Bartering Her Innocence (6 page)

‘The rest of your wardrobe should be here shortly.’

She frowned, searching for meaning. ‘But I left nothing at my mother’s.’

‘The
signore
has organised a delivery for you. I am expecting it at any time.’

A delivery? To replace one plain old bra that had seen better days? He needn’t have bothered, she thought, rummaging in her pack after the valet had departed. It wasn’t as if she travelled without a spare.

Half an hour later she emerged from the bathroom wearing a floral miniskirt that she loved for the way it flirted around her legs and a cool knitted top and found the delivery man had been. Or men, plural, because it must have taken an entire team to cart the lot filling the dressing room wardrobe.

A veritable boutique was waiting for her, dresses of all descriptions, from day dresses to cocktail dresses to ball gowns. She flicked through the rack, many of the items still in transparent protective sleeves, along with racks of shoes—one pair for every outfit, by the look of it—and the drawers filled with lingerie of every imaginable colour.

And not a T-shirt bra in sight.

So much for imagining Luca wanted to replace her bra. He wanted to replace her entire wardrobe. She almost laughed. Almost. Because it was ridiculous.

Not to mention unnecessary.

More than that. It was downright insulting.

She pulled open the bedroom door and called for the valet. Who the hell did Luca Barbarigo think he was?

* * *

She was writing an email to her father on her clunky old laptop, pounding at the space bar that only worked when it wanted to, when the double doors to the living room opened. She didn’t have to turn her head to know it was Luca. The way her heart jumped and her skin prickled was enough to tell her that. And the way heated memories of last night and a certain desk jumped to centre stage in her mind, she was grateful to have something to focus on so she didn’t have to look at him until she’d wiped all trace of those pictures from her eyes. She banged her thumb once again on the space bar, trying to appear unmoved, while feeling the weight of his gaze on her back.

‘What are you wearing?’

‘I’m trying to get this space bar to work. It sticks all the time.’ She pounded on the key again, hoping it covered the thump of her heart and this time it worked and she managed to rattle off another few words before she noticed her fingers were on the wrong keys and she’d written nonsense.

‘No. Not, what are you doing. What are you
wearing
?’

The correction took her by surprise. She forgot the email and looked down at her simple outfit and then around at him. She almost wished she hadn’t. The dark business suit and snowy white shirt made him look powerful. The five o’clock shadow darkening his olive skin turned that power into danger. Or was that just the way his eyes narrowed as they assessed her? She might just as well be a butterfly pinned in a display cabinet, being examined for the colour of its wings. Being found wanting.

‘Just a skirt and top.’ And she half wondered whether he was still seeing her in those jeans, as she edged them down over her hips. Had he been expecting to find her wearing them again? Had he been hoping for a repeat performance? She shivered in anticipation—suddenly half hoping... ‘Why do you ask?’

‘What happened to the clothes I ordered? Did they not arrive?’

Oh. She’d forgotten the clothes. She swivelled out of her chair and stood, keeping hold of the desk behind her, solid and strong. Sitting down he loomed too tall and imposing, but standing up wasn’t as easy as it looked. Not when it looked as if the Furies were about to descend upon her. ‘They came.’

‘Then why aren’t you wearing something from that collection?’

She hitched up her chin. ‘How do you know I’m not?’

He snorted. ‘Believe me, Valentina, it shows.’

‘So what’s wrong with what I’m wearing, anyway?’

‘Nothing, if you want to look like a backpacker. Go and get changed.’

‘Excuse me? Since when did you tell me what to wear?’

‘Ever since you agreed to this deal.’

‘I never—’

‘You made your conditions known last night, if I recall rightly. I remember nothing about choosing what you wear being one of them. In which case...’

‘You can’t make me—’

‘Can’t I? I have a dinner reservation in one hour. At one of the most exclusive restaurants in Venice. Do you expect to accompany me wearing those rags?’

