‘What was the information?’ Dante queried, wondering if he could believe anything she told him because of course she would try to vindicate herself in any way that she could. Naturally she would swear that she had only ever worked one evening as an escort and had no plans to do so ever again.
‘That’s private.’ Topsy turned her face away from his hard appraisal, guilty colour mantling her cheeks as the movement made her long dark hair fall against her face and tumble in loose glossy curls round her tense shoulders. ‘That...isn’t for sharing.’
Especially not with a man who would happily use that information to slam another nail in the coffin of his dislike for Vittore. Dante would become even more hostile if something embarrassing from Vittore’s past were to surface to hurt or humiliate his mother.
‘I refuse to believe that you only worked one night as an escort,’ Dante drawled scornfully.
Topsy flipped back to face him. ‘There’s nothing I can do about that.’
‘I do not keep three mistresses,’ Dante told her in a roughened undertone, the denial wrenched from him without his seeming volition.
Topsy shrugged slim shoulders, face carefully nonchalant. ‘It’s nothing to me if you do.’
‘You were angry about it, gioia mia. I could see it in your face.’ Dante savoured his recollection of the moment. ‘Like me, you don’t share.’
‘The rumour must’ve started somewhere,’ Topsy replied, although she hadn’t meant to say something so revealing and cursed her unruly tongue. Now he would think she was angling for an explanation of that story.
Dante closed the distance between them, resting his hands on her narrow shoulders. ‘Once upon a time when I was very young and very randy I thought there was safety in numbers. Instead the combined demands of the three of them drove me crazy.’
His hands felt very heavy on her taut shoulders and her mouth had run dry because once again he had invaded her space. ‘I wasn’t jealous,’ she told him vehemently, recognising that that was what he was driving at and furious at the suggestion.
‘Neither was I, but the thought of you cavorting with Kusnirovich in that hotel suite outraged every skin cell in my body,’ Dante confided huskily, long fingers spreading to smooth the tops of her arms. ‘I can’t stand the idea of another man touching you.’
‘I’m not going to let you touch me,’ Topsy pointed out half under her breath, her lungs less than efficient with him so close. And she wanted to touch him back so badly that it literally hurt to deny herself.
‘Then say no now,’ Dante advised.
‘No...’ Topsy said flatly.
‘Louder and with more conviction,’ Dante urged mockingly, setting her temper on fire.
‘No, Dante no!’ Topsy shouted back at him furiously, wishing he would learn how to take no for an answer.
A loud knock prefaced the abrupt opening of the door. Dante swung round with angry words on his lips, intending to rebuke the offender, only to see his stepfather standing in the doorway with a frown of indecision stamped on his face. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt but I heard raised voices,’ Vittore declared. ‘Sofia was concerned when Topsy didn’t come upstairs.’
Dante vented a soft laugh. ‘We were arguing. I want to give her a driving lesson but she’s not sure she’s willing to trust me,’ he murmured smoothly.
Taken aback by the speed with which he had come up with the excuse, Topsy blinked rapidly. ‘Er...yes,’ she contributed, not one half as smooth as him in a tight corner.
‘If she doesn’t wish to learn to drive she doesn’t have to,’ Vittore commented. ‘It’s not important.’
‘I think it is,’ Dante overruled. ‘It would make her independent. She would be able to work much more efficiently if she could drive.’
‘Right...OK, I’ll take that on board,’ Topsy promised, moving towards the door, desperate to make her escape and willing to use Vittore’s arrival to facilitate it.
‘And there’s no time like the present,’ Dante quipped, drawing level with her, one determined hand pressing lightly to the base of her spine to guide her across the hall. With the other he withdrew his cell phone and instructed someone to bring his mother’s car out of the garage.
‘It’s a small and easily manoeuvred car,’ he remarked, walking her outside into the sunshine. ‘Perfect for the purpose.’
‘I don’t want to do this,’ Topsy told him grittily. ‘I don’t like driving and I don’t want you trying to teach me.’
‘All you need to do is concentrate and you can’t have got a doctorate in advanced maths without that ability,’ Dante countered with assurance.
Topsy chewed her lower lip in vexation. She had never felt less like getting behind the wheel of a car. Her nerves were ragged after the row they had had, her emotions were still reeling from the shock of being called a whore and her temper remained in highly sensitive mode. Virtually everyone who had ever tried to teach her to drive had ended up shouting at her or at the very least raising their voice, convinced she wasn’t listening properly to their directions. She was also convinced that domineering, impatient and far from even-tempered Dante was the last man alive to take on such a challenge.
‘Climb in,’ Dante urged, opening the door of the small hatchback with a flourish. ‘Once you’ve got over your nerves, I’ll hire an instructor to take charge. You have an entire estate of private roads here on which to practise.’
Perspiration beading her short upper lip, Topsy accepted the keys he passed her with a hand that already felt damp. He ran through every move she was to make first and then told her to start the car. ‘Promise you won’t shout,’ she breathed before she put the key in the ignition.
‘Of course I’m not going to shout,’ Dante retorted drily. ‘I’m not the excitable type.’
Well, that was a lie for a start, Topsy thought wryly. He had a really bad temper and when he touched her he was decidedly excitable and anything but cool or calm. In fact he already qualified as the most passionate male she had ever met.
‘Are you planning to sit here doing nothing all afternoon?’ Dante enquired drily.
He also had the patience of a jet plane forced to travel in the slow lane.
Topsy gazed out of the windscreen at the spacious cobbled courtyard and switched on the engine, which seemed very noisy in the rushing silence. A trickle of sweat ran down between her breasts.
‘Run through your mental checklist first,’ Dante advised.
Her mind was a blank and her teeth clenched together. ‘I don’t want to do this with you,’ Topsy admitted starkly.
‘Stop dramatising yourself—just get on with it!’ Dante told her impatiently.
Thoroughly fed up with him and keen to get the experience over with, Topsy rammed the car into gear and hit the accelerator. The vehicle shot back so fast a startled gasp was wrenched from her. Dante shouted something and then there was a sickening crunch and a violent jolt that rattled every tooth in her head, the seat belt cutting into her midriff as it clamped tight.
‘You total maniac!’ Dante roared at her, leaping out of the car as though she had branded him with a burning torch.
Topsy switched off the engine and breathed in deep to ward off the nausea and the dizziness of shock. Detaching the seat belt, she opened the car door and shakily climbed out.
‘You didn’t even look in the mirror before you reversed!’ Dante launched at her incredulously as he bent down to examine the damage to the bonnet of his precious Pagani Zonda.
‘I wasn’t planning to reverse... It’s an unfamiliar