CHAPTER TWELVE
ITWASSTILLdark when Dante sliding away from her woke Beatrice. She stretched and stopped, the memories that explained the stiffness of her muscles flooding back. She reached out in the dark, her hand touching the smooth warm skin of his back.
Seated on the edge of the bed, he responded to her sleepy murmur of protest with a kiss that deepened as her lips softened beneath the pressure before he pulled away abruptly.
Suddenly cold even though the air was warm, she shivered.
‘Who has a conference call in the middle of the night?’ she complained, raising herself on one elbow and pushing the silky skein of hair from her sleepy eyes, desire ribboning through her and settling heavy and low in her abdomen as she smelt him on her skin.
‘The half of the world that has been awake hours. It is what living in a global economy is all about, and it is not night…’
He heard her reach out for the lamp and covered her hand with his. ‘No, leave it.’ If he saw her, read the sultry invitation in her eyes and remembered feeling the aftershocks of her climax as they’d stayed joined as one, he was pretty sure that he would never get to that call.
She ignored him—of course she did.
She looked every bit as wanton and glorious as he had imagined as she sat there, her perfect breasts partially concealed by her hair.
She pouted. ‘I don’t want to be awake.’ She didn’t want the night to end; she knew it would, she just didn’t want to think about it yet.
He slanted a kiss across her lips, the touch making her shiver, and flicked off the light.
‘Then go back to sleep.’
It was a week later that Dante walked into the drawing room just as a young woman was walking out. This was the second time this week he had managed to arrange his day to include lunch with Beatrice.
On one level he couldn’t believe he was trying to earn brownie points from his own wife, but amazingly he actually found that his new schedule made him more productive.
‘Who was that?’
‘My new PA.’
His eye-framing dark brows lifted. ‘You are not letting the grass grow under your feet.’
‘She came highly recommended.’
‘By whom?’
‘Jacintha.’
His brow furrowed as he loosened his tie. ‘Who is Jacintha, again?’
‘The maid. The one with the red hair and cool glasses.’
‘You hired a PA on the say-so of a maid?’
‘Should I have run it past you?’ she challenged.
‘Not at all.’
She smiled. ‘Well, Jacintha’s recommendation, and those of her previous employers.’ She gave a small smug smile as she listed them, watching his eyes widen. ‘I know working for me does seem like a step down, but she wants to come home because her mother has a heart condition. The best thing is she is not related even by marriage to any of the families.’ It did not take long to figure out that most of the top positions in the palace were given to relatives or cronies of a handful of historically powerful San Macizan families.
‘This will cause a storm in a champagne glass, you know that?’ he mused, watching her face with a half-smile as he perched on the edge of the polished mahogany desk and began to leaf through the diary that lay open. ‘Wow, you have hit the ground running,’ he remarked as he skimmed through the entries written in her distinctive hand. ‘Oh, leave Tuesday morning free. I’ve made an appointment with the obstetrician and—’ He stopped and leaned in closer as he reread the most recent entry that had caught his attention before he stabbed it with his finger. ‘What is this?’
‘What is what?’ she asked, not understanding the ice in his voice.
‘“Fun run, five K, fancy dress optional”,’ he read out.
‘Oh, that’s Lara. She rang earlier. She is organising a fun run for the children’s hospice. I agreed to take part.’