‘How dare you?’ They weren’t rags to her. Maybe nothing in her wardrobe cost more than fifty dollars, maybe they weren’t weighed down in designer labels, but they were hardly rags. She bundled up her outrage and fired it straight back. ‘Anyway, those clothes you had delivered...’

‘What about them?’

She allowed herself a smile. ‘I sent them back.’

‘You
what
?’

‘You heard me. I sent them back. I didn’t ask for them, I didn’t want them, so I told Aldo to send them back.’

Luca stormed to the door. ‘Aldo!’ he yelled, his booming voice echoing around the palazzo, before turning around and striding across the room, eating up the length of it in long powerful strides, wheeling around when he reached the end. ‘I can’t believe you would do such a stupid thing.’

‘And I can’t believe you would order clothes for me like I was some kind of doll you want to dress up and play with!’

He stopped right in front of her. ‘You will be seen on my arm. You will look the part.’

‘As your strumpet, you mean. As your whore!’

‘I didn’t see you complaining last night when you agreed to this deal. You seemed quite willing to spread your legs for me then.’

The crack of her palm against his cheek filled the room, the resultant sting on her hand a mere shadow of what he must be feeling.

He rubbed his face, his cheek blooming dark beneath his hand. ‘You seem to have an unfortunate habit of slapping me, Valentina.’

‘What a coincidence. You seem to have an unfortunate habit of provoking me.’

‘By calling a spade a spade? Or by buying you clothes and insisting you wear them? Most women would not object. Most women would be delighted.’

‘I’m not most women and I am not your whore. And I agreed to share your bed, yes. But that doesn’t mean I’m happy to be paraded on your arm like some kind of possession.’

‘Did you expect to stay one month chained to my bed? While I must admit the idea appeals on some primitive level, given I have your agreement to this arrangement, it seems such drastic measures will not be necessary.’

‘What a shame,’ she snapped. ‘I imagine someone like you would get a real kick out of that.’

‘I don’t know,’ he countered. ‘Why would I restrict you to my bed when you have already shown such willingness for spontaneity?’

Aldo coughed at the door, signalling his presence, and two heads swivelled simultaneously. Tina wanted to curl up and die while Luca might just as well have been talking about the weather for all the embarrassment he showed.
‘Prego,’
said Luca. ‘I’m looking for the clothes that were sent, Aldo. The ones Valentina says she had sent back.’

‘They are downstairs in the studio. I thought, under the circumstances, it might be wise to wait.’

Tina forgot her embarrassment. ‘What? I told you to send them back. You told me you’d take care of it.’

He bowed his head. ‘
Scusi.
If that is all?’

‘No,’ Tina said, ‘that’s not all—’

‘What Aldo is saying—’ Luca interrupted ‘—is that I am master of this house. You are a guest and an honoured one, but you would do well to understand that I make the decisions here. Not you.’

He turned to his valet. ‘
Grazie
, Aldo. Perhaps you might be so good as to select a few outfits for our guest to choose from. It seems designer fashion is not one of her strong points. She may need your assistance.’

‘I don’t want to go out.’

‘Find her something sexy, Aldo,’ he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘Cocktail length would be perfect. High heels. Choose something that shows off her figure. I want every man in that restaurant to be salivating for her and every woman to be hating them for it.’

Aldo bowed and turned, a man on a mission, clearly unsurprised by his master’s bizarre request and equally clearly expecting her to follow meekly along now that they had both been given their orders.

She stood her ground. ‘And meanwhile,’ she said, ‘while all these people are busy either drooling or planning to murder their partners, what will you be doing?’

His smile returned, and a flare of something hot and dangerous in his dark eyes sent a bolt of heated anticipation coursing straight through her. ‘I’ll be imagining bringing you back here and tearing whatever it is you’re wearing right off you until you are lying naked and spreadeagle on my bed.’

She shivered at his words, even as his smile widened dangerously. ‘And now,’ he said, his white teeth almost glinting, ‘so will you.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

H
OW
was a girl supposed to think of anything after that?

