didn’t even know my stepfather had a job until today,’ Dante commented.
‘Your mother doesn’t approve because it takes him away from her but he does only work four mornings a week,’ she proffered, instinctively defensive on the older man’s behalf. ‘I would’ve thought you would be pleased that he makes the effort.’
‘When I consider the size of my mother’s income, it strikes me as a pointless demonstration of independence,’ Dante said drily.
‘Is financial worth your only marker of good character?’ Topsy asked with spirit. ‘Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity would see that Vittore is very well aware of his position and determined not to take advantage of it!’
His designer sun specs clasped in one hand, Dante gazed down at her, green eyes radiating irritation. ‘Why are you defending him?’
‘He adores your mother and he makes her happy,’ Topsy countered in quiet reproof. ‘I like him, I like both of them and it distresses your mother that you so obviously think so little of the man she chose to marry.’
A muscle pulled taut at the corner of his unsmiling mouth, his stunning green eyes silvering with cold anger at the reproof. ‘Maledizione! What right do you have to interfere in the private affairs of my family?’ he ground out with disdain. ‘Or even to express an opinion?’
Topsy paled and then reddened, feeling both embarrassed and irritated, knowing very well that she should have kept her thoughts to herself. The icy look of hauteur stamped on his face mortified her and she spun away to cross the square. A hand closed over her arm to hold her back.
‘Where are you going?’
‘The Uffizi.’
He sent her a derisive look. ‘At this time of day? It will be a suffocating crush of tourists and you will only gain entry if you have a pre-arranged ticket.’
‘I haven’t,’ she acknowledged ruefully.
‘It would be a nightmare. Give up on the Uffizi and I promise I’ll arrange a special pass for you some day so that you can browse in peace.’ His eyes locked with hers and her tummy hollowed, her muscles pulling tight while her world rocked dizzily on its axis as if someone had given her a sudden violent shove. In the grip of that almost intoxicating sense of disassociation from planet earth Dante was all that mattered, filling her mind with insane thoughts that turned her inside out, filling her body with frighteningly familiar reactions she couldn’t fight. She wanted him, wanted him in a way she had never wanted anyone before, craved him with every breath that she drew.
A slow, exultant smile slashed Dante’s expressive mouth as he flipped down his sunglasses, closing her off from that visual connection that had made her entire body hum with excitement. She blinked, momentarily dazed by the clawing lash of desire unfulfilled and dropped her head, fighting for self-control and staring in surprise at the hand that now gripped hers.
‘You haven’t even told me what you’re doing here,’ she breathed unsteadily.
‘My mother forgot to ask you to pick up her contact lens prescription,’ he said prosaically.
‘Oh...I should have remembered. She always has stuff for me to do here but I didn’t want to wake her up so early to ask.’ Topsy pushed her knuckles against her pounding brow as if she could force logical thought back into being again.
‘This is the original home of the Leonetti Bank founded centuries ago by one of my ancestors.’ Dante paused outside a tall sandstone building that bore all the hallmarks of ancient Florentine architecture. ‘I started work here when I was twenty-one and a few years later we centralised operations in Milan and donated the building to the city to become a museum.’
‘Twenty-one? You were young. Didn’t you ever want to be something other than a banker?’
‘What I would be was set in stone on the day of my birth,’ Dante informed her drily. ‘My father would have allowed nothing else and, fortunately for me, I inherited the Leonetti business gene and the affinity with numbers. You still haven’t told me how you managed to spot the error on that document the other night.’
Topsy flushed. ‘I could just see that it was wrong.’
‘But you only saw that document for seconds.’
‘I can’t help it if my brain works like a computer sometimes,’ she admitted soft and low, uneasy with the subject of the high IQ that had made her a gifted child and an even more gifted adult. ‘Where are you taking me?’
He walked into the lively and very busy little medieval streets between Via Maggio and Piazza Pitti, the artisan quarter of workshops. It was like stepping back in time as she walked past studios displaying the wares of bookbinders, violin makers, metal workers, sculptors and cobblers. Topsy was enchanted because it was a taste of Renaissance Florence as only a local could have shown her. She had spent several mornings wandering round the city with a guidebook in a never-ending crowd of equally studious tourists until after a while the sights began to blur and intermingle and her brain went into overload mode.
In a design studio she chose a pretty enamelled photo frame for Kat in her sister’s favourite colours and frowned in surprise when Dante attempted to pay for the purchase.
‘It isn’t for me, it’s a gift for my eldest sister,’ she commented as she politely refused to allow him to buy it for her.
He had more success when he bought her a lemon ice cream, so rich and creamy and smooth in texture that she loosed a helpless moan of delight as the icy concoction engulfed her taste buds. Dante lifted a napkin and dabbed at the tip of her nose and the corner of her mouth where ice-cream stains lingered. ‘You’re worse than a child for making a mess, carissima mia.’
Mesmerised by his flashing smile of amusement at her clumsiness, she looked up at him, amber eyes unusually serious. He could hurt her and only the night before that fear had held her back but now that pronounced caution felt more like an excuse for not living than truly living and she was regrouping, hungry for new experiences and wildly curious about him and what he could make her feel.
‘We’ll go for lunch now,’ Dante decreed.
‘I should be getting back to work,’ Topsy protested.
‘My mother isn’t expecting you back. She has friends joining her for lunch,’ he told her.
He walked her back to a Bugatti Veyron surrounded by a small crowd of admiring teenaged boys. He pressed a banknote into the hand of the tallest youth, thanked him for taking care of his car and tucked Topsy into the passenger seat.
‘Where’s the Pagani?’ she finally asked stiffly.
‘In a workshop for the foreseeable future.’ Dante groaned out the admission and cast her a glimmering sidelong glance. ‘You’re a menace.’
‘At least nobody was hurt,’ Topsy parried, a flush on her cheeks. ‘Where are we going for lunch?’
‘You’ll see.’
Her attention fell on a lean, powerful thigh encased in denim and she dragged it away again, struggling to get a grip on the weird, wild promptings assailing her. She might be curious but she wasn’t foolish. Nothing was going to happen between her and Dante unless she allowed it to and she was in too much control to make that mistake, she told herself urgently. Her head was all over the place; one minute she wanted him, the next she was telling herself that she had to resist him.
‘So, where did you go with Vittore this morning?’ Dante asked casually.
‘He wanted my advice about a gift he’s buying for your mother’s birthday,’ Topsy admitted, since she saw nothing wrong with sharing that.
‘Why would he need your advice?’
‘Because he always gets it wrong.’
‘Wrong?’ Dante pressed. ‘How?’
‘Vittore