And yet she knew she had been a party to it. More than that, she had been so swamped by the response of her senses that she wasn’t thinking straight. She had been burning up with hunger, the sensual need that had uncoiled in the pit of her stomach and radiated out along every nerve. If they could have moved then, been instantly transported from the ballroom to wherever they were going, then she wouldn’t have had a moment to think, to allow any hint of second thoughts to slide into her mind.
But now, when it seemed that the cold of the evening was seeping into her bones, a slow sneaking sense of apprehension destroyed that wonderful heated knowledge that this was right. That it was what she had been looking for all her life. The restrictions she’d had to put up with in order to help care for her ailing mother had limited her chances for the sort of fun and spontaneity her friends enjoyed. Tonight was going to be so very different.
Twisting in her seat, she glanced back the way they’d come, the brilliantly lit doorway to the hotel shielded from the rain by the canopy that flapped furiously in the wind. The weather had driven almost everyone indoors so there was only the doorman on duty. But as she watched a single figure emerged from the hotel doorway and stood, feet planted firmly apart on the red carpet, his whole body turned in their direction, his gaze obviously following the progress of the car as it sped away. The lamplight gleamed on the bright red-gold of his head, making it plain just who he was. He couldn’t be anyone else.
Marcus Kavanaugh. The man whose single-minded campaign to bully her into marrying him had blighted her life for the past few weeks. She had done everything she could to make it plain that he meant nothing to her, but it hadn’t worked. Of course she’d had to be polite. He was her father’s boss’s son after all. But politeness hadn’t worked. And now that her father had joined in the campaign to see them married, insisting it was the match of the century, she’d felt hounded, trapped, driven into a corner.
It was the memory of how the other man had behaved this morning that made her shudder faintly. She could still hear Marcus’s voice telling her that she would regret it if she gave him the runaround any more, and some dark edge to it had made her blood run cold. It was that that had pushed her into the plan she’d had for tonight.
Hastily, Alyse turned back, huddling into her coat.
‘Cold?’
Dario’s enquiry sounded innocuous but there was an edge to it that brought her eyes up to his in a rush, wary green meeting assessing blue.
‘You shivered,’ he pointed out.
‘Did I?’ The inanity of the conversation brought home to her the strangeness of the situation she was in. It was the sort of overly polite small talk you made with a complete stranger when you had just met for the first time.
But that was what Dario was. A stranger. A tall, dark, devastating stranger, and yet a man she had connected with from the start. One whose touch had lit a fire inside her when he’d held her on the dance floor. A man who had driven all thoughts of common sense or self-protection from her head when he had whispered, ‘Let’s go somewhere else...’ in the same moment she had used the exact same words.
Could this be real? She couldn’t have this sort of connection in so short a time. And yet this was what she had planned on happening all along. This was supposed to be her get-out-of-jail-free card, wasn’t it?
Once more, she made herself look back over her shoulder, seeing the blond man raise his hand to hail a taxi as the car turned a corner and he disappeared from sight. She couldn’t hold back a smile at the thought that, no matter what else happened, at this moment Marcus was very definitely out of the picture. The rush of the sense of freedom to her head was like the effect of strong alcohol.
‘Feeling better?’
He’d caught the smile—that much was obvious—and wanted an explanation for it. She was never going to tell him the real truth—but then that truth had nothing to do with him. Just as what happened from now on had nothing to do with Marcus. The result was the same, but the one thing she hadn’t expected when she’d come up with the whole crazy plan was how much she had wanted to do this.
‘I could feel even better,’ she murmured, sliding over the seat and moving closer to the big, lean body of Dario Olivero. Wanting, needing his arms around her again. ‘Yes,’ she sighed as the heat from his closeness thawed some of the chill of apprehension inside her. ‘Like that.’
* * *
He couldn’t see her face, Dario reflected as she rested her head against his chest. But the faint purr in her words told him it would still be there on her lips. She felt like a small cat, curled up close, the blonde silk of her hair brushing his chin, the aroma of her perfume swirling around him, making him inhale deeply to draw in more of it. Held as close as she was, she couldn’t be unaware of the heat and hardness of his body, the way his heart kicked up at every move she made so that it was almost impossible to keep his breathing steady and controlled. When her head tilted slightly upwards towards his, he knew that she wanted him to kiss her. But not now, not yet.
‘We’ll soon be there,’ he told her, the swift sidelong glance towards the chauffeur meant to imply that they needed to wait until they were alone. And that was definitely true. But there was more to it than that.
He wanted to know what that smile had meant. And why it had appeared on her lips, warming her expression, just after she had looked back through the car window. There had been nothing there to make her smile. Only that one glimpse of Marcus.
And Marcus was nothing to smile about.
Dario’s own smile, reflected in the black glass of the window, was grimly triumphant, the flash of lights as they passed showing up the cold curve of his lips, the determined set of his jaw. Marcus had lost this round—and, with any luck, the rest of the contest.
‘Just round this corner.’
And, as he spoke, the car swung round the bend, sending a spray of dark rainwater up over the kerb from a puddle that had gathered as a result of the storm. A short way down the road, they pulled up outside the building where his newly bought apartment took up the whole of the top floor.
‘We’re here,’ Dario urged Alyse, his tone suddenly rough with the knowledge that if he didn’t get her out of here and up to that penthouse fast then what little was left of the control that had been fraying mercilessly with every sway and pitch of the vehicle that brought her slender warmth even closer to him would snap completely. He would have to have her under him, his hands plundering her soft curves, her silken skin, and to hell with the audience of José the driver or anyone else.
‘Time to get inside...’
The image of being inside her that the words flung into his brain was almost his undoing. He grabbed at Alyse’s shoulders, wrenching her up from the half lying, half leaning position before he claimed her hands. Folding his around both of hers and pulling her along with him, he exited the car backwards, not even flinching as his broad shoulders met the force of the wind, the slash of the icy rain that was splattering down over his head.
‘Come on.’
He pulled his jacket up high to cover her head like an improvised umbrella, protecting that silky hair from the onslaught of the downpour.
‘José, I won’t need you any more tonight...’
He tossed the command at his driver as he slammed the car door shut behind them, not needing the man’s nod of agreement—or the knowing smile that said his employee had already recognised that fact before they’d arrived.
* * *
It was like travelling blind, Alyse reflected, her eyes not quite focusing in the glare of the brilliantly lit building