Challenging Dante

‘Why don’t you accompany us?’ Dante asked lightly.

His mother tensed. ‘I hate the smell of paint.’

Sofia also got horribly car sick, Topsy conceded, happy to stand in for the older woman if it helped her to rest and regain her strength. Struggling to keep up with Dante’s long impatient stride, she accompanied him downstairs and out to the rear of the castle where one of the collection of high-powered cars he owned had already been extracted for his benefit from the garage block. It was a Pagani Zonda. Saffy’s husband, Zahir, owned one of these high-powered sports cars although as the king of the Arabian Gulf state of Maraban he never seemed to get the opportunity to drive himself anywhere. Boys and their toys, she thought wryly.

‘Nice wheels,’ she said, reckoning it was another nail in the coffin of her attraction to him, another reminder that they would be a poor match in every way. The gilded extras of life did not impress her although she would have been the first to admit that since Kat had assumed charge of her as a child she had never known what it was to want for anything she needed. In so many ways she had been spoiled as the baby of the family and perhaps that was why she had had to run away to grow up.

‘I gather Vittore drives you around quite a lot,’ Dante commented as she slid in beside him.

‘I need lifts anywhere I can’t walk or ride a bike,’ Topsy admitted. ‘I can’t drive.’

Dante frowned, his surprise unconcealed. ‘That must make doing the job a challenge.’

‘Yes,’ Topsy conceded, since it was the truth, watching a lean brown hand glide smoothly round the steering wheel, angling the powerful car through the castle gates and down through the village beyond the ancient estate walls. ‘But neither your mother nor I thought of the need for me to drive during our interview.’

‘You could learn. I’ll fix the paperwork,’ Dante informed her.

‘I’ve failed the driving test a few times at home...I don’t really want to try again,’ Topsy said truthfully.

‘How many times?’ Dante asked.

Topsy stiffened. ‘Six times. That was enough for me. I’ve got poor co-ordination and lousy spatial awareness. Everyone’s got a weakness—that’s mine and I can live with it.’

‘Any idiot can drive,’ Dante retorted, unimpressed, seeing how she could be detached from Vittore in one way at least. ‘I’ll teach you while I’m here.’

Topsy winced at the prospect. ‘Thanks but no, thanks.’

‘It wasn’t a suggestion, it was an order,’ Dante told her lethally. ‘To fully perform your duties, you should be able to drive.’

Topsy stared straight out of the windscreen at the magnificent scenery as the car descended the hill into the rolling valley studded with shapely cypresses and the serrated green lines of the vineyards, her expressive mouth silently forming a rude word of disagreement. ‘I work for your mother, not for you. I don’t have to do what you tell me to do.’

His long fingers flexed expressively round the steering wheel and she stole a reluctant glance at him, noting the taut set of his bold bronzed profile while she doubted that he met in-your-face rebellion very often from subordinates. Momentarily, his shimmering green gaze flared in her direction and a crackling energy filled the atmosphere with tension. Topsy breathed in deep and slow, smoothed her skirt down over her slim thighs and tactfully said nothing.

‘So, tell me what qualified you for the job,’ Dante invited without skipping a beat.

Topsy was more intimidated by his self-discipline than she would have been had he snapped angrily back at her. ‘I have a lot of experience with charity committee work, volunteers and functions,’ she confided, recalling the long educational summer stays in Maraban while her sister Saffy concentrated her time on benevolent good works as befitted the wife of a ruler, not to mention her sister Kat’s ventures in the same line. ‘I also speak the language and I’m very versatile and not too proud to do whatever needs to be done. Basically I’m your mother’s gopher. I deal with all the decorating hassles at the new house as well. Your mother has a very clear picture of how she wants every room to look. I’m also handling the arrangements for the fancy-dress ball.’

His jaw line set granite hard. ‘Try to understand my surprise at your employment. My mother has never required assistance before.’

‘But then she had made her charities and your very extensive gardens into a full-time job,’ Topsy pointed out a shade drily. ‘And now the contessa wants the time to relax and be with her husband. She’s also hired another full-time gardener to help out on the estate.’

