give a little start. ‘But I thought—’
He turned, his dark eyes hitting hers. ‘Go, Bronte. Before I change my mind.’
She swallowed and took a hesitant step towards the door, but then she remembered her clutch purse was sitting on the sofa. She glanced at it but, before she could move, he stepped forward and picked it up.
He came over to where she was standing and handed it to her. ‘This is all wrong, isn’t it?’ he said.
She rolled her lips against each other, not sure if he wanted an answer or not. Of course it was wrong. It was wrong for her to still want him, no matter what terms he laid down. It was shameless of her, needy and pathetic and desperate, but that was what he reduced her to. No man had ever made her feel so desperately in need. No man had made her heart ache with an indescribable longing. No man had made her want to throw herself at him in spite of everything.
She had to leave.
She had to leave now, before he saw how close she was to offering herself for further hurt. She had to leave before these minutes alone turned into an hour or two of stolen pleasure that, just like in the past, would trick her too-trusting, too-romantic mind into thinking they had any sort of future.
‘I have handled this all wrong,’ he said again with a rueful tilt to his mouth. ‘I should have called you first, given you some warning, perhaps. Maybe then you would not be so wary of me. You would have been better prepared, sì?’
‘Why didn’t you?’ she asked in a scratchy voice.
One of his broad shoulders rose and fell. ‘I wanted to see your instinctive response to me, not a rehearsed one.’
Bronte gave him a disdainful look. ‘You make it sound like some sort of social experiment.’
His eyes stayed on hers: dark, tempting, fathomless. ‘I would like to see you again, cara,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow night. No strings this time. No threats or bribes or blackmail, just two people having dinner together. If you like, we can pretend we have met for the first time.’
Bronte chewed at her lip, torn between temptation and uncertainty. Was this some sort of set-up? What if he still wanted to pull the financial rug from under her feet? ‘The rent thing…’ she said. ‘I don’t have that sort of money. I think you know that.’
‘Forget about the rent,’ he said. ‘I don’t want you in my bed because you have no choice in the matter. I know you will come to me, Bronte. It is inevitable. I knew that as soon as I walked into the studio.’
Had she been that transparent? Bronte wondered. ‘You are deluding yourself, Luca,’ she said with a proud hitch of her chin. ‘You mistook surprise for something else.’
His knowing half-smile travelled all the way to his eyes. ‘So beautiful,’ he said, trailing a slow-moving finger down the curve of her cheek. ‘So very beautiful.’
Bronte flinched in case she betrayed herself completely. His touch was like a feather and yet it set every nerve screaming for more. ‘What’s going on, Luca?’ she asked, rubbing at her cheek as if he had tainted her.
His expression was like a blank stone wall. ‘What do you mean?’
‘This…’ She waved her arm to encompass the suite. ‘You. Me. Us. I’m not sure what’s really going on. I get the feeling there is far more to this than you’re telling me.’
He gave her a small twisted smile. ‘Is it so hard for you to understand I wanted to see you again? Would it not have seemed strange for me to travel all this way, knowing you lived in the same city where I would be based and not at least try and make contact with you?’
Bronte’s mouth tightened with cynicism. ‘Do you make contact with all your ex-lovers wherever you travel in the world? If so, I am sure by now your little black book would be classified as overweight luggage.’
His smile lingered for a moment as if he found the thought amusing. ‘There have not been as many lovers as you might think,’ he said. ‘I have been busy with… other things.’
Bronte wondered what other things had taken up his time. She knew he worked hard in the family business but he had found plenty of time in the past to play hard too. If he wasn’t squiring yet another wannabe model or Hollywood starlet like his equally single younger brother Nicoló, what had he been doing?
‘Did you drive here or catch a cab?’ Luca asked.
‘I caught a cab,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to have to worry about parking.’
He reached for a set of car keys on a nearby sideboard. ‘I’ll drive you home.’
Bronte felt a frisson of fear run through her like a trickle of ice-cold water. ‘You don’t have to do that,’ she said quickly. ‘I mean… it’s no trouble getting a cab. I would prefer it, actually…’
His eyes narrowed just a fraction. ‘What is the problem, Bronte? You surely trust me to get you home safely? I do know which side of the road to drive on here.’
‘It’s not that,’ she said. ‘I would prefer to make my own arrangements.’
‘Is there someone waiting for you at home?’ he asked.
‘My private life has nothing to do with you, Luca,’ she said. ‘Not any more.’
He continued to watch her, his eyes dark and inscrutable. He didn’t speak, which made the silence open up like a chasm between them.
‘Look,’ Bronte finally said, moving from foot to foot with impatience, ‘I have to work tomorrow. And I don’t want my mother to worry.’
‘Your mother?’ A deep frown appeared between his brows. ‘You live with your mother?’
She straightened her spine. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ she asked. ‘Property is horrendously expensive in Melbourne. I can’t afford the studio rent and a mortgage. I’m just starting out.’
‘How long have you been teaching at the studio?’ he asked, still frowning.
‘About a year,’ Bronte said. ‘Rachel and I trained at the same academy together. She broke her ankle in a car accident a couple of years ago and had to give up dancing. We decided to set up our own ballet school.’
Another silence passed but to Bronte it felt like hours. Each second seemed weighted; even the air seemed heavy and too thick for her to breathe.
‘The audition you said you missed,’ he said, watching her steadily. ‘Did that by any chance have anything to do with me?’
Bronte felt her heart trip and carefully avoided his gaze. ‘W… why do you ask that?’
‘We broke up, what, about four weeks before you were due to audition, right?’
She gave a could-mean-anything shrug and fiddled with the catch on her clutch purse. ‘I didn’t see the point in trying for the company when my heart wasn’t in staying in London,’ she said. She brought her gaze back up to his. ‘It was time for me to go home, Luca. There was nothing in London for me. The competition was tough, in any case. I didn’t have a hope of making the shortlist. The audition would have been yet another rejection I just wasn’t up to facing.’
‘So you preferred to not show up at all rather than to fail.’ It was not a question but a rather good summation of what she had been feeling at the time.
Bronte hadn’t realised he had known her quite so well. She hadn’t spoken to him of her doubts about making the grade. Their relationship hadn’t been the sort for heart-to-heart confessions. She had always felt as if he was holding himself at a distance, not just physically but emotionally, so she had done the same. ‘Yes,’ she said, deliberately holding his gaze. ‘I did, however, speak to the head of auditions in person and explain I was withdrawing my application. I had at least the common decency to do that.’