his jaw had grown slack and jowly. But not Niccolò. No way. He still had the kind of powerful physique which looked as if he could fell a tree with the single stroke of an axe. He still had the kind of looks which made people turn their heads and stare. His rugged features stopped short of being classically beautiful, but his lips looked as if they had been made with kissing in mind—even if their soft sensuality was at odds with the hostile glitter in his eyes.
She hadn’t seen him for ten years and ten years could be a lifetime. In that time she’d achieved a notoriety she couldn’t seem to shake off, no matter how much she tried. She’d grown used to men treating her as an object—their eyes fixed firmly on her generous breasts whenever they were talking to her.
In those ten years she’d seen her mother get sick and die and had woken up the day after the funeral to realise she was completely alone in the world. And that had been when she’d sat down and taken stock of her life. She’d realised that she had to walk away and leave the tawdry world of glamour modelling behind. She had reached out to try something new and it hadn’t been easy, but she had tried. She was still trying—still dreaming of the big break, just like everyone else. Still trying to bolster up her fragile ego and hold her head up high and make out she was strong and proud, even if inside she sometimes felt as lost and frightened as a little girl. She’d made a lot of mistakes, but she’d paid for every one of them—and she wasn’t going to let Niccolò da Conti dismiss her as if she were of no consequence.
And suddenly, she was finding it difficult to do ‘calmʼ, when he was staring at her in that contemptuous way. A flicker of rebellion sparked inside her as she met his disdainful gaze.
‘While you, of course, are whiter than the driven snow?’ she questioned sarcastically. ‘The last thing I read was that you were dating some Norwegian banker, who you then dumped in the most horrible way possible. Apparently, you have a reputation for doing that, Niccolò. The article quoted her as saying how cruel you’d been—though I guess that shouldn’t have really surprised me.’
‘I prefer to think of it as honesty rather than cruelty, Alannah,’ he answered carelessly. ‘Some women just can’t accept that a relationship has run its natural course and I’m afraid Lise was one of them. But it’s interesting to know you’ve been keeping tabs on me all this time.’ He gave her a coolly mocking smile. ‘I guess single billionaires must have a certain appeal to women like you, who would do pretty much anything for money. Tell me, do you track their progress as a gambler would study the form of the most promising horses in the field? Is that how it works?’
Alannah tensed. Now he’d made it sound as if she’d been stalking him. He was trying to make her feel bad about herself and she wasn’t going to let him. ‘Now who’s flattering themselves?’ she said. ‘You’re best friends with the Sultan of Qurhah, aren’t you? And if you go out for dinner with royalty, then the photos tend to make it into the tabloids—along with speculation about why your date was seen sobbing outside your apartment the following morning. So please don’t lecture me on morality, Niccolò—when you know nothing of my life.’
‘And I would prefer to keep it that way,’ he said. ‘In fact, I’d like to keep you as far away from any member of the da Conti family as possible. So why don’t we get down to business?’
She blinked at him, momentarily disconcerted. ‘Business?’
‘Sure. Don’t look so startled—you’re a big girl now, Alannah. You know how these things work. You and I need to have a little talk and we might as well do it in some degree of comfort.’ He waved his hand in the direction of the cocktail cabinet which stood at the far end of the glittering hotel suite. ‘Would you like a drink? Don’t good-time girls always go for champagne? I can’t guarantee a high-heeled shoe for you to sip it from, but I can vouch for an extremely good vintage.’
Don’t rise to it, she told herself, before fixing a weary smile to her lips. ‘I hate to challenge your stereotype, but I’m not crazy about champagne and even if I was I certainly wouldn’t want to drink it with you. That might imply a cordiality we both know doesn’t exist. So why don’t you say whatever it is you’re determined to say? And then we can end this conversation as quickly as possible so that I can concentrate on fitting Michela’s wedding gown.’
He didn’t answer for a moment, but instead leaned back against one of the giant sofas and looked at her, his arms folded across his broad chest. Yet for all his supposedly casual stance, Alannah felt a chill of foreboding as his eyes met hers. There was a patina of power surrounding him which she hadn’t noticed in that long-ago nightclub. There was a hardness about him which you didn’t find in your average man. Suddenly he looked formidable—as if he was determined to remind her just who she was dealing with.
‘I think we both know a simple way to resolve this,’ he said softly. ‘All you have to do is step out of the spotlight right now. Do that and there will be no problem. Michela is about to marry a very powerful man. She is about to take on an important role as a new wife. In time, she hopes to have children and her friends will be role models to them. And…’
‘And?’ she questioned, but she knew what was coming. It was crystal clear from the look on his face.
‘You are not an appropriate role model,’ he said. ‘You’re not the kind of woman I want fraternising with my nephews and nieces.’
Her heart was beating very fast. ‘Don’t you dare judge me,’ she said, but her voice wasn’t quite steady.
‘Then why not make it easy for yourself? Tell Michela you’ve changed your mind about acting as her bridesmaid.’
‘Too late!’ Forcing herself to stay strong, she held up her palms in front of her, like a policeman stepping into the road to stop the traffic. ‘I’ve made my own dress, which is currently swathed in plastic in my room, waiting for me to put it on just before noon tomorrow. I’m wearing scarlet silk to emphasise the wedding’s winter theme,’ she added chattily.
‘But it’s not going to happen,’ he said repressively. ‘Do you really think I would let it?’
For a moment Alannah felt another shimmer of doubt flicker into the equation. The quiet resolution of his voice scared her and so did the forthright expression in his eyes. Somehow he was making her feel…vulnerable. And she wasn’t going to let that happen. Because she didn’t do vulnerable. Not any more. Vulnerable got you nowhere. It made you fall down when life landed one of its killer punches and think you’d never be able to get back up again. It made you easy prey to powerful predators like Niccolò da Conti. ‘How wicked you make me sound,’ she said.
‘Not wicked,’ he corrected silkily. ‘Just misguided, out-of-control and sexually precocious. And I don’t want any publicity generated by the presence of Stacked magazine’s most popular pin-up.’
‘But nobody—’
‘Michela has already mistakenly tried to tell me that nobody will know,’ he interrupted impatiently. ‘But they will. The magazines you stripped for have become collectors’ items and back issues now change hands for thousands of dollars. And I’ve just been informed that a film of you has made its way onto YouTube, raising your public profile even further. It doesn’t matter what you wear or what you don’t wear—you still have the kind of body which occupies a fertile part of the male imagination. Men still look at you and find themselves thinking of one thing—and only one thing.’
Alannah tried not to cringe, but unfortunately his words struck home. Clever, cruel Niccolò had— unwittingly or not—tapped into her biggest insecurity. He made her feel like an object. Like a thing. Not a woman at all, but some two-dimensional image in a magazine—put there simply for men to lust over.
The person she was now wouldn’t dream of letting her nipples peek out from behind her splayed fingers, while she pouted at the camera. These days she would rather die than hook her thumbs in her panties and thrust her pelvis in the direction of the lens. But she’d needed to do it, for all kinds of reasons. Reasons the uptight Niccolò da Conti wouldn’t understand in a million