‘You’re calling me soft?’ He ignored the instinct to go for his brother’s throat.
‘I’m telling you I think she’s great, and if you don’t go get her I might.’
Valentino knew Dante was baiting him but even so his brother’s soft taunt twisted the knots in his gut.
‘Okay.’ Dante held up his hands in mock surrender, even though Tino hadn’t moved a muscle. ‘I take back the not a fighter bit... But seriously, man, why fight it?’
Tino turned his back on the dance floor. ‘You know why.’ He sighed. ‘My job.’
‘So quit.’
Tino was shocked by Dante’s suggestion. ‘Would you give up your multi-billion dollar hotel business for a woman?’
Dante shrugged. ‘I can’t imagine it, but...never say never. Isn’t that the adage? You’ve done it for fifteen years and you have an omen flapping over your head the size of an albatross. I don’t think your time will be up tomorrow, if that helps, but why risk it?’
Tino knew Dante was remembering the day his father had crashed, something neither brother ever talked about, but he felt better now, knowing the reason behind Dante’s topic of conversation. ‘Did Ma or Katrina put you up to this?’
‘You think the girls tried to get me to stop you racing? Ma would never do that. She’s always been a free spirit. No.’ He shook his head. ‘There was just something different about you on the track today. As if you were...’
He frowned, searching for a word Tino didn’t want him to find.
‘Distracted.’ Yep, that was the one. ‘I thought maybe you were thinking it was time for a change.’
‘In conversation, yes,’ Tino bit out tersely.
The fact that his brother had noticed his earlier tension before the qualifying session was more concerning to him than if either one of the females in their family had sicced Dante onto him.
‘Fair enough.’ Dante took the heavy silence between them for what it was—disconnection. ‘I won’t push it. God knows I’d hate someone to push me. But I’d avoid Katrina if I were you. She’s already trying to work out who will be flower girls to Toby and Dylan’s pageboys.’
* * *
Miller stood to the side of the sparkling room, only half listening to Katrina’s friendly chatter, her body still tingling from Valentino’s earlier lovemaking when he had returned from the track. He hadn’t even greeted her when he’d walked into the room—just backed her against the wall like a man possessed and taken her.
It had been fast and furious, and although he had shown her the same consideration as always she couldn’t shake the feeling that he had been treating her as just another pit lane popsy—someone to use and discard straight after.
After her near accident at the go-cart track that morning his emotional withdrawal had been handled with military-like precision.
Which on some level she understood. She had been a complete bag of nerves watching him whip his car around the track during the qualifying sessions at speeds that made the go-carts look like wind-up toys, so she could only imagine how badly he had felt when she had lost control of the cart.
What she couldn’t understand—what she hated—was the way he politely maintained that everything was still normal between them.
It was too much like the time her parents had sat her down to tell her they were separating, pretending that they were happy with the decision while they each seethed with anger and hurt below the surface.
Their denial of how they really felt had made dealing with the separation nearly impossible, because Miller had known something wasn’t right, and yet the one time she had been brave enough to broach the subject with her mother she had brushed her off and made her feel stupid.
Which was why, she realised, she had let Valentino give her the silent treatment. She hadn’t been brave enough to open herself up to that kind of hurt again.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t a failsafe plan, because without her even being aware of it the unthinkable had happened.
She had fallen in love with him.
The uncomfortable realisation had hit her when she’d been pressed deliciously against the hotel wall with his body buried deep inside hers.
At that moment when he had looked at her a spiral of emotion had caused her heart to expand, and she’d shattered around him in an agony of pleasure and longing.
She’d told herself it wasn’t possible to fall in love in such a short space of time, but her heart had firmly overridden her head—as it had always done with Valentino Ventura.