‘Right here in the foyer,’ he told her. ‘Awaiting my date—are you coming down?’
Coming down? She frowned. ‘Don’t you need to change first?’
‘Would you like me to come up?’
‘No!’ she cried, not understanding why she was being handed this reprieve from the one moment she had been dreading all day, but more than willing to accept it. ‘I just need a few minutes and I will come down to you.’
Already beginning to panic, she put down the phone, then turned in an anxious daze to gather the last of her things together. She would have to collect them tomorrow, she told herself as she stuffed her day things into the suit bag with fingers that trembled in her urgency. For it wouldn’t be practical for her to come back here tonight just to collect them.
Who needs a practical excuse to come back here? a little voice inside her head mocked.
Ignoring it, she turned to take a last quick glance at herself in the mirror. What she saw reflected back at her set her nerve-ends singing. Was that her—was it really her?
Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were too bright—and the dress was an absolute disaster! It was too short, too tight, too—everything! she decided, giving a wriggling tug at the stretchy fabric in an effort to cover up some more leg. The dusky-blue silk-knit settled back to its original position the moment she let go of it—leaving her standing there staring at it in despair. She had deliberately chosen this particular dress because she’d thought it had all the right qualities to look elegant and demure with its long sleeves and what she’d remembered as a modest V neckline.
So how was it that she hadn’t remembered how it clung to her body like a second skin? Or that the V dipped too low into her cleavage and her legs suddenly looked twice as long as they were!
And I should have put my hair up! she realised as panic put its foot on the throttle and went raging through her at full pace. Leaving it down to hang loose over her shoulders made her look—slinky, she saw in growing horror.
Had she time to stand here messing with it? The overriding fear of him losing patience and coming up here to find her told her she hadn’t even got t
ime to panic like this!
‘Oh,’ she groaned. This was all his fault! The wretched man had been slowly driving her out of her mind all day.
Then—no, she amended that as she shuffled her feet into three-inch high-heeled shoes and made a grab for her evening jacket. He had been driving her out of her mind from the first moment she’d set eyes on him two days ago!
Was it only two days? It felt like for ever, she thought tensely as she snatched up her evening purse and left the bedroom.
She was hurrying past the kitchen opening when she spied the ice bucket sitting on one of the units with the bottle of champagne standing in it—and pulled to a stop, then closed her eyes on the unwanted reminder of this particular instruction he’d emailed her.
Five o’clock on the dot, she recalled with a tense little quiver. ‘You may stop being the efficient Miss Deyton now and turn yourself into the very desirable Natalia for me. PS. Put the champagne on ice,’ leaving her in no doubt as to his expectations later tonight.
But what really bothered her was—she’d done it. What did that tell her about her own expectations for tonight?
But—no. Grimly she blocked out that thought. They were going out for dinner, she told herself firmly as she stepped into the lift and pressed for the foyer. Dinner, she repeated. Nothing more, nothing less. When it was over she would go home to her own house and her own bed, and Giancarlo Cardinale would be drinking his champagne alone.
A promise she forgot the moment she set eyes on him. The lift doors came open as he was turning round to face them. She gained a very vague impression of subtle lighting and white tiled flooring, then—nothing.
He went still. So did she, the breath dying in her throat. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt and a dark tie, all of which looked as if he had put them on only minutes ago. His face was clean-shaven, his hair as smooth as silk. He looked lean and dark and frighteningly special—and his eyes were so hot they made her flesh burn…
Had it worked? Giancarlo was asking himself tensely as he turned to watch the lift doors open. Had he managed to keep her mind so totally focused on him all day that she would not be able to think of any other man?
One look at her flushed, slightly guarded expression as the lift doors opened, and he had his answer.
Dio—yes! he exclaimed on a silent hiss of triumph that made his heart vibrate. She was his, those darkened eyes were seeing no other man but him, thinking of no other man—wanting no other man.
And this one wanted her with a craving that was threatening to take him over. She looked sensational. All fire and light and simmering senses, he expanded on a hot sense of masculine pleasure for the way those eyes were looking at him. Eyes that did things to him no other pair of eyes had ever done. The eyes, the hair, the wonderful skin, he listed. The body inside the sensually moulding fabric of her dress that brought vivid pictures to mind of what was going on unseen and did things to his libido that actually shocked him.
And then there was the mouth, he came to finally. It was a mouth to revel in, lose himself in, a mouth he had acquired a hungry taste for and intended to taste over and over again very soon.
In fact his driving impulse was to leap the gap between them and devour her right there and then in the lift on the way back upstairs. But there was also an overriding desire burning in him that simply wanted to enjoy watching her long legs bring her towards him.
His, all his, he claimed possessively. And stepped smoothly forward to gallantly take hold of her hand. ‘Buona sera, signorina,’ he greeted softly. ‘Non è bello quel che è bello, ma è bello quel che piace…’
Somewhere in the background the concierge was watching all of this with smiling indulgence. Neither of them seemed to notice. Giancarlo was too engrossed in what was happening to her eyes again, and Natalia was trying to come to terms with the way his voice in its native Italian had affected her. She felt hot and stripped and touched all over!
‘What did you say?’ she asked, wary in case she was responding this violently to some bland remark about the time!