Numbly Tina followed Aldo down the marble staircase, wishing she had a way to prove Luca wrong and wipe that knowing smile from his face, but there was no denying the delicious thrill of anticipation that had accompanied Luca’s dark promise. And it was a promise, for it could hardly be called a threat. Not when her blood fizzed at the knowledge that in a few short hours he wanted her back in his bed.

Was it wrong to look forward to sex with a man that you hated, who held you hostage to a debt you hadn’t yourself incurred? But maybe that was the wrong question to ask, for that question led to more questions, and all kinds of answers she didn’t want to think too much about.

Maybe it was simply better to ask if it was wrong to look forward to an act that you knew would blow your mind and your world apart—an act that your body hungered for on a scale you had never known—an act you had already agreed to undertake for one entire month and so what was the point of asking anyway?

Surely that was the better question.

It felt better, from where she was standing.

‘This one,’ said Aldo, intruding into her thoughts as he handed her a dress, feverishly intent on his task and already searching for the right accessories as she took the hanger. He soon found what he was looking for and before she knew it she was back in her dressing room and wearing a dress that fitted as if it had been made for her.

And in spite of her protests that she didn’t want any of Luca’s clothes and her order to send everything back, she adored the dress the moment she slipped it over her head. It felt delicious and sinful and decadent all in one go.

Cocktail length, the cobalt satin dress skimmed her shape without a ridge or seam in evidence beneath—perhaps because she was wearing gossamer-thin silk underwear instead of her usual plain, cotton bras—or perhaps because it was so superbly right for her, the dress nipping in at the waist to make the most of her curves, hugging her shape like a caress.

Aldo had somehow even managed to conjure up earrings to match, sapphires set with diamonds that sparkled when they caught the light, the blue stones echoing the rich colour of her dress. A touch of make-up and a simple uptwist of her hair were all she needed to do herself, and even she was astounded by the results. The rich colour of the dress did something to her eyes, turning amber into gold, although maybe it was the thoughts of what would happen later that seemed to turn them molten.

‘You look amazing,’ Luca said when she emerged, his rich deep voice working its way down to her bones, and he made her believe it. When she looked into his dark eyes, she felt his desire. When he took her hand to step down into the water taxi, she felt the spark of his need ignite her own.

Mad, she thought, as he finally let her hand go so she could precede him into the interior; she must be mad to feel this schoolgirl breathlessness, this overwhelming sense of anticipation. It was not as if she was going on a date with a man she wanted to be with. It was not as if they hadn’t already made love. In fact he was really nothing to her but an obligation—thirty days and nights to spend in his bed—a deal made with the devil.

But knowing that was somehow still not enough to stop the racing of her pulse as he ducked his head and curled his long body onto the leather divan alongside her. Knowing that was no protection against the lure of his signature scent or the sheer magnetism of his body heat. In fact, logic seemed pathetically irrelevant when the devil looked like Luca Barbarigo.

The water taxi cruised slowly down the Grand Canal, past yet more examples of Venice’s architectural treasures, and out past the crowded St Mark’s Square with its magnificent Doge’s Palace and towering Campanile. Across the basin, the church of San Giorgio Maggiore and its belltower stood majestically on their own island.

She’d come here not as a tourist. She’d come to Venice with no thought of sightseeing, but it was impossible not to drink in the sights and be awed by the spectacle.

How could anyone remain unmoved, when the shifting view revealed such a feast for the eyes with every turn? And then Luca turned his head and she caught his profile and the feasting continued.

Such sculpted perfection, she thought, such classical chiselled features. He belonged here in Venice, amongst the beautiful and the magnificent. He was a part of it. And as she drank his dark beauty in, she wondered...

Would their son have grown up to look like him?

Pain, sharp and swift, lanced her heart and so suddenly that she gasped with the intensity of it. A single tear squeezed from each eye and she had to cover her mouth with her hand to prevent her grief escaping via that route.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked, but all she could do was shake her head as she remembered.

Their tiny son.

Born too early to save. Born too late not to love. A child lost.

A child his father knew nothing about.

