A Reputation to Uphold (7 page)

That must be why she was scratching at her neck. Why her skin felt too tight. It had nothing to do with his presence filling the room with a dark feral aura that made her feel equal parts aroused and scared witless. How could she possibly hide this ridiculous, malapropos attraction when
he
wanted it on full show? For everyone to see...

She gripped the squashy arm of the sofa until her knuckles screamed. ‘Whoa, hold on. What’s Finn going to think?’

Dante rubbed over his lips with the flat of his hand and Eva fancied she’d just taken a chunk out of his invincible armour.

‘I will explain everything and he’ll realise that such a story is in our mutual interest. I will
not
risk losing Hamptons and it’s clear to me you’ve worked hard to gain your professional standing. So let us make the most of a bad situation.’

Why was one more department store so important to him? Was he so power-hungry? She understood ambition but, hell’s bells, he was one of the richest men on earth. It was said he could turn one dollar into a million within an hour. Sell noodles to a Chinaman, green grass to the Irish.

It was seriously tempting to use that power for her own ends. If she lost custom, she would never meet next month’s rent. Her staff would be out of jobs. Life as she knew it, the success she’d fought for, would end.

Could it really work? She was so desperate she wasn’t sure she was thinking straight. He made everything sound so simple but simplicity had never figured in her life. There was always a black figure lurking around the corner. Ready to pounce.

‘Rebecca will know the truth,’ she said as needles of doubt began to pop his plan. ‘What’s to say she won’t pull the plug? Next Sunday she may have sold her story to the papers and we’ll be right back to square one.’

The look he tossed her made her feel ten kinds of a fool. ‘Ah,
tesoro
, so little faith. Rebecca was the first to know of our affair.’

Never mind thinking on his feet, the man was two steps ahead of time!

‘We haven’t had time for a love affair,’ she said, flinching as the words
love affair
tripped her heart to miss a beat. ‘I only clapped eyes on you last night for the first time in years.’

‘Precisely. One look and we knew. Rekindled love affairs are the sweetest, so they say.’ His voice was jaded silk as he turned away to peruse the flea market knick-knacks on her Edwardian mahogany occasional table.

Rekindled. Right. That made perfect sense. Oh, God. His sharp, cunning intellect sliced her every objection to shreds. But, looking at it another way, he’d clearly thought it through and decided it could work. Still...

‘I don’t imagine she was very happy.’ She’d bet her best sewing machine the woman was neck-deep in love with him. Women with broken hearts could be problematic. Make the most impulsive, illogical decisions...

Digging her blunt nails into her palms, she slammed the brakes on her reminiscences and shifted on the sofa, desperate to stand but knowing she’d only pace and Dante was making her dizzy enough.

Picking up an antique mother-of-pearl trinket box, he ran the thick pad of his thumb over the inlay and she’d swear she could feel that very touch glissade down the sensitive skin beneath her ear and she shivered wildly.

‘She was beginning to lose perspective,’ he said, voice hard, dark. ‘Blending fable with reality. I wanted a business arrangement, not a twenty-four-hour migraine.’

In that moment Eva had no idea what she ever saw in him. Or why her body craved his touch. He was despicable.

‘Obviously the poor woman fell head over her stilettos,’ she said, remembering the shattering pain of hurtling into mindless oblivion for this man. ‘I almost feel sorry for her.’

‘Save your pity,’ he said, lowering the small trinket back to the table with a surprisingly gentle touch. ‘Women are incapable of love. Unless it comes with a million-pound price tag.’

‘Good grief, you’re abnormally cynical.’ What made a man think in such a demeaning way of women? All women?

‘Realistic,
tesoro
.’

‘So how come you trust me?’

‘I don’t,’ he said in a casual tone that completely belied the tension radiating off him. ‘It is dangerous to place faith in another. Especially when the outcome is of the utmost importance.’

Slumping back into the soft embrace of the sofa, she said, ‘Oh, charming.’

‘The difference is you have just as much to lose as I. This is not just about money to you.’

