‘I’m impressed.’ She turned her attention from the view to the man opposite. The angles of Liev’s face, which had once made him look hard and unyielding, now made him appear more handsome. Or was it because he was actually smiling?
‘With our engagement making the headlines this week, there was no question of not getting a table at any of New York’s finest restaurants. It was, of course, a test to see just how far being engaged to you has brought me.’ His voice held a new lightness to it but she couldn’t relax.
She couldn’t afford to, not when he’d been on her mind all week, lingering on the edge of her thoughts as she worked on Dario’s forthcoming launch. When she’d opened a file for Liev, and had begun filling in the few details she’d overheard on their first date, she realised she knew very little else about him and checked again on the internet to find nothing much existed. There was nothing about his family, his education or his love life. Nothing. As if he’d never existed before he arrived in New York.
‘And are you happy with the progress so far?’ She watched the champagne bubble up in her glass, unable to maintain eye contact with him because of the whispers of awareness which brushed over her. They reminded her of how it had felt to be kissed by him and how much she’d wanted that kiss to continue.
‘It is a start, but not yet enough.’ His sharp words forced her to look again at him. His tailored suit showed off his physique, giving him a razor-sharp business look she couldn’t help but admire. It was also blatantly obvious he wasn’t going to settle for anything less than he wanted.
‘We now need to begin planning your launch, which means I need to know a little more about you.’ She kept her tone as businesslike as she could, but with those grey eyes watching her so intently, it was almost impossible. Shyness began to creep over her. Something she hadn’t shown publicly for many years, preferring to hide behind a hardened mask of professionalism for which she was renowned. She was also well aware that she was referred to as the ice princess and had seen the gossip columns all week speculating if Liev was the man to melt that heart.
If only they knew the truth.
‘Is that something we should be doing on a date?’ His suggestive smile as he sat back to allow their first course to be placed on the table sent nerves skittering down her spine, closely followed by a tingle of awareness. Was that because he’d called tonight a date or because he’d smiled at her?
‘I need to know more about you and, if you recall, we are not dating. We merely have an agreement. One I would prefer to think of as business—unless you’d like to use the more unsavoury term of blackmail?’ She couldn’t quite keep the tartness from her voice. Saying it aloud reminded her of the anger that she was allowing him to do this to her, making her feel as insignificant as she had that night of the prom.
‘Very well. What do you need to know?’ The smile had left his lips and his eyes now glittered with barely concealed mistrust, confirming he was hiding something or that his reasons for demanding the three-month engagement were not what he’d led her to believe.
‘You mentioned at the charity dinner last week that you built your business up from nothing. That must have taken some doing and it’s something I can use. But I need to know more.’ Her business mind was beginning to take over, to leave the timid and vulnerable Bianca in the shadows, where she belonged.
Creating an image for her clients was what she was good at, and right now, keeping things on a more professional level was far more comfortable than the simmering tension which arced constantly between them, making her think again and again of that kiss.
‘I was eighteen when we entered a new century and was determined to put my past behind me, so I started a computer repair business. I was self-taught and good at it. Those years with my father had served me well, and as you can see today, my company is very successful.’
‘Self-taught?’ She picked up on something she could use.
‘My father was in the business and I grew up with computers as a big part of my childhood.’
‘You must have missed your father. How old were you when he died?’ She probed deeper, even though she sensed him shutting her out second by second, question by question.
‘Twelve years old.’
Bianca recognised the fierce tone of his voice which covered up hurt. It was exactly what she did, but she also knew he wouldn’t appreciate her saying she understood. How could any person understand what it was to lose a parent when you were young unless they, too, knew the pain? ‘That must have been hard for you and your mother.’
‘She died before my father. I had no one after he died.’ Each word was clipped and short and her heart constricted for him.
She had lost both her parents, but as a two-year-old it didn’t have such an immediate impact on her life, not when Allegra had stepped neatly into the role of mother and her grandfather had always been around. It must have been so much harder for Liev. She looked at him, imagining the young boy, alone and grieving.
‘You were totally alone?’ The whisper her voice had become revealed the sadness he’d evoked within her, bringing painful memories of her own to the surface.
He nodded slowly, the thin line of his lips showing the control he was using, and she knew she should stop, but with her heartstrings tugged by the thought of him alone in the world as a young boy, she couldn’t.
‘How and where did you live after your father died?’ she asked, but seeing his jaw clench, she almost dreaded the answer. Surely he’d had some distant family who could have taken him in. Surely he hadn’t been like those kids at the homeless shelter her business sponsored.
‘I survived by doing whatever was necessary.’ He was aiming to shock her. She could sense it in him, the way he sat, the way he looked at her, but she wasn’t shocked. This man was a survivor, a born fighter, and she had the distinct impression that if everything were taken away from him right now, he would reinvent himself and become even more successful.
* * *
Liev had to stop thinking about Bianca like this, as if she was the woman he truly wanted to be with, the woman to share his past and build a future with. Each time she asked a question, she unlocked something inside him, prised open the door to his past a little more. It was a door he’d slammed shut and locked years ago. He had to stop opening it now, stop her digging into his past, because she would find far more than she ever expected, far more than he wanted to reveal.
Instead of dwelling on what she might find, he steered the conversation the way he wanted it to go. ‘I soon realised I had an aptitude for making money as well as working with computers. It wasn’t long before I had my own premises and began selling my own software.’
‘When did you begin selling globally?’ Her attention was well and truly caught, and he found it a pleasurable change for a woman to be interested in what he did rather than how much money he made. He had met too many women like that lately and begrudgingly admitted that Bianca may not be quite as frivolous as he first thought, that perhaps she wasn’t a carbon copy of the woman who’d broken his young and inexperienced heart, shattering it beyond repair.
But she wants the bracelet. Those words goaded him to reconsider.
Inwardly he breathed a sigh of relief. The questions she was asking were coming from Bianca the businesswoman. If they were coming from Bianca the woman, they would have led in a very different direction—somewhere he didn’t go, not with anyone.
‘Almost immediately. It was my aim from the