If possible, Dante’s stubborn chin and firm mouth took on an even more hostile set. ‘I know my mother.’

No, you don’t, Topsy thought silently. He was out of the inner circle now and evidently not yet to be trusted with the news that had torn Sofia’s neat and tidy life apart. Really, that aspect was none of her business either but she had no intention of betraying the contessa’s trust. Sofia had been very kind to Topsy and she was determined to be loyal and supportive in return.

The Casa di Fortuna sat on top of a hill, a square, solid stone structure surrounded by garden. It had once been the estate manager’s home but the current manager had built his own house and Sofia had decided to make the old house her new marital home. A variety of pickup trucks and vans sat in the driveway announcing the presence of builders and tradesmen.

Dante vaulted out of the car, Topsy falling in step behind him, gazing up at the sheer height and width of him, shaken afresh by the total size of him and the utter impossibility of ignoring him. They had barely walked into the hall when Gaetano Massaro, whose building company was in charge of renovating the house, descended the stairs to greet them. ‘Topsy...’ He inclined his curly dark head and grinned in his usual friendly fashion before addressing Dante and offering to show him round.

Of course the two men knew each other, not least because Gaetano was also involved in the fund-raising for the local child’s leukaemia treatment. In the airy kitchen Topsy dug her phone from her bag so that she could take photos to show Sofia. The tiles had been redone in a different shade and design at Sofia’s request. Her employer was very particular about details and Topsy fully understood why. Not only married but also a mother at the tender age of seventeen, Sofia had moved into her husband’s ancestral castle and had not been allowed to change anything to suit her own taste. By all accounts, Dante’s father had been something of a domestic tyrant and a control freak. The Casa di Fortuna, therefore, was very much the contessa’s first real home.

The decorator joined Topsy and took her into the cloakroom to inspect the illuminated mirror that had been installed. Playing safe, Topsy took a photo of it as well and then lingered in the doorway, watching Dante and Gaetano chat. Beside Dante, Gaetano looked small, slight and boyish and yet it was only three days since she had decided that Gaetano was attractive enough to date and she had agreed to have dinner with him in his family’s restaurant that very evening. Gaetano was good company, she reminded herself impatiently, which was all she required in a man. He didn’t need to send her temperature rocketing as well.

Dante crossed the hall. ‘Show me the downstairs reception area,’ he instructed, dismissing Gaetano with an almost invisible nod of his handsome dark head.

Behind Dante’s back, the builder rolled his eyes in mock amusement at the manner in which Dante had virtually ignored his offer to be his guide and Topsy coloured, narrow shoulders lifting back as if she was bracing herself while she led the way into the very large open-plan area that several rooms had been sacrificed to create. Floor-to-ceiling glass doors led out onto a terrace at the back of the house.

‘It’s much more contemporary than I was expecting,’ Dante admitted lazily, his deep accented voice fingering a trail of awareness down her taut spine. ‘For some reason I thought the two of them would recreate the Eighties here.’

‘I think your mother’s tired of living with the past and looking to the future for inspiration.’ Topsy pressed a wall button and the glass doors whirred smoothly back. ‘All this took an enormous amount of planning.’

‘How much input did Vittore have?’ Dante asked.

‘Very little...’ Strolling outside into the shade cast by the roof above, Topsy laughed softly. ‘He doesn’t have much interest in house interiors but I think he was also aware from the outset that this was very much your mother’s dream and he didn’t want to spoil it for her by imposing his views.’

‘You appear to have a high opinion of Vittore,’ he commented with a derogatory edge to his tone that suggested he didn’t share her outlook.

‘I speak as I find. I’ve yet to see or hear him do anything to detract from that opinion,’ Topsy responded easily, trying not to resent his judgemental attitude towards the older man, telling herself that was none of her business and refusing to let Dante make her feel uncomfortable.

And yet he managed that feat without even trying, she acknowledged in dismay as she looked up at him, striving to be fearless and frank rather than nervous and wary of her every word. His stunning green eyes glittered with high-voltage energy in the sunlight in which he stood, for he was much more at home in the heat of midday than she was. He looked hostile and intimidating and she was in the act of stepping back from him when his hands came out and closed round her slender forearms, halting her into a startled retreat.

