Back In The Brazilian's Bed

‘As I would expect,’ Dante agreed. ‘There will be plenty of time for you to do that on my ranch.’

Her mouth dried at the thought of going to Dante’s ranch. ‘I need to work while my ideas are fresh,’ she argued. ‘You want carnival as your theme, and I’ll give you carnival, but I must make my notes before all the detail of today escapes me.’

‘You have all the answers, don’t you?’ Dante stared down at her. ‘Except for the one answer I want.’

She ignored that, but not before she saw the flash of anger in his eyes. Dante liked to control everything. When she started work on his ranch she would have to make sure that Dante and his people didn’t take over. This was her contract, her reputation at stake. He played on a team. Dante should be able to work with her. But would he work on her team? Her best guess was no. She maintained a diplomatic silence as they walked on side by side to the crowning.

The piazza where the celebration was to take place was packed. Towering walls kept in the sound and the heat, creating a dizzying counterpoint to her jangling thoughts. She had always known when she had agreed to take on this project that her biggest challenge would be Dante. They were both strong characters with set ideas of their own, but he would have to learn to compromise, just as she would have to learn to keep her thoughts confined to the job.

‘I’ll take you back,’ Dante insisted, when he saw her glance at a taxi rank.

‘I can walk.’

‘I won’t let you. Do you think I’m going to abandon you in the middle of the city?’

She almost laughed. Feeling abandoned by Dante was hardly a new sensation for her.

The crowd was thickening as people gathered to watch the ceremony, but Dante guided her safely through with his hand in a safe place in the small of her back. It was incredible that such a light touch could have such a profound effect on her body. Why could she remember his touch so clearly? Why did those hands directing her pleasure have to spring to mind now?

Dante seemed totally at ease. He bought them both a bottle of water and a pair of flip-flops for her from a market stall so she could take off her high-heeled shoes. She groaned with pleasure as she replaced them with the simple footwear.

‘Please, stop,’ she begged, when he added a shawl that was billowing above them like a sail. ‘You don’t have to do this.’

‘But I want to,’ he argued, as he draped the soft jade-green fabric around her shoulders. When he drew it tighter over that part of her body and she flinched, he gave her a questioning stare.

‘I’ll need this,’ she said, gazing about to distract him. ‘The wind is cool at night.’

Dante stared at her for a moment, and then relaxed. ‘It just reminded me of that dress you wore on your eighteenth birthday.’

Why wouldn’t he remember? He had enjoyed sliding it off her.

‘Your party was themed. Arabian Nights, wasn’t it?’

‘That’s right. And as for that dress,’ she added with relief, glad that he’d turned from suspicion to thinking back, ‘I could hardly expect my guests to turn up in costume while I wore a suit.’

He huffed a laugh as he scanned her office outfit. ‘I doubt you had one in your wardrobe. You didn’t dress like an undertaker back then.’

She stroked the shawl as she remembered the soft folds of chiffon of her birthday dress beneath her hands. The outfit she had chosen to wear at her party had been floating and insubstantial...and very easy to remove.

Time to change the theme of their conversation to a safer track. ‘I love the shawl. Thank you.’ An involuntary quiver crossed her shoulders as his hands brushed the back of her neck. He was only lifting the shawl a little higher to protect her against the wind, but it was close enough to the danger area to make tremors of an unpleasant kind run through her. And then, thankfully, a group of people recognised him and crowded around, letting her off the hook.

‘You’re a complex man,’ she said, when he’d signed the last autograph.

He frowned. ‘I’m complex because I talk to people?’

‘You’re so generous with your time, and that’s not the image you give out with the team.’

‘Ah, the team.’ His dark eyes turned black with amusement. ‘The brooding and unapproachable barbarians.’ He laughed. ‘Do you think we would attract the same crowds if our publicist worked the image of clean-shaven, pipe-and-slippers men?’

Against her better judgement, he made her laugh. ‘There’s no danger of that.’

Their gazes lingered a little longer on each other’s faces than perhaps they should have done, and then Dante turned serious. ‘These people are my audience, Karina. Of course I respect them. I’ll always make time for them. Without them I’m nothing.’

‘I think you’re more than you know,’ she murmured to herself.

She wondered again about the years they’d been apart and Dante’s meteoric rise to fame and fortune after a childhood that had been less than perfect. His father had squandered the family fortune, by all accounts, and Dante had been proud but poor. Proud, but poor and determined, she amended. There had never been anyone like him, the rumour mill said. Dante was a natural horseman, and with his looks he had soon been inundated with requests from sponsors to become the face of first this big brand and then the next. She doubted he’d had to buy a car or a watch for years, and apart from those smaller perks the money that went with the huge deals had made him an extremely wealthy man. If Dante’s father could see him now...

Baracca senior had been a cold, self-serving man who could always be depended upon for one thing, and that was to be dismissive and scathing about his son. He had never been interested in what the world had thought of Dante’s emerging talent because all he’d cared about had been recounting the times when he had done so much more.

‘Wool-gathering again?’ Dante suggested, staring keenly at her.

‘I was thinking about your father.’

His expression instantly closed off, but then, to her surprise, he admitted, ‘My father was an unhappy man, who was always locked in the past.’

Always trying to belittle him, she thought as Dante fell silent. She couldn’t bring herself to feel charitable towards a man who had been so relentlessly critical of his own son.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_f70cf36c-86d7-5c77-bef7-efb63b045daa)

‘IS THERE SOMETHING WRONG?’ Dante asked her, when they were sitting in the car.

‘I was just thinking about the logistics of accommodating thousands of people on your ranch.’

‘No need to worry,’ he said, cutting off her thoughts. ‘My ranch is big enough to accommodate however many people want to come—and I have the funds to support them and give them the time of their lives.’

She knew a lot of wealthy people, but Dante’s wealth nowadays was on a different scale. Were even those even huge contracts from sponsors enough to supply an apparently bottomless pit of money?

‘So now I’ve reassured you, how about you open up to me?’ he pressed. ‘We haven’t had chance to talk for years. I’d like to know what makes you tick these days, Karina.’

Her heart clenched tight. ‘My work,’ she said.

‘There has to be more to you than that.’

‘Does there?’ She shrugged. ‘I work—I sleep—I eat. That’s it.’

He frowned. ‘We used to be friends. You used to trust me.’

She bristled. She couldn’t help herself. She was remembering that night. ‘That was a long time ago, Dante.’ She turned her head to stare out of the window.

‘Butt out?’ he suggested wryly.

‘Something like that,’ she agreed. She had buried the heartache deep where it was safe from anyone’s scrutiny. At the time Dante was talking about she had thought she knew it all.

And she couldn’t have been more mistaken.