He was leaning into the car now, his breath warm on her cheek, his dark eyes cool and inscrutable.
‘I try and get out whenever I can.’ Sunny was beginning to feel horribly uncomfortable in the skimpy outfit, under his accusatory gaze.
What business was it of his anyway? she thought defiantly.
Stefano didn’t say anything but he shot a sideways glance at Eric as he slid into the front seat.
He could hardly blame his driver for looking. The outfit was an eye-catcher! She wouldn’t be able to walk five steps without drawing stares. Should he revisit his choice of restaurant? Perhaps stay at the house and have one of the caterers he used come in and do the honours? He’d thought of the restaurant in question because it often attracted minor celebrities and he’d thought that might be fun for Flora. Now he had visions of tacky minor celebrities ogling Sunny, maybe trying to slip her their number.
He couldn’t even kid himself that he was taking an avuncular interest in her well-being, protecting her from male attention she didn’t like. No. He didn’t want men staring at her and thinking about making passes because he wanted her for himself. Didn’t matter how hard he fought it, that was the base line, wasn’t it? He wanted her.
They covered the short distance to the restaurant in silence. Sunny stared through the window while next to her Flora was in a world of her own, listening to music.
When she glanced down, she could see way too much thigh exposed because the skirt had ridden up. He’d seen her in a bikini, had already seen a lot more of her body than was on show now, but this felt different.
Not that he was looking. Except in a derogatory way.
She was unusually quiet over the meal, only interacting when pulled into the conversation. The food was delicious and the crowd was interesting. Flora, for once showing her age, got a little excited and bright-eyed at seeing a boy who was, she whispered, the lead singer in a boy band, the name of which neither she nor Stefano recognised.
Wearing this outfit had been a crazy idea. She’d wanted to prove something and the only thing she’d proved was that she had it in her to be just like her mother. Her mother used to dress like this—worse, tiny little clothes that left nothing to the imagination and attracted all the wrong attention from all the wrong men.
The more she thought of that, the worse she felt. Instead of seeing her in a different light, Stefano would now see her as someone cheap and easy, someone who stopped being a lawyer the second she could wriggle out of her suit. She worked so hard to project the image she wanted the world to see that it was horrible suspecting that one impulsive decision might have left him with the wrong impression of her.
They stayed at the restaurant far longer than she had expected. Flora, animated and excited at seeing the very young-looking boy band member, dragged her meal out for as long as she could and then insisted on having dessert.
‘Why don’t you stay the night?’ Stefano suggested, turning to look at her from the front seat.
An exhausted Flora had ended up half asleep on Sunny’s shoulder but she roused herself sufficiently to sleepily agree with the suggestion.
‘It’s Sunday tomorrow so, unless you have plans, stay over and have another day out here. It’s far nicer than being in London and you can try your hand at swimming again, if you haven’t been scared off...’
‘Thank you,’ Sunny said politely, ‘but I couldn’t possibly.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because...’ There were a lot of reasons to choose from. How about, she wanted to say, because you make me feel uncomfortable and just the thought of being under the same roof as you overnight sends shivers down my spine? How about the fact that I don’t have a change of clothes and I’ll die if I have to spend another day in these? And his suggestion that she try her hand at swimming again? Well, Sunny wanted to laugh out loud at that because there was no way that she was going to parade in her bikini in front of him.
‘You heard Flora. She’d like it. Wouldn’t you, Flora?’
‘I don’t think it’s very fair to try and coerce your daughter into siding with you.’
‘I can play dirty if the occasion demands... Think about it.’ He turned back around and within minutes the car was pulling through the stone pillars that heralded the long drive up to the house.
Flora was dead on her feet and was in bed within half an hour and, since it seemed rude to disappear without thanking him properly for the meal, Sunny hovered, feeling more and more conspicuous in the wretched outfit.
‘Well? What’s your decision to be?’ He’d reappeared through one of the side doors, having obviously gone somewhere else after he had dropped his daughter to her bedroom.
Sunny feasted her eyes on him. He hadn’t dressed formally for the meal and was wearing a simple pair of black trousers and a cream linen shirt which highlighted his wildly exotic bronzed skin tone. All at once several thoughts raced through her head, clamouring for attention.