‘It’s nothing,’ she lied, knowing that the only good thing she had taken from their baby’s premature death was the relief that she would never have to tell him—that it didn’t matter because she would never see him again.

But where was that relief now that she was here in Venice, forced to share a month with the father of that child? Where was the certainty now, that what she had decided back then was right?

She’d been a fool to ever believe it would be that easy. For the relief had turned to guilt, certainty had turned to fear, as the secret she had tried to lock away now hung over her like the sword of Damocles.

How could she begin to tell him the truth about their child now? Where would she start?

‘It’s the wake from the vaporetto,’ he said alongside her, misinterpreting her distress. ‘We’re over it now.’

She nodded and smiled thinly, and wondered if she ever would be.

* * *

The water taxi berthed a few minutes later down a side canal at a plushly canopied hotel landing.

‘Feeling better?’ he asked, as he handed her out of the taxi.

‘Yes.’ And she was, if only because she was surprised by his concern. It wasn’t one of the things she associated with the man. Arrogance was a given. Lust she expected. But concern hadn’t figured on her list of Luca’s character traits. Then again, maybe he was just worried that his playmate might be too ill to play games tonight. And that sounded so fitting that she even managed to dredge up a smile. ‘Much better, thank you.’

Through an elegant arched doorway and the hotel lobby opened up like an Aladdin’s Cave. Ceilings soared, magnificently decorated with gold leaf, while pink marble columns stretched high to reach them and a wide red carpeted staircase wound around the walls on its way heavenwards.

‘It’s stunning,’ she said.

‘You are.’ And when she turned to look at him, he simply gestured around. ‘Every head is turned your way. Hadn’t you noticed?’

No.
‘If they are, it’s because I’m with you.’

‘They’re all wondering who you are, it’s true,’ he told her as he led her towards the magnificent staircase, ‘but every woman in this hotel wishes she looked like you.’

‘It’s the dress,’ she countered, needing to change the subject, before she started believing him. ‘However did you know what size to have delivered?’

‘Wouldn’t you expect a man like me to know what size his lover wears?’

She shivered. His lover? That seemed too personal. Too intimate. Theirs was a business arrangement. A deal. So she schooled her features, aiming for cool and unaffected and definitely uncaring. ‘Clearly you’ve had plenty of practice to be so good at it.’

‘Clearly.’ His smile widened. ‘Does that bother you?’

‘Why should it? I don’t care who you sleep with. I don’t want to know.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Although perhaps I am not so expert as you would like to believe. Aldo found your clothes. The tags were still readable apparently. But only just.’

Another reminder of her wanton behaviour. Yet another reminder of the age of her clothes. And she had no comeback either, other than to blush. So she concentrated on the stairs beneath her feet and just hoped her face didn’t clash with her dress.

The restaurant ran the length of the building, half enclosed, half terrace, all understated elegance with red upholstery and cream linen tablecloths, with touches of gilt for highlights around artfully placed mirrors. Heads turned as they passed, men greeted Luca like an old friend, women preened for him and stared openly and questioningly at her. He swept through the room like a rolling wave, refusing to be distracted for longer than a second, even when it was clear that he was being welcomed to share someone’s table for the evening.

Clearly Luca had other plans.

Through wide glass doors they were led onto the broad terrace, where Luca’s table stood waiting for them at the far corner, boasting uninterrupted views over the San Marco Basin and the Gulf of Venice. Below them tourists paraded along the Riva degli Shiavoni enjoying the balmy September evening while water craft darted across the basin lit up like fireflies.

Luca sat back in his seat and smiled. The views from the terrace were sublime, it was true, but then his view was even better. He hadn’t lied. She looked amazing tonight. There was something about the colour of her cat-like eyes. And there was something about the colour of that dress, the way the shadows danced across it in the light whenever she moved. His fingers envied those shifting shadows and itched to dance their own way across her skin. ‘Are you hungry?’ he asked as they were handed their menus. He was, but what he wanted to feast upon had nothing to do with his stomach.

