Читать книгу The Billionaires Collection - Оливия Гейтс - Страница 75
ОглавлениеDANTE DI SIONE FELT the adrenaline pumping through his body as he walked into the tiny airport terminal. His heart was pounding and his forehead was beaded with sweat. He felt like he’d been running. Or just rolled away from a woman after a bout of particularly energetic sex. Even though it was a long time since he could even remember having sex. He frowned. How long?
His mind raced back over the past few weeks spent chasing across continents and flitting in and out of different time zones. He’d visited a dizzying array of countries, been presented with a whole shoal of red herrings and wandered up against several dead ends before arriving here, in the Caribbean. All in pursuit of a priceless piece of jewellery which his grandfather wanted for reasons he’d declined to share. Dante felt the tight clench of his heart. A dying man’s wish.
Yet wasn’t the truth that he had been tantalised by the task he’d been given and which he had taken on as a favour to someone who had given him so much? That his usually jaded appetite had been sharpened by a taste of the unusual. Truth was, he was dreading going back to his high-octane world of big business and the slightly decadent glamour of his adopted Parisian home. He had enjoyed the unpredictability of the chase and the sense that he was stepping outside his highly privileged comfort zone.
His hand tightened around the handle of his bag which contained the precious tiara. All he needed to do now was to hang on to this and never let it go—at least, not until he had placed it at his grandfather’s sickbed so that the old man could do what he wanted with it.
His mouth felt dry. He could use a drink, and...something else. Something to distract him from the fact that the adrenaline was beginning to trickle from his system, leaving him with that flat, empty feeling which he’d spent his whole life trying to avoid.
He looked around. The small terminal was filled with the usual suspects which this kind of upmarket Caribbean destination inevitably attracted. As well as the overtanned and ostentatiously wealthy, there seemed to have been some photo shoot taking place, because the place was full of models. He saw several giraffe-tall young women turn in his direction, their endless legs displayed in tiny denim shorts and their battered straw hats tilted at an angle so all you could see were their cute noses and full lips as they pouted at him. But he wasn’t in the mood for anyone as predictable as a model. Maybe he’d just do a little work instead. Get on to René at his office in Paris and discover what had been going on in his busy and thriving company while he’d been away.
And then his gaze was drawn to a woman sitting on her own. The only pale person in a sea of tanned bodies. Her hair was blond and she looked as fragile as spun sugar—with one of those pashmina things wrapped around her narrow shoulders which seemed to swamp her. She looked clean. He narrowed his eyes. Like she’d spent most of her life underwater and had just been brought up to the surface. She was sitting at the bar with an untouched glass of pink champagne in front of her, and as their eyes met, she picked up her glass, flustered, and began to stare at it as if it contained the secret to the universe—though he noticed she didn’t drink any.
Was it that which made him start walking towards her, bewitched by a sudden demonstration of shyness which was so rare in the world he inhabited? With a few sure strides he reached her and put his bag down on the floor, right next to a remarkably similar brown leather carry-on. But then she lifted her head and all he could think about was the fragile beauty of her features.
‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hi,’ she said in a very English accent as she blinked up at him through thick lashes.
‘Have we met before?’ he questioned.
She looked startled. Like someone who had been caught in an unexpected spotlight. She dug her teeth into her lower lip and worried them across the smooth rosy surface.
‘I don’t think so,’ she said, then shook her head so that the strands of fair hair shimmered over her narrow shoulders like a silky cascade of water. ‘No, we haven’t. I would have remembered.’
He leaned on the bar, and smiled. ‘But you were staring at me as if you knew me.’
Willow didn’t answer—not straight away—her head was too full of confusion and embarrassment combined with a powerful tug of attraction which she wasn’t quite sure how to handle. Yes, of course she had been staring at him because—quite honestly—who wouldn’t?
Beneath the pashmina, she felt the shiver of goose bumps as she met his mocking gaze, acknowledging that he was probably the most perfect man she’d ever seen—and she worked in an industry which dealt almost exclusively with perfect men. Dressed with the carelessness only the truly wealthy could carry off, he looked as if he’d only just fallen out of bed—though probably not his own. Faded jeans clung to unbelievably muscular thighs, and although his silk shirt was slightly creased, he still managed to convey a sense of power and privilege. His eyes were bright blue, his black hair was tousled and the gleam of his golden olive skin hinted at a Mediterranean lineage. Yet behind the brooding good looks she could detect a definite touch of steel—a dangerous edge which only added to his allure.
