The Vengeful Husband (The Husband Hunters 2)

And although she didn't want to do it, she made herself remember that night in Venice, when her explosive re¬sponse to his first kiss had shocked her inside out. Within seconds, Darcy was plunging back into the past—indeed, suddenly stung into eagerly seeking out those memories, almost as if some part of her believed they might be a comfort...

'I said just one dance before I leave,' she reminded Luca stiffly, thoroughly unnerved by her own behaviour and pull¬ing hurriedly back from him.

For Richard had never once made her feel like that. Only now did she understand why her relationship with the younger man had failed. Neither of them had made an effort to share a bed before their wedding. Richard had said he didn't mind waiting. Theirs had been a love without a spark of passion, an unsentimental fondness which they had both mistaken for something deeper.

'Why should you leave?' Luca demanded.

'I don't belong here—'

He vented a soft, amused laugh. 'Running scared all of a sudden?'

'I'm not scared. I—'

'Are you committed to someone else?'

Recalling Richard's betrayal, fiery pride made her eyes flash. 'I don't believe in commitment!'

'If only that was the truth,' Luca drawled, supremely unimpressed by that declaration. 'In my experience all women ultimately want and expect commitment, no matter what they say in the beginning.'

Darcy flashed him a look of supreme scorn. Having come within inches of the deepest commitment a man could make to a woman and lost out, she no longer had any faith in the worth and security of promises. 'But I don't follow the common herd...haven't you realised that yet?'

As she stepped back from him, he shot out a hand and linked his fingers firmly with hers to keep her close. 'Either you're bitter...or extremely clever.'

'No, frank...and easily bored.'

'Not when I kiss you—'

'You stopped!' she condemned.

An appreciative smile of intense amusement slashed his dark features. 'We were attracting attention. I'm not a fan of public displays.'

In the mood to fight with her own shadow, Darcy shrugged. "Then you're too sedate, too cautious, too con¬ventional for me...'

And, like Neanderthal man reacting with reckless spon¬taneity to a challenge, Luca hauled her back into his arms and crushed her mouth with fierce, hungry passion under his again. When she had emerged, her lips tingling, every sense leaping with vibrant excitement and delighted pride at this proof of her feminine powers to provoke, she had giggled. 'I liked that...I liked that very much. But I'm still going to leave.'

'You can't—'

'Watch me...' Sashaying her slim but curvaceous hips, she had spun in her low-heeled pumps and moved towards the doors that stood open on the ballroom, willing him to follow her with every fibre of her being.

'If you walk out of here, you will never see me again...'

'Cuts both ways,' she murmured playfully over one slight shoulder, and then she recalled that he was a waiter...or was he? Somehow that didn't seem quite as likely as it had earlier.

'Are you a waiter?' she paused to ask uncertainly. 'Be¬cause if you are, I'm not playing fair.'

'What would you like me to be?'

'Don't be facetious—'

'So that treatment doesn't cut both ways! Of course I am not a waiter,' he countered in impatient dismissal.

She smiled then. So he had lifted a tray and brought her a drink specifically to approach her. She was impressed, incredibly flattered as well. 'Then you're a guest, a legiti¬mate one, yet you're not masked.'

'I'm—'

'You really are dying to introduce yourself, aren't you? I don't want to know... After tonight, I'll never see you again. What would be the point?'

'You might be surprised—'

'I don't think so...are you going to follow me out of here?'

‘No,' he delivered with level cool.

'OK...fine. I felt like company, but I'm sure I can find that elsewhere...but then I sort of like you—the way you kiss anyway,' she admitted baldly.

'One moment you behave like a grown woman, the next you talk like a schoolgirl.'

Darcy's face burned with chagrin. As she attempted to stalk off he tugged her back to him and spoke in a lazy tone of indulgence.

'Tell me, what would you like to do tonight that you cannot do here?'

She put her head to one side and answered on impulse. 'Sail in a gondola in the moonlight...'

Luca flinched with almost comical immediacy. 'Not my style. Tourist territory.'

Darcy pulled her fingers free of his. 'I am a tourist. I dare you.'

'I'll arrange a trip for you tomorrow—'

'Too late.'

'Then sadly, we are at an impasse.'

'It's your loss.' With a careless jerk of one shapely shoulder, Darcy strolled back into the ballroom. She took her time strolling, but he didn't catch up with her as she had hoped. She wondered why she was playing such dan¬gerous games. She wondered if, her whole life through, she would ever again meet a man who could turn her bones to water and her brain to mush with a single kiss...