She said curtly, ‘I’ll do it.’
‘As you wish.’ He shrugged, and took her place in the doorway, leaning a casual shoulder against its frame.
‘You give little away,’ he remarked after a pause. ‘No pictures—no ornaments or personal touches. You are an enigma, Signorina Flora. A woman of mystery. What are you trying to conceal, I wonder?’
‘Nothing at all,’ Flora denied, spooning coffee into the cafetière. ‘But I work with colour all the time. When I get home I prefer something—more restful, that’s all.’
‘Is that the whole truth?’
She bit her lip, avoiding his quizzical gaze. ‘Well, I did plan to decorate at first—perhaps—but then I met Chris, so now I’m saving my energies for the home we’re going to share. That’s going to be a riot of colour. The showcase for my career.’
‘You say you plan to go on working after you are married?’
Flora lifted her chin. ‘Naturally. Is something wrong with that?’
‘You do not intend to have babies?’
She began to set a tray with cups, sugar bowl and cream jug. ‘Yes—probably—eventually.’
‘You do not sound too certain.’
She opened the cutlery drawer with a rattle to look for spoons. ‘Maybe I feel I should get the wedding over with before I start organising the nursery.’
‘Do you like children?’
‘Boiled or fried?’ Flora filled the cafetière and set it on the tray. ‘I don’t know a great deal about them, apart from my sort of nephew, and he’s a nightmare—spoiled rotten and badly behaved. A real tantrum king.’
‘Perhaps you should blame the parents rather than the child.’
‘I do,’ she said shortly. ‘Each time I’m forced to set eyes on him.’ She picked up the tray and turned, noting that he was still blocking the doorway. ‘Excuse me—please.’
He made no attempt to move, and she added, her tone sharpening, ‘I—I’d like to get past.’
‘Truly?’ he asked softly. ‘I wonder.’ He straightened and took the tray from her suddenly nerveless hands.
Taking a breath, Flora marched ahead of him back to the sitting room, deliberately choosing the armchair.
He placed the tray on the glass table and sat down on the sofa. ‘I am beginning to accustom myself to your unsullied environment.’ His tone was silky. ‘But I find it odd that there are no photographs anywhere—none of your Cristoforo—or of your parents either. Are you an orphan, perhaps? Is your past as unrevealing as your walls?’
‘Of course not,’ she said coolly. ‘I have plenty of family pictures, but I keep them in an album. I don’t like—clutter.’
His brows lifted mockingly. ‘Is that how you regard the image of your beloved?’
‘No, of course not.’ She bit her lip. ‘You like to deliberately misunderstand.’
‘On the contrary, I am trying to make sense of it all.’ He paused. ‘Of you.’
‘Then please don’t bother,’ Flora said swiftly. ‘Our acquaintance has been brief, and it ends tonight.’
‘Ah,’ he said softly. ‘But the night is not yet over. So I am permitted a little speculation.’
‘If you want to waste your time.’ Flora reached for the cafetière and filled the cups, controlling a little flurry of unease.
‘My time is my own. I can spend it as I wish.’ He paused. ‘So—are you going to show me these photographs of yours—if only to prove they really exist?’
For a moment she hesitated, then reluctantly opened the door of one of the concealed cupboards beside the fireplace and extracted a heavy album.
She took it across to him and held it out. ‘Here. I have nothing to hide.’ She gave him a taut smile. ‘My whole history in a big black book.’
He opened the album and began to turn the pages, his face expressionless as he studied the pictures.
Flora picked up her coffee cup and sipped with apparent unconcern.
He said, ‘Your parents are alive and in good health?’
She paused, chewing her lip again. ‘My father died several years ago,’ she said at last. ‘And my mother remarried—a widower with a daughter about my own age.’
‘Ah,’ he said softly. ‘The mother of the tantrum king. Is that why you don’t like her?’
‘I have no reason to dislike her,’ Flora said evenly. ‘We haven’t a great deal in common, that’s all.’
He turned another page and paused, the green eyes narrowing. He said, ‘And this, of course, must be Cristoforo. How strange.’
She stiffened. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because he is the only man to feature here.’ His voice was level. ‘Were there no previous men in your life, Flora mia? No minor indiscretions of any kind? Or have they been whitewashed away too?’
‘I’ve had other boyfriends,’ she said coldly. ‘But no one who mattered. All right?’
He looked down again at the photograph, his mouth twisting. ‘And he means the world to you—as you do to him?’
‘Of course. Why do you keep asking me all these questions.’
‘Because I want to know all about you, mia cara. Every last thing.’
Her throat tightened. ‘But no one can ever know another person that well.’
‘Then perhaps I shall be the first.’ He closed the photograph album and laid it aside. He rose, taking off his jacket and tossing it across the back of the sofa, then walked across to her, taking her hands in his and pulling her to her feet. She went unresistingly, her heart beating a frantic, alarmed tattoo, her eyes widening in a mixture of panic and strange excitement.
He said softly, ‘And I shall start with your mouth.’
‘No,’ Flora said hoarsely as his arms went round her, drawing her against the hard heat of his body. ‘You can’t. You said—you promised—that I’d be safe tonight.’
‘And so you have been, mia bella.’ There was laughter in his voice, mingled with another note, more dangerous, more insidious. ‘But midnight has come and gone. It is no longer tonight, but tomorrow. And from this moment on I guarantee nothing.’
He added softly, ‘You can command me not to touch you, but not to stop wanting you. Because that has become impossible.’
Then he bent his head, and his lips met hers.
SOME distant voice in her mind was telling her that she should fight him. That she should kick, bite and punch, if necessary, before the warmth of his mouth on hers sapped every last scrap of resistance from her being.
That she should hang on, with every ounce of will she possessed, to her life—her safe, planned future with Chris.
And to her reason—her sanity.
But it was too late. Indeed, she realised helplessly, it had always been too late—from that first time she had seen him in the restaurant. And, even more, from that fleeting moment when his lips had first touched hers.
It was pointless to remind herself that she had no moral right to be doing