‘I’ll pick up my bag from you and then fly straight back to France.’ He stifled a yawn. ‘It’s been an eventful few days.’
And that, thought Willow, was that.
She was glad of all the times when her mother had drummed in the importance of posture because it meant that she was able to walk into her apartment with her head held very proud and her shoulders as stiff as a ramrod, as Dante followed her inside.
She pulled out the leather case from the bottom of her wardrobe, her fingers closing around it just before she handed it to him.
‘I’d love to see the tiara,’ she said.
He shook his head. ‘Better not.’
‘Even though I inadvertently carried a priceless piece of jewellery through customs without declaring it?’
‘You shouldn’t have picked up the wrong bag.’
You shouldn’t have been distracting me. ‘And I could now be languishing in some jail somewhere,’ she continued.
He gave a slow smile. ‘I would have bailed you out.’
‘I only have your word for that,’ she said.
‘And you don’t trust my word?’
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know you well enough to answer that. Besides, oughtn’t you to check that the piece is intact? That I haven’t substituted something fake in its place—or stolen one of the stones. That this Lost Mistress is in a decent state to give to your grandfather and...’
But her words died away as he began to unlock the leather case and slowly drew out a jewelled tiara—a glittering coronet of white diamonds and almond-size emeralds as green as new leaves. Against Dante’s olive skin they sparked their bright fire and it was impossible for Willow to look anywhere else but at them.
‘Oh, but they’re beautiful,’ she breathed. ‘Just beautiful.’
Her eyes were shining as she said it and something about her unselfconscious appreciation touched something inside him. And Dante felt a funny twist of regret as he said goodbye. As if he was walking away from something unfinished. It seemed inappropriate to shake her hand, yet he didn’t trust himself to kiss her cheek, for he suspected that even the lightest touch would rekindle his desire. He would send her flowers as a thank-you, he decided. Maybe even a diamond on a fine gold chain—you couldn’t go wrong with something like that. She’d be able to show it off to her sisters and pretend that their relationship had been real. And one day she would be grateful to him for his restraint. She would accept the truth of what he’d said and realise that someone like him would bring her nothing but heartache. She would find herself some suitable English aristocrat and move to a big house in the country where she could live a life not unlike that of her parents.
He didn’t turn on his phone until he was at the airfield because he despised people who allowed themselves to get distracted on the road. But he wished afterwards that he’d checked his messages while he was closer to Willow’s apartment. Close enough to go back for a showdown.
As it was, he drove to the airfield in a state of blissful ignorance, and the first he knew about the disruption was when his assistant, René, rushed up to him brandishing a newspaper—a look of astonishment contorting his Gallic features.
‘C’est impossible! Why didn’t you tell me, boss?’ he accused. ‘I have been trying to get hold of you all morning, wondering what you want me to say to the press...’
‘Why should I want you to say anything to the press?’ demanded Dante impatiently. ‘When you know how much I hate them.’
His assistant gave a flamboyant shake of his head. ‘I think their sudden interest is understandable, in the circumstances.’
Dante frowned. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘It is everywhere!’ declared René. ‘Absolutely everywhere! All of Paris is buzzing with the news that the bad-boy American playboy has fallen in love at last—and that you are engaged to an English aristocrat called Willow Anoushka Hamilton.’
WILLOW FELT RESTLESS after Dante had left, unable to settle to anything. Distractedly, she wandered around her apartment—except that never had it felt more like living in someone else’s space than it did right then. It seemed as if the charismatic American had invaded the quiet rooms and left something of himself behind. She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about his bright blue eyes and hard body and the plummeting of her heart as he’d said goodbye.
She slipped on a pair of sneakers and let herself outside, but for once the bright colours of the immaculate flower beds in the nearby park were wasted on her. It was funny how your thoughts could keep buzzing and buzzing around your head, just like the pollen-laden bees which were clinging like crazy to stop themselves from toppling off the delicate blooms.
She thought about the chaste night she’d spent with Dante. She thought about the way he’d kissed her and the way she’d been kissed in the past. But up until now she’d always clammed up whenever a man touched her. She’d started to believe that she wasn’t capable of real passion. That maybe she was incapable of reacting like a normal woman. But Dante Di Sione had awoken something in her the moment he’d touched her. And then walked away just because she’d been ill as a kid.
She bought a pint of milk on her way home from the park and was in the kitchen making coffee when the loud shrill of the doorbell penetrated the uncomfortable swirl of her thoughts. She wasn’t really concentrating when she went into the hall to see who it was, startled to see Dante standing on her doorstep with a look on his face she couldn’t quite work out.
She blinked at him, aware of the thunder of her heart and the need to keep her reaction hidden. To try to hide the sudden flash of hope inside her. Had he changed his mind? Did he realise that he only had to say the word and she would be sliding between the sheets with him—right now, if he wanted her?
‘Did you forget something?’ she said, but the dark expression on his face quickly put paid to any lingering hope. And then he was brushing past her, that brief contact only adding to her sense of disorientation. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Shut the door,’ he said tersely.
‘You can’t just walk in here and start telling me what to do.’
‘Shut the door, Willow,’ he repeated grimly. ‘Unless you want your neighbours to hear what I have to say.’
Part of her wanted to challenge him. To tell him to go right ahead and that she didn’t care what her neighbours thought. Because he didn’t want her, did he? He’d rejected her—so what right did he have to start throwing his weight around like this?
Yet he looked so golden and gorgeous as he towered over her, dominating the shaded entrance hall of the basement apartment, that it was difficult for her to think straight. And suddenly she couldn’t bear to be this close without wanting to reach out and touch him. To trace her finger along the dark graze of his jaw and drift it upwards to his lips. So start taking control, she told herself fiercely. This is your home and he’s the trespasser. Don’t let him tell you what you should or shouldn’t do.
‘I was just making coffee,’ she said with an airiness which belied her pounding heart as she headed off towards the kitchen, aware that he was very close behind her. She willed her hand to stay steady as she poured herself a mug and then flicked him an enquiring gaze. ‘Would you like one?’
‘I haven’t come for coffee.’
‘Then why have you come here, with a look on your face which would turn the milk sour?’
His fists clenched by the faded denim of his powerful thighs and his features darkened. ‘What did you hope to achieve by this,