been so cold for so long. Outside, the streets of New York were sweltering in the first real heat wave of the summer. Back at her adopted home in Tuscany, the high mountains were warm and lush and green. But for Lia time had stopped in January, when she’d first learned of Giovanni’s illness. Since then, in her heart, the ice and snow had only risen higher and higher, burying her in its cold waves.
Now she felt the dark stranger’s heat almost painfully. Desire struck her with the sharpness of its heat, and blood rushed through her with a sudden burning intensity and throbbing pain, as frozen limbs came back to life.
“Who are you?” she whispered.
He pulled her slowly into his arms and looked down at her, his face inches from her own.
“I’m the man who’s taking you home with me tonight.”
CHAPTER TWO
HAVING his larger hand wrapped around her own caused a seismic boom to spread shock waves through Lia’s body. As he pulled her into his arms, she felt his hands touch her back above her gown. Felt the brush of his sleek tuxedo against her bare skin, felt the hardness of his body against her own.
Her breath suddenly came in short, quick little gasps. She looked up at him, bewildered by her overwhelming sensation and need. Her lips parted, and…and…
And she wanted to go with him. Anywhere.
“Here’s your champagne, Countess.” Andrew’s sudden return broke the spell. Scowling at the dark stranger, he barged between them and gently placed a Baccarat flute into her hand.
Across the room Lia suddenly saw the other board members of the park trust trying to get her attention. Saw discreet little waves, donors heading her way. Realized that three hundred people were watching her, waiting to talk to her.
She could hardly believe she’d actually considered running off with a stranger to heaven knows where, and doing heaven knows what.
Clearly grief had taken a toll on her sanity!
“Excuse me.” She pulled away from the stranger, desperate to escape the intoxicating force of him. She raised her chin. “I must greet my guests. My invited guests,” she added pointedly.
“Don’t worry.” The sardonic heat in the man’s dark eyes caused a flush to spread down her body. “I’m here as the guest of someone you did invite.”
Meaning he was here with another woman? At the same moment he’d very nearly convinced Lia to leave with him? She tightened her hands into fists. “Your date won’t be pleased to see you here with me.”
He gave her a lazy, predatory smile. “I’m not here with a date. And I’ll be leaving with you.”
“You’re wrong about that,” she flashed defiantly.
“Countess?” Andrew Oppenheimer’s lip curled into a snarl as he glared at the other man. “May I escort you away from this…person?”
“Thank you.” Putting her hand on Andrew’s arm, Lia allowed him to steer her toward the many well-heeled, elegantly dressed socialites and stockbrokers.
But as Lia sipped Dom Perignon and pretended to smile and enjoy their chatter—recognizing every park trust donor, knowing every person, their income and their place in society—she couldn’t block out her awareness of the dark stranger. No matter where he was in the enormous hotel ballroom, she always felt his presence. Without looking around, she felt his gaze on her and knew exactly where he was.
Filled with a strange, humming tension, she felt her reason start to melt like an icicle dripping water in the sun.
She’d always heard that desire could be bewildering and destructive. That passion could destroy a woman’s sanity and cause her to make ridiculous choices that made no sense. But she’d never understood it.
Until now.
Her marriage had been one of friendship, not passion. At eighteen, she’d married a family friend she respected, a man who’d been kind to her. She’d never once been tempted to betray him with another.
At twenty-eight, Lia was still a virgin. And at this point in her life, she’d assumed she would stay a virgin till she died.
In some ways, it had been a blessing not to feel anything. After losing everyone she’d ever cared about, all she’d wanted was to remain numb for the rest of her life.
But now…
She felt the tall, dark stranger every instant. As she made her opening speech on the dais, thanking her donors and guests with a champagne toast while tuxedoed men hovered around her like sharks, all she could feel was the stranger’s hot glance throbbing through her veins.
Making her feel alive against her will.
He was handsome, but not with the dignified elegance that Andrew and the other New York blue bloods had. He didn’t have the milk-fed look of someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth. No.
In his midthirties, muscular and rough, he had the look of a hardened warrior. Ruthless, even cruel.
A shiver went through her. A liquid yearning in her veins that she fought with all her might, telling herself it was the result of exhaustion. Illusion. The trick of too much champagne, too many tears and not enough sleep.
But when the guests all sat down to their assigned seats for dinner, she looked again, and realized the stranger had disappeared. All the intense emotion that had been singing through her veins like crescendoing music abruptly ended.
She told herself that she was glad. He’d made her feel strange and uneven and half-drunk.
But where was he?
Why had he gone?
Dinner ended, and a new dread distracted her. The emcee, a prominent local land developer, went to the dais with his gavel.
“Now, the fun part of the night,” he said with a grin. “The auction you’ve all been waiting for. The first item up for bid…”
He started the fund-raiser with a 1960s crocodile Hermès bag that had once been owned by Princess Grace herself. Lia listened to society mavens placing enthusiastic bids around her. The increasingly astronomical bids should have delighted Lia. Every penny donated tonight would go to the park trust, for playground equipment and landscaping costs.
But as she heard the items get auctioned off one by one, she felt only a trickle of building fear.
“It’s a perfect idea,” Giovanni had said with a weak laugh when the party planner had first suggested it. Even from his sickbed, he’d placed his trembling hand over Lia’s. “No one will be able to resist you, my dear. You must do it.”
And even though Lia had hated the idea, she’d eventually agreed. Because Giovanni had asked her.
She’d never thought his illness would take a sudden turn for the worse. She hadn’t expected that she would be here to face this all alone.
One by one the auction items sold. The dress-circle box at the Vienna Opera Ball. The month-long stay at a Hamptons beach estate. The vintage 1966 Shelby Cobra 427 in pristine condition.
And every punch of the gavel caused the tension to heighten inside her. Getting closer and closer to the final item for sale…
After the twenty-carat Cartier diamond earrings were sold for $90,000, Lia heard the crack of the gavel. It was like the final blow of a guillotine.
“Now,” the emcee said gleefully, “we come to our last item up for bid. A very special item indeed.”
A spotlight fell on Lia where she stood alone on the marble ballroom floor. A titter rose from the guests, who’d all heard whispers of this open secret. She felt the eager eyes of the men, the envious glares of the women. And she longed more than anything to be back in her cloistered Italian rose garden, far from all this.
Oh,