Good point. And did it really matter if he trusted her or not? Her heart ached for him to believe in her but, then again, her heart had always been on the stupid side where he was concerned.

Business—she had to focus on business. He was right. This was the only way. On her own it would be hard, maybe impossible to fix such catastrophic damage. They had a far better chance together.

‘Okay. What would I have to do?’

A small smile lifted the corner of his mouth. The victorious type. In truth it didn’t matter what type it was, it was just as lethal as the rest of him. Also highly premature. She hadn’t
technically
agreed to anything.

‘Go out,’ he began in that silky sinful drawl. ‘Attend a few dinners with Yakatani. Play my loving
devoted
fiancée.’

Fairy tales.

Everything stopped. The room morphed into a black and white blur as her vision began to swim as the enormity of his suggestion hit her with the thwack of a hammer-blow to her head.

An unseen hand gripped her heart, the fingers spreading to her throat, squeezing relentlessly until her pulse thudded in a rapid beat. Yet somehow, knowing his fierce shrewd gaze watched her every move, she managed to choke out a laugh. ‘Ah, well, there we have our first problem. I don’t do devotion.’ Nothing but the truth. She didn’t want a relationship of any sort—never even
had
a real relationship before.

‘Ah, yes,’ he said. ‘Eva, footloose and fancy-free. Why does that not surprise me?’ Dark, savage and wickedly sharp, Dante’s tongue was like a blade slicing across the room, lacerating her skin, gashing open another wound. It took every shred of strength she possessed to lift her chin and affect a careless shrug that almost ripped her shoulder blades in two.

It didn’t matter to him why she felt so strongly. He was here to save his deal. She was a means to an end. But Eva knew the limitations of her life.

The script had been written years before by one of the most renowned specialists in the world. The moment she’d heard ‘high risk’ she’d known with bone-deep clarity she would never experience love or the joy of having a family of her own. She couldn’t tempt fate. Her mother’s death was a living, breathing thing inside her, reminding her of the destruction one woman’s demise could cause. Eva refused to take the risk. Refused to expose herself to such pain.

And what exactly was she missing out on anyway? She doubted true love even existed outside the imagination of youthful naivety.

She’d never forget the day her father had left. After her mother had endured another dose of chemo. For twenty years Libby St George had devoted her life to her husband, gave him two children, curbed his alcoholic tendencies and sang like the proverbial groupie at his every concert—whilst building a successful career of her own. And the day his wife needed him more than ever was the day he’d left.

It was Eva who’d picked up the shards of their fragile world. Eva who’d stroked away every tear. Eva who didn’t make it to design school that term or the two long, heart-shattering years that followed. Eva who hid every newspaper showing her father on another drunken binge, invariably wrapped around a leggy brunette.

If that were payment for love and devotion—if
that
was true love—such utter heartbreak—she’d rather live her life out completely dependent on herself.

Clearing her throat, she directed her voice to sass. ‘Yes, Dante. Footloose and fancy-free. That’s me. So, you see, I can’t possibly feign a relationship with you. I wouldn’t know where to start. And, as for attraction...’ A
ppff
vibrated over her lips. There’d be no feigning
that.

The air shifted, tilting the room on its axis, as he prowled across the room towards her. She felt hunted and it was a dazzling, terrifying experience. Each lithe stride was a thump of her heart and a beat of heat through her blood, until everything melted when he braced one large hand on the sofa arm and the other across the high back, caging her in.

Brooding and fierce, he leaned forward and her brain was attacked by the infusion of his expensive scent. Raw enough to strip away the layers of her anguish.

‘Are you saying it is impossible, Eva? To
fake
it.’

‘Not impossible,’ she said, air stuttering in her lungs as her internal organs went on strike. ‘Just a bit of a stretch.’
Push him away, Eva, push him away.

‘Do not lie,
tesoro
, even to yourself. I can hear your heartbeat from the other side of the room.’

Exactly. How mortifying was that?

She stared at his full, dark red lips, unable to move. Her entire body was liquid. A boneless, quivering mass of thrumming desire.

‘That would be the clock, Dante. Your welcome in my home is coming to an end.’ He had to leave now. Before she did something very,
very
stupid. For the second time in the last twenty-four hours.