The instant he made physical contact, another kind of energy hummed into being inside Topsy, taking her body out of control and into a dangerous state of extreme awareness. For a split second she couldn’t breathe. Her breasts swelled beneath her clothing, the tender tips straining into tight buds while a sensation of heat pulsed almost unbearably at her feminine core. ‘What are you doing?’ she said breathlessly, struggling to pull air into her depleted lungs as his hands trailed down her arms to close round her wrists instead.

‘What I wanted to do the minute I first saw you,’ he husked, pressing her back into the cooling shade of the wall. ‘Discover how you taste.’

‘No, thanks,’ Topsy told him thinly, fighting her weakness with all her might even though she was insanely tempted to move forward and sink into the hard muscular heat of him and find out what that mutual tasting would feel like.

A derisive smile that unnerved her slashed his hard, handsome mouth. ‘The way you look at me, do you seriously expect me to believe that?’

Shock that he could study her in such a way and yet show his scorn filled her and momentarily she hesitated, struggling to compute that strange combination of desire and contempt. That tiny instant of hesitation, however, was fatal. His mouth swooped down on hers with a hard, hungry urgency that shot every sensible thought right out of her head as though it had never existed. She felt as she had never felt before, burning waves of reaction slivering through her entire body, whipped up to a storm with every carnal plunge of his tongue. Heat burst low in her pelvis, tightening her nipples to the point of pain and shooting raw stabs of need to the very heart of her. Inflamed by her own response, she strained back against him, just as he bent even more with a growl of frustration to curve his hands below her hips to lift her and pin her in place between his body and the wall behind her. She felt entrapped, excited, wild for more...

His hands roved across her back, came up to curve to the sides of her face while her fingers delved happily into his luxuriant black hair, delighting in the springy depths. The scent of him flared her nostrils, clean, hot male laced with an elusive spicy scent of soap or cologne. She breathed him in headily like an addict.

‘You’re way too small to do this standing up,’ Dante complained against her swollen, reddened mouth.

That remark cut through the haze of desire that had engulfed her, innate apprehension gripping her. Do what? Suddenly she was aware again, conscious that her legs were pinned round him and that her skirt had to be somewhere up round her waist. Shock reverberated through her like a hard wakening slap on the face. ‘Put me down!’ she exclaimed in horror. ‘We shouldn’t be doing this!’

Dante lowered her slowly, reluctantly, back down to the tiles while with frantic hands she yanked down her skirt to cover her exposed thighs. She was appalled by her own loss of control and the false message of availability she had no doubt given him by responding to him in such a way. She didn’t play around and she didn’t tease men either, and as her stomach brushed against his hard, taut length on the passage back to standing on her own feet again she knew he was in no mood to be teased. He was aroused, fully aroused, and a wave of discomfited pink engulfed her heart-shaped face. Her brain told her it had only been a kiss, but no kiss, no man’s touch had ever had that explosive an effect on Topsy before, and even as she stole a glance up at him she knew she wanted to drag him back into her arms and have him do it again. Hands unsteady, she reached for the shoulder bag that had fallen on the patio and anchored it round her shoulder again.

‘Is that a “no” in Topsy land or simply a prudent “not here, not now”?’ Dante enquired with terrifyingly smooth assurance.

‘It’s a no, never. I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened. I work for your mother. I don’t think she would like me—’

‘I assure you that it is many, many years since my mother worried about who I take to my bed,’ Dante sliced in very drily.

Flustered and intensely ill at ease, Topsy walked away from him on stiff legs to the edge of the patio, perspiration beading her upper lip as the hot sun beat down on her. Drowning in mortification and consternation at the passion that had exploded between them, Topsy breathed in jerkily. ‘But in the circumstances it’s not a good idea, let’s face it,’ she reasoned steadily. ‘I’ve no intention of going to bed with you anyway so there’s no point starting something that won’t go to the finish that you expect.’

‘I’ll take you into Florence this evening...we’ll dine out,’ Dante declared as though she hadn’t spoken.