworthy of your suspicions.’
‘You worked as an escort. I’m quite sure it wasn’t above board with all your clients,’ Dante vented with a curled lip.
A sound of impatience escaped Topsy. ‘You just don’t listen, do you? Jerome is the only client I ever had because that evening was the only time I ever worked as an escort!’ she snapped back in exasperation.
He shot her a look of wounding derision. ‘You can’t really expect me to believe that...’
‘I went out with Jerome as a favour to my mother,’ Topsy chose to admit, willing to tell him enough to satisfy him because she did not want to be forced to leave the castle just when she was beginning to get to know Vittore.
Dante frowned. ‘Your mother?’
Topsy braced herself. ‘My mother owns and runs an escort agency.’
‘An escort agency?’ Dante repeated in disbelief.
‘There’s nothing I can do about the way my mother chooses to make her living,’ Topsy pointed out curtly. ‘Unfortunately, one doesn’t get to choose one’s parents.’
Dante studied her in silence with caustic cool.
‘Yes, I can already hear the wheels of your limited imagination cranking into motion,’ Topsy told him sourly, her generous pink mouth thinning with annoyance. ‘But no, I wasn’t dragged up in a sordid household by a depraved mother. Relax—no sob story of that sort is about to come your way. I was raised in a perfectly respectable home by my eldest sister and I only got to know my mother again recently.’
‘By the sound of it you should’ve kept your distance from her,’ Dante commented, watching the tip of her tongue flicking out to moisten her full lower lip, angrily registering the stirring of arousal at his groin as perspiration dampened his skin. He only had to look at that luscious mouth and erotic fantasy took over.
Topsy was tense but the pulse of sexual awareness was like a monster running amok inside her body. She was remembering the glory of that hard sensual mouth smashing down on hers, the wonderfully solid feel of his hard, muscular power pinning her against that wall, the indescribable delight of his fingers touching her intimately and finally the waves of wickedly wanton pleasure that had followed. Her knees trembled, her breathing fracturing. ‘Stop looking at me like that,’ she warned him stiffly.
‘You were telling me about your mother,’ Dante reminded her thickly, picturing her on his desk, splayed open and ready for him. He knotted his hands into fists of restraint and breathed in deep and slow, struggling to put a lid on his overactive brain and the images flying up there.
‘I needed some very important information from her,’ Topsy volunteered after a perceptible hesitation. ‘My sisters had warned me that she wasn’t to be trusted but I knew what to expect from her and I was prepared. If you want to get on the right side of my mother you have to bribe her. She said that if I stepped in for the employee who was sick and spent the evening with Jerome in her place, she would give me the information I needed. We made a deal and she understands deals. I know she was hoping that I would agree to take on other clients and work for her as an escort afterwards but I never had any intention of doing that. I’m not that stupid...’
‘What was the information?’ Dante queried, wondering if he could believe anything she told him because of course she would try to vindicate herself in any way that she could. Naturally she would swear that she had only ever worked one evening as an escort and had no plans to do so ever again.
‘That’s private.’ Topsy turned her face away from his hard appraisal, guilty colour mantling her cheeks as the movement made her long dark hair fall against her face and tumble in loose glossy curls round her tense shoulders. ‘That...isn’t for sharing.’
Especially not with a man who would happily use that information to slam another nail in the coffin of his dislike for Vittore. Dante would become even more hostile if something embarrassing from Vittore’s past were to surface to hurt or humiliate his mother.
‘I refuse to believe that you only worked one night as an escort,’ Dante drawled scornfully.
Topsy flipped back to face him. ‘There’s nothing I can do about that.’
‘I do not keep three mistresses,’ Dante told her in a roughened undertone, the denial wrenched from him without his seeming volition.
Topsy shrugged slim shoulders, face carefully nonchalant. ‘It’s nothing to me if you do.’
‘You were angry about it, gioia mia. I could see it in your face.’ Dante savoured his recollection of the moment. ‘Like me, you don’t share.’
‘The rumour must’ve started somewhere,’ Topsy replied, although she hadn’t meant to say something so revealing and cursed her unruly tongue. Now he would think she was angling for an explanation of that story.
Dante closed the distance between them, resting his hands on her narrow shoulders. ‘Once upon a time when I was very young and very randy I thought there was safety in numbers. Instead the combined demands of the three of them drove me crazy.’
His hands felt very heavy on her taut shoulders and her mouth had run dry because once again he had invaded her space. ‘I wasn’t jealous,’ she told him vehemently, recognising that that was what he was driving at and furious at the suggestion.
‘Neither was I, but the thought of you cavorting with Kusnirovich in that hotel suite outraged every skin cell in my body,’ Dante confided huskily, long fingers spreading to smooth the tops of her arms. ‘I can’t stand the idea of another man touching you.’
‘I’m not going to let you touch me,’ Topsy pointed out half under her breath, her lungs less than efficient with him so close. And she wanted to touch him back so badly that it literally hurt to deny herself.
‘Then say no now,’ Dante advised.
‘No...’ Topsy said flatly.
‘Louder and with more conviction,’ Dante urged mockingly, setting her temper on fire.
‘No, Dante no!’ Topsy shouted back at him furiously, wishing he would learn how to take no for an answer.
A loud knock prefaced the abrupt opening of the door. Dante swung round with angry words on his lips, intending to rebuke the offender, only to see his stepfather standing in the doorway with a frown of indecision stamped on his face. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt but I heard raised voices,’ Vittore declared. ‘Sofia was concerned when Topsy didn’t come upstairs.’
Dante vented a soft laugh. ‘We were arguing. I want to give her a driving lesson but she’s not sure she’s willing to trust me,’ he murmured smoothly.
Taken aback by the speed with which he had come up with the excuse, Topsy blinked rapidly. ‘Er...yes,’ she contributed, not one half as smooth as him in a tight corner.
‘If she doesn’t wish to learn to drive she doesn’t have to,’ Vittore commented. ‘It’s not important.’
‘I think it is,’ Dante overruled. ‘It would make her independent. She would be able to work much more efficiently if she could drive.’
‘Right...OK, I’ll take that on board,’ Topsy promised, moving towards the door, desperate to make her escape and willing to use Vittore’s arrival to facilitate it.
‘And there’s no time like the present,’ Dante quipped, drawing level with her, one determined hand pressing lightly to the base of her spine to guide her across the hall. With the other he withdrew his cell phone and instructed someone to bring his mother’s car out of the garage.
‘It’s a small and easily manoeuvred car,’ he remarked, walking her outside into the sunshine. ‘Perfect for the purpose.’
‘I don’t want to do this,’ Topsy told him grittily. ‘I don’t like driving and I don’t want you trying to teach me.’
‘All you need to do is concentrate and you can’t have got a doctorate in advanced maths without that ability,’ Dante countered with assurance.
Topsy chewed her lower lip in vexation. She had never felt less like getting behind the wheel of a car. Her nerves were ragged after the row they had had, her emotions were still reeling from the shock of being called a whore and her temper remained in highly sensitive mode. Virtually everyone who had ever tried to teach her to drive had ended up shouting at her or at the very least raising their voice, convinced she wasn’t listening properly to their directions. She was also convinced that domineering, impatient and far from even-tempered Dante was the last man alive to take on such a challenge.
‘Climb in,’ Dante urged, opening the door of the small hatchback with a flourish. ‘Once you’ve got over your nerves, I’ll hire an instructor to take charge. You have an entire estate of private roads here on which to practise.’
Perspiration beading her short upper lip, Topsy accepted the keys he passed her with a hand that already felt damp. He ran through every move she was to make first and then told her to start the car. ‘Promise you won’t shout,’ she breathed before she put the key in the ignition.
‘Of course I’m not going to shout,’ Dante retorted drily. ‘I’m not the excitable type.’
Well, that was a lie for a start, Topsy thought wryly. He had a really bad temper and when he touched her he was decidedly excitable and anything but cool or calm. In fact he already qualified as the most passionate male she had ever met.
‘Are you planning to sit here doing nothing all afternoon?’ Dante enquired drily.
He also had the patience of a jet plane forced to travel in the slow lane.
Topsy gazed out of the windscreen at the spacious cobbled courtyard and switched on the engine, which seemed very noisy in the rushing silence. A trickle of sweat ran down between her breasts.
‘Run through your mental checklist first,’ Dante advised.
Her mind was a blank and her teeth clenched together. ‘I don’t want to do this with you,’ Topsy admitted starkly.
‘Stop dramatising yourself—just get on with it!’ Dante told her impatiently.
Thoroughly fed up with him and keen to get the experience over with, Topsy rammed the car into gear and hit the accelerator. The vehicle shot back so fast a startled gasp was wrenched from her. Dante shouted something and then there was a sickening crunch and a violent jolt that rattled every tooth in her head, the seat belt cutting into her midriff as it clamped tight.
‘You total maniac!’ Dante roared at her, leaping out of the car as though she had branded him with a burning torch.
Topsy switched off the engine and breathed in deep to ward off the nausea and the dizziness of shock. Detaching the seat belt, she opened the car door and shakily climbed out.
‘You didn’t even look in the mirror before you reversed!’ Dante launched at her incredulously as he bent down to examine the damage to the bonnet of his precious Pagani Zonda.
