Читать книгу Italian Bachelors: Steamy Seductions - Линн Грэхем, CATHERINE GEORGE - Страница 14

CHAPTER SIX

VITTORE TOOK A last dissatisfied glance at the gold pendant. ‘It’s so plain,’ he lamented, clearly longing for a more bold and sparkly design.

‘I think Sofia will like it,’ Topsy told him firmly.

Vittore nodded and proffered his credit card. ‘We’ll go for coffee before I head into the office,’ he said, casting her a glance. ‘My first appointment isn’t until ten-thirty. What are you going to do?’

‘My plans are fairly loose but I think I’ll do the Uffizi again. My last visit felt rushed,’ she confided.

‘Do you get homesick for London?’ Vittore asked her, having ordered coffee at a pavement café opposite the office he used.

‘No, I’m enjoying the change of scene.’ Topsy hesitated, seeing her opening, moving to grab it. ‘When were you last in London?’

‘More than twenty years ago,’ Vittore told her, looking reflective.

‘Was it a holiday?’ she prompted, sipping at her cappuccino.

‘No. I moved to London to start up a business but it all went pear-shaped,’ he volunteered wryly.

‘What happened?’ Topsy asked quietly.

‘I fell in love with the wrong woman and she emptied my bank account,’ Vittore admitted, giving her a rueful look when she could not hide her shock at that admission. ‘That was the end of the affair and the end of my business venture. I came home to lick my wounds and never went back.’

Topsy was frowning. ‘Did you tell the police?’

‘No, I wrote it off to experience. I don’t think the police could have helped me. After all, I trusted her and gave her free access to my account. What happened was my own fault. Back then I was still young and foolish,’ he declared with a fatalistic shrug of his shoulders. ‘Maturity does have some advantages.’

Topsy wanted so badly to ask if the woman concerned had been called Odette Taylor but if she mentioned her mother’s name she would have to come clean and tell all and she wasn’t ready to do that yet. Could the woman who had robbed Vittore be her mother? It was a depressing suspicion and only made the challenge of tackling the thorny mystery of her parentage more difficult, for if Odette had been the thief, Vittore would very probably be appalled to learn that he might have fathered a child with her. Already painfully aware of numerous occasions when her mother had been greedy and dishonest with money, Topsy had little difficulty picturing her avaricious parent in such a scenario. Odette had even admitted to her that she had chosen to lie and tell her polo player lover that he was the father of her youngest daughter because he had impressed her as a better financial bet than Vittore.

‘You look very thoughtful,’ Vittore quipped.

Topsy glanced up from her coffee cup and blinked in consternation at the tall male figure striding across the square towards them: it was Dante as she had never seen him before, his lean powerful thighs sheathed in tight-fitting faded denim, a blue-striped short-sleeved shirt casually open at his brown throat. Black hair ruffled in the slight breeze, strong face cool and calm, he looked breathtakingly beautiful to her stunned gaze. She moistened her lower lip with a nervous flick of her tongue. ‘Dante’s coming this way,’ she warned the older man.

Vittore frowned, his air of relaxation vanishing. ‘He didn’t even mention that he was coming into town today.’

Topsy was covertly engaged in admiring the gloriously neat fit of Dante’s jeans across his narrow hips and long muscular legs and in the midst of that wholly inappropriate appraisal drained her cappuccino in an effort to suppress her thundering pulses and an almost painful attack of self-consciousness. Soft pink highlighted her cheeks as Dante approached their table. ‘I thought I’d find you here. According to my mother this is your favourite breakfast bar,’ Dante remarked silkily.

‘It is and your timing is excellent because I was about to abandon Topsy to keep an appointment,’ Vittore remarked, turning his head to smile at Topsy. ‘You could find no better guide to this city than Dante. Florence is the original home of the Leonetti Bank and where he embarked on his gilded career.’

‘Is it really?’ Topsy pushed away her cup and rose upright, keen to stress her independence, reluctant to be foisted on Dante like some hapless tourist in need of guidance and attention. She watched his eyes follow Vittore as he vanished through a door on the other side of the busy street.

‘I didn’t even know my stepfather had a job until today,’ Dante commented.

‘Your mother doesn’t approve because it takes him away from her but he does only work four mornings a week,’ she proffered, instinctively defensive on the older man’s behalf. ‘I would’ve thought you would be pleased that he makes the effort.’

‘When I consider the size of my mother’s income, it strikes me as a pointless demonstration of independence,’ Dante said drily.

‘Is financial worth your only marker of good character?’ Topsy asked with spirit. ‘Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity would see that Vittore is very well aware of his position and determined not to take advantage of it!’

His designer sun specs clasped in one hand, Dante gazed down at her, green eyes radiating irritation. ‘Why are you defending him?’

