IGNORING DANTE’S OFFER to link arms, she walked ahead. This wasn’t a personal expedition, this was business.
Really?
Dante didn’t need to know that just being within touching distance of him made her heart go crazy, or that she beginning to feel the excitement of carnival thaw the ice around her heart. She hadn’t done this for ages—walked in the city for no better reason than to have fun. She hadn’t felt this free for years. Her gaze was darting around like a hermit let out of a cave as she desperately tried to soak up all the sights and sounds and smells at once.
She felt drunk on them, elated, after the hushed silence of her brother’s luxury hotel, and for a moment she was so wrapped up in events around her that she stopped walking altogether and got jostled along by the crowd. She almost lost her balance and then a steadying hand rescued her—Dante’s. She sucked in a noisy breath, glad that the ruckus from the crowd drowned it out. Even that briefest of touches was a warning of how receptive she still was to Dante.
She shouldn’t have come here with him, she fretted as she made for some shadows beneath the awning of a shop. Carnival in Rio was the highest-octane party in the world. No one came to carnival to discuss dry business deals or to cement business relationships. If couples talked at all, their faces were close and their eyes were locked on each other.
The music, the colour, the spectacle, the noise, the heat of the sun and the warmth of the cobbled street beneath her feet, combined with the scent of cinnamon and spices, made a riotous feast for the senses, and she had been on an austere diet. Appealing to her senses was the very last thing on her agenda for today. Logic and facts were all she needed to make the Gaucho Cup a success.
But she was here. And with him. Get over it. Get out there and make the most of it.
‘Hold on,’ Dante cautioned, as she followed a sudden impulse to plunge into the crowd. ‘It gets wild from here.’
Like she didn’t know that—though anything was wild compared to the way she’d been living. She exulted in the beat of the approaching drums as they grew louder. Maybe she wasn’t so dead inside after all. She wasn’t—she wasn’t dead at all. In fact, she had to fight the urge to go along the crowd and lose herself in the echo of a different life.
‘Karina!’
Dante’s shout brought her to her senses just in time. Of course she wouldn’t have followed that impulse, and of course she held back. She knew better than to let herself go these days because she knew where that led.
They had reached a small square. The crowd had moved ahead of them, leaving just the two of them on the street. Dante was leaning back against a wall, watching her with a puzzled expression on his face. His forearms were crossed over his powerful chest, and somewhere along the way he’d removed his jacket and tie. However hard she tried to look away, she couldn’t, and when she tried desperately hard to blank her mind to the image of a ridiculously good-looking man, she failed there too.
Then she noticed that an elderly couple had stopped to watch them, as if they had somehow created a mini-drama to be played out in silence between them. She quickly dragged her attention from Dante, only to see the old lady wink at her. She wanted to explain that there was nothing between them, but that wouldn’t have been very professional of her so she smiled instead. The elderly couple were having such a happy day—why spoil it for them? But if her feelings were so obvious to them, were they obvious to Dante?
He smiled at the old couple too. He could be charming when he wanted. And then the crowd thickened once more and the elderly couple disappeared into the throng, while Dante stood in front of her to protect her as the crowd surged past.
‘I can look after myself,’ she protested, when he put an arm around her to draw her close.
‘Is chivalry out of fashion these days?’
His look was mocking. She responded in kind. ‘Chivalry? That’s not a word I readily associate with you.’
‘Why not?’ he demanded, looking at her keenly.
She looked away. She didn’t want to get into it. They were here in the middle of carnival with nowhere else to go. She had to make the best of it, and with more than two million people milling about on the streets of Rio it was important to stay close.
The crowd pushed them together as they walked along. Her body tingled each time she touched Dante. It was a distracting client relationship tool, she told herself sternly. Cold emptiness had been her companion for so long she felt each light brush as if it were an intentional touch. And then he was distracted by one of the beautiful young samba dancers and her stomach squeezed tight as she watched them exchange kisses on both cheeks like old friends. She carefully masked her feelings when he came back to her.
‘My apologies for not introducing you, Karina.’
She shrugged it off, but Dante wasn’t fooled. ‘Are you jealous?’ he probed with amusement.
‘Certainly not. Why would I be?’ she demanded, as a little green imp stabbed her with its pitchfork.
Dante’s smile broadened infuriatingly as he took her arm to steer her through the crowd. ‘We must head for the main square where all the performers are gathering.’
More choice for him?
Whatever Dante did or didn’t do with half the girls in Rio was no business of hers. Carnival was full of beautiful women. It was a showcase. It was Dante’s hunting ground. There wasn’t a samba school in the city that wasn’t represented, and the samba beauties could swivel their bodies to stunning effect. All the men were transfixed by them, and all the girls played up to the most famous man of all: the infamous Dante Baracca.
She was jealous.
She was not!
‘Karina...’
‘Yes?’
As Dante turned to look at her she was determined he wouldn’t see, not by so much as the flicker of an eyelash, that she was affected by him, and more than she could ever have anticipated.
‘Stay close,’ he advised.
That proved impossible when a gang of young girls mobbed him, and she ended up defending him. They wanted his autograph, and, by the look of it, his clothes. Elbowing her way through the scrum, she spread out her arms in front of Dante. ‘Senhor Baracca has an important appointment to keep, but I noticed a television crew around the corner—’ Barely were the words out of her mouth when the young girls screamed with excitement and ran off.
Dante was amused. ‘When I need a bodyguard I’ll know who to call.’
‘It will cost you extra,’ she warned him dryly, moving on.
Dante was right about things getting wild. The decorated floats had arrived and everyone was excited as they trundled into view. ‘Your safety’s my responsibility,’ he explained, when he yanked her close.
‘And you’re my honoured client,’ she reminded him, pulling away. ‘If anyone gets protected here, it’s you—and you haven’t paid my fee yet,’ she said dryly.
He laughed. The first honest, open laugh she’d heard from him so far.
‘You’re one tough lady.’
‘Believe it, Dante. You became my responsibility from the moment I agreed to accompany you to the carnival, and I won’t let any harm come to you.’
‘And I will allow none to come to you,’ he assured her with an intensity that made her blink.
Did the same rule apply these days to the women in his bed?
‘I can look after myself,’ she repeated, wondering if her treacherous heart could beat its way out of her lying mouth. Having Dante this close made her doubt everything—her willpower, her powers of reasoned thought...
His husky