He looks nice. There’s nothing personal in noticing.
‘Hello, Luchino.’ Catch that calm tone? This is me, Luchino, ignoring you on every level but that of business acquaintance. ‘I’m ready to leave.’
‘Good evening, Arabella. Won’t you introduce me?’ Luc glanced beyond her shoulder and stepped into the flat’s small living room before Bella fully realised his intention.
Great, now she got to sense him as well as see him, and he smelled nice, too, like freshly showered man. Not that she cared what he smelled like. ‘Uh—’
‘Bella?’ Soph fingered the hairbrush clutched in her right hand and looked at Luc through narrowed eyes.
Soph’s intervention brought Bella out of her…momentary surprise, or whatever this was. Bella stiffened her spine, took two sensible steps away from Luchino.
‘Sophia, meet Luchino. Luchino, my sister Sophia.’ She rattled the introductions off as she sent a quelling stare in Soph’s direction, then turned back to Luc. She wasn’t about to dwell on the introductions, nor give her sister time to start an inquisition that would only waste time.
‘Let’s go.’ She wanted Luchino out of here, wanted to start this evening because once she started it, she was on the way to ending it. ‘We have some matters to discuss on the way to the dinner ball. You terminated our phone conversation without allowing me to finish my questions.’
‘So eager for my company, Arabella?’ Luc’s gaze clashed with hers. He examined her, head to toe and back again, from beneath lowered lids. When he met her gaze once more, a flicker of awareness showed in his eyes. He quickly masked the reaction but it was enough to make her breath catch with…unease and…annoyance at him.
While she drew a steadying breath, Luc spoke again. ‘You look…good.’
‘Thank you. I, um…’ She had to pull herself together! She would start by making it clear what she expected of tonight, and her whole association with him. ‘I’m certainly not eager for your company, as you suggested a moment ago. Some things just have to be endured and are best over with quickly. Like when you have to swallow a nasty-tasting medicine.’
‘That’s how you envision our evening?’ His mouth twitched, but quickly firmed.
‘It’s how I envisage all of this, until it finally ends.’ There. Let him chew on that.
She broke the hold of his gaze and yanked the apartment door open. ‘If we’re quite finished with the chit-chat, perhaps we could go.’
Luchino turned his attention briefly to their surroundings, and then approached the flat’s front door and stood back for Bella to precede him through it. ‘By all means. The evening awaits us.’
He cast a final glance at Sophia, whom Bella had completely forgotten in the few short moments that had just passed. ‘It was nice to meet you. Perhaps we’ll have a chance to speak more another day.’
‘We’ll see!’ The hairbrush quivered in Soph’s hand.
Bella eyed her sister cautiously. Next thing Soph would be brandishing the brush at Luc, threatening death by bristle attack if he didn’t behave. ‘We’re fine, Sophia, just a couple of small issues that needed airing. Sorry if we left you out of the conversation.’
Smile. Glide out of the door. Let the smile fade.
Once on the road, Luc guided his car through the traffic with no apparent effort. The scent of leather seats and his cologne pressed in on Bella’s senses and dulled them until she realised what was happening and stiffened her spine.
‘Your sister seems nice.’ Luc made the observation in a neutral tone. ‘A little protective, maybe.’
So Luc had noticed the hairbrush, too. Bella’s unease softened a little at the thought of her youngest sister. ‘Soph’s a hairdresser.’ As though that explained everything, when in fact it explained nothing at all.
Anyway, this wasn’t about that. Bella had questions. She wanted answers. ‘You haven’t said how we’re supposed to explain all this to your aunt.’ Bella wanted to know what he was thinking, planning. ‘Us working together to sell my gowns, I mean. If we start to get the kind of notice you hope for, won’t Maria wonder why we’re out at all those functions together?’
‘We can take care of that problem.’ He merged for a right turn and, as they waited for a green light, drew some folded pages from his breast pocket and passed them to her. ‘That’s the itinerary to date. I’ll let you know of any changes or additions as they happen.’
‘At a glance it all looks…acceptable.’ She recognised some of the names on his list, and knew she would never have got near those people.
But she didn’t have to feel grateful. Bella stuffed the list of functions and explanations into her evening bag. Against the carpeted floor of the car, she tapped the foot of one stiletto. ‘You haven’t addressed my question.’
He shrugged the broad shoulders that looked so brilliant under jet-black dinner suiting. ‘We tell my aunt as much truth as we can. We knew each other years ago in Milan. When I came back to Australia, we renewed the acquaintance. Now we’re having fun going out together.’
‘You want us to act like we’re dating?’ Her question hung in the air in shocked denial.
‘It will save a lot of awkward questions.’ Luc’s face was impassive, blank, yet somehow Bella sensed he wasn’t as withdrawn from this as he made out. He went on. ‘I think we can manage a credible image of two people very interested in each other. Don’t you?’
Her heart skipped a beat. In fury at his audacity! ‘Just because we once had a brief relationship…’ She wished the traffic lights would turn green so Luc would stop looking at her. ‘We can’t pretend to be lovers.’
The lights changed and the car moved forward. When Luc responded, it was with a tinge of challenge in his tone. ‘I don’t recall using the term lovers, but we need a reason to be seen together, to be in the public eye together so much. Is it such a big deal to you, Arabella? Surely, if it keeps Maria happy and you sell your gowns—’
‘You should just tell her the truth.’
‘She’s my family. I won’t let anything happen to her. I’ve already taken steps—’ He swore and cut himself off.
But it was too late. Because Bella remembered a previous hesitation when he’d said ‘I don’t want her to know I bought—’ and now those words made sense. Bella turned her head, looked right at the dark, handsome face. ‘You bought up her debts, didn’t you? But if you’ve done that, why bother with me about it? It’s taken care of, isn’t it?’
‘Except for the fact that you’re responsible for getting all that money back in for your gowns, and I intend to see that you do it! How did you guess, anyway? I haven’t said I’ve done anything.’ His hands tightened on the wheel as he muttered the words.
Bella looked at the long, tanned fingers and remembered them cupping her chin, a preparation for kissing her.
No! That had been years ago. This was now and she had nothing but dislike for him. ‘It was just something you almost said.’ She brushed that off. ‘How much was it, Luchino? What are the terms? How much does Maria owe you?’
He made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. ‘It doesn’t matter how I did it, or how much or how little. I couldn’t leave her dangling like that so I…made arrangements.’
‘It matters to me.’ Bella felt as though one more revelation might crack her completely in two. ‘I sold my stock to Maria, not to you.’ That was the crux of her concern. Oh, that mattered! ‘I don’t want to be financially tied to you.’
‘Don’t you? Well, you’ve just given me a reason to answer you.’ Anger flared in his tone