She gave a tightly controlled smile. ‘So nice to have met you, Mr Farnese. Do please excuse me,’ she murmured in deliberate English, her tone as inexpressive as his, and turned away.
She would not be complicit in her hostess’s embarrassing matchmaking. Nor would she, even more excruciatingly, give the damn man any idea that she was complicit. Not waiting for a response, she threaded her way across the room, chatting animatedly with anyone she knew, even if only slightly.
She was done with the party, she realised. If Marnie van Huren was set on pairing her off, she didn’t want to spend the evening avoiding her hostess’s efforts. She set down her champagne, dived into the restroom, then went to the cloakroom to get her fake fur jacket and make her getaway.
She stepped out into the upper floor lobby, beyond the function rooms, and headed for the elevator.
Then stopped dead.
Luca Farnese, tall, dark, devastatingly good-looking and with those obsidian eyes that could cut like black lasers, had beaten her to it.
There was nothing else for it. She either had to bottle it, and scurry back to the party, or else hold her nerve and make her escape as she’d planned.
She opted for the latter. Head high, she stalked to the elevator.
Luca Farnese watched her approach. His face was unreadable, completely masked. Did the man think she was chasing after him? She didn’t care. Because she wasn’t. He could think what he liked—it didn’t bother her.
Bestowing upon him only the curtest of nods of acknowledgement, she stepped gratefully into the car as the elevator doors slid open. He followed her in.
‘Lobby?’ he enquired.
The dark, deep voice still had that sardonic tone to it, and Ariana knew exactly why.
‘Please,’ she said briefly.
He jabbed with a long finger and the doors sliced shut. The car descended. It seemed to leave Ariana’s stomach somewhere on the function room floor as it did so. Or something did.
She did not look at her fellow passenger, staring fixedly ahead. As the doors sliced open again he stood aside, letting her emerge first. She stalked across the marble lobby towards the hotel’s revolving doors. Out on the pavement the air was chilly, and she clutched her jacket around her. A doorman beckoned a taxi for her, opening the passenger door as Ariana stepped forward.
A voice sounded behind her. Deep and speaking Italian.
‘Have dinner with me,’ said Luca Farnese.
CHAPTER TWO
THERESTAURANTWASQUIET, and Luca liked it that way, it was why he patronised it when he was in New York. As the waiter bestowed menus upon them he found his thoughts flickering like a faulty circuit.
Why the hell had he gone and done this? It didn’t make logical sense. He should have headed back to his hotel, dined in his suite and had an early night before his flight to Milan the next day. Then at the weekend he’d be heading south, into the heart of Italy, to Umbria. To change his life for ever.
With a woman as unlike the one he’d brought here as it was possible to be.
The faulty circuit shorted out. His gaze lifted from the menu to the lush brunette Charles’s wife had so blatantly introduced him to. He’d been as dismissive about the introduction as civility permitted, and yet, when she had been similarly dismissive of him, he had been illogically put out. Was that why he’d made his impulsive dinner invitation to her?
His dark eyes rested on her now, as still he questioned himself. Her focus was entirely on the menu, and it allowed his gaze to linger. That fabulous hair, a wanton cloud around her shoulders, long and luxuriant, those huge, long-lashed smoky eyes, the full, wide mouth, lush with deep red lipstick to match the burgundy of her dress pulled tight across her generous breasts.
Sensuous, sensual... He’d known it from the moment he’d watched her dance. Unable tonotwatch her... And yet—he frowned inwardly—she was totally different from the kind of women he had affairs with—the sleek, corporate executive types, with sharp hair and sharp minds and slim, gym-fit bodies.
This woman, seated opposite him now, couldn’t be more different. And not just from the style of women he was used to. In his head flickered a projected image of the woman waiting for him in Italy—half a world away. Angelically fair, celestial blue eyes...
The image flickered again and cut out. Gone. As if she no longer existed. At least for now.
Only the woman sitting opposite him remained, dominating his vision, his senses, his consciousness, blocking out everything else. Everyoneelse.
Why?Why am I doing this when it is not what I planned at all? And why this woman?
The questions speared his head, seeking an answer from his keenly honed, coolly rational brain. Finding none.
He snapped his mind away from what he was doing and why he was doing it, forcibly returning his attention to his choice for dinner.