Maybe all Italian men learned to kiss like that in their teens, she told herself grimly. Maybe she was just a com¬plete push-over for Italian men—at least those of the tall, dark, well-built and sensationally desirable variety. Maybe living like a nun and refusing to recognise that she might have physical needs had made her a degradingly easy mark for any male with the right sensual technique.
But what was technique without chemistry? she asked herself doggedly. It was pathetic for her to try and deny one minute longer that she was wildly, dangerously at¬tracted to Luca Raffacani. For what pride had refused to face head-on, her own body had just proved with mortify¬ing eagerness.
As Luca thanked her stepmother for the party, Margo gave Darcy's hot cheeks a frozen look while Nina surveyed her stepsister as if she had just witnessed a poor, defence¬less man being brutally attacked by a sexually starved woman. Darcy's farewells were incoherent and brief.
The night air hit her like a rejuvenating bucket of cold water. 'We've played our part well enough to satisfy,' Luca had said, only minutes earlier. At that recollection Darcy now paled and stiffened, as if she had been slapped in the face.
Naturally that kiss had simply been part of the masquer¬ade. He had been acting. Acting as if he was attracted to her, in love with her, on the very brink of marrying her. Oh, dear heaven, had he guessed? Did he for one moment suspect that she hadn't been acting? How much could a man tell from one kiss? As kisses went, her response had been downright encouraging. Her self-respect cowered at that acknowledgement.
'That went off OK,' Luca drawled with distinct satisfac¬tion.
'Yes, you were marvellous,' Darcy agreed, struggling to sound breezy, approving and grateful, and instead sounding as if each individual word had been wrenched from her at gun-point. 'The kiss was a real bull's-eye clincher too. Strikes me you could make a fortune as a gigolo!'
With a forced laugh, she trod ahead of him, valiantly fighting to control her growing sense of writhing mortifi¬cation.
'Say that again’
Stalking rigid-backed down the pavement, Darcy slung another not very convincing laugh over her shoulder. 'Well, you've got everything going for you in that line,' she told him with determined humour. "The look, the charm, the patter, the screen-kiss technique. If I was some fading lonely lady with nothing but my money to keep me warm, I would've been swept off my feet in there!'
Without warning, a shockingly powerful hand linked forcibly with hers and pulled her round to face him again. Startled, Darcy looked up and clashed with blazing golden eyes as enervating as a ten-ton truck bearing down on her shrinking length.
'Porca miseria!' Luca growled in outrage. 'You compare me to a gigolo?'
Genuinely taken aback by that reaction, Darcy gawped at him. And then the penny dropped. Considering the mon¬etary aspect of their private arrangement, her lack of tact now left her stricken. 'Oh, no, I never thought... I mean, I really didn't mean—'
'That I am a man who would sell himself for money?' Luca incised in a raw tone that told her he took himself very seriously.
Darcy was so appalled by her own thoughtlessness that her hand fluttered up between them to pluck apologetically at his lapel and then smooth it down again. 'Luca... honestly, I was just trying to be funny—'
'Ha...ha,' Luca breathed crushingly. 'Give me the car keys.'
'The—?'
'You've had too much champagne.'
Darcy had had only a single glass. But out of guilt over her undiplomatic tongue, she handed over the keys. He swung into the driver's seat.
'You'll need directions.'
'I have total recall of our death-defying journey here.'
She let that comment on her driving ability go unchal¬lenged. She did drive pretty fast. And in three days' time they needed to get married. There was now some source of relief in the awareness that the marriage would be a fake. He had no sense of humour and a filthy temper. Even worse, he brooded. She stole a covert glance at his hard, dark chiselled profile...but, gosh, he still looked spectacu¬lar!
In the moonlight, she averted her attention from him, torn with shame at that betraying response. Deep in the pit of her taut belly, she felt a surge of guilty heat, and was ap¬palled by the immediacy of that reaction. He reminded her of Zia's father...was that the problem? She shook her head and studied her tightly linked hands, but although she tried to fight off those painful memories, they began flooding back...
When Richard had changed his mind about marrying her-three years earlier, Darcy had ended up taking their hon¬eymoon trip solo. Of course it had been dismal. Blind to the glorious sights, she had wandered round Venice as if she was homeless, while she struggled to cope with the pain of Richard's rejection.
Then, one morning, she had wit¬nessed a pair of youthful lovers having a stand-up row in the Piazza San Marco. The sultry brunette had flung some¬thing at her boyfriend. As the thick gilded card had fluttered to rest at Darcy's feet the fiery lovers had stalked off in opposite directions. And Darcy had found herself in un¬expected possession of an invite to a masked ball at one of the wonderful palaces on the Grand Canal.