‘I am very pleased to hear it,’ said Gianferro. He shot Nico another unfathomable look. ‘Perhaps I could see you alone for a moment, Nicolo?’
Nico raised his eyebrows. ‘As you can see, I’m a little busy.’
Ella felt her cheeks flaming. Was Gianferro trying to get Nico out of the office to warn him not to make love to her? Well, he could save his breath!
She closed the open book on the desk and picked it up, somehow managing a cool and professional smile. ‘I was actually just about to leave,’ she said. ‘My trip here today was only intended to be an introductory one, and in future I will be working on my own.’ Her green eyes flashed Nico a warning. ‘I certainly won’t need to waste any more of Nico’s time.’
Nico’s mouth tightened. She was playing him like a virtuoso, knowing that he would be unable to object in his brother’s presence. How dared she? ‘Will there be anything else, Gianferro?’
‘I’ll see you at dinner.’
Nico shook his head. ‘I don’t think you will.’
There was a pause while the brothers’ eyes met and engaged in a silent ebony duel. ‘Then perhaps you could make me an appointment in your diary some time this year?’ returned Gianferro sardonically, and left the room with a curt nod.
Once he had gone, and the door was closed behind him, Ella rounded on Nico, her voice beginning to tremble with rage. ‘How dare you expose me to that kind of humiliation?’ she accused.
‘I certainly wasn’t expecting my brother to walk in,’ he said drily.
‘No?’
‘Of course not. I would have gone to the precaution of locking the door had that been the case.’
Ella could have screamed! He didn’t look in the least bit repentant—on the contrary, he simply looked irritated, as if he had had his fun cut short. Which, when she stopped to think about it, he had. ‘Did you think you could just come up here and have your wicked way with me? Is that what you thought?’ she demanded. ‘Your droit de seigneur?’
‘I wasn’t doing much thinking,’ he drawled. ‘And I hadn’t planned it, no, if that’s what you want to know.’ His eyes glittered. ‘You are just too damned irresistible, cara.’
‘What kind of a tramp must I have looked to your brother?’
‘Tramp?’ He raised his brows in surprise. ‘That’s fairly emotive language, Ella. My brother is no innocent—he won’t judge you, or me, for doing what comes so naturally to a man and a woman. I really should have locked the door…’ he said, half to himself.
That just about did it. ‘I don’t care about him judging me!’ declared Ella, wildly contradicting herself in the heat of the moment. ‘I’m judging myself, if you must know—and I’m pretty appalled at my own behaviour!’
‘Why?’
‘Because it was wrong—you know it was wrong!’
‘I disagree.’ He regarded her steadily, wondering if she had any idea just how magnificent she looked when she was angry. ‘You want me, Gabriella,’ he observed coolly. ‘Don’t deny it. You know you do.’
She stared at him, at the hot, glittering eyes and the autocratic curve of his sensual lips, and her heart flipped and there was nothing she could do to stop it. ‘Oh, I don’t deny that on some fundamental level I do—sure I do. But that’s not how I operate, Nico—women rarely do. There has to be more than pure physical attraction.’
‘That didn’t seem to bother you last time,’ he commented insultingly.
‘That’s because—’ She bit her lip, terrified of showing her vulnerability, of letting him know that she had been beginning to build all kinds of dreams about him. She had seen him for what she had believed him to be—her strong, powerful rescuer and an intelligent, provocative man. But that had been an illusion that had crumbled into dust.
‘Because?’ he prompted arrogantly.
‘Maybe I did behave hot-headedly,’ she admitted. ‘But I thought that you…’ She cleared her throat. ‘At the time I didn’t realise that you…’
‘Were a prince?’ he supplied drily. ‘Well, now you do, and I must say it’s the first time that it’s ever worked against me.’
Her eyes flashed fire. ‘It’s more than that, and you know it!’
‘What is it?’ he grated. ‘Explain it to me! Why are you so hung up on my title, Gabriella?’
‘It’s not the title—’
‘Isn’t it?’ he challenged.