‘I have a lot to do tomorrow,’ she began backtracking but in her head all she could think about was...those fabulous dark eyes coolly assessing her in her borrowed clothes, coolly making judgements, coolly sneering at her.
All her dormant insecurities, ones she had thought she had put to rest a long time ago, wriggled out of their shallow graves.
She remembered the men who had come and gone, chasing behind her mother...she remembered the way her foster father’s eyes had followed her even though she had dressed like a nun in his presence...she remembered the boys she had met at boarding school, the way they had looked, as though their fingers were itching to touch...
She remembered the way she had never quite managed to fit in, always standing out amongst those well-bred girls with their braying laughs and bone-deep self-confidence.
She thought that if one of that type had dressed in a short skirt and top Stefano would never have dreamed of making awful sarcastic remarks at her expense.
If, say, Katherine had worn an outfit which, quite honestly, was hardly anything out of the ordinary on a girl in her early twenties, Stefano would probably have complimented her on it, rather than asking whether she had forgotten to finish putting on her clothes.
‘I resent the way you insulted me,’ she heard herself burst out.
She honestly hadn’t meant to say anything and she couldn’t imagine why she had because that sort of remark was a glaring admission of her insecurities—insecurities she didn’t want to advertise. Not to him, not to anyone.
Stefano, thrown a curve ball, stared at her in frowning silence.
‘Explain,’ he said eventually. ‘And sit while you explain. You make me feel like a kid called into the principal’s office to account for himself.’ He turned away and poured them both a glass of wine. They had only drunk a small amount at dinner, which had seemed a good idea with Flora present, and right now he felt as if he needed to make up for the oversight. ‘How have I insulted you?’ He sat down and dragged a chair over with his foot, pushing it back slightly so that he could extend his long legs on it as a foot rest.
The joys of great wealth, Sunny thought, without a trace of envy but more than a hint of stark realism. Every stick of furniture in the kitchen was handmade. It was obvious. You could feel it in the solidity of the wood and the smoothness of the grain. However, it would never have occurred to Stefano to be precious around any of the furniture because if it got scratched or even destroyed, it could all be replaced with the click of an imperious finger.
‘My outfit,’ she muttered, already regretting having brought this grievance out into the open because, the second she mentioned what she was wearing, his dark, lazy eyes obligingly roamed over her body, bringing her out in a tingle of excruciating awareness.
‘What about it?’ Had she noticed the way men had stared covertly at her when they had walked into the airy dining room? Flora would have been mortified had she only noticed that the underage boy-band member had done his fair share of staring at Sunny. Stefano had noticed it all and he hadn’t liked any of it.
He’d never cared what the women he dated wore. Indeed, most of them wore less than Sunny was wearing now, hadn’t thought twice about displaying their wares, just so that he could be in no doubt as to what he was getting.
Had he ever felt the slightest inclination to demand that any of them change their clothes? Dress in something prissier? Something, preferably, that covered from neck to ankle?
Simple answer...no.
But he’d had to bite back the urge to hurry the meal along this evening so that he could remove an oblivious Sunny from the sideways glances she was commanding from every single male in the room with a pulse.
He could only assume that he was so accustomed to getting exactly what he wanted, when he wanted it, from the opposite sex, that her lack of availability was stirring all sorts of puzzling responses in him. Responses that were unwanted and definitely out of bounds!
Not only was she not making any moves to attract his attention, but she was actively discouraging it.
And it wasn’t, as he had assumed, that she actively discouraged all male attention. If she did, then she surely wouldn’t own an outfit like the one she was wearing.
‘I didn’t appreciate your insinuating that I looked like...like a tart.’ Her voice was barely audible and she was beetroot red, but it had to be said. Considering she’d begun.
Stefano flushed darkly because he could hardly try and adopt a pious stance when he knew exactly what she was talking about.
Even if she had managed to misconstrue the intention behind his words.
‘I thought you might have been uncomfortable with the sort of unwarranted attention an outfit like that might attract.’
‘I’m not wearing anything any girl in her twenties might not wear.’