through her so that the hold she took on him was more than to get down the steps to the floor. It was like being taken back in years, to the days when she had been just a stupid, crazy, hormone-ridden teenager and she had first met Jett. Back to the days when she had given him her heart, her soul, her virginity. And he had only to touch her to send her up in flames.
From being cold with shock, she was now burning with response and could feel the colour heating her cheeks.
‘Now can we talk about the dress you will create for my sister?’
Rose knew that everyone was watching, that she was the focus of all eyes, and she knew there was only one answer she could give. He had saved her reputation, her business, and the slam of the door told its own story: that Geraldine had conceded defeat and was on her way out of the room, out of the building—please heaven, out of her life.
She had caught that firm and deliberate emphasis on the word now even if no one else had. He knew she had tried so hard to get out of the commission he had proposed. The commission that would mean she would have to work with him, for him, all the time she was planning the dress for his sister. At least it was not for his bride.
But she’d been here once before, when Nairo had seemed to be her saviour and turned out to be a threat of danger she had barely escaped. So now had she been rescued or entrapped? Was he offering her freedom and a new security or had he actually caught her tight in some carefully planned and deliberately achieved spider’s web? Did he really just want her to design a dress for his sister or was there more to his intervention than that?
Right now it seemed that he was her saviour—at least that was what everyone else would think. And because of everyone else, all those eyes on her, she knew she had no option but to give him the response he wanted.
‘Miss Cavalliero?’
The prompt sounded easy, almost gentle, but she had regained enough composure to look into his eyes and easy and gentle were not what she saw there.
What she saw was ice, resolve and the sort of ruthless determination that warned her that if she didn’t do as he wanted, then he was more than capable of turning this apparent rescue mission into one of total, devastating destruction.
She had been offered a lifeline as long as she went along with what Nairo Moreno wanted. Her life had been full of problems before, but now it seemed that by escaping one set of difficulties she had landed herself with a whole new adversary. One who she suspected was much more formidable than anyone she’d come up against before.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire. But what else could she do?
‘Of course, Señor Moreno...’ She forced her stiff lips into what must have looked like the most wooden and unbelievable of smiles. ‘I’d be happy to discuss your commission with you.’
NAIRO MIGHT HAVE said that he wanted to discuss the design for his sister’s wedding dress, but he showed no inclination to deal with that business right then and there. Instead he waited, smiling, courteous—apparently patient—while Rose spoke to the women who wanted to talk to her about designing their dresses, or their daughters’. The endorsement that Nairo Moreno had given her was apparently enough to convince them that Scarlett was the designer that everyone wanted now.
Which was not surprising really, Rose admitted to herself. After all, as she had discovered earlier in a quick, mind-blowing search on the Internet, the wedding that he was organising for his sister was to be the society event of the year. Esmeralda Roja Moreno was to marry into powerful Austrian aristocracy, it seemed. Duke Oscar Schlieburg was the eldest son of Prince Leopold of Magstein and his wedding was to be almost a state occasion. Her head was spinning simply at the thought of the boost of publicity and the prestige that would come to her business as a result of her involvement with such an event.
A boost that had already started, it seemed, as she collected up the lists of names and addresses of all the potential new customers she’d gained.
‘That seemed to be a success,’ Nairo’s cool voice drawled as the last customer went out the door.
‘Success is an understatement.’
Her response came faintly. She had been so absorbed in the matter in hand that she hadn’t really been aware of the fact that he had been there all the time, a silent observer, sitting on the edge of the runway, his long black-clad frame standing out so starkly from the white and silver décor. She’d been fooling herself, of course, if she’d let herself think that he had gone. He had set this response in progress with his intervention for his own personal reasons, and now he was going to claim what he felt he was owed.
A chill breeze seemed to blow across Rose’s skin as he dropped down from his place on the runway and started towards her and she wished everyone hadn’t left her quite so alone.
‘Th-thank you for your help. I really appreciate it.’
His dark head nodded, bronze eyes hooded to hide any emotion he might feel.
‘There is a price for my assistance.’
Of course there was. This was Nairo Moreno she was dealing with now. A man who had somehow built himself up from the shabby, broken beginnings of their lives when they had first met and who now was this powerful, wealthy man. There had to be a price on anything he did. He was no longer Jett, the youth she had run out on so long ago.
‘A price?’
‘Oh, don’t look so panicked,’ he mocked as she turned uncertain eyes on him. ‘I’m not going to demand your body in return for my favours in some odd modern version of droit du seigneur.’
He paused just long enough for her skin to smart under the bite of his mockery.
‘There wouldn’t be much point, would there? After all, we’ve already been there, haven’t we, querida?’
The pointed reminder that they had once been lovers, that he had been the one to take her virginity all those years before, drained the strength from her muscles, making her grab at a nearby chair for support. An innocence that then she had relinquished happily and unhesitatingly, she had been so much under the sway of the heated hunger she had known for this man, blinded to anything but her need for him.
‘Been there, done that—didn’t bother to stay around to get the tee shirt,’ she flashed at him, then immediately regretted her too-aggressive tone.
He might have stepped in to save her business earlier this evening, but what he had decided so surprisingly to give her, he could take away in the blink of an eye. Just as so many new customers had followed his lead to want to use her services, they could easily follow him away from her again if he chose to reject her after all.
She must not forget that she was no longer dealing with the Jett of ten years before. This man was a very different sort of male. Tall and powerful, his broad frame had filled out and strengthened where Jett had had a whipcord leanness that had been defined even further by the fact that there was never quite enough to eat in the squat.
Added to that he was someone else entirely—a man of status, with power and money no object. He had a sister who was marrying into the aristocracy and an estate which, if the Internet reports were to be believed, was more than the equal of his prospective in-laws. How he had come by that she had no idea; she didn’t want to think about it too closely. She had bitter memories of the appalling ways he had planned on acquiring more money ten years before. But it all added up to someone who was light years away from the scrawny, long-haired Jett she had once believed herself in love with.
Thank heaven she was well over that particular nasty infection! But the scars the past had left on her soul reminded her that she would do best to play this particular game very carefully. Every instinct warned her that Nairo Moreno played to win and that he would prove a spectacular opponent if she was foolish enough to challenge him too far.
‘Querida...’