‘Would you normally do that?’
‘No, but I’m sure all the other women there—’
‘Only do it if it’s what you want, and not for them. If you want my opinion, your colouring is beautiful and does not need any enhancement. Be proud of your skin as it’s part of what makes you uniquely you.’
The skin he’d complimented turned the shade of a radish and it took her a beat to say hurriedly, ‘Thank you for the ego boost. Before I forget, I spoke to Orla earlier. I know you’ve got a lot on your mind with the wedding but I promised I’d ask—she wants to know if you’ll come to Finn’s birthday party. She really wants to meet you.’
Thrown by the question, disarmed by the plea resonating in the grey eyes, danger ringing like an alarm in his head, Dante chose his words with care. ‘Give me the details after the wedding.’
Her relief was visible. Before she could say anything further on the matter, he said, ‘Before we leave, I have something to give you.’
He kept firmly to his side of the threshold.
After a restless sleep, he’d awoken full of fresh determination to keep a distance from this woman he was so drawn to.
But that look they’d exchanged under the moonlight lingered in his bloodstream. Tight arousal had sprung back to life when she’d walked into the breakfast room, russet hair tousled, eyes still puffy from sleep.
There had been the slightest jolt in her step to see him and then her cheeks had stained with colour.
Aislin, he knew with every fibre of his being, was as attracted to him as he was to her.
If she was anyone else, anyone other than Sinead O’Reilly’s daughter and Orla O’Reilly’s sister, he knew damn well all their long conversations would have taken place in a bed, preferably with Aislin’s legs wrapped tightly around his waist.
He could not stop himself from imagining, with increasing vividness, what it would be like to be deep inside her, the colour of the hair that nestled between her legs, the weight of her breasts in his hands, the colour of her nipples...
It was a form of mental torture that he was inflicting on himself but, as hard as he tried, was unable to stop. It took every ounce of the control he’d mastered in his thirty-four years not to pull her into his arms and plunder her mouth.
But she was resisting it too and the electricity zinging between them was charged enough for him to feel it in the roots of his hair.
Her scent filled the space around them and he had to hold himself back from filling his lungs to the brim with it.
‘What did you want to give me?’ She was virtually rocking on her heels, cheeks still containing the remnants of her blush, eyes for once looking anywhere but at him.
‘Your engagement ring.’
Now the grey eyes snapped on him. ‘An engagement ring?’
‘It would be strange to introduce you as my fiancée without a ring on your finger, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose.’
He pulled the small box out of his trouser pocket and handed it to her. ‘Hopefully you will find it fits.’
She plucked it from the palm of his hand with, he noted, fingers that contained the slightest of tremors, and pressed it open.
Dante waited, chest and throat suddenly tight, for her reaction.
He’d bought it that morning. Thinking he would buy the first decent ring he saw that would pass muster under all the eyes that would undoubtedly want to look at it, he’d strolled into the jeweller as blasé as if buying a new pair of shoes.
He had not expected to walk out twenty minutes later without buying anything.
Three jewellers later he’d finally found the perfect ring for Aislin, a large pear-cut diamond encrusted with dozens and dozens of tiny sparkling diamonds, emeralds and sapphires and centred on a band of rose gold.
It was beautiful and different, just like Aislin.
It was also the single most expensive item he’d ever bought that was not bricks and mortar.
Why he had spent such an obscene amount of money on his fake fiancée he did not know, and refused to think too deeply about. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t afford it.