Challenging Dante

by Lynne Graham

  Looking up at his handsome features, Topsy was suddenly swamped by such a powerful tide of longing that she felt dizzy. He was gorgeous but so different from her in every way that she could not comprehend the terrifying strength of his appeal. It’s just sexual attraction, a little voice said in the back of her head and for once that little voice was a comfort to her, for ‘just sex’ she could handle while the prospect of experiencing anything deeper unnerved her.

  ‘You shouldn’t be in here with me late at night,’ Topsy said abruptly, recognising the danger of being alone with him in her bedroom, instinctively trying to protect herself. ‘It’ll give the staff the wrong idea about us.’

  A surprisingly boyish grin slanted his beautifully shaped mouth. ‘Non importa, bellissima mia. I don’t care about other people’s opinions—’

  ‘I’m not beautiful,’ she told him thinly, questioning that endearment. ‘But of course you’re an Italian male and fully living up to the stereotype with your compliments.’

  ‘I do think you’re beautiful and I’m no stereotype.’ Dante cradled her cheekbone, tilting her face up to better appraise eyes the colour of warm melted honey and the succulent pink mouth that haunted his dreams.

  Topsy could feel her heart accelerating like an express train on a downhill run and, even worse, the instant leap of anticipation that he alone could summon. ‘Dante...go,’ she urged hoarsely.

  Instead Dante bent down and pulled her up against him. ‘I want you.’

  A tiny pulse flickered below her collarbone, her face taut with strain as she fought an urgent need to respond in kind. ‘Put me down,’ she told him stiffly.

  ‘I’m not a rabid dog. I don’t bite,’ Dante teased, burying his mouth in the soft silky tangle of dark hair between her shoulder and neck and nuzzling her skin to kiss a trail up her slender throat, which made her writhe and gasp. ‘Dio mio! I ache for you!’

  Her arms linked across his broad shoulders to steady herself. ‘You only ache because I said no. If I’d said yes, you would already have lost interest,’ she condemned.

  Taken aback by that condemnation, Dante tumbled her down slowly on the bed. ‘I’m not a teenager with a score card and I don’t do one-night stands.’

  ‘You’re not my type,’ Topsy argued shakily, looking up at him with wide, accusing eyes.

  One knee on the bed, Dante bent down to mould a possessive hand to the swell of her breast, fingers withdrawing only to expertly massage the protuberant bud of her nipple through the fine covering of the silk. ‘Your body says otherwise. As for the suits you don’t like,’ Dante mused lazily. ‘Guess what? They come off!’

  Her eyes softened at the teasing note in his voice, her attention arrested by the compelling smile he now wore. ‘This isn’t a game, Dante.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ A doubting ebony brow rose. ‘What else can it be between us?’

  And the spell of his charismatic presence broke in that same moment because what he said opposed her every thought and feeling and the shock of her recoil gave her the strength to muster her defences. In an abrupt movement, Topsy pulled away and rolled off the other side of the bed, standing up and folding her arms defensively. ‘I don’t play games, Dante. Please go.’

  Dante studied her, taking in the wilful tilt of her chin, the blazing determination in her dark eyes, and wondered if that strength of character and continued resistance was what made her so powerfully attractive. When it came to women Dante very rarely met with a challenge. His clever brain coolly assessed the situation. He decided that on balance even if he hadn’t got her into bed and gratified his lust, he was content that he had redressed the damage of their confrontation earlier. He might be back almost where he had started, but at least communication channels were open again.

  * * *

  Topsy got into bed, weak as a twig blown down in a storm: mentally and physically, he exhausted her. In the back of her mind she had been thinking that they could have an affair. He had worn her down, weakened her into thinking such a development could be acceptable. While it was true that she had come to Italy ready to extend her experience of men if the right opportunity offered, Dante Leonetti was so far off her scale of what was acceptable in a lover that he made her think more of disaster than opportunity.

  An affair wasn’t a game to her and she didn’t want to get hurt. Instinct was already warning her that the confusion of emotions she experienced around Dante went dangerously beyond basic attraction. Possibly it was infatuation, she reasoned uneasily, but only children played with fire without fear of getting burned and Topsy didn’t want to suffer so much as a scorch mark. So, on that score, Dante was strictly off limits.

  CHAPTER SIX

  VITTORE TOOK A last dissatisfied glance at the gold pendant. ‘It’s so plain,’ he lamented, clearly longing for a more bold and sparkly design.

  ‘I think Sofia will like it,’ Topsy told him firmly.

  Vittore nodded and proffered his credit card. ‘We’ll go for coffee before I head into the office,’ he said, casting her a glance. ‘My first appointment isn’t until ten-thirty. What are you going to do?’

  ‘My plans are fairly loose but I think I’ll do the Uffizi again. My last visit felt rushed,’ she confided.

  ‘Do you get homesick for London?’ Vittore asked her, having ordered coffee at a pavement café opposite the office he used.

  ‘No, I’m enjoying the change of scene.’ Topsy hesitated, seeing her opening, moving to grab it. ‘When were you last in London?’

  ‘More than twenty years ago,’ Vittore told her, looking reflective.

  ‘Was it a holiday?’ she prompted, sipping at her cappuccino.

  ‘No. I moved to London to start up a business but it all went pear-shaped,’ he volunteered wryly.

  ‘What happened?’ Topsy asked quietly.

  ‘I fell in love with the wrong woman and she emptied my bank account,’ Vittore admitted, giving her a rueful look when she could not hide her shock at that admission. ‘That was the end of the affair and the end of my business venture. I came home to lick my wounds and never went back.’

  Topsy was frowning. ‘Did you tell the police?’

  ‘No, I wrote it off to experience. I don’t think the police could have helped me. After all, I trusted her and gave her free access to my account. What happened was my own fault. Back then I was still young and foolish,’ he declared with a fatalistic shrug of his shoulders. ‘Maturity does have some advantages.’

  Topsy wanted so badly to ask if the woman concerned had been called Odette Taylor but if she mentioned her mother’s name she would have to come clean and tell all and she wasn’t ready to do that yet. Could the woman who had robbed Vittore be her mother? It was a depressing suspicion and only made the challenge of tackling the thorny mystery of her parentage more difficult, for if Odette had been the thief, Vittore would very probably be appalled to learn that he might have fathered a child with her. Already painfully aware of numerous occasions when her mother had been greedy and dishonest with money, Topsy had little difficulty picturing her avaricious parent in such a scenario. Odette had even admitted to her that she had chosen to