‘He adores your mother and he makes her happy,’ Topsy countered in quiet reproof. ‘I like him, I like both of them and it distresses your mother that you so obviously think so little of the man she chose to marry.’

A muscle pulled taut at the corner of his unsmiling mouth, his stunning green eyes silvering with cold anger at the reproof. ‘Maledizione! What right do you have to interfere in the private affairs of my family?’ he ground out with disdain. ‘Or even to express an opinion?’

Topsy paled and then reddened, feeling both embarrassed and irritated, knowing very well that she should have kept her thoughts to herself. The icy look of hauteur stamped on his face mortified her and she spun away to cross the square. A hand closed over her arm to hold her back.

‘Where are you going?’

‘The Uffizi.’

He sent her a derisive look. ‘At this time of day? It will be a suffocating crush of tourists and you will only gain entry if you have a pre-arranged ticket.’

‘I haven’t,’ she acknowledged ruefully.

‘It would be a nightmare. Give up on the Uffizi and I promise I’ll arrange a special pass for you some day so that you can browse in peace.’ His eyes locked with hers and her tummy hollowed, her muscles pulling tight while her world rocked dizzily on its axis as if someone had given her a sudden violent shove. In the grip of that almost intoxicating sense of disassociation from planet earth Dante was all that mattered, filling her mind with insane thoughts that turned her inside out, filling her body with frighteningly familiar reactions she couldn’t fight. She wanted him, wanted him in a way she had never wanted anyone before, craved him with every breath that she drew.

A slow, exultant smile slashed Dante’s expressive mouth as he flipped down his sunglasses, closing her off from that visual connection that had made her entire body hum with excitement. She blinked, momentarily dazed by the clawing lash of desire unfulfilled and dropped her head, fighting for self-control and staring in surprise at the hand that now gripped hers.

‘You haven’t even told me what you’re doing here,’ she breathed unsteadily.

‘My mother forgot to ask you to pick up her contact lens prescription,’ he said prosaically.

‘Oh...I should have remembered. She always has stuff for me to do here but I didn’t want to wake her up so early to ask.’ Topsy pushed her knuckles against her pounding brow as if she could force logical thought back into being again.

‘This is the original home of the Leonetti Bank founded centuries ago by one of my ancestors.’ Dante paused outside a tall sandstone building that bore all the hallmarks of ancient Florentine architecture. ‘I started work here when I was twenty-one and a few years later we centralised operations in Milan and donated the building to the city to become a museum.’

‘Twenty-one? You were young. Didn’t you ever want to be something other than a banker?’

‘What I would be was set in stone on the day of my birth,’ Dante informed her drily. ‘My father would have allowed nothing else and, fortunately for me, I inherited the Leonetti business gene and the affinity with numbers. You still haven’t told me how you managed to spot the error on that document the other night.’

Topsy flushed. ‘I could just see that it was wrong.’

‘But you only saw that document for seconds.’

‘I can’t help it if my brain works like a computer sometimes,’ she admitted soft and low, uneasy with the subject of the high IQ that had made her a gifted child and an even more gifted adult. ‘Where are you taking me?’

He walked into the lively and very busy little medieval streets between Via Maggio and Piazza Pitti, the artisan quarter of workshops. It was like stepping back in time as she walked past studios displaying the wares of bookbinders, violin makers, metal workers, sculptors and cobblers. Topsy was enchanted because it was a taste of Renaissance Florence as only a local could have shown her. She had spent several mornings wandering round the city with a guidebook in a never-ending crowd of equally studious tourists until after a while the sights began to blur and intermingle and her brain went into overload mode.

In a design studio she chose a pretty enamelled photo frame for Kat in her sister’s favourite colours and frowned in surprise when Dante attempted to pay for the purchase.

‘It isn’t for me, it’s a gift for my eldest sister,’ she commented as she politely refused to allow him to buy it for her.

He had more success when he bought her a lemon ice cream, so rich and creamy and smooth in texture that she loosed a helpless moan of delight as the icy concoction engulfed her taste buds. Dante lifted a napkin and dabbed at the tip of her nose and the corner of her mouth where ice-cream stains lingered. ‘You’re worse than a child for making a mess, carissima mia.’

Mesmerised by his flashing smile of amusement at her clumsiness, she looked up at him, amber eyes unusually serious. He could hurt her and only the night before that fear had held her back but now that pronounced caution felt more like an excuse for not living than truly living and she was regrouping, hungry for new experiences and wildly curious about him and what he could make her feel.

‘We’ll go for lunch now,’ Dante decreed.

‘I should be getting back to work,’ Topsy protested.

‘My mother isn’t expecting you back. She has friends joining her for lunch,’ he told her.

He walked her back to a Bugatti Veyron surrounded by a small crowd of admiring teenaged boys. He pressed a banknote into the hand of the tallest youth, thanked him for taking care of his car and tucked Topsy into the passenger seat.

