He was on the verge of making a complete fool of himself, holding on to her fine, long-boned hand for so long. The smile that had come to her lips was wavering, and he could feel the tension in her fingers as if they were hovering on the edge of being snatched away.
‘Forgive me...’
‘Hello, Dario...’
The two sentences clashed in mid-air between them, and the sudden release of tension made them laugh, even if a little edgily. When he released her hand he was surprised to see that she still held it up just for a moment, suspended between them, not quite breaking the contact. But a second later she had dropped it to her side again, looking round for the bag he had placed on the table moments before.
‘Thank you for coming to my aid.’
‘I was coming towards you before that.’ He couldn’t hold back the truth.
‘You were?’ Her blonde head went back slightly, green eyes looking up into his face, a small, puzzled frown creasing the smoothness of her brow.
‘But of course...’
The smile he gave her now was much more natural, so that he could feel the spark of awareness in her before her own lips curved in response.
‘And you knew it.’
‘Did I?’
She was going to back away from it; the sharpness of the question told him that. That, and the sudden lift of her chin in defiance, the firming of that full, sensual mouth. She was going to deny that stunning, fiery spark of awareness that had flashed across the width of the huge room in the moment that their eyes had met. An awareness that had pushed him into action, moving towards her before he had even recognised what was happening or stopped to think, in a way that was totally out of character. He was not the sort of man who acted on impulse; he never made a rash move. Everything was thought out, the last detail finalised—‘i’s dotted, ‘t’s crossed. He was known for it. It was what he’d built his reputation—and his fortune—on: that total focus, the white-hot attention to detail.
And yet here he was, standing before a woman he had seen from across the room, simply because he had been unable to do anything else.
He didn’t even have the excuse that she was the woman he’d come here looking for. When he’d taken those first steps to her side he’d had no idea that she was Alyse Gregory.
That feeling had been in her too. He had seen it in her face, in the way she had choked on her wine as she’d tried to swallow it. He had been so totally sure...
‘Did I?’ she challenged again.
Those green eyes dropped from his, glancing swiftly to her right, to the huge archway where, even this late in the evening, a steady stream of new arrivals were making their way into the overcrowded ballroom. She must be looking for a way of escape, and irritation at the thought that her cowardice would make her deny the truth started to prickle over his skin.
But then, unexpectedly, she paused, turned back, lifted her head again.
‘Yes, I did,’ she said, strong and firm and almost bold. ‘And if you hadn’t, then I would certainly have come to you.’
It was such a turnaround that he felt almost as if the world tilted on its axis and something happened so that the woman he had first seen had disappeared and been replaced by another one. Identical in appearance but so very, very different.
‘So come on then,’ she teased, a new light in her eyes. ‘What were you heading towards me for?’
Good question. And one that he was damned if he could answer, with his brain suddenly turned to mud, while the more basic response of his body threatened to scramble his thoughts.
It was just his damned luck that the Alyse Gregory he had come here looking for was the sex kitten who had looked at him across a crowded room, their eyes connecting in an instant lightning strike, calling to him wordlessly with a come-hither glance. And now that he was here...
At that moment, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a movement on the stairs, a sleek blond head he recognised instantly. Marcus had finally made his appearance. Reminding him that the whole point of this had been to make sure that Marcus’s scheme to present his father with a titled daughter-in-law came off the rails before the night was over. Time to go back to plan A. Though, if he was lucky, he could put the new plan B into action at the same time.
‘I wanted to ask you to dance.’
Now, which woman would answer him? Which Alyse Gregory would give him a response—and in what sort of mood?
‘Of course.’
It was another Alyse entirely—a brand new one and one that was totally disconcerting. That smile would have lit up rooms, rivalling the huge glittering chandeliers in the high ceilings of the ballroom. And yet there was something odd about it, something that did not quite ring true. It was too bright, too blinding.