CARLA LOOKED AT her watch for the umpteenth time, glancing out across the crowded restaurant towards the entrance. Where was he? Anxiety bit at her, and an emotion more powerful than that—one she had never felt before. Had never thought to feel about the man she was waiting for.
She had thought only to feel what she had felt the first time she had set eyes on him. And she so desperately wanted to set eyes on him again now—walking in, striding with his effortlessly assured gait, tall and commanding, with that inbuilt assumption that he could go wherever he liked, that there would always be a place for him, that people would move aside to let him through, that no one would ever dream of turning him down or saying no to him—not about anything at all.
She had not turned him down. She had denied him nothing—granted him everything. Everything he’d ever wanted of her...
Memory, hot and fervid, scorched within her. From the very first moment those hooded night-dark eyes had rested on her, assessing her, desiring her, she had been lost. Utterly lost! She had yielded to him with the absolute conviction that he was the only man who could ever have such an impact on her. That moment was imprinted on her—on her memory, on her suddenly heating body...on her heart.
Memory scorched again now, burning through her veins...
* * *
The art gallery was crowded with Rome’s wealthy, fashionable set, and champagne and canapés were circling as Carla threaded her way among them, murmuring words of greeting here and there.
Reaching for a glass of gently foaming champagne, Carla knew that she herself could be counted as one of them. Oh, not by birth or breeding, but as the stepdaughter of multi-millionaire Guido Viscari she could move in circles such as these and hold her own and look the part.
Her cocktail dress in a deep blue raw silk had come from one of the currently favoured fashion houses, and it hugged a figure that easily passed muster amongst all the couture-clad females there. Her face, too, as she well knew, also passed muster. Her features veered towards the dramatic, with eyes that could flash with fire and full lips that gave a hint of inner sensuousness.
It was a face that drew male eyes, and she could sense them now—especially since she was there on her own. Unlike many of the other guests, she had a genuine reason for attending this private viewing other than simply being there to while away an hour or so before dining.
But she’d long got used to the constant perusal that Italian men habitually bestowed upon females. It had shocked and discomfited her ten years ago, when she’d been a raw English teenager new to Italian life, but since then she’d grown inured to it. Now she hardly ever noticed the looks that came her way.
Except—She stilled suddenly, the champagne glass halfway to her lips. Someone was looking at her. Someone whose gaze she could feel on her like a physical touch. Her eyes shifted their line of sight. Someone who was making her the centre of his observations.
And then, as her gaze moved, she saw him.
He’d just come into the gallery. The receptionist at the welcome desk was still smiling up at him, but he was ignoring her, instead glancing out across the room. Carla felt a little thrill go through her, as though somewhere deep inside her a seismic shock were taking place, and she noticed his gaze was focussing on her.
She felt her breath catch, seize in her throat. She felt a sudden flush of heat go through her. For the man making her the object of his scrutiny was the most devastating male she had ever seen.
He was tall, powerfully built with broad shoulders, his features strong...compelling. With a blade of a nose, night-dark hair, night-dark eyes, and a mobile mouth with a twist to it that did strange things to her.
Unknown things...
Things she had never experienced before.
The flush of heat in her body intensified. She felt pinned—as though movement were impossible, as though she had just been caught in a noose—captured.
Captivated.
For how long he went on subjecting her to that measuring, assessing scrutiny she could not tell—knew only that it seemed to be timeless.
She felt her lungs grow parched of oxygen... Then, suddenly, she was released. Someone had come up to him—another man, greeting him effusively—and his eyes relinquished hers, his face turning away from her.
She took a lungful of air, feeling shaken.
What had just happened?
The question seared within her...and burned. How could a single glance do that to her? Have such an effect on her?
Jerkily, she took a mouthful of champagne, needing its chill to cool the heat flushing through her. She stepped away, averting her body, making herself do what she had come there to do—study the portraits that were the subject of the exhibition.
Her eyes lifted to the one opposite her.
And as they did so another shock went through her. She was staring—yet again—into a pair of night-dark eyes. The same eyes...the very same.
Night-dark, hooded, sensuous...
That little thrill went through her again, that flush of heat moved in her body. The portrait’s eyes seemed to be subjecting her to the same kind of measuring scrutiny that the man by the door had focussed on her.
She tore her eyes away from the face that looked out at her from the portrait. Moved them down to the brass plate at the side of the frame. She hardly needed to read it—she knew perfectly well who the artist was.
Andrea Luciezo, who, along with Titian, was one of the great masters of the High Renaissance. His ability to capture the essence of those who had sat for him—the rich, the powerful, the men who had controlled the Italy of the sixteenth century, the women who had adorned them—had brought them vividly, vibrantly, to life. Luciezo—whose dark, glowing oils, lustrous and lambent, infused each subject with a richly potent glamour.
Her eyes went from the name of the artist to that of his subject. She gave a slow, accepting nod. Yes, of course.
Her gaze went back to the man in the portrait. He looked out at all those who gazed at him with dark, hooded, assessing eyes. She looked at the powerful features, the raven hair, worn long to the nape of the strong neck, his jaw bearded in the fashion of the time, yet leaving unhidden the sensuous line of his mouth, the unbearably rich velvet of his black doublet, the stark pleated white of his deep collar, the glint of precious gold at his broad, powerful chest.
He was a man whom the artist knew considered his own worth high, whose portrait told all who gazed upon it that here was no ordinary mortal, cut from the common herd. Arrogance was in that hooded gaze, in the angle of his head, the set of his shoulders. He was a man for whom the world would do his bidding—whatever he bade them do...
A voice spoke behind her. Deep, resonant. With a timbre to it that set off yet again that low, internal seismic tremor.
‘So,’ he said, as she stood immobile in front of the portrait, ‘what do you think of my ancestor, Count Alessandro?’
She turned, lifted her face, let her eyes meet the living version of the dark, hooded gaze that had transfixed her across the centuries—the living version that had transfixed her only moments ago and was now transfixing her again.
Cesare di Mondave, Conte di Mantegna.
The owner of this priceless Luciezo portrait of his ancestor, and of vast wealth besides. A man whose reputation went before him—a reputation for living in the same fashion as his illustrious forebears: as if the whole world belonged to him. To whom no one would say no—and to whom any woman upon whom he looked with favour would want to say only one thing.
Yes.
And as Carla met his gaze, felt its impact, its power and potency, she knew with a hollow sense of fatalism that it was the only word she would ever want to use.
‘Well?’