And Willow was usually left cold by good-looking men, something she put down to a certain shyness around them. Years of being ill, followed by a spell in an all-girls school, had meant that she’d grown up in an exclusively female environment and the only men she’d ever really met had been doctors. She’d been cocooned in her own little world where she’d felt safe—and safety had been a big deal to her.
So what was it about this man with the intense blue eyes which had made her heart start slamming against her ribcage, as if it was fighting to get out of her chest?
He was still looking at her questioningly and she tried to imagine what her sisters would say in similar circumstances. They certainly wouldn’t be struck dumb like this. They’d probably shrug their gym-honed shoulders and make some smart comment, and hold out their half-empty glasses for a refill.
Willow twisted the stem of the champagne glass in between her finger and thumb. So act like they do. Pretend that gorgeous-looking men talk to you every day of the week.
‘I imagine you must be used to people staring at you,’ she said truthfully, taking her first sip of champagne and then another, and feeling it rush straight to her head.
‘True.’ He gave a flicker of a smile as he slid onto the bar stool beside her. ‘What are you drinking?’
‘No, honestly.’ She shook her head, because surely the champagne must be responsible for the sudden warmth which was making her cheeks grow hot. ‘I mustn’t have too much. I haven’t eaten anything since breakfast.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘I was going to ask if it was any good.’
‘Oh. Yes. Of course. Right. Silly of me. It’s...’ Feeling even more flustered, Willow stared at the fizzing bubbles and drank a little more, even though suddenly it tasted like medicine on her tongue. ‘It’s the best champagne I’ve ever had.’
‘And you often drink champagne on your own at airports, do you?’ he drawled.
She shook her head. ‘No. Actually, I’m celebrating the end of a job.’
Dante nodded, knowing this was his cue to ask her about her job, but the last thing he wanted was to have to listen to a résumé of her career. Instead, he asked the bartender for a beer, then leaned against the bar and began to study her.
He started with her hair—the kind of hair he’d like to see spread over his groin—because although he wouldn’t kick a brunette or a redhead out of bed in a hurry, he was drawn to blondes like an ant to the honeypot. But up close he could see anomalies in her appearance which made her looks more interesting than beautiful. He noted the almost-translucent pallor of her skin which was stretched over the highest cheekbones he’d ever seen. Her eyes were grey—the soft, misty grey of an English winter sky. Grey like woodsmoke. And although her lips were plump, that was the only bit of her which was—because she was thin. Too thin. Her slim thighs were covered in jeans onto which tiny peacocks had been embroidered, but that was as much as he could see because the damned pashmina was wrapped around her like an oversize tablecloth.
He wondered what had drawn him towards her when there were other more beautiful women in the terminal who would have welcomed his company, rather than looking as if a tiger had suddenly taken the seat beside her. Was it the sense that she didn’t really fit in here? That she appeared to be something of an outsider? And hadn’t he always been one of those himself? The man on the outside who was always looking in.
Maybe he just wanted something to distract him from the thought of returning to the States with the tiara, and the realisation that there was still so much which had been left undone or unsaid in his troubled family. Dante felt as if his grandfather’s illness had brought him to a sudden crossroads in his life and suddenly he couldn’t imagine the world without the man who had always loved him, no matter what.
And in the meantime, this jumpy-looking blonde was making him have all kinds of carnal thoughts, even though she still had that wary look on her face. He smiled, because usually he let women do all the running, which meant that he could walk away with a relatively clear conscience when he ended the affair. Women who chased men had an inbuilt confidence which usually appealed to him and yet suddenly the novelty of someone who was all tongue-tied and flustered was really too delicious to resist.
‘So what are you doing here?’ he questioned, taking a sip of his beer. ‘Apart from the obvious answer of waiting for a flight.’
Willow stared down at her fingernails and wondered how her sisters would have answered this. Her three clever, beautiful sisters who had never known a moment of doubt in their charmed lives. Who would each have doubtless murmured something clever or suggestive and had this gorgeous stranger tipping back his dark head and laughing in appreciation at their wit. They certainly wouldn’t have been sitting there, tying themselves up in knots, wondering why he had come over here in the first place. Why was it only within the defining boundaries of the work situation that she was able to engage with a member of the opposite sex without wishing that the floor would open up and swallow her?
