Challenging Dante

‘You’re identifying them now?’ Topsy teased even though she was touched by his consideration for Sofia. ‘Your time with that rose book is certainly paying off!’

Vittore laughed, turned a little red and smiled warmly.

* * *

This was the little tableau that Dante was deeply disturbed to witness as he strode round the corner of the castle to access the side entrance. Like a pantomime lech, his grinning stepfather was extending a rose to a giggling young brunette. Even if Marco hadn’t planted suspicion in Dante’s mind he would have become suspicious at the sight of such conspicuous familiarity between an older man and a youthful employee.

‘Vittore...’ Dante breathed, quietly announcing his presence.

Startled, his stepfather whirled round so fast he almost fell over a shrub and, righting himself, stiffened and froze in place still standing in the rose bed. ‘Dante,’ he acknowledged with a rather forced smile. ‘This is Topsy. She’s working here to help your mother with her charities.’

Topsy stared at the tall black-haired male who had appeared out of nowhere. So, this was Dante, Sofia’s beloved only child, the selfish, unfeeling cad, who had spoiled the older couple’s wedding with his cold attitude and even quicker departure. Of course she had seen a photo of him in Sofia’s sitting room but no two-dimensional image could possibly have conveyed the devastating effect of Dante Leonetti in the flesh.

He was drop-dead gorgeous from the crown of his luxuriant black hair to the soles of his undoubtedly handmade shoes. His dark suit said he meant business and was faultlessly tailored to his lean powerful frame. He stalked closer like a predator closing in on its prey and she blinked, wondering where that strange comparison had come from. Within six feet of them he came to a halt and the sheer height and breadth of him intimidated her, reminding her of the undeniable drawbacks of being just four feet ten and a half inches tall. His extraordinary eyes made her stare for they were an unexpectedly exquisite shade of green, strikingly luminous and light against his bronzed skin and oddly unsettling. An unfamiliar sense of breathlessness afflicted her.

Her body felt weirdly detached from her brain while a series of bizarre reactions was filtering through her. All of a sudden, her breasts felt incredibly sensitive and an uncomfortable clenching sensation between her legs made her instinctively press her thighs together. Sexual attraction? She refused to believe that it could be. She couldn’t possibly be attracted to a male she was already programmed to thoroughly dislike!

* * *

Dante studied the tiny brunette with fierce attention. Her glossy mane of curling dark hair fell down her back almost to her waist. She had wide almond-shaped eyes the colour of melted honey, creamy olive skin and a ripe pink mouth. Her beautiful face was the shape of a heart and, for all her surprising lack of height, she had the pronounced curves of a pocket Venus. The ripe swell of her full breasts pushed against her thin cotton top while the opulent flare of the hips below her tiny waist was neatly delineated by the fitted skirt. Dante was startled by the instantaneous swelling sensation at his groin for not since he was an undisciplined teenager had he reacted that strongly at first sight of a woman. Annoyingly, she wasn’t even his type, she absolutely wasn’t his type: he went for tall elegant blondes and always had. But evidently his treacherous hormones had a different opinion and he had cause to be grateful for the suit jacket he still wore.

Topsy extended a slim hand. ‘Topsy Marshall.’

‘Dante Leonetti,’ Dante told her as he grasped her small hand, barely aware of his stepfather still hovering in the background while his keen scrutiny remained welded to Topsy’s smiling face.

His brain kicked back into gear. Of course she was smiling at him, of course she was responding with charm! How else would she treat a very rich man? After all, if she was a gold-digger, he was a wealthier and much more rewarding target than Vittore could ever be. On the back of that thought the germ of an excellent idea flared through Dante. He was rich and single and consequently had to be a much more tempting prospect than his stepfather. Possibly, Vittore was still only flirting with the idea of adultery, for Dante was convinced that Vittore would not be going to the idiotic lengths of gathering roses if he had already got into the little brunette’s bed. Surmising that nothing very much had yet happened between the couple, Dante recognised that he had the power to nip the relationship in the bud and protect his mother in the short term. If he showed an interest in his mother’s employee, Vittore would have to master his weakness and back off.

‘Your mother will be eager to see you,’ Topsy remarked.

Her use of fluent Italian surprised Dante. ‘You speak our language?’

‘I speak several languages,’ Topsy admitted lightly. ‘But my best friend at school was Italian and we shared a room, so I picked up more colloquial phrases.’

‘You have a commendable grasp,’ Dante remarked, curious about her for the first time. ‘What other languages do you speak?’

‘French, Spanish and German. Rather old-fashioned choices,’ Topsy commented wryly. ‘I wish I’d had the foresight to study Russian and Chinese. Even a working knowledge of those might have been more useful.’

Dante shrugged a broad shoulder as he moved towards the entrance. ‘You can’t lose with those languages while you’re living in Europe.’

‘I’ll take you straight up to see your mother,’ Vittore volunteered, hurrying towards the stone staircase at the rear of the hall.

