A Scandal, a Secret, a Baby. Sharon Kendrick
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it felt like hell to be this close to him. Trying like mad to pretend that she felt nothing when inside her heart was beating so loudly she was surprised that someone hadn’t told her to turn the volume down.
She played around with the food some more, before forcing herself to look into his face. ‘Okay. Let’s do it your way and get the niceties over with. What are you doing these days? Still living in Rome, I suppose?’
‘Not any more. These days I have an apartment in New York.’
‘Oh?’
‘You sound surprised.’
‘Not really. Surprise would imply a degree of interest, which I simply don’t have.’ She pushed her plate away and—forgetting her no-carbs rule—started nibbling on a piece of bread instead. ‘It’s just that you used to act as though paradise was a place in Italy, sandwiched in between Umbria and Emilia Romagna.’
‘My love of my homeland has not diminished, Justina,’ he said silkily. ‘And I go home whenever I can—though that is becoming increasingly less these days.’
‘Business is doing well?’ She made the question sound as if it was a bore to have to ask it.
He attempted a modest shrug, but she reflected with a growing feeling of frustration that modesty was one of the few things he didn’t do well.
‘Business is doing excellently. We’ve expanded our interests in North America and I love the vibrancy of New York. Okay, it isn’t Tuscany—but you can’t have everything.’
Justina ate some more bread—as if that could help fill the emotional hole which Dante had exposed with his words. She didn’t want to think about Tuscany—or the palazzo where the D’Arezzo family had lived for centuries. She had been blown away by the dramatic beauty of the region and the country itself, but her visit there hadn’t been a success. Actually, that was a complete understatement. Dante’s aristocratic family had disapproved of his English pop-star fiancée—especially as her visit had coincided with the release of a promotional video. The one where she’d been dancing energetically while not wearing a bra. Even she had been appalled by how raunchy the finished product had appeared to be—but it wouldn’t have seemed very credible for her to come out and say so at the time.
She had been deemed an unsuitable girlfriend for one of the D’Arezzo men, as well as being a potentially bad influence on his younger sister, and their trip had been cut abruptly short. At the time Justina had accepted what had seemed a rather harsh verdict because she’d had no choice other than to accept it. But it had been yet another nail in the coffin of their relationship.
‘Can’t have everything?’ she echoed sarcastically. ‘But I thought you were the man who always believed he could. Who made “having it all” into an art form!’
‘Oh, how brittle you sound, Justina,’ he murmured. ‘I do hope that your attitude isn’t motivated by envy or avarice. Career taken a nose-dive, has it?’
She was tempted to tell him to go to hell, but some remnant of pride stopped her. Let him know that you’ve carved a respectable life for yourself, she thought. That the sacrifices she’d made had been worth it. She was independent and proud of it. And she was never going to be like her mother.
‘On the contrary, I’m living in London and still writing songs,’ she said. ‘But for other people now.’
‘And you’re successful?’
‘Oh, I do okay.’ Justina kept her smile tight. She could have told him about her recent chart-topping song, or the invitation to write the score for an upcoming musical, but he wouldn’t be impressed. Dante didn’t approve of ambition unless it came from a man. ‘It keeps me in shoes.’
‘Very expensive shoes, by the look of them.’ He lowered his gaze to study her skyscraper heels before lifting his head to let his eyes drift lazily over her face. And it was still the most beautiful face he had ever seen. Her pink lips were pressed together as if she was trying to decide what to do with them and Dante felt a rush of pure and potent lust. It hit his skin like the buffeting of a powerful wave. It turned the blood in his veins into a heated flow as he imagined kissing her again.
And in that moment he knew that he was going to have her one last time. That this fever wouldn’t go away unless he did. He realised then that his desire for her was like a disease which had lain dormant all these years and the sight of her had suddenly reactivated it all over again.
He felt the heavy aching at his groin as he leaned forward a little. ‘And what about men?’ he questioned softly.
‘Men?’
His gaze was steady; his voice was not quite. ‘Nobody in your life you like enough to bring him along today as your “plus one”?’
Justina met the blaze of his eyes, determined he wouldn’t discover the truth. Because wouldn’t he laugh—or, even worse, act smug—if he knew that her time with him had ruined her for other men? That she’d been unable to trust another man enough to get close to—even if she’d found anyone else attractive enough to want to try.
So why not play games with him? Why not pretend that she loved men just as they loved her? Surely pride demanded something along those lines? For Dante was traditional and old-fashioned enough to see her still-single status as some kind of failure.
She took another sip of wine. ‘Oh, I do all right with men,’ she said, and the sudden darkening of his face gave her a brief thrill of pleasure. Because if that was jealousy then it was only a fraction of what she’d felt when she’d walked into his hotel suite that day and seen that naked woman writhing all over him. Fighting back a sudden feeling of nausea, she raised her eyebrows, as if daring him to continue his interrogation.
‘But nobody permanent?’ he persisted.
‘Nope.’ She made it sound like a conscious choice instead of an unwanted situation into which she had been cast. She hadn’t realised that love would be so difficult to find second time around. She hadn’t realised that she would look at other men, compare them to the arrogant Tuscan—and be left completely cold. ‘I don’t do permanence. And now, if you don’t mind, Dante, I think we’ve exhausted pretty much everything we need to say to each other.’
Very deliberately, she turned her back on him and started talking to the Brigadier, who was sitting on her other side—although it took her a moment before she had composed herself enough to concentrate. But the old soldier was a lucky choice of companion. He knew lots about the groom’s ancestral home, and once he got going there was no stopping him. Acting like balm on her ruffled senses, he made for unexpectedly engaging company—especially to someone like Justina, who’d had such an erratic education.
Her mother’s louche and nomadic lifestyle had meant that Justina had changed schools as often as most people changed their wardrobes. By the age of seventeen she’d had a wealth of experience, but not much in the way of formal teaching—unless you counted her mother’s weekly master classes in gold-digging. But from an early age she’d learnt the art of asking the right questions, and the Brigadier was able to answer them all to her satisfaction. He told her all about the battles which had been fought around the beautiful Norfolk estate, and described in detail all the house’s treasures—including the rare Titian painting in the picture gallery.
If only she could have blocked out the occasional drift of Dante’s accent as she heard him entertaining his side of the table throughout the meal. The redhead wearing emeralds had a particularly piercing laugh, and Justina had to stop herself from wincing every time she heard it. If only she could have blotted out her aching awareness of his presence, too. She could almost feel the heat from his body and detect the raw, masculine scent which was so uniquely his.
Someone began banging a spoon against the side of a glass, and as the bride’s father stood up to make his speech Dante leaned over to speak in her ear.
‘You turned your back on me, Justina—and nobody ever does that.’
‘Shh.