‘Where’s the Pagani?’ she finally asked stiffly.

‘In a workshop for the foreseeable future.’ Dante groaned out the admission and cast her a glimmering sidelong glance. ‘You’re a menace.’

‘At least nobody was hurt,’ Topsy parried, a flush on her cheeks. ‘Where are we going for lunch?’

‘You’ll see.’

Her attention fell on a lean, powerful thigh encased in denim and she dragged it away again, struggling to get a grip on the weird, wild promptings assailing her. She might be curious but she wasn’t foolish. Nothing was going to happen between her and Dante unless she allowed it to and she was in too much control to make that mistake, she told herself urgently. Her head was all over the place; one minute she wanted him, the next she was telling herself that she had to resist him.

‘So, where did you go with Vittore this morning?’ Dante asked casually.

‘He wanted my advice about a gift he’s buying for your mother’s birthday,’ Topsy admitted, since she saw nothing wrong with sharing that.

‘Why would he need your advice?’

‘Because he always gets it wrong.’

‘Wrong?’ Dante pressed. ‘How?’

‘Vittore likes bling.’

A husky laugh of understanding unexpectedly sounded from Dante. ‘I can see that that would be a problem.’

* * *

About half an hour later when they were in familiar countryside, he drove up a winding mountain road and, turning into a stony lane, he switched off the engine. When she looked at him in surprise, he shrugged and said lightly, ‘I’m afraid we have to walk from here.’

Topsy climbed out into the sunshine and hung over the door, enjoying the view of the forested slopes and the city now far in the distance. ‘Where are we?’

‘On the edge of the Leonetti estate.’ Dante emerged from the boot gripping a substantial picnic basket and he tossed her a rug to carry.

Topsy gave him a startled glance. ‘We’re picnicking?’

‘I think the food will be a cut above the usual picnic. Though I say it myself, my chef is unbeatable.’

Topsy anchored the rug uncertainly beneath her arm. ‘I didn’t think you were the picnicking type.’

‘Blame yourself. I needed a good reason to put on jeans,’ Dante quipped, striding off into the cover of the trees and leaving her to follow the rough trail through the long grass.

Her figure-hugging cotton dress rode up her thighs as she broke into a stride in an effort to keep up with him. She smoothed it back down, breathless in the heat, perspiration beading her brow. ‘Wish you’d warned me. I’m not really dressed for the occasion.’

‘I know but I wouldn’t have missed that outfit for anything, carissima mia,’ Dante confided. ‘Clinging to your truly spectacular curves that dress is a show stopper.’

It was a grey stretchy cotton dress teamed with a colourful scarf but he made it sound like something else entirely and she flushed, unaccustomed to such masculine candour. Spectacular curves? She had long envied her siblings’ whippet-slim frames. Clothes hung on her sisters as though they were elegant models while Topsy’s infinitely fuller figure was much more of a challenge to dress.

‘Why...a picnic?’ Topsy asked, drawing level with him in a clearing below a spreading mature chestnut tree as broad in proportion as a bus. Beyond the clearing the ground fell away steeply into dense woods but the view over the quiet valley was amazing.

‘I thought it would be more your style than a trendy city lunch.’ Setting the basket down, he took the rug from her and spread it.

The silence but for the birdsong crept round her like a cocoon. She kicked off her shoes and sat down on her knees, determined not to betray her nervous tension. ‘Where are your bodyguards?’ she asked abruptly.

‘I gave them the day off. After all, I’m still on the estate and this was a last-minute decision that nobody else knows about.’ Pouring the wine, he passed her a glass, the tips of his long elegant fingers briefly brushing hers. ‘Drink up...relax.’

Relax? Topsy almost laughed at that impossibility. Being alone with a man who fascinated her to the degree that he did was deeply unnerving. She sipped the wine and let him pile a plate with a selection of the many delicacies he unpacked from the basket. She ate wafer-thin ham, dainty crostini snacks and Panzanella, a refreshing tomato salad. Lemon tart followed by a rich spicy slice of cake finished the meal. Having drained her second glass of wine, Topsy flopped down flat on her back with a sigh to gaze up through the sun-dappled canopy of leaves above her.

‘I’ll never move again,’ she swore ruefully. ‘I’ve never eaten as much at one sitting.’

‘My chef will be flattered.’

A window of clarity briefly shone in her sunlight-and-wine-dazed mind. He had brought her into the woods to seduce her. He had even put on jeans. Topsy froze and then hurriedly sat up, deeming it unwise to lie horizontal like a sacrifice and encourage him. She collided with iridescent green eyes and a quiver of response shimmied through her. ‘I know why you brought me here.’

Dante shifted fluidly closer. ‘We both know why.’

‘This is so not going to happen,’ she warned him ruefully.