‘And I must deliver the roses before they start to wilt,’ Topsy added, her heart beating very fast as Dante momentarily paused to shoot a razor-edged glance at her that was anything but friendly. What on earth was wrong with the man? Had he disliked her on sight?

Dante ground his even white teeth together. He was in his own home and he had not seen his mother for weeks. He needed neither a guide to her rooms nor companions and was immediately suspicious. Vittore slung him an almost apprehensive look over his shoulder as he reached the top of the stairs, his attention shooting anxiously to Topsy. Witnessing that revealing byplay between them, Dante sensed a powerful hint of duplicity that put him even more on his guard.

The contessa smiled warmly as her husband entered her charming private sitting room.

‘I have a surprise for you,’ Vittore said tautly.

And then, a split second later, as Dante strode through the door the small slim brunette, who had been reclining on the comfortable chaise longue by the window flew to her feet and cried, ‘Dante! Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?’

‘I was scared I would be forced to cancel at the last moment.’ Dante kissed his mother’s cheek and then grasped her hands to stand back and look at her. ‘You look pale, tired—’

Recognising the flicker of dismay in the older woman’s eyes at that remark, Topsy spoke up before she could think better of it. ‘Your mother’s still recovering from the bout of flu she had a couple of weeks ago.’

‘Yes...it took a lot out of me,’ Sofia confirmed the lie while sending Topsy a warm glance for providing her with that easy excuse. ‘Come and sit down, Topsy—’

‘I think I should get on with some work,’ Topsy protested as Sofia settled back down onto the chaise longue and patted the space beside her. In her late forties, Sofia was still a very pretty woman with the same unusual clear green eyes that distinguished her son.

‘No, no,’ Vittore argued, reaching for the house phone with alacrity. ‘Take a break. I’ll order coffee for us.’

Dante watched in silence while Topsy took a seat beside his mother, his handsome mouth compressing with disapproval as he recognised that the older woman was treating the girl more like a favoured niece than an employee. Quite clearly she had no suspicions whatsoever about the younger woman’s character or, indeed, her behaviour with her husband. Vittore, meanwhile, hovered beside the chaise longue within reach of his wife, the very epitome of the devoted husband he wanted Dante to believe he was.

In reaction, hostility flared through Dante’s lean, powerful frame and he wondered if anger was making him paranoid for, observing the cosy little threesome, he was convinced he was being treated to an act designed to pull the wool over his eyes. Yet what could his mother possibly have to hide from him? Sofia and her son had always been close. His reading of the situation, his conviction that something was badly amiss, had to be wrong, he reasoned in growing frustration.

CHAPTER TWO

TOPSY GOT UP and walked through to the adjoining cloakroom to put the cut roses in water and then she answered the knock on the door that preceded the housekeeper, Carmela’s entrance with a tray of coffee and cakes. The grey-haired older woman reacted to Dante as though he were the prodigal son with a fatted calf to be slaughtered to celebrate his return.

Topsy returned to her seat while Vittore arranged a table beside his wife so that she could pour the coffee. While that was going on, Topsy studied Dante. Those eyes, fringed by long black lashes in that lean dark face were utterly stunning, she conceded grudgingly, unsettled that such a thought should even occur to her for he was not the type of man who should ever appeal to her. He wore his elegant business suit like a second skin and his sleek aura of well-groomed arrogance and command reminded her strongly of her bossy brothers-in-law. Dante Leonetti, she reflected abstractedly, would have all the imagination of a stone and would only think in terms of power and profit. Money was all important to him and undoubtedly the yardstick by which he judged other men. She suspected that had Vittore Ravallo been a rich and powerful man, Dante might well have welcomed him into the family.

How could anyone dislike someone as sweet and inoffensive as Vittore? Even so, although Dante might be offensive he was still, indisputably, a stunningly beautiful man. The shock of that second disturbing acknowledgement almost floored Topsy where she sat, for she had never been the susceptible sort, impressed by outward appearance. After all, her sisters were married to handsome men and she was accustomed to their looks. But no matter how hard she tried to concentrate on something else her attention remained hopelessly locked to Dante, noting the arrow-straight flare of his nose, the level black brows, the spectacular bone structure and the strong stubborn jaw line already darkening with stubble. She shifted uneasily where she sat, shocked by the sensations flooding her treacherous body and appalled to realise that for the first time in her life she was greedily wondering if a man would look as good naked as he did clothed. Her lashes fluttered as she tried to suppress that embarrassingly intimate thought while still guiltily engaged in mentally mapping the impressive breadth of his shoulders, the muscular width of the chest flexing beneath his silk shirt and the neat fit of his expensive trousers pulled taut over his long, powerful thighs.