This close, he was even more spectacular, with a raw and restless energy which fizzed off him like electricity. But it was his eyes which were truly remarkable. She’d never seen eyes like them. Bluer than the Caribbean sky outside. Bluer even than the wings of those tiny butterflies which used to flutter past on those long-ago summer evenings when she’d been allowed to lie outside. A bright blue, but a hard blue—sharp and clear and focused. They were sweeping over her now, their cerulean glint visible through their forest of dark lashes as he waited for her answer.
She supposed she should tell him about her first solo shoot as a stylist for one of the UK’s biggest fashion magazines, and that the job had been a runaway success. But although she was trying very hard to feel happy about that, she couldn’t seem to shake off the dread of what was waiting for her back in England. Another wedding. Another celebration of love and romance which she would be attending on her own. Going back to the house which had been both refuge and prison during her growing-up years. Back to her well-meaning sisters and overprotective parents. Back to the stark truth that her real life was nowhere near as glamorous as her working life.
So make it glamorous.
She’d never seen this man before and she was unlikely to see him again. But couldn’t she—for once in her life—play the part which had always been denied to her? Couldn’t she pretend to be passionate and powerful and desirable? She’d worked in the fashion industry for three years now and had watched professional models morph into someone else once the camera was turned on them. She’d seen them become coquettish or slutty or flirtatious with an ease which was breathtaking. Couldn’t she pretend that this man was the camera? Couldn’t she become the person she’d always secretly dreamed of being, instead of dull Willow Hamilton, who had never been allowed to do anything and as a consequence had never really learned how to live like other women her age?
She circled the rim of the champagne glass with her forefinger, the unfamiliar gesture implying—she hoped—that she was a sensual and tactile person.
‘I’ve been working on a fashion shoot,’ she said.
‘Oh.’ There was a pause. ‘Are you a model?’
Willow wondered if she was imagining the brief sense of disappointment which had deepened his transatlantic accent. Didn’t he like models? Because if that was the case, he really was an unusual man. She curved her lips into a smile and discovered that it was easier than she’d thought.
‘Do I look like a model?’
He raised his dark eyebrows. ‘I’m not sure you really want me to answer that question.’
Willow stopped stroking the glass. ‘Oh?’
His blue eyes glinted. ‘Well, if I say no, you’ll pout and say, Why not? And if I say yes, you’ll still pout, and then you’ll sigh and say in a weary but very affected voice, Is it that obvious?’
Willow laughed—and wasn’t it a damning indictment of her social life that she should find herself shocked by the sound? As if she wasn’t the kind of person who should be giggling with a handsome stranger at some far-flung spot of the globe. And suddenly she felt a heady rush of freedom. And excitement. She looked into the mocking spark of his eyes and decided that she could play this game after all. ‘Thank you for answering me so honestly,’ she said gravely. ‘Because now I know I don’t need to say anything at all.’
His gaze became speculative. ‘And why’s that?’
She shrugged. ‘If women are so unoriginal that you can predict every word they’re going say, then you can have this conversation all by yourself, can’t you? You certainly don’t need me to join in!’
He leaned forward and slanted her a smile in response and Willow felt a sense of giddy triumph.
‘And that would be my loss, I think,’ he said softly, his hard blue eyes capturing hers. ‘What’s your name?’
‘It’s Willow. Willow Hamilton.’
‘And is that your real name?’
She gave him an innocent look. ‘You mean Hamilton?’
He smiled. ‘I mean Willow.’
She nodded. ‘It is—though I know it sounds like something which has been made up. But it’s a bit of a tradition in our family. My sisters and I are all named after something in nature.’
‘You mean like a mountain?’
She laughed—again—and shook her head. ‘A bit more conventional than that. They’re called Flora, Clover and Poppy. And they’re all very beautiful,’ she added, aware of the sudden defensiveness in her tone.
His gaze grew even more speculative. ‘Now you expect me to say, But you’re very beautiful, too.’ His voice dipped. ‘And you respond by...’
‘And I told you,’ interrupted Willow boldly, her heart now pounding so hard against her ribcage that she was having difficulty breathing, ‘that if you’re so astute, you really ought to be having this conversation with yourself.’
‘Indeed I could.’ His eyes glittered. ‘But we both know there are plenty of things you can do on your own which are far more fun to do with someone else. Wouldn’t you agree, Willow?’