She’d left him hungering for more last night. He’d imagined a second course before leaving for work, but she’d been so deeply asleep this morning that letting her sleep had seemed the far wiser action. He wanted her wide awake when he made love to her again. And this time he wanted her to last all night.

This night.

The thought was as delicious as anything offered on the menu, which suddenly seemed too long and filled with far too many courses. He lost interest in the choices, returned to watch her instead, enjoying the tilt of her head and the curl of slim fingers angled around her menu.

‘A little,’ she said, her eyes drifting upwards, widening when they caught him watching her. She swallowed and he watched the slight kick of her chin and the movement down her throat. ‘Is there something special you can recommend?’

Plenty.
But if she was talking food—he skipped straight to the main courses, already impatient to be home. Surprised a little by how much. ‘The monkfish is excellent here, or there is always the rabbit.’

Something flared in her eyes, something challenging, as if she could read his thoughts. ‘I think the beef,’ she said, and he smiled.

‘Excellent choice,’ he said, thinking she would need it and ordered for them both.

Sparkling prosecco arrived, poured into glasses spun with gold. ‘A toast,’ he said, lifting his glass to her. ‘To...’ She arched one eyebrow, waiting. He smiled, a long, purposeful smile. ‘...anticipation.’

Her expression gave nothing away. Only her eyes betrayed the fact she felt it too, this thread between them, as fine as that trace of gold spun in their glasses, pulling inexorably tighter. ‘To anticipation,’ she echoed, a husky quality infusing her voice as she lightly touched her flute to his.

Giddy.

She hadn’t even had one sip of the wine and she already felt giddy. But how could she not? The setting was sublime, the view magical and the man opposite was looking at her as if she was more tasty than anything on the menu.

And no matter what she thought of him, she could not help but like the way he looked at her and what it did to her body. She liked this delicious heat simmering under her skin and the way his eyes warmed her from the inside out. She liked the way he seemed impatient to have this meal over with when he had been the one who had insisted on coming out. There was something empowering about his need, something that meant he didn’t hold all the cards.

Yes, she had agreed to his deal. She was his for the month, it was true, but did he not realise that by dressing her up and turning her into something worthy of his attention he was handing her a decent measure of his power?

All she had to do was play her part. It wasn’t hard. Whatever she thought of Luca Barbarigo and his ruthless determination to get his own way, there was no hardship in anticipating the pleasures of the night to come. Just as there was no hardship in anticipating the pleasures of walking away one short month from now.

Oh yes, she’d drink to anticipation.

‘So this is where we make small talk,’ Luca said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Where we sit and converse like two civilised people when there is somewhere we would both rather be and something we would both much prefer to be doing.’

There was no need to ask what he would rather be doing, not when his dark eyes were thick with desire. But if he wanted small talk... ‘Maybe we could talk about the weather,’ she suggested. ‘It’s a beautiful night.’

‘The weather does not interest me.’

‘No? Then we could talk about the view. You could point out the places of interest. There seems to be no shortage of those.’

He shook his head. ‘I could do that. But that would be dull. We would just be marking time. I would rather talk about you. How long is it since that night? Two years? More?’

That night.
What an appropriate way to put it. ‘Three years come January.’

‘So many.’ He took a sip of his wine and sat back, his dark eyes searching hers. ‘Which begs the question: what have you been doing all that time?’

Well, now there was a simple question. How to find a simple answer for all she had been doing?

Nursing a bruised ego.

Discovering that she was pregnant.

Grieving the loss of that child.

Hating...

She picked up her water glass, a tumbler that bore the swirling logo of the restaurant, clearly made locally in Murano, and she wondered that, for all her vast collection, her mother had never managed to find anything near as simple or as beautiful. She studied the piece so that she didn’t have to look at the man sitting opposite. She stared at it so he wouldn’t know how much his questions unsettled her. ‘Working on my father’s property, mostly.’ The mostly was important. She wasn’t about to confess that for the first few months she’d been holed up in a friend’s one-bedroom flat in Sydney while her life lurched from one turmoil to the next.