briefly whether it was the opportunity for business offered by her father’s company or her own status as an heiress that had drawn Konstantin Vitale across the room to her side.
Tony Carew answered the question for her. ‘He’s working on the headquarters project.’
‘Ah. Palazzo Carew,’ said Annis, understanding.
Her father’s plans for the new centre he was going to build for his company were enthusiastically extravagant. They had impressed the media and had stunned his rivals. His family had been teasing him about them for months.
‘So, here’s your mystery woman, Vitale.’ He sounded pleased with himself ‘My daughter, Annis.’
‘Mystery woman?’ echoed Annis. She was growing warier by the minute.
The Byronic hero answered before her father had the chance. ‘So late. So damp. So preoccupied.’
To her annoyance, an instinctive hand flew to the soaked strands at the base of her neck. His eyes followed the gesture. She felt embarrassment heat her skin.
She said more sharply than she intended, ‘Nothing mysterious about being late. I let time get away from me, that’s all.’
‘You two should have a lot in common,’ Tony announced.
He gave Annis a conspiratorial grin before he pushed off. She knew that grin. It meant things were going to plan. In this case, she was almost certain the plan in question had been laid down in advance of the party by his wife. She ground her teeth silently.
‘You don’t look as if you agree with him,’ said the black treacle voice, amused. But not only amused. The damned man sounded as if he was caressing her.
Annis felt her spine arch like an angry cat’s. Over his shoulder she could see her reflection in the oval Venetian mirror. It was eighteenth century, one of Lynda’s finds. Curlicued and garlanded, gleaming with gold, it might have been made for Konstantin Vitale, with his brocade coat and dramatic profile.
It had certainly never been intended to reflect someone like Annis. Her short dark hair had been turned black by the rain and was now plastered to her head like a skullcap. The only good thing about it was that the wet hair was also plastered over the ugly scar that ran from her eyebrow to her hairline. Realising it, she scowled horribly, then saw that he was laughing at her again.
Hurriedly Annis readjusted her expression.
‘I always try to keep an open mind,’ she said lightly.
He hardly pretended to believe her.
‘Sure you do.’
Her reflected brows snapped together in a frown of irritation. Annis saw it in despair. Her frowns were notorious. There never seemed to be anything that she could do about them, either.
She struggled to forget that she was over-tired, underdressed and that her minimal make-up had run in the rain. And that the Lord Byron look-alike in front of her had noticed every detail. She even tried to hide how thoroughly jangled she was to find the promised family supper transformed into one of Lynda’s find-Annis-a-man fests. After all, none of that was Konstantin Vitale’s fault, she reminded herself.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Put it down to end-of-the-week neurosis.’ She squared her shoulders, pinned on a polite smile, and tried to retune her mind to social conversation. ‘So what does my father think we have in common?’
The sardonic expression was very evident. ‘To be honest it was Mrs Carew who said you and I ought to get together.’
‘Surprise me,’ muttered Annis.
‘Excuse me?’
She shook her head, annoyed with herself. ‘Nothing.’
His eyes were speculative. ‘She respects you a lot.’
But not enough to accept that I can live without a man. There was a pregnant pause while Annis closed her lips over that one.
‘No, really. She’s a real fan. She was telling me how smart you are. What a great stepdaughter.’ It was almost a question.
Annis knew she was not reacting like a great stepdaughter. ‘That was kind of her,’ she managed in a stifled voice.
‘And unusual.’
Quite suddenly Annis realised she had run out of the ability to pretend. It was something to do with Friday-night tiredness. But more, much more, to do with that seductive voice and the horrible feeling that she was being sucked into something she could not control.
‘No,’ she said on an explosive little sigh. ‘No, it’s not unusual. Lynda does a terrific marketing campaign.’
‘What?’
She fixed the tall dark stranger with a baleful eye. She had been in this situation before. Experience told her there was only one thing she had never tried. Take a firm line straight from the start and hang on to it.
She took a deep breath and did just that. ‘Look, I don’t know what Lynda has told you. But let me set the record straight.’
He looked politely intrigued.
Annis drew a deep breath. ‘I’m twenty-nine years old, I live for my work and I don’t date.’
The man had high cheekbones and strange, slanting green eyes. They did not blink. Not blinking, he said a lot.
Ouch, Annis thought. I don’t think I meant it to sound like that.
She added hastily, ‘Nothing personal.’
It was not, perhaps, brilliantly tactful. The green eyes narrowed almost to slits.
‘That’s a relief,’ he said with a dryness that made her wince.
The deep voice had just a hint of a foreign accent. A very sexy accent. And he was taller than she was. Annis did not usually have to look up to people. It threw her off balance in every way.
‘I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. I mean I just like to make things clear. In general.’ She was floundering. Come on, Annis, you can do better than this. ‘Sometimes Lynda can be a bit misleading…’
He did not say anything, maintaining his air of gentle interest. Annis ran out of excusing generalities.
She tried the truth. ‘I—er—I mean I’m a bit of a workaholic.’
She made a despairing gesture. Too big a gesture, as always in this room of objets d’art. Champagne fountained from the glass she’d forgotten she was holding. At the same time a gold-painted plinth swayed at the impact. Konstantin Vitale steadied it. She saw he was looking deeply amused.
Amused! Great!
Of course, she could have said, My stepmother has set me up once too often. She thinks it would be nice for me to meet you. And when she says meet, she means dine with, dance with, holiday with, sleep with and, in the fullness of time, marry. Because my stepmother cannot get her head round the idea that any woman of my age might have other priorities. She thinks I’m scarred and difficult and on the shelf. She wants to help. You’re just the latest in a long, long line of unattached men she thinks might be good for me.
Oh, yes, she could have said that. It was there, every furious word, seething on the tip of her tongue.
Except, Annis was realising uneasily, he did not look like the latest in a long line of anyone. Nor, on consideration, like the sort of man who was likely to be good for the woman of the moment. Challenging, exciting and unpredictable, yes; cynical, certainly. Not, good.
Annis looked into the handsome, world-weary face and was assailed by doubt. Surely even Lynda, who thought she had a moral obligation to throw unmarried people together, wouldn’t imagine she could matchmake for a sophisticate like this?
She said gropingly, ‘Lynda did say she wanted us to meet?’
He