Willow might not have been the most experienced person on the block where men were concerned and had never had what you’d call a real boyfriend. But although she’d been cosseted and protected, she hadn’t spent her life in total seclusion. She now worked in an industry where people were almost embarrassingly frank about sex and she knew exactly what he meant. To her horror she felt a blush beginning. It started at the base of her neck and rose to slowly flood her cheeks with hot colour. And all she could think about was that when she was little and blushed like this, her sisters used to call her the Scarlet Pimpernel.
She reached for her glass, but the clamp of his hand over hers stopped her. Actually, it did more than stop her—it made her skin suddenly feel as if it had developed a million new nerve endings she hadn’t realised existed. It made her glance down at his olive fingers which contrasted against the paleness of her own hand and to think how perfect their entwined flesh appeared. Dizzily, she lifted her gaze to his.
‘Don’t,’ he said softly. ‘A woman blushing is a rare and delightful sight and men like it. So don’t hide it and don’t be ashamed. And—just for the record—if you drink more alcohol to try to hide your embarrassment, you’re only going to make it worse.’
‘So you’re an expert on blushing as well as being an authority on female conversation?’ she said, aware that his hand was still lying on top of hers and that it was making her long for the kind of things she knew she was never going to get. But she made no attempt to move her own from underneath and wondered if he’d noticed.
‘I’m an expert on a lot of things.’
‘But not modesty, I suspect?’
‘No,’ he conceded. ‘Modesty isn’t my strong point.’
The silence which fell between them was broken by the sound of screaming on the other side of the terminal and Willow glanced across to see a child bashing his little fists against his mother’s thighs. But the mother was completely ignoring him as she chatted on her cell phone and the little boy’s hysteria grew and grew. Just talk to him, thought Willow fiercely, wondering why some people even bothered having children. Why they treated the gift of birth so lightly.
But then she noticed that Blue Eyes was glancing at his watch and suddenly she realised she was missing her opportunity to prolong this conversation for as long as possible. Because wouldn’t it be great to go home with the feeling of having broken out of her perpetual shyness for once? To be able to answer the inevitable question, So, any men in your life these days, Willow? with something other than a bright, false smile while she tried to make light of her essentially lonely life, before changing the subject.
So ask him his name. Stop being so tongue-tied and awkward.
‘What’s your name?’ asked Willow, almost as if it was an afterthought—but she forced herself to pull her hand away from his. To break that delicious contact before he did.
‘Dante.’
‘Just Dante?’ she questioned when he didn’t elaborate further.
‘Di Sione,’ he added, and Willow wondered if she’d imagined the faint note of reluctance as he told her.
Dante took a sip of his beer and waited. The world was small, yes—but it was also fractured. There were whole groups of people who lived parallel existences to him and it was possible that this well-spoken young Englishwoman who blushed like a maiden aunt wouldn’t have heard of his notorious family. She’d probably never slept with his twin brother or bumped into any of his other screwed-up siblings along the way. His heart grew cold as he thought about his twin, but he pushed the feeling away with a ruthlessness which came easily to him. And still he waited, in case the soft grey eyes of his companion suddenly widened in recognition. But they didn’t. She was just looking at him in a way which made him want to lean over and kiss her.
‘I’m trying to imagine what you’re expecting my response to be,’ she said, a smile nudging the edges of her lips. ‘So I’m not going to do the obvious thing of asking if your name is Italian when clearly it is. I’m just going to remark on what a lovely name it is. And it is. Di Sione. It makes me think of blue seas and terracotta roofs and those dark cypress trees which don’t seem to grow anywhere else in the world except in Italy,’ she said, her grey eyes filling with mischief. ‘There. Is that a satisfactory response—or was it predictable?’
There was a heartbeat of a pause before Dante answered. She was so unexpected, he thought. Like finding a shaded space in the middle of a sizzling courtyard. Like running cool water over your hot and dirty hands and seeing all the grime trickle away. ‘No, not especially predictable,’ he said. ‘But not satisfactory either.’
He leaned forward and as he did he could smell the tang of salt on her skin and wondered if she’d been swimming earlier that morning. He wondered what her body looked like beneath that all-enveloping shawl. What that blond hair would look like if it fell down over her bare skin. ‘The only satisfactory response I can think of right now is that I think you should lean forward and part your lips so that I can kiss you.’
Willow stared at him—shocked—as she felt the whisper of something unfamiliar sliding over her skin. Something which beckoned her with a tantalising finger. And before she had time to consider the wisdom of her action, she did exactly as he suggested. She extended her neck by a fraction and slowly parted her lips so that he could lean in to kiss her. She felt the brush of his mouth against hers as the tip of his tongue edged its way over her lips.
