In fact, it might be better if she changed the subject altogether! ‘Keep your fingers crossed for me, hmm, Daddy?’ she encouraged happily.
Her father still looked as if he would prefer to lock her in her bedroom and keep her there until Cesare Gambrelli had disappeared from London altogether. But, as he really wasn’t about to do that, he had no choice but to accept what she told him.
‘Just take care, Robin?’ he said gruffly, and he laid his hand on her cheek affectionately. ‘I’m not sure I altogether trust Gambrelli’s motives.’
‘Don’t be silly.’ She smiled confidently. ‘And of course I’ll be careful,’ she assured him, feeling her heart aching at the deception she was practicing on her father, but knowing it would ache even more if he were to discover the truth and forbid her to marry Cesare, and so force Cesare into carrying out his threat against Ingram Publishing.
No, it was much better this way, she reassured herself.
She had no intention of showing Cesare any of that compliance when she met him at Gregori’s restaurant later that evening, as they had arranged during a very brief telephone call earlier in the day. Had no intention of making this any easier for Cesare than she already had with her response to him the previous evening.
‘Did you sleep well last night?’ Cesare prompted tersely, once the ordering of champagne and food was of the way.
‘Very, thank you,’ she came back briskly. ‘You?’
Little wildcat, Cesare fumed inwardly. He knew damn well she only had to look at him to see the dark shadows beneath his eyes and the lines of strain beside his nose and mouth and know that he hadn’t slept. At all. Instead he had prowled his hotel suite until the early hours of this morning, going down to the gym when it opened at six o’clock to work off some of his excess energy, if not his sexual frustration, on the rowing machine for an hour.
Robin, on the other hand, looked fresh and alert this evening; the deep purple dress she wore was the same colour as her eyes, her hair hung loose about her shoulders, and she had huge gold hoops in her earlobes, her deep peach lip gloss silkily inviting on those sensually pouting lips.
An invitation that made Cesare want to wipe everything from the table between them, lay Robin upon its surface, and bury himself deep inside her!
‘Do not play with me, Robin,’ he warned icily. ‘I am not in the mood for games.’
‘Dear me—sexual frustration hasn’t improved your demeanour, has it?’ she saucily pointed out, before turning to give the wine waiter a glowing smile as he poured some champagne into a glass for Cesare to taste.
Cesare took a sip of the wine before placing the glass back on the table. ‘It is corked,’ he said coldly. ‘Bring me a sixty-three. Chilled to the correct temperature this time.’
‘Yes, sir. Of course, sir.’ The startled wine waiter grabbed the bottle and two glasses and hastily back away.
‘That wasn’t kind,’ Robin reproved softly once they were alone.
His eyes glittered darkly as he scowled across the table at her. ‘I thought we were both agreed that I am not a kind man.’
Robin didn’t remember them ever agreeing on that, but Cesare certainly hadn’t been very polite to the wine waiter. The poor man was probably a gibbering wreck in his wine cellar at this moment, as he desperately checked the temperature of the second bottle of champagne before serving it!
‘I will leave him a large tip at the end of the meal, if that will make you feel better, Robin,’ Cesare compromised.
‘Well, no, it isn’t really a question of making me feel better, now, is it?’ she reasoned lightly, very aware of the fine edge to Cesare’s control. ‘I’m not the one you were rude to.’
‘I was not rude—’ He broke off as the man once again appeared beside their table, sighing deeply at his flustered removal of the champagne cork. ‘It is not your fault that the previous bottle of wine was … unacceptable,’ he assured the waiter smoothly, very aware that there had been nothing wrong with the first bottle of champagne at all, that he had only verbally bit out at the other man because Robin had smiled at him so warmly.
Her smiles, and everything else about her, belonged to him!
Not that she had given many smiles in his direction, but Cesare found he deeply resented her bestowing her good humour on anyone else, either.
He had never been possessive where his lovers were concerned. His previous relationships had always been brief, never lasting longer than a month or two, and at the first sign of any serious intent on the woman’s behalf he would end the affair and move on.
This slight possessiveness he felt where Robin was concerned had to be because she was to be his wife, and as such he would require exclusivity, he assured himself.
‘There, now.’ Robin smiled at him mischievously once the wine waiter had left their table, the bottle of wine completely satisfactory this time. ‘That didn’t hurt too much, did it?’
‘I did not apologise because you thought that I should,’ he told her haughtily. ‘I merely realised I was not … polite to him earlier,’ he accepted curtly.
No, he hadn’t been, Robin acknowledged—but she doubted that too many other people had ever told this man when he was being impolite, let alone reproved him for it as she had.
She sat back as their first course was placed on the table—pâté for Cesare, smoked salmon for herself—very aware that several other women in the restaurant had looked at Cesare admiringly when they’d arrived together a short time ago, and that several of those women were still eyeing him covetously.
He did look rather tall, dark, and handsome tonight, she allowed ruefully, with that overlong dark hair curling silkily onto the collar of the pale grey shirt he wore beneath a charcoal grey suit. His dark good looks and those dark brown eyes were riveting, to say the least, and the expert tailoring of his suit showed his wide shoulders, tapered waist and thighs to their advantage.
Something that at least half a dozen other women in the restaurant seemed just as aware of!
‘This marriage you’re proposing between the two of us, Cesar—’ she kept her gaze lowered on her smoked salmon ‘—is it to be an exclusive relationship? Or are you expecting me to ignore the odd mistress or ten?’ She looked up at him challengingly as she said the last.
Cesare had been in the process of eating some of his toast and pâté, but he put it back down on his plate as he frowned across at her. ‘Would it bother you if I was?’ he probed softly.
She pulled a face. ‘No one likes to be made to look a fool. I just thought it might be better if I was aware of the … arrangement beforehand, that’s all.’
No, it was not all, Cesare reflected darkly. If he were to take mistresses during their marriage, then no doubt Robin would consider she had the same freedom to take a lover, or lovers. But, as he had never shared a lover, neither did he intend sharing his wife.
‘There will be no mistresses, Robin,’ he vowed. ‘I have no idea why you should think there would be when I will have a perfectly desirable wife waiting for me at home. Now, do you think we could eat our meal this evening without the danger of the indigestion I am sure both of us suffered yesterday?’ he added, before she could come back at him with any of her clever replies.
Robin raised blonde mocking brows. ‘I’ve already told you—I slept perfectly well last night.’
Cesare glared at her frustratedly for several long seconds before leaning forward across the table to easily hold her startled gaze with his. ‘Perhaps I should warn you that at this moment this tabletop is looking very tempting as a place to make love to you!’ he hissed between gritted teeth.
Those