Italian Bachelors: Steamy Seductions

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.

Topsy froze, registering that she had made a mistake that would bring punishment home to her fast. ‘I’ve already got a date tonight.’

Ashamed as she was of her behaviour, Topsy could not resist looking at him again and the astonishment that briefly flashed across his handsome features in reaction to that admission only increased her embarrassment.

‘I don’t share—cancel him,’ Dante advised, taken aback by her statement while wondering if she was reluctant to dally with him because she already had Vittore in her sights. Certainly she could not hope to keep two men in the same household interested.

‘No, I won’t do that, not when this was a mistake...but for your information, it’s a first date. I haven’t cheated on anyone,’ she confided on a driven note of pride. ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

Dante shrugged a broad shoulder as if such restraints had no meaning for him and she was even less impressed by that attitude. ‘We’re both single. I want you and you want me—’

‘For a moment of madness,’ Topsy quipped. ‘But I’m glad it didn’t go any further.’

‘Liar...’ Dante murmured soft and low.

That fast she wanted to slap him so hard that her palm tingled and she flashed him a flaring look of such seething anger that he looked taken aback. But if Topsy was furious with him, she was equally furious with herself. She had come to Italy with a real purpose and, while she had certainly planned to enjoy the freedom of meeting men without family supervision, a fleeting affair with her employer’s son would be as inappropriate as it was humiliating. Her stubborn chin came up just as Gaetano strolled out to join them, flicking her a curious glance as if he had picked up on the tension in the air.

‘Anything I can help you with?’ he prompted Dante. ‘Do you want to see the upper floor?’

‘Another time,’ Dante deferred with no expression at all. He had known the Massaro family all his life and he was well aware that Gaetano would be out of his depth and drowning with a little schemer like Topsy. Was Gaetano being used as cover for the girl’s interest in Vittore? If his marriage crashed and burned, Vittore would be a wealthy divorcee well worth pursuing. But if money was Topsy’s goal, and what else could it be, why was she turning down Dante, who was a much more lucrative target? His face set into forbidding lines. Of course Vittore would be easier meat, he reasoned, and some women preferred older men. That suspicion still rankled with a male who had not, in living memory, been turned down by a woman.

Topsy settled back into the Pagani sports car and strove to rigorously ignore the thunderous undertones in the atmosphere. She had said no and he wasn’t pleased that she had but she had made the right decision; she knew she had. Getting involved with Dante would be disastrous even though she wasn’t foolish enough to imagine that he was considering anything more than a brief sexually entertaining fling. Although she had no doubt that he would be seriously disappointed by her lack of bedroom expertise. She knew that rich international bankers didn’t seriously date humble employees unless said humble employee was possessed of extraordinary beauty. The only exception to the rule was her sister Emmie, who had ended up marrying her Greek billionaire boss, Bastian Christou.

While Saffy, Zahir’s adored queen, and her twin Emmie could stop traffic with their looks, Topsy had long since resigned herself to being the plain one of the family, having inherited neither the height, the flawless features nor the blonde manes bestowed by their mother’s genes. Kat was a redhead and stunning as well. At an early age, Topsy had grasped that her own most notable talent was her powerful intellect but that being cleverer than most of the people around her was not so much a gift as a curse. It certainly didn’t make you popular, she reflected, thinking of the brutal bullying she had endured at primary school. Being different from the norm could entail paying a high price.

Her mobile phone rang in her bag and she dug it out to answer it.

‘It’s Mikhail. I’m in Milan and you’re not where you’re supposed to be,’ her brother-in-law told her succinctly, making her lose colour and freeze in dismay at her end of the phone, quite unprepared to deal with the bombshell that her cover story had blown up in her face when she least expected it.

‘I had no idea you were coming to Italy,’ she muttered, nervous tension gripping her for Mikhail, Kat’s husband, was not a man she felt she could lie to with impunity.

‘And unfortunately for you your school friend, Gabrielle, decided to confess and admitted that you were actually staying in Tuscany. We’ll meet in Florence tomorrow for lunch and you’ll explain then fully what’s going on,’ he decreed without an ounce of hesitation, making her feel like one of his many minions who leapt to do his bidding and fulfil his every request.

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible,’ Topsy said stiffly.

‘Make it possible,’ her Russian brother-in-law advised in a grim tone that brooked no argument. ‘I’ll send a limo to pick you up at noon.’

‘That won’t be necessary. I’ll meet you if you tell me where to go.’

‘I decide what’s necessary and don’t feed your sisters any more nonsense or tell my wife anything that might worry her,’ he told her sternly.

Topsy swallowed her growing ire with difficulty, feeling like a dog being yanked by a choke chain, both powerless and bullied. ‘I wouldn’t risk doing that.’

‘Wouldn’t you? It would undoubtedly distress Kat to learn that you felt the need to lie to her,’ Mikhail breathed harshly and cut the connection without another word.

Topsy breathed in deep and slow and thrust her phone back in her bag. Mikhail was furious with her, for naturally he would only see the situation from his wife’s point of view and he was fanatically protective when it came to her sister. Even so, it didn’t matter what he intended to say to her in Florence, she wasn’t quitting Tuscany and returning to London on his say-so.

On that rebellious thought she lifted her chin, her innate obstinacy kicking in. Somehow, some way her family had to come to terms with the reality that she was an adult with a right to freedom and independence and if that meant that she made mistakes, so be it! Her sisters had had the chance to grow up and explore the world without interference. Why shouldn’t she claim the same right?

‘You seem upset...trouble?’ Dante prompted softly.

‘No...er...not exactly,’ she responded tightly.