Dante sounded strangled. Daisy almost felt pity for him. Almost, but not quite.
Anabella smiled. Leaning against Daisy’s seat, she whispered to her, “Dante loves women. But he doesn’t get serious. Lots of women but no serious girlfriends and no wedding. He is too busy with business.”
“Ana!” Dante’s voice thundered through the car. Switching to Spanish, he gave his baby sister an earful, but Anabella shrugged and looked out the window.
After several tense, silent minutes Anabella sighed. “I hate the estancia. I don’t know why you keep this place, Dante. It makes me crazy here. Everything’s so slow.”
“It might be good for you to take things slow for awhile,” he said cryptically.
His sister tossed her head. “I can take things slow when I die, and I’m not dead yet.”
“You will be, if you continue to live so recklessly.”
Anabella didn’t say anything for a long moment, and then with a jerk she pulled herself forward, taking a seat on the center console. Her long hair hung in her eyes and she pushed it away with an impatient flick of her wrist. “You’re not going to leave me here, Dante. It’s just for the weekend, right? That’s what the driver said when he picked me up. Just for the weekend.” Her voice began to rise in panic and frustration. “You know I hate it here. Promise me I’m going back to the city with you on Sunday.”
Dante kept his eyes fixed on the pale dirt road ahead. “I can’t make that promise, Ana.”
Anabella let out a piercing cry. “You can’t keep me here. I’m not a prisoner. You can’t make me a prisoner.”
“I’m not making you a prisoner.”
“You are if you keep me here. You know how I go crazy here.”
“We’re not going to talk about it now.”
“Well, I am.” She slammed her hand down, rattling the console. “This isn’t my home. I want to go to Mama’s.”
“You know it’s not an option.”
“I’m almost eighteen. I can do what I want.”
“Not a chance.”
“Dante!”
“Enough! I don’t want to hear another word. Discussion over.”
Anabella fell back onto the seat and covered her face with her hands. No one spoke for the remainder of the journey.
Dante drove faster, gunning the motor as though chased by the devil, and maybe in a way he was, Daisy thought, clinging to the Land Rover seat, her silvery hair swirling in her eyes. Obviously they shared many family secrets, secrets that continued to haunt both Dante and Anabella.
The car bounced and jolted its way toward the distant line of trees. Closer, the trees loomed larger and rounder, the lush, leafy trees becoming a magnificent alley of shade that ended before a vast Spanish colonial mansion.
Drawing up in front of the house, Dante parked and turned off the engine. “My home,” he said, gesturing toward the elaborate whitewashed facade.
The bell tower’s red tiled roof gleamed almost copper beneath the early evening sun and reminded her of one of the missions in the American Southwest.
Daisy opened her door. “It’s not a new house built to look old?”
“No, it’s just naturally old,” Anabella sullenly interjected, jumping out and stomping up the front steps. “You won’t find anything new here. No television, no movies, no video or computer games. Just one hundred and eighty years of old.”
The front door shook as Anabella slammed it shut.
“And that,” Dante said flatly, grabbing the suitcases from the back, “is sweet Anabella.”
Dante was a beast.
A gorgeous beast, Daisy conceded, toweling off and dressing, putting on a pair of linen trousers the color of wheat and a matching sleeveless knit top.
He was a gorgeous beast who knew far more than she did about making love and happened to use his expertise on her with nerve-shattering ease. Just thinking about the kiss on the airstrip made her stomach do a fabulous flip-flop. He was skilled and doubly deadly because in this area he had far more control than she did, and if Daisy hated anything, it was weakness.
He made her weak. He made her crave things she couldn’t have, especially not from him.
The one and only time she’d been intimate with a man hadn’t been a disaster, but it hadn’t turned her into a vixen, either. He was a nice guy in her university program and they’d gone together for awhile before finally making love. She was twenty-one and ready to lose her virginity, but in the end, he hadn’t been the best choice. It wasn’t particularly awful. It just wasn’t particularly good. She’d gone through the motions, and that’s what it had been. Motions without any emotions. Some pelvic gyrations on his part, which left her rather … cold.
She’d decided she wasn’t the passionate sort. After all, she’d waited this long to have sex, she must not have a strong drive.
But Dante was making her reconsider that drive. In fact, he was forcing her to reconsider quite a few of her closely held beliefs.
Daisy put down her brush and stared at her reflection. Just because she felt attracted to him didn’t mean she could have, or should have, a relationship with him. Besides, did he really think he was the only one that cared about responsibility? She had just as strong a sense of duty and obligation as he did. Probably stronger.
So there. Nothing was going to happen because she didn’t want anything to happen. And that’s the way it was.
Now all she had to do was face him.
Outside her bedroom, Daisy was directed by one of the housemaids to the covered, lit patio where she discovered Dante waiting for her. The dining room’s French doors had been opened to welcome the cooler evening air, and pots of blooming citrus trees marked the long veranda at regular intervals.
He’d also showered and changed and was dressed in light chino slacks and a caramel knit shirt open at the collar. The caramel color was gorgeous on him, played up his thick dark hair, warm toffee eyes and the touch of bronze in his skin.
Beast, she muttered silently, feeling her heart begin to thump harder. “Where’s Anabella?” Daisy asked, not wanting to be alone with him, not the way she was feeling at the moment.
“She’ll be here soon.”
“I’ll go check on her.”
“No need. I asked her to give us fifteen minutes alone.”
Daisy stiffened and slowly turned to face him. “Why?”
His gaze held hers. “Don’t play dumb. It’s obvious we need to sort a few things out before I leave tomorrow.”
He was leaving already? Disappointment surged through her. Aware of his scrutiny she half-turned away, trying to cover her chaotic emotions. “What do we need to sort out?”
“For a woman who prefers honesty, you’ve certainly developed a taste for ambiguity.”
She blushed, swallowed, then acknowledged the truth in that. “What happened on the airstrip was a mistake.”
“It might have been impulsive, but it wasn’t a mistake.”
The caress in his voice was unmistakable. He stole her breath. Trapped her heart in his hands. She coughed, backed up a step. “But you said—”
“I never said I wasn’t attracted to you. I said we couldn’t have an affair, not while you’re here.”
“I don’t want an affair.”
“You