had won a big literary prize last year and—rather distractingly—several pairs of silk boxer shorts which were wrapped around a leather box. She’d found her fingertips sliding over the slippery black material of the shorts and had imagined them clinging to Dante Di Sione’s flesh and that’s when her cheeks had started doing that Scarlet Pimpernel thing again, and she’d hastily stuffed them back before anyone on the Heathrow Express started wondering why she was ogling a pair of men’s underpants.
She let herself into her apartment, which felt blessedly cool and quiet after the heat of the busy London day. She rented the basement from a friend of her father’s—a diplomat in some far-flung region whose return visits to the UK were brief and infrequent. Unfortunately one of the conditions of Willow being there was that she wasn’t allowed to change the decor, which meant she was stuck with lots of very masculine colour. The walls were painted bottle-green and dark red and there was lots of heavy-looking furniture dotted around the place. But it was affordable, close to work and—more importantly—it got her away from the cloying grip of her family.
She picked up some mail from the mat and went straight over to the computer where she tapped in Dante Di Sione’s name, reeling a little to discover that her search had yielded over two hundred thousand entries.
She squinted at the screen, her heart beginning to pound as she stared into an image which showed his haunting blue eyes to perfection. It seemed he was some sort of mega entrepreneur, heading up a company which catered exclusively for the super-rich. She looked at the company’s website.
We don’t believe in the word impossible.
Whatever it is you want—we can deliver.
Quite a big promise to make, she thought as she stared dreamily at photos of a circus tent set up in somebody’s huge garden, and some flower-decked gondolas which had been provided to celebrate a tenth wedding anniversary party in Venice.
She scrolled down. There was quite a lot of stuff about his family. Lots of siblings. Snap, she thought. And there was money. Lots of that. A big estate somewhere in America. Property in Manhattan. Although according to this, Dante Di Sione lived in Paris—which might explain why his accent was an intriguing mix of transatlantic and Mediterranean. And yet some of the detail about his life was vague—though she couldn’t quite put her finger on why. She hadn’t realised precisely what she’d been looking for until the word single flashed up on the screen and a feeling of satisfaction washed over her.
She sat back and stared out at the pavement, where from this basement-level window she could see the bottom halves of people’s legs as they walked by. A pair of stilettos tapped into view, followed by some bare feet in a pair of flip-flops. Was she really imagining that she was in with a chance with a sexy billionaire like Dante Di Sione, just because he’d briefly kissed her in a foreign airport terminal? Surely she couldn’t be that naive?
She was startled from her daydream by the sound of her mobile phone and her heart started beating out a primitive tattoo as she saw it was the same number as before. She picked it up with fingers which were shaking so much that she almost declined the call instead of accepting it.
Stay calm, she told herself. This is the new you. The person who kisses strangers at airports and is about to start embracing life, instead of letting it pass her by.
‘Hello?’
‘Is that you, Willow?’
Her heart raced and her skin felt clammy. On the phone, his transatlantic/Mediterranean twang sounded even more sexy, if such a thing was possible. ‘Yes,’ she said, a little breathlessly. ‘It’s me.’
‘You’ve got my bag,’ he clipped out.
‘I know.’
The tone of his voice seemed to change. ‘So how the hell did that happen?’
‘How do you think it happened?’ Stung into defence by the note of irritation in his voice, Willow gripped the phone tightly. ‘I picked it up by mistake...obviously.’
There was a split-second pause. ‘So it wasn’t deliberate?’
‘Deliberate?’ Willow frowned. ‘Are you serious? Do you think I’m some sort of thief who hangs around airports targeting rich men?’
There was another pause and this time when he spoke the irritation had completely vanished and his voice sounded almost unnaturally composed. ‘Have you opened it?’
A little uncomfortably, Willow rubbed her espadrille toe over the ancient Persian rug beneath the desk. ‘Obviously I had to open it, to see if there was any address or phone number inside.’
His voice sounded strained now. ‘And you found, what?’
Years of sparring with her sisters made Willow’s response automatic. ‘Don’t you even remember what you were carrying in your own bag?’
‘You found, what?’ he repeated dangerously.
‘A book. Some glossy photos of a Spanish castle. And some underpants,’ she added on a mumble.
‘But nothing else?’
‘There’s a leather case. But it’s locked.’
At the other end of the phone, Dante stared at the imposing iron structure of the Eiffel Tower and breathed out a slow sigh of relief. Of course it was locked—and he doubted she would have had time to get someone to force it open for her even if she’d had the inclination, which he suspected she didn’t. There had been something almost otherworldly about her...and she seemed the kind of woman who wouldn’t be interested in possessions—even if the possession in question happened to be a stunning diadem, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He could feel the strain bunching up the muscles in his shoulders and he moved them slowly to release some of the tension, realising just how lucky he’d been. Or rather, how lucky she had been. Because he’d been travelling on a private jet with all the protection which came with owning your own plane, but Willow had not. He tried to imagine what could have happened if she’d been stopped going through customs, with an undeclared item like that in her possession.
Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and for a moment he cursed this mission he’d been sent on—but it was too late to question its legitimacy now. He needed to retrieve the tiara as soon as possible and to get it to the old man, so that he could forget all about it.
‘I need that bag back,’ he said steadily.
‘I’m sure you do.’
‘And you probably want your swimwear.’ He thought about the way his finger had trailed over the gusset of that tiny scarlet bikini bottom and was rewarded with another violent jerk of lust as he thought about her blond hair and grey eyes and the faint taste of champagne on her lips. ‘So why don’t I send someone round to swap bags?’
There was a pause. ‘But you don’t know where I live,’ she said, and then, before he had a chance to reply, she started talking in the thoughtful tone of someone who had just missed a glaringly obvious fact. ‘Come to think of it—how come you’re ringing me? I didn’t give you my phone number.’
Dante thought quickly. Was she naive enough not to realise that someone like him could find out pretty much anything he wanted? He injected a reassuring note into his voice. ‘I had someone who works for me track you down,’ he said smoothly. ‘I was worried that you’d want your bag back.’
‘Actually, you seem to be the one who’s worried, Mr Di Sione.’
Her accurate tease stopped him in his tracks and Dante scowled, curling his free hand into a tight fist before slowly releasing his fingers, one by one. This wasn’t going as he had intended. ‘Am I missing something here?’ he questioned coolly. ‘Are you playing games with me, Willow, or are you prepared to do a bag-swap so that we can just forget all about it and move on?’
In the muted light of the basement apartment, Willow turned to catch a glimpse of her shadowed features in an antique oval mirror and