Willow could feel all the blood drain from her face. ‘No, of course I didn’t!’ And then her hand flew to her lips. ‘Unless...’
‘So you do know?’ he demanded, firing the words at her like bullets.
Please let me wake up, Willow thought. Let me close my eyes, and when I open them again he will have disappeared and this will have been nothing but a bad dream.
But it wasn’t and he hadn’t. He was still standing there glaring at her, only now his expression had changed from being a potential milk-curdler, to looking as if he would like to put his hands on her shoulders and throttle her.
‘I may have...’ She took a deep breath. ‘I was talking to my sister about you—or rather, she was interrogating me about you. She asked if we were serious and I tried to be vague—and my aunt overheard us, and started getting carried away with talking about weddings and I didn’t...well, I didn’t bother to correct her.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘And why would you do something like that?’ he questioned dangerously.
Why?
Willow met his accusing gaze and something inside her flared like a small and painful flame. Couldn’t he see? Didn’t he realise that the reasons were heartbreakingly simple. Because for once she’d felt like she was part of the real world, instead of someone just watching from the sidelines. Because she’d allowed herself to start believing in her own fantasy.
‘I didn’t realise it was going to get out of hand like this,’ she said. ‘And I’m sorry.’
‘You’re sorry?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘You think a couple of mumbled words of apology and everything’s going to go back to normal?’ His face darkened again. ‘My assistant has been fielding phone calls all morning and my Paris office has been inundated with reporters asking for a comment. I’m in the process of brokering a deal with a man who is fiercely private and yet it seems as if I am about to be surrounded by my own personal press pack. How do you think that’s going to look?’
‘Can’t you just...issue a denial?’
Dante stared into her soft grey eyes and felt close to exploding. ‘You think it’s that simple?’
‘We could say that I was... I don’t know...’ Helplessly, Willow shrugged. ‘Joking?’
His mouth hardened, and now there was something new in his eyes. Something dark. Something bleak.
‘A denial might have worked, were it not for the fact that some enterprising journalist was alerted to the Di Sione name and decided to telephone my grandfather’s house on Long Island to ask him for his reaction.’ His blue eyes sparked with fury as they captured hers with their shuttered gaze. ‘And despite the time difference between here and New York, it just so happened that my grandfather was suffering from insomnia and boredom and pain, and was more than willing to accept the call. Which is why...’
He paused, as if he was only just hanging on to his temper by a shred.
‘Why I received a call from the old man, telling me how pleased he is that I’m settling down at last. Telling me how lovely you are—and what a good family you come from. I was trying to find the right moment to tell him that there is nothing going on between us, only the right moment didn’t seem to come—or rather, my grandfather didn’t give me a chance to say what I wanted to.’
‘Dante...’
‘Don’t you dare interrupt me when I haven’t finished,’ he ground out. ‘Because using the kind of shameless emotional blackmail he has always used to ensure he gets his own way, my grandfather then told me how much better he’d felt when he heard the news. He said he hadn’t felt this good in a long time and that it was high time I took myself a wife.’
‘I’m sorry.’ She gave him a beseeching look. ‘What else can I say?’
Dante felt a feeling of pure rage flood through him and wondered how he could have been stupid enough to take his eye off the ball. Or had he forgotten what women were really like—had he completely wiped Lucy from his memory? Had it conveniently slipped his mind that the so-called fairer sex were manipulative and devious and would stop at nothing to get what it was they wanted? How easy it was to forget the past when you had been bewitched by a supposedly shy blonde and a sob story about needing a temporary date which had convinced him to go to the damned wedding in the first place.
He stared at the slight quiver of Willow’s lips and at that moment he understood for the first time in his life the meaning of the term a punishing kiss, because that was what he wanted to do to her right now. He wanted to punish her for screwing up his plans with her thoughtlessness and her careless tongue. He watched as a slow colour crept up to inject her creamy skin with a faint blush, and felt his body harden. Come to think of it, he’d like to punish her every which way. He’d like to lay her down and flatten her against the floor and...and...
‘Are you one of those habitual fantasists?’ he demanded hotly. ‘One of those women who goes around pretending to be something she isn’t, to make herself seem more interesting?’
She put her coffee cup down so suddenly that some of it slopped over the side, but she didn’t even seem to notice. Her hands gripped the edge of the table, as if she needed its weathered wooden surface for support.
‘That’s an unfair thing to say,’ she breathed.
‘Why? Because you’re so delicate and precious that I’m not allowed to tell the truth?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘I thought you despised being given special treatment just because you’d been ill. Well, you can’t have it both ways, Willow. You can’t play the shrinking violet whenever it suits you—and a feisty modern woman the next. You need to decide who you really are.’
She met his eyes in the silence which followed. ‘You certainly don’t pull your punches, do you?’
‘I’m treating you the same as I would any other woman.’
‘Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, because you’re not!’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘If I was any other woman, you would have had sex with me last night. You know you would.’
Dante felt the heavy beat of a pulse at his temple and silently cursed her for bringing that up again. Did she think she would wear him down with her persistence? That what Willow wanted, Willow would get. His mouth hardened, but unfortunately, so did his groin. ‘Like I told you. I don’t sleep with virgins.’