Dante’s handsome dark head whipped round and he met her wide dark gaze in a head-on collision. Topsy felt her face flame red as fire, mortification claiming her entire body in a scorching blush as she literally tore her scrutiny from him, lowering her head as awkward as a schoolgirl caught out, only to find that her wretched gaze accidentally fell on the very last part of him she should be studying: the prominent masculine bulge at his crotch. It was as if Dante Leonetti put out sexual pheromones that fried her brain cells and all she could think about was touching him, tracing that arrogant blade of a nose, caressing that roughened jaw line, smoothing hands in worshipping exploration of places she had never touched before but longed to discover.

‘Excuse me...’ Dante sprang upright and strode over to the window, turning his back to them and thrusting the latch open to filter in fresh air to the stuffy room. Madre di Dio... He had never known temptation could come in such a small unexpected package, had never dreamt that involuntary arousal could seize him when he was in every way an adult in full control of his libido. What the hell was happening to him? Why was Topsy Marshall having this effect on him? It was not as though he were sex-starved or had even had much interest in that direction of recent. He ground his perfect white teeth together in bemused frustration, striving not to picture the diamond-hard pointed buttons of her nipples indenting her tee shirt, the mere hint of a shadowy vee between her creamy thighs as the hem of her skirt rode up. It was like being shot back screaming to the teen years when his control over his own body had been a bad joke. So exactly what was it about her that got to him? A tiny, shapely brunette, years his junior, not a raving beauty by any means but sexy, impossibly, outrageously sexy.

‘Are you feeling all right, Dante?’ his mother asked curiously.

‘I was too warm,’ Dante murmured flatly. ‘Would you mind if I took a run over to see how the work is progressing on your house? I feel like some fresh air.’

‘Of course I wouldn’t mind and if you don’t mind taking Topsy with you, Vittore and I will be able to have lunch together,’ his mother remarked. ‘Topsy has to see my decorator and check that he’s redone the kitchen the way I wanted it. I don’t know what I would have done without her help. For a while there, I had far too much on my plate.’

Dante skimmed a glance in Topsy’s direction that didn’t linger. ‘We’ll go as soon as we’ve had our coffee.’

Not best pleased by the news that she would be visiting the Casa di Fortuna in Dante’s company rather than Vittore’s, Topsy had stiffened, gripped by the most maddening self-consciousness she had ever experienced. She was afraid to look near the wretched man in case he cast a spell over her again. She wasn’t stupid: she knew she was attracted to him and that it was a stronger attraction than she had ever felt before. So superficial of her too, she scolded herself wryly, being physically drawn to a male who was a virtual stranger and with whom she would not have a thought or feeling in common. It was yet another complexity in her life that she really didn’t need, but hopefully he was only making a fleeting visit to the castle to see his mother. From what she understood, Dante spent little time in his Tuscan home and much preferred the faster, more sophisticated pace of Milan.

She listened quietly while her companions made polite conversation, Sofia mentioning recent visitors and small domestic concerns at the castle while parrying her son’s concerned questions about her mythical bout of influenza. Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practise to deceive! Sir Walter Scott’s words were as relevant to Vittore and Sofia as to Topsy. They all had their secrets from which Dante was being excluded but, watching the frown slowly darkening Dante’s face, she reckoned he was fully aware of the covert undertones.

Why, oh, why had she walked into the lion’s den without thought of what her secret might cost others? Self-loathing momentarily gripped Topsy. Her twin sisters had got by fine being ignored by their father after their parents divorced and their father remarried. Topsy’s father had not married her mother but she was still desperate to know who he was. Perhaps that very desperation was driven by the fact that for most of her life she had mistakenly believed that she did know who had fathered her: a handsome South American polo player called Paolo Valdera, who had enjoyed a brief affair with her mother. After all, over the years she had met Paolo several times when he visited London and there had been the occasional phone call around Christmas or her birthday. Sadly, although Paolo had apparently accepted without question that he was Topsy’s father, he had been very little more interested in his supposed daughter than her mother had been.

Then when she was eighteen Paolo had discovered that he was sterile and had finally asked for DNA testing, the results of which had proved that he could not possibly be Topsy’s dad. Topsy had had to go to great lengths to get another name out of her mother and the only name she had been given was Vittore’s.

Getting close to Vittore and working out exactly what kind of a man he was had been Topsy’s main motivation in applying for the job working for Sofia. She had been driven by entirely selfish promptings, never pausing to consider that such a bombshell as the existence of an adult illegitimate daughter could damage his very new and happy marriage. For that reason, while she had learned to like Vittore Ravallo, she had done nothing to check out her mother’s story and could not even begin to imagine asking Vittore to subject himself to DNA tests to satisfy her craving to know who she was. Right now, Vittore had far more pressing concerns on his mind and Topsy was very unwilling to do or say anything that might risk upsetting Dante’s mother.

Dante rose to his full height, fluid as quicksilver for all his size. ‘We’ll leave now.’

‘Don’t pass the work that’s been done in the kitchen unless it’s perfect,’ Sofia warned her firmly.