His breath trickled over her face, warm and alluring. Spellbinding. He dipped his head and lightly grazed his jaw up her cheek, the friction a delicious firework of sensation. And all the willpower in the world couldn’t have prevented the mini explosions in her midriff, the ripples that danced up her body. Piping her veins with heat. Making her breath hitch.

‘Ah, Eva, we have enough chemistry to blow up a small country.’

Blinking over and over, she said, ‘We do?’
Oh, boy
. Was he saying he felt the same way?

She would laugh if she had the strength to fight through the painful irony. Of all the times she’d wanted him to crave her, only her, he finally desired her when it was too late. ‘Explosives are dangerous, Dante.’

‘Very dangerous,’ he murmured, his deep voice sliding over her, dark and sensuous, like a physical touch.

And then,
oh
, he did touch. His lips shimmied over the soft spot between her neck and shoulder and her lashes fluttered to a close.

‘Therefore not to be trifled with,’ he went on, before flicking her earlobe with the tip of his nose.

A moan threatened to trip from her lips but she caught it in the nick of time. Determined to stay strong. Not to cry out for more. More pleasure. More pain.

‘Eva...’ he said, her name another caress, sliding off his tongue with all the practice that had once made her name an endearment. When she was young, stupidly naive, she’d fancied he said it as if she was the most special thing in his world.

The past blended with the present as his heat surrounded her, drawing her in. Without conscious thought, she reached up...touched the smooth satin of his jaw. Satin over steel, his skin smouldered, scorching her fingertips. And Eva—now a moth to a flame—turned her face until they shared one breath. Until he licked her lower lip with the devilish accuracy of his tongue. Leaving it burning. Tingling.

‘Need more proof,
cara
?’ he said, drawing back, his eyes the deepest, most sensual hazel she’d ever seen. Hot. Heavy. Glittering. The same way he’d looked at her last night. In the gardens, when he’d held her tight to his body to stem her fall and she’d convinced herself that look was antipathy. That he couldn’t bear to touch her.

Suddenly the room revolved once more, spinning their situation in another direction entirely.

Dante was attracted to
her
. He felt the same way. And suddenly she was less of the girl she used to be and more Eva, the older, wiser woman on an equal footing. The woman who’d made peace with the strictures of her life. The woman who didn’t need love. Nor passion. Especially with a man masterful in the art of devour-and-discard.

Oh, she’d read the tales of his jar of tattered hearts, seen enough pictures of Dante with his glamorous brunettes to fashion the ultimate armour. She may not want a relationship but hell would freeze before she slept with a man no better than her father.

So, if she was going ahead with this spurious soap opera, losing her grip, her head or her pride was not an option.

She’d been thrown for a loop yesterday, unreeling like a spool after the fund-raiser. Missing Finn, her mother. But, today, everything had changed. She had her business to save. Be the woman she’d fought to become.

If she could rise from the ashes of destruction and build a business to be proud of she could go out and be his date for dinner. Easy. Two or three dinners in a nice, controlled, professional atmosphere—deal done. Her beautiful little boutique, her new life saved. His deal saved. Everyone happy.

Some of the stress knotting her nape unravelled. Of course she could do it. She met clients over lunch, knew how to talk the talk.

There was really no need for the words
fairy tale
and
relationship
to bring on a migraine of epic proportions. It wouldn’t resemble a real relationship at all. No lovey-dovey stuff. This
was
Dante they were talking about, after all.

‘And this is strictly business. Right?’ she asked, just to make sure they were pulling the same thread.

‘
Strictly
business,’ he agreed in a low, deep growl that sent a shudder the strength of 7.0 on the Richter scale on a direct course to her pelvis.

Oh, boy
, if this was going to work the man
had
to keep his distance.

Conviction enhanced the adrenalin pumping through her body and Eva pushed at his chest with all her might. He didn’t budge one inch. ‘What are you made out of—granite? Will you back off? You’ve proved your point.’

He stayed right where he was and demanded, ‘So your answer is?’