Was it the champagne she’d drunk, or just some bone-deep yearning which made her open her mouth a little wider? Or just the feeling of someone who’d been locked away from normal stuff for so long that she wanted to break free. She wanted to toss aside convention and not be treated like some delicate flower, as she had been all her life. She didn’t want to be Willow Hamilton right then. She wanted the famous fairy godmother to blast into the Caribbean airport in a cloud of glitter and to wave her wand and transform her, just as Willow had been transforming models for the past week.
She wanted her hair to stream like buttery silk down her back and for her skin to be instantly tanned, shown to advantage by some feminine yet sexy little dress whose apparent simplicity would be confounded by its astronomical price tag. She wanted her feet to be crammed into sky-high stilettos which still wouldn’t be enough to allow her to see eye to eye with this spectacular man, if they were both standing. But she didn’t want to be standing—and she didn’t want to be sitting on a bar stool either. She wanted to be lying on a big bed wearing very sexy underwear and for those olive fingers to be touching her flesh again—only this time in far more intimate spots as he slowly unclothed her.
All those thoughts rushed through her mind in just the time it took for her own tongue to flicker against his and Willow’s eyes suddenly snapped open—less in horror at the public spectacle she was making of herself with a man she’d only just met than with the realisation of what was echoing over the loudspeaker. It took a full five seconds before her befuddled brain could take in what the robotic voice was actually saying, and when it did, her heart sank.
‘That’s me. They’re calling my flight,’ she said breathlessly, reluctantly drawing her mouth away from his, still hypnotised by the blazing blue of his eyes. With an effort she got off the stool, registering the momentary weakness of her knees as she automatically patted her shoulder bag to check her passport and purse. She screwed up her face, trying to act like what had happened was no big deal. Trying to pretend that her breasts weren’t tingling beneath her pashmina and that she kissed total strangers in airports every day of the week. Trying not to hope that he’d spring to his feet and tell her he didn’t want her to go. But he didn’t.
‘Oh, heck,’ she croaked. ‘It’s the last call. I can’t believe I didn’t hear it.’
‘I think we both know very well why you didn’t hear it,’ he drawled.
But although his eyes glinted, Willow sensed that already he was mentally taking his leave of her and she told herself it was better this way. He was just a gorgeous man she’d flirted with at the airport—and there was no reason why she couldn’t do this kind of thing in the future, if she wanted to. It could be the springboard to a new and exciting life if she let it. That is, if she walked away now with her dignity and dreams intact. Better that than the inevitable alternative. The fumbled exchange of business cards and the insincere promises to call. Her waiting anxiously by the phone when she got back to England. Making excuses for why he hadn’t rung but unable—for several weeks at least—to acknowledge the reason he hadn’t. The reason she’d known all along—that he was way out of her league and had just been playing games with her.
Still flustered, she bent down to grab her carry-on and straightened up to drink in his stunning features and hard blue eyes one last time. She tried her best to keep her voice steady. To not give him any sense of the regret which was already sitting on the horizon, waiting to greet her. ‘Goodbye, Dante. It was lovely meeting you. Not a very original thing to say, I know—but it’s true. Safe journey—wherever you’re going. I’d better dash.’
She nearly extended her hand to shake his before realising how stupid that would look and she turned away before she could make even more of a fool of herself. She ended up running for the plane but told herself that was a good thing, because it distracted her from her teeming thoughts. Her heart was pounding as she strapped herself into her seat, but she was determined not to allow her mind to start meandering down all those pointless what if paths. She knew that in life you had to concentrate on what you had, and not what you really wanted.
So every time she thought about those sensual features and amazing eyes, she forced herself to concentrate on the family wedding which was getting closer and the horrible bridesmaid dress she was being made to wear.
She read the in-flight magazines and slept soundly for most of the journey back to England, and it wasn’t until she touched down at Heathrow and reached into the overhead locker that she realised the carry-on bag she’d placed in the overhead locker wasn’t actually her bag at all. Yes, it was brown, and yes, it was made of leather—but there all similarities ended. Her hands began to tremble. Because this was of the softest leather imaginable and there were three glowing gold initials discreetly embossed against the expensive skin. She stared at it with a growing sense of disbelief as she matched the initials in her head to the only name they could stand for, and her heart began to pound with a mixture of excitement and fear.
D.D.S.
Dante Di Sione.
