Fiddling with the neckline of her blouse, Matilda dragged her eyes away and willed the lift to move faster, only realising she’d been holding her breath when thankfully the doors slid open and she released it in a grateful sigh, as in a surprisingly gentlemanly move he stepped aside, gesturing for her to go first. But Matilda wished he’d been as rude on the fourth floor as he had been on the ground, wished, as she teetered along the carpeted floor of the administration wing in unfamiliar high heels, that she was walking behind instead of ahead of this menacing stranger, positive, absolutely positive that those black eyes were assessing her from a male perspective, excruciatingly aware of his eyes burning into her shoulders. She could almost feel the heat emanating from them as they dragged lower down to the rather too short second half of her smart, terribly new charcoal suit. And if legs could have blushed, then Matilda’s were glowing as she felt his burning gaze on calves that were encased in the sheerest of stockings.
‘Oh!’ Staring at the notice-board, she bristled as he hovered over her shoulder, reading with growing indignation the words beneath the hastily drawn black arrow. ‘The opening’s been moved to the rooftop.’
‘Which makes more sense,’ he drawled, raising a curious, perfectly arched eyebrow at her obvious annoyance, before following the arrow to a different set of lifts. ‘Given that it is the rooftop garden that’s being officially opened today and not the function room.’
‘Yes, but…’ Swallowing her words, Matilda followed him along the corridor. The fact she’d been arguing for the last month for the speeches to be held in the garden and not in some bland function room had nothing to do with this man. Admin had decided that a brief champagne reception and speeches would be held here, followed by a smooth transition to the rooftop where Hugh Keller, CEO, would cut the ribbon.
The logistics of bundling more than a hundred people, in varying degrees of health, into a couple of lifts hadn’t appeared to faze anyone except Matilda—until now.
But her irritation was short-lived, replaced almost immediately by the same flutter of nerves that had assailed her only moments before, her palms moist as she clenched her fingers into a fist, chewing nervously on her bottom lip as the lift doors again pinged open.
She didn’t want to go in.
Didn’t want that disquieting, claustrophobic feeling to assail her again. She almost turned and ran, her mind whirring for excuses—a quick dash to the loo perhaps, a phone call she simply had to make—but an impatient foot was tapping, fingers pressing the hold button, and given that she was already horribly late, Matilda had no choice.
Inadeguato.
As she stepped in hesitantly beside him, the word taunted him.
Inadeguato—to be feeling like this, to be thinking like this.
Dante could almost smell the arousal in the air as the doors closed and the lift jolted upwards. But it wasn’t just her heady, feminine fragrance that reached him as he stood there, more the presence of her, the…He struggled for a word to describe his feelings for this delectable stranger, but even with two languages at his disposal, an attempt to sum up what he felt in a single word utterly failed him.
She was divine.
That was a start at least—pale blonde hair was sleeked back from an elfin face, vivid green eyes were surrounded by thick eyelashes and that awful lipstick she’d been wearing only moments ago had been nibbled away now—revealing dark, full red lips, lips that were almost too plump for her delicate face, and Dante found himself wondering if she’d had some work done on herself, for not a single line marred her pale features, her delicate, slightly snubbed nose absolutely in proportion to her petite features. She was certainly a woman who took care of herself. Her eyes were heavily made up, her hair fragranced and glossy—clearly the sort of woman who spent a lot of time in the beauty parlour. Perhaps a few jabs of collagen had plumped those delicious lips to kissable proportions, maybe a few units of Botox had smoothed the lines on her forehead, Dante thought as he found himself scrutinising her face more closely than he had a woman’s in a long time.
A very long time.
He knew that it was wrong to be staring, inadeguato to be feeling this stir of lust for a woman he had never met, a woman whose name he didn’t even know.
A woman who wasn’t his wife.
The lift shuddered, and he saw her brow squiggle into a frown, white teeth working her lips as the lift shuddered to a halt, and Dante’s Botox theory went sailing out of the absent window!
‘We’re stuck!’ Startled eyes turned to him as the lift jolted and shuddered to a halt, nervous fingers reaching urgently for the panel of buttons, but Dante was too quick for her, his hand closing around hers, pulling her finger back from hitting the panic button.
She felt as if she’d been branded—senses that had been on high alert since she’d first seen him screeched into overdrive, her own internal panic button ringing loudly now as his flesh closed around hers, the impact of his touch sending her into a spin, the dry, hot sensation of his fingers tightening around hers alarming her way more than the jolting lift.
‘We are not stuck. This lift sometimes sticks here…see!’ His fingers loosened from hers and as the lift shuddered back into life, for the first time Matilda noticed the gold band around his ring finger and it both disappointed and reassured her. The simple ring told her that this raw, testosterone-laden package of masculinity was already well and truly spoken for and suddenly Matilda felt foolish, not just for her rather pathetic reaction to the lift halting but for the intense feelings he had so easily evoked. She gave an apologetic grimace.
‘Sorry. I’m just anxious to get there!’
‘You seem tense.’
‘Because I am tense,’ Matilda admitted. The knowledge that he was married allowed her to let down her guard a touch now, sure in her own mind she had completely misread things, that the explosive reaction to him hadn’t been in the least bit mutual, almost convincing herself that it was nerves about the opening that had set her on such a knife edge. Realising the ambiguity of her statement, Matilda elaborated. ‘I hate this type of thing—’ she started, but he jumped in, actually nodding in agreement.
‘Me, too,’ he said. ‘There are maybe a hundred places I have to be this morning and instead I will be standing in some stupido garden on the top of a hospital roof, telling people how happy I am to be there…’
‘Stupid?’ Matilda’s eyes narrowed at his response, anger bristling in her as he, albeit unwittingly, derided the months of painstaking work she had put into the garden they were heading up to. ‘You think the garden is stupid?’ Appalled, she swung around to confront him, realising he probably didn’t know that she was the designer of the garden. But that wasn’t the point—he had no idea who he was talking to, had spouted his arrogant opinion with no thought to who might hear it, no thought at all. But Dante was saved from her stinging response by the lift doors opening.
‘Don’t worry. Hopefully it won’t take too long and we can quickly be out of there.’ He rolled his eyes, probably expecting a sympathetic response, probably expecting a smooth departure from this meaningless, fleeting meeting, but Matilda was running behind him, tapping him smartly on the shoulder.
‘Have you any idea the amount of work that goes into creating a garden like this?’
‘No,’ he answered rudely. ‘But I know down to the last cent what it cost and, frankly, I can think of many more important things the hospital could have spent its money on.’
They were walking quickly, too quickly really for Matilda, but rage spurred her to keep up with him. ‘People will get a lot of pleasure from this garden—sick people,’ she added for effect, but clearly unmoved he just shrugged.
‘Maybe,’ he admitted, ‘but if I were ill, I’d far rather that the latest equipment was monitoring me than have the knowledge that a garden was awaiting, if I ever made it up there.’
‘You’re