‘I don’t like talking about that, Dante,’ she admitted quietly. ‘I learn incredibly fast and I have a photographic memory for facts and figures. Let’s leave it there.’
A tall beautiful brunette in pearls and black and white polka-dot silk strolled up to them and addressed Dante with the familiarity of an old friend. Her need to ignore Topsy’s presence told Topsy all she needed to know about the brunette’s true source of interest and she drifted off.
‘Why on earth did you walk off?’ Dante demanded ten minutes later when he finally ran her to ground in the Titian room.
‘She was flirting with you and being rude to me. I don’t waste my time with people like that,’ Topsy told him without apology.
‘We were lovers many years ago,’ Dante admitted with a fluid shrug. ‘She means nothing to me now.’
As soon I will mean nothing, Topsy’s logic supplied, sending a wave of gooseflesh across her exposed skin. Her slim shoulders set back as if she was bracing herself for that day. She knew that their affair lacked the longevity gene. Soon, Dante would head back to the bank headquarters in Milan and Topsy, and having only agreed to work for Sofia for three months, she was returning to London at the end of the summer. He was a holiday fling, she told herself urgently, scanning his perfect profile in a hungry stolen glance. And the end of a holiday fling would sting, not hurt.
* * *
‘That was an amazing experience,’ Topsy assured him when she slid back into his car. ‘I thank you from the bottom of my heart. Kat will be so envious when she hears that I attended a private viewing.’
‘There’s something I want to discuss with you,’ Dante told her softly. ‘I have to fly to Milan tomorrow for forty-eight hours—there’s something of a crisis and I have a government minister to advise. I want you to come with me, gioia mia.’
Dismayed though she was at the prospect of being without him for even that short length of time, Topsy was very practical. ‘That’s impossible. There’s only three days to go to the fancy-dress ball. I can’t possibly leave your mother to deal with any last-minute hitches that might arise.’
‘I heard her say that you’d taken very little time off.’
‘That’s true but that was my choice and it doesn’t mean I’m willing to leave her in the lurch. The ball is a huge amount of work and loads of little things could go wrong.’
‘She has Vittore.’
Tensing at his persistence, Topsy shot him an angry look of reproach. ‘You really don’t like hearing the word no, do you? My answer is no, sorry...and thanks for asking...but no.’
‘It should be yes,’ Dante contradicted harshly, making no attempt to conceal his dissatisfaction with her decision.
‘Arrogant...much?’ Topsy quipped. ‘You don’t get to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do.’
‘Non importa...no matter,’ he pronounced with dismissive finality, wide, sensual mouth clenching into a hard line.
Well, at least she was seeing all his flaws, Topsy reflected unhappily as she lay alone in her bed for the first night that week. Dante was spoilt by having enjoyed too much attention from over-eager-to-please women. He should not be willing to put her in a difficult position with his mother when they could perfectly well cope with being apart for a mere forty-eight hours.
‘Topsy...?’
In the act of crossing the hall the next morning to head into the dining room for breakfast, Topsy spun and raised an imperious questioning brow when Dante beckoned to her from his study doorway. She was still angry with him and it didn’t help that he was so extraordinarily handsome in his formal dark suit teamed with a very chic fuchsia-pink shirt and black tie that one glimpse of him literally stole the breath from her lungs.
‘A word before I leave?’ he added expectantly.
Unimpressed, Topsy stalked towards him, outraged by his infuriating self-assurance. ‘When you say, “Jump,” I will never say, “How high?”’ she swore in a sizzling undertone.
Instead of answering back, Dante swept her off her feet and up into his arms with the easy strength that always shook her. Linking her arms round his neck, he backed into the study and sealed her mouth to his in a passionately hungry kiss that jolted every skin cell in her treacherous body. ‘You’ll miss me,’ he husked against the swollen contours of her lush mouth. ‘I’ll miss you.’
‘But we’ll live,’ Topsy pointed out prosaically.
‘For a woman who wants a romantic male that was a very unromantic comment,’ Dante mocked, eyes dancing with amusement. ‘You’ve brought fun back into my life, cara mia.’
He lowered her slowly and reluctantly to the floor again. Her fingers curled into fists by her side because for the first time in her life she wanted to hurl herself back into a man’s arms but she wouldn’t let herself behave like an adoring schoolgirl. Fun, his word and very revealing it was, she acknowledged grimly. Fun was never serious and never permanent. Fun was a fleeting thing of the moment and appreciated as such.
* * *
The next morning, Topsy had breakfast with Sofia in her private sitting room. With Vittore in Florence, the two women ran over last-minute changes to the seating arrangements for the many celebrities attending the dinner being held before the ball. Topsy noted the name of the woman seated beside Dante.
‘Cosima Ruffini?’ she repeated the name. ‘Why does that name seem familiar?’
The older woman tensed. ‘Perhaps you’ve seen it in a magazine. Cosima is a famous fashion model.’
Topsy nodded, wondering if Cosima was being placed beside Dante to entertain him. Was his mother playing cupid? And if that was the case, it was none of her business. Fun, she reminded herself doggedly, she and Dante were only having fun and temporary fun at that.
‘Topsy...? May I be frank with you?’ Sofia asked rather abruptly.
Topsy glanced up from the list, her mouth still crammed full of delicious melting croissant, and she nodded agreement, wondering what on earth her employer wanted to say.
‘It’s about Dante,’ his mother volunteered. ‘He’s my son and I love him very much but I don’t want you to get hurt.’
Topsy’s croissant suddenly turned to sawdust in her mouth while colour rose hotly to her cheeks. She had thought that she and Dante were being so discreet that nobody would realise there was anything going on and, self-evidently, she had been fooling herself on that score.
‘Dante doesn’t seem to get involved in serious relationships. I worry that he may be what is nowadays called a commitment-phobe,’ Sofia admitted uncomfortably. ‘Bu
t he wasn’t always like that.’
Topsy finally managed to swallow and clear her throat. ‘Neither of us is looking for anything serious,’ she hastened to declare.
Her companion lifted her chin and gave Topsy a measured look. ‘I’ve seen the way you look at my son and it worries me.’
Topsy paled, not knowing how to answer that for she knew she was always looking at Dante, always mesmerically drawn to him when he was around, but wasn’t that a physical pull rather than a mental one? She reddened, knowing the distinction was not one she could raise in present company. I only want him for his body would be a conversational killer, she reflected a little hysterically, because Sofia had taken her very much by surprise in opening the subject.
‘Dante’s wife used to look at him the same way,’ the older woman told her softly.
Topsy frowned in disbelief. ‘Wife? His wife?’ she repeated.
‘I see he hasn’t mentioned his marriage.’ Sofia seemed unsurprised by Dante’s oversight in that regard. ‘Dante got married when he was twenty-one. Emilia and he virtually grew up together. She died within a year of their wedding—she walked in front of a car in Florence and she was killed instantly. Dante was inconsolable.’
A tragic experience of first love, Dante ‘inconsolable’. That was a challenging image, which disconcerted Topsy for it had never occurred to her that he might be concealing such a past. ‘He was very young when he married,’ Topsy remarked abstractedly, thinking it typical that Mikhail had chosen to tell her about the three mistresses but not the tragedy that had preceded that change in Dante’s private life. ‘And no, you’re right, he didn’t discuss it with me.’
‘Why would he have? It’s a long time ago. I’m telling you now only because I don’t want you to think too badly of my son. I doubt that he’s ready for an exclusive relationship,’ Sofia opined, ‘but sometimes people do know instantly when they’ve met their perfect match...’