blue eyes languorous, her soft pink mouth pouting in reproach at his refusal to match her honesty. ‘I don’t embarrass that easily and I am well over the age of consent.’
‘Your body might be but your brain is way behind,’ Vito riposted, shifting closer in a fluid step that made her heart race. ‘Go home, Ava. I don’t want this nonsense.’
‘I would be much more fun than any of those women I’ve seen you bring back here!’ she challenged. ‘I’m not the clingy type.’
Vito stopped dead right in front of her. ‘I’m not looking for fun. You’ve got nothing I want … and a little word of warning. Most men prefer to do their own chasing. Your in-my-face approach is a complete turn-off.’
Colour flamed into Ava’s cheeks at his blunt rejection of what she had to offer. She snaked off the desktop in a surge of temper and wrapped her arms round his neck to prevent him from backing away from her. ‘I do not turn you off,’ she argued vehemently, gazing up into his dark golden eyes, which were spectacular in the firelight. ‘That’s a total lie! Why won’t you tell the truth for once?’
‘Ava …’ Vito groaned in frustration, reaching up to detach her hands from his neck.
But before he could do so she stretched up and kissed him with every atom of craving she possessed. The muscles in his lean, strong body turned rigid and then he suddenly crushed her lips under his, his tongue spearing hungrily down into the tender interior of her mouth to make her literally shudder with excitement and a blissful sense of coming home. That single kiss was like dynamite to her self-control. With an eager gasp of response she melted into him, bones turning to mush under the onslaught of the piercing hunger gathering low in her pelvis. A door opened but she didn’t hear it, reacting only when it slammed shut again.
‘Vito … for heaven’s sake, what are you doing?’ Olly yelled in dismay. ‘Let her go!’
Vito thrust Ava away roughly from him, the distaste on his face unmistakable. ‘You’re a calculating little tease … and you won’t take no for an answer.’
‘I’m not a t—’
Olly closed his hand round her forearm. ‘Time to go home, Ava. I’ll drive you.’
Ava’s head swivelled, her furious eyes pinned to Vito’s shuttered face in condemnation. ‘How dare you call me a tease?’ she launched at him as a sense of humiliation engulfed her, for she had made her last desperate move and he was still rebuffing her, resolutely refusing to acknowledge the sense of connection between them.
For the very first time in the immediate aftermath of that encounter Ava worried that her feelings were entirely one-sided. Was it possible that a man could be attracted to a woman without actually wanting to act on it? The same way people could admire a painting in a museum without needing to own it? That humiliating realisation came crashing down on Ava like a big black storm cloud. Her last recollection of that evening was of rushing down the steps of the castle in floods of tears with Olly chasing after her, urging her to calm down. The image that came next in her memory was waking up in hospital with a mind that was a terrifying blank, the events of the previous evening only returning slowly over the following days in jagged bits and pieces. But she had never been able to fully recall that car journey or the crash. Her defence had made much of the yawning gaps in her memory during her trial.
But ignorance had not protected her even from her own painful questions. How could she have got behind a steering wheel in the state she had been in? She had never been able to answer that question to her own satisfaction. Even more saliently, the car had belonged to Olly and he had been sober so why on earth had he allowed her to drive when she wasn’t insured to drive his car?
Shoulders bowing beneath the stress of recalling her stupid selfishness that evening, Ava focused her swimming eyes on the Christmas list and resolved to get on with the task at hand. Revisiting the past, she decided, was a very bad idea when her mistakes had resulted in indefensible behaviour and tragic consequences.
CHAPTER THREE
‘COMPLETE junk!’ Karen Harper pronounced triumphantly, laying a cushion woven with an image of a dog down on Vito’s desk. ‘Ava has made a complete pig’s ear of the Christmas list and bought ridiculous gifts! She’ll have to return the stuff and someone else will have to take charge of the list.’
An expression of exasperation crossed Vito’s face for he did not appreciate having his busy morning interrupted by inconsequential dramas. He had only given Ava the list to get her out of the office and was in no mood for fallout from that decision. He swept up the phone. ‘Ask Ava Fitzgerald to join us,’ he told his PA.
Ava was sheltering in the cloakroom, cheeks still burning after a mortifyingly public scene with the dissatisfied office manager. Having done what she had been asked to the best of her ability, Ava had been furious when Karen Harper looked over her carefully chosen purchases and labelled her ‘an idiot’ in front of her co-workers. She accepted that she was just a junior but felt that even a junior employee deserved a certain modicum of respect and consideration. Her pale heart-shaped face tight, she finished renewing her lip gloss and moved away from the mirror.
‘Mr Barbieri wants to speak to you,’ Vito’s PA, a glamorous blonde in her early thirties, informed Ava in the corridor.
Ava walked stoically back into Vito’s office. Twenty-four hours had passed since their last encounter and after the restless night she had suffered while she fretted over what could not be changed she wished it had been longer. Getting out of bed to face another day had been a challenge. Having to deal with a man who despised her was salt in an already open wound. That he was the same guy she had once loved hammered her pride to smithereens.
Vito, a devastatingly elegant figure in a charcoal grey suit expertly tailored to his tall, powerful physique, viewed her with cool precision, the sooty lashes that ringed his remarkable eyes visible even at a distance. He indicated the cushion. ‘Ava … care to explain this?’
‘Matt Aiken and his wife breed Labradors and show them at Crufts. I thought the cushions were the perfect gift.’
‘What about that ugly pottery vase?’ Karen Harper broke in.
‘Made by a charity in Mumbai that supports homeless widows,’ Ava explained. ‘Ruhina Dutta is very forthright about the needs of minorities in India. I thought she would appreciate the vase and a charitable donation more than she would appreciate perfume,’ Ava continued levelly, encountering an unreadable look from Vito that made her even tenser. She could not tell whether he approved of her outlook or not, but that lingering scrutiny sent high-wire energy shooting through her like lightning rods.
‘And that silly chain from Tiffany’s?’ Karen was in no mood to back down. ‘It doesn’t even have a proper catch—’
‘Because it’s a spectacles chain. Mrs Fox complained in a recent interview that she is always mislaying her glasses.’
Vito released a short laugh, his impatience with the subject unconcealed. Ava went pink, noting that he was now avoiding looking directly at her and feeling ignored even though she told herself that it was stupid to feel that way. Surely she no longer wanted his attention? And if he wanted to treat her like the office junior she was supposed to be, she would have to get used to receiving as much attention as the paint on the wall.
‘What about all that animal-orientated stuff you’ve bought?’ Karen demanded sharply. ‘It’s unacceptable for you to only buy gifts from your favourite charity.’
‘A lot of people on that list have pets. You told me to save money if I could.’
‘I certainly didn’t tell you to buy junk!’ Karen Harper snapped.
‘Some of the proposed gifts on the list were incredibly expensive and at a time when so many people are cutting back, those suggestions struck me as OTT,’ Ava admitted in a rueful undertone. ‘But, of course, anything I’ve bought can be changed if required.’
‘That won’t