In the taxi, Phoebe had also lent her words of wisdom. 'Don't say you're a student. It sounds too brainy. Say you're a secretary or something and don't whatever you do admit your age. Teenies aren't in great demand.'
It had been a private party in a Mayfair hotel and twenty minutes into the evening Phoebe had met up with the male she had come to meet and had disappeared into the crush. Ashley had been engulfed by eager young men and several glasses of champagne later she had been reaping a vicarious thrill from all the attention she was receiving. She had had few nights out during her first term at university. Her father had kept her so short of money that she had had to work every free hour she could steal from her studies as a waitress to make ends meet.
When the tiger lily was delivered, she had been catching her breath at a table. 'That can't be for me,' she had said.
'For the lady at table twenty-two,' the waiter had insisted.
A magnum of pink champagne had arrived next. Her male companion had started to become annoyed. 'What's going on?' he had bleated. 'Is this some sort of send-up?'
'Someone's made a mistake.' She had fingered the opulent little box containing the tiger lily, dismayed to discover that something perilously close to mushy romanticism was making her resent the knowledge that the flamboyant gifts could not possibly be for her.
'What the hell do you want now?' her companion had demanded when the grinning waiter reappeared a third time. He had deposited a business card in front of her with a theatrical flourish.
'The gentleman would like you to join him, madam.' 'Is he in a wheelchair?'
'No, madam. He's seated at table three,' he had replied, deadpan.
She had glanced at the name, crunched up the card and dropped it in the ashtray, fighting the pull of her own fascination. It was her companion who had rescued the card and turned a sort of puce shade. 'Vito di Cavalieri?'
Ashley had screened a yawn. 'I've never heard of him.'
'I've never come across anyone who hasn't heard of Vito di Cavalieri.' He had looked at her as though he suspected she was a gatecrasher.
'I bet he's his own best publicist.'
His jaw had thrust out. 'He has a very bad reputation with women.'
'But what does he look like?' Little quivers of excitement had been leaping shamelessly through her veins at the style Vito had employed to introduce himself.
'Somebody else can damned well play Cupid!' he had snapped, and stormed off.
Curiosity had been eating her alive. She had sauntered up the steps from the dance-floor, striving to appear unconcerned, meaning only to steal a covert glance on her way to the cloakroom. But the covert glance had become a most uncool stare. While she hovered, Vito had slid upright and strolled forward to greet her, his raking appraisal every bit as intense as her own.
'Why didn't you just ask me to dance?' she had mumbled, all of an adolescent quiver.
'I don't compete with a crowd.' Dark golden eyes had enveloped her like hot, liquid honey. The high voltage charge of sexual awareness had been so powerful that she had felt dizzy, disorientated and utterly detached from her usual argumentative and unromantic self.
'And if I hadn't come up here-?'
'I was coming to get you,' he had completed softly, and, lifting her hand, he had pressed his mouth intimately to the tender skin on the inside of her wrist and every bone in her body had begun to melt and fuse beneath her skin.
On the one and only occasion when she had accidentally met his teenage sister, Giulia, the other girl had demanded to know how they had met. Ashley had been truthful. Giulia had stared at her with enormous round eyes and flatly refused to believe her.
'You're joking, you've got to be,' Giulia had insisted. 'Vito's the most boringly conventional guy you could meet. He never deviates from his life of workaholic duty and devotion to the bank. He's unbelievably old- fashioned… that's why he suits Carina down to the ground, and when he marries her-'. Giulia had gone scarlet and hastily changed the subject. That had been the first time she'd heard Carina's name, but not the last. Ashley had been subtle. She had questioned Vito ever so sneakily and had in her naïveté learnt nothing to dismay her. Carina was virtually one of his family, the daughter of close friends, who frequently came to stay. He had actually laughed when he'd confided that his parents had this rather unreal hope that he might one day decide to marry Carina. 'And pigs might fly' had gone politely unsaid.
Why hadn't she run like a rabbit four years ago? She had recognised his maturity and sophistication. Indeed, in a foolish attempt to ease up on to a more equal level, she had spouted the secretary story and added four years to her age. Neither wit nor pride had distinguished her in Vito's company. From her early teens she had been accustomed to male interest. She had never had any trouble keeping boyfriends under control. Invariably she had had the stronger personality, and she had called every shot. But from the first moment Vito had been the one in control, she the one struggling to hold her own in the dialogue. That humbling fact had challenged her. She had been pretty provocative once or twice, she conceded grudgingly. In addition, the champagne level had been dangerously high in her bloodstream.
He had kissed her while they were dancing. That kiss had burned all the way down to her feet and back up again. That kiss was all that it had taken to wipe out year after year of self-taught feminist conditioning.
She had drifted out into the night to be tucked into a chauffeur-driven limo and somehow within minutes she had been in his arms again, the victim of a quite agonising need for constant physical contact. She had left Phoebe's shoes behind in the lift on the way up to his apartment. She had lost her dress in the hall. Her brain-well, her brain had never made it out of the hotel, had it?
'All my life I have dreamt of meeting a woman like you,' Vito had groaned, depriving her of her first stocking one step through the bedroom door. 'And now that I have finally found you I will never let you go. So much passion… such glorious spontaneity… '
And, true to form, the passion and spontaneity he had rejoiced in the night before were unwelcome in the cold light of the following morning. For an apparently sophisticated male, Vito had been shocked rigid when he'd seen the bloodstains on the sheet. While she had been cringing with chagrin, Vito had acted more like a judge than a lover. Why hadn't she said no? How
could she have let him treat her like that? Didn't she realise what a precious commodity virginity was? Why had she pretended to be something that she wasn't? And what age was she anyway? In daylight she didn't look twenty-three. A teenager? He had gone white. Did she realise that he had a sister not very much younger? Stark naked, he had prowled about the bedroom, ranting in Italian but using just enough English to ensure that she understood the gist of his fury. And the gist of the message had been that she was so stupid in her lack of care for herself that she wasn't fit to be let out on her own. He had then, with awesome arrogance, chosen to conclude that she had been extremely lucky to meet someone like him.
Trembling with embarrassment and fury, Ashley had wrapped herself in a sheet and raced about the room picking up pieces of her clothing.
'What are you doing?' Vito had demanded. 'I'm going home.'
'But we need to talk.' He had appeared thunderstruck by her announcement.
'Is that usual after a one-night stand?' she had asked bitterly.
'That is not what it was!' Vito had raked back at her fiercely. 'I've never had a one-night stand in my life. Dio, what sort of a man do you think I am? Last night was about a great deal more than sex.'
'You could have fooled me.'
'How did you expect me to react today? You lied to me,' he had condemned. 'If I'd known you were a virgin, I'd never have slept with you. I must have been insane. I didn't even take precautions when we made love. I have never been so irresponsible. You could be pregnant… '
Ashley had allowed a glittering little smile to touch her ripe mouth, repayment for the mortification she had been forced to endure. 'Oh, I don't think so. I'm on the Pill.'
'But you were a-'
'So?' She had watched his darkly handsome face harden as he drew the conclusion she had intended: that she had been ready for a lover and she had simply chosen him. In fact she had been put on the Pill to correct irregularities in her menstrual cycle, and protection from possible pregnancy had been the last thing on her mind.