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The professionals danced the first waltz alone and then the master of ceremonies instructed the gentlemen to choose a partner. Soon, four hundred people filled the floor, the dresses whirling in a wonderful kaleidoscope of colour.
For the next dance, the ladies got to choose their partner. Only one man refused to relinquish his dance partner, and as that man was Giannis Basinas himself no one was going to argue the point with him.
From that moment, the evening passed in a blur, and Beth found herself able to breathe properly.
She regularly monitored the other rooms, unobtrusively checking and double-checking everything, ready to instruct a team member to fix the tiniest imperfection.
She had lost track of time when she made another return to the ballroom and received a tap on the shoulder.
Spinning around, expecting to find a male guest requesting a dance—something she had had to decline four times already—her heart leapt into her throat to find Valente standing before her, two flutes of champagne in his hands.
He held one out to her and bowed his head. ‘For you, my lady.’
Much as she would have liked to pretend otherwise, Beth had been alert to his presence the entire evening. Every small glimpse had set her pulses thumping.
She blinked away the effect of his emerald eyes boring into her and the drumming effect playing in her head, echoes from her thundering heart. ‘That’s kind, but I don’t drink when I’m working.’
‘You are officially off the clock as of now.’
She rolled her eyes and strove to keep her voice light-hearted. ‘I’ll be off the clock at four in the morning when the ball finishes.’
‘I have spoken to Giannis. He is exceptionally pleased with how well everything is going. Now is the time for you to turn your work head off and enjoy yourself.’
‘Is that what you’ve been doing?’ she asked. ‘Enjoying yourself? Because I haven’t seen you do anything that looks like work.’
‘Dance with me and I’ll tell you all about it.’
‘Valente, I’m working. I can’t dance.’
‘I told you, you are officially off the clock. Your work is done. Your assistant can take charge. Your instructions now are to enjoy yourself.’
‘Is that an official order?’
‘Assolutamente.’ A wicked gleam flashed in his eyes that made her belly melt all over again. ‘And the first official order for enjoying yourself is to drink this glass of champagne. The second is to dance with me.’
Valente was the intermediary between Beth and Giannis. He spoke for the Greek billionaire. If he said she was off duty then it had to be true.
Romance filled the air within the palace. The thought of joining the happy revellers on the dance floor with the most handsome man there was far more appealing than it should be.
When he offered the champagne to her a second time, she took it from him and brought the flute to her lips. The bubbles exploded in her mouth. ‘If you’re lying to me and I get a rollicking for skiving off, you can pay the bonus I’ll forfeit.’
‘You will not forfeit the bonus.’
He sounded so confident in this assertion that Beth relaxed enough to laugh.
Lines appeared on his handsome face as he grinned, the only imperfections on a face that could have been designed by a renaissance master. And the lines weren’t even imperfections, serving to enhance the gorgeous face she could not help herself from drinking in.
He held his flute to hers.
She chinked hers to it. In unison, they drank.
Valente placed the empty flutes on the tray of a passing waiter then held his hand out to her. ‘Time to dance.’
But still she hesitated.
She wanted to dance with him. She wanted it more than she should. And that was the cause of her hesitation.
What if he wanted more than just a dance?
And why did that thought make her skin tingle as if a thousand electric ants were zipping through her veins?
Through the years Beth had been asked to dance by countless numbers of men. Valente was the first man she had wanted to say yes to.
She reminded herself about all the event staff she’d seen through the years involve themselves with rich clients or the client’s staff or guests. When alcohol flowed freely, inhibitions loosened and hedonistic pleasure became the aim. She would not be like the poor events staff she’d observed through the years fall for the practised patter, kidding themselves that the attention was anything more than an eye for the chance of a willing body for a night’s pleasure, discarded and forgotten when the sun came up.
Beth had come to distrust rich, powerful men. In her experience, they were the worst for treating women as commodities.
Domenico had been the only rich man she’d met who hadn’t treated women like that. He’d loved Caroline and had treated her with the utmost respect.
But Domenico had forfeited his riches out of loathing for his rich, powerful family. He’d preferred to be poor and happy than rich and cruel like his brother, Alessio. His stories about what went on behind the closed doors of the rich and powerful had only hardened Beth’s distrust of the elite.
Valente was not a rich man. The power he exuded was a figment of her imagination.
The dance had finished, the guests pairing off again for the next one.
‘Enough stalling,’ he scolded. He took the matter out of her control by taking hold of her hand and marching her to the dance floor.
‘I really can’t dance,’ she warned, laughing, although unable to understand why she was laughing.
What harm would one dance do? It wasn’t as if she were agreeing to marry him!
He guided her to possibly the only empty space on the floor. ‘It is easy. I will teach you.’
‘You can dance?’
‘Si. Follow my lead and you will be fine.’ He bowed. ‘Now you must curtsey.’
Laughing again, she curtsied then allowed him to take her right hand in his left.
She took a quick peek at where the other women were placing their left hands and placed hers on Valente’s bicep. It was rock-hard.
The laughter died in her throat when he slipped his right hand around her waist and pulled her to him. Her nose was level with his neck. The scent of his cologne coiled through her and something else, something like warm treacle, pooled low in her abdomen and with it came a flash of the dream she’d had of him, of them...
Slowly she raised her head to meet his eyes. The amusement that had been in the emerald gaze just moments ago had died.
After a long, silent beat passed between them, the faintest of smiles curved his lips. Her own lips tingled and she felt a sudden yearn to press them to his, a yearn that dissolved when the first note of the music rang out and suddenly she was being spun around the room in the most heavenly of arms.
For such a tall, muscular man, Valente danced with an elegance that made her dazed mind think he’d done this many times. His assured grace and utter control allowed her to relax into the dance and, as he spun her around the great ballroom, weaving seamlessly between the other dancing couples, she imagined herself as a princess from days gone by waltzing in the arms of her very own Prince Charming.
When the dance ended, Alessio kept tight hold of her. ‘One more,’ he murmured into her ear.
The rays from her answering smile beamed straight into his loins.
Impulse had driven him to ask her to dance. He’d spent the evening observing her, the desire to have her in his arms growing with every passing minute.
The compulsory ballroom dancing lessons he’d endured at his English boarding school were finally paying off.
‘Where did you learn to dance?’ she asked when they were on their third waltz, one set at a slower tempo.
‘As a child.’ Soon there would be no more need for evasion.
Her head tilted as she studied him. ‘What is it you do for Giannis Basinas?’
‘Why do you ask?’
‘None of the hotel staff have heard of you.’ There was no accusation in the beautiful chocolate eyes, just a soft curiosity.
He pulled her a little closer. Their bodies were almost touching. She didn’t pull back. ‘Let’s just say I have known Giannis for many years.’
‘Is that all you will tell me?’
‘For now.’
A spark flared in her eyes. Its brilliance flashed through him. ‘Intriguing.’
He laughed but it was from discomfort rather than humour. Alessio knew this was the moment he should whisk her away somewhere private and tell her the truth, somewhere where they wouldn’t be overheard.
Forget waiting until the morning. He had waited long enough. Beth had passed every test he’d given her.
But he wanted to hold her in his arms for a few more dances first and savour the heady, erotic feeling flowing through his loins a little longer before the dilated softness flowing from her gaze turned into loathing.
The loathing wouldn’t last long, he was sure. Beth was too practical to be dictated to by emotions.
The dance ended without any further conversation, and the master of ceremonies took to the stage to announce that there would be a short break from the dancing for the fireworks display being held in the grounds.
‘Shall we?’ He held his arm out to her.
She smiled, nodded and tucked her hand through it.
They followed the crowd through the ground floor of the palace to the famed gardens. Alessio had only taken a few breaths of the warm night air when there was a tap on his shoulder.
He turned and inwardly cringed to find Richard, an old university friend, standing there.
‘Alessio Palvetti as I live and breathe!’ Richard roared, obviously steaming drunk. ‘How wonderful to see you! My God, man, how many years has it been?’
Not enough.
He felt Beth go rigid beside him.
‘Hello, Richard,’ he answered tightly.
‘I thought it was you,’ Richard shouted. ‘I said to my wife, look, there’s Alessio Palvetti. I must introduce you to her. She never believes me when I tell her we were at Oxford together.’
Richard’s words washed over him.
He met Beth’s frozen gaze. Her eyes were stark and wide. Slowly she extricated her hand from his arm and stepped back to wrap her arms tightly around her chest.
Alessio held her stare.
The first firework exploded in the sky.
Beth blinked then, turning as fast as the shooting rocket hurtling above them, fled.
* * *
Beth pushed her way through the crowd still spilling out into the gardens, the curses thrown at her as champagne was spilt in her wake nothing but a distant sound, the industrial fireworks showering the sky with luminescence melding with the drum beats exploding in her head.
Her lungs had cramped, fear fisting tightly in her stomach.
Back under the palace roof, she ran as fast as her heeled feet would carry her until she entered an unfamiliar room and spun around in panic.
She’d lost her bearings.
She covered her mouth with a shaking hand and forced herself to think. She had pored over the map of the palace for so many hours she knew it intimately but her brain had turned into stunned goo.
Think!
Instinct had her race to the door to the right of the room but it only led to another unfamiliar room.
Her instincts clearly weren’t worth anything. If they had been, she would have had an inkling that Valente wasn’t...was...
Oh, dear God, it had all been a lie.
Get to Dom.
She turned back and ran to the door to the left.
The palace’s proportions that she had found so awe-inspiring on her arrival had become a frightening warren. The richly decorated walls had gained faces, the masks on the few guests who’d stayed inside rather than watch the fireworks coming to life to laugh at her.
That feeling, that the whole palace was laughing cruelly at her naivety, was compounded when she finally found the stairs and tripped on the third step. One of her shoes fell off. She stumbled on, pausing only to remove her remaining shoe, climbing the stairs as fast as she could but somehow feeling as if time itself had slowed and that she was ascending a mountain that was fighting back, a lucid, waking nightmare.
The nightmare showed no sign of letting up when she finally reached the door to her suite. She’d left her bag in the staff room. Her door key was in it.
The door was locked.
She banged on it and kept on banging until it was opened by the nanny.
‘Where’s Dom?’ she gasped, uncaring of Miranda’s blatant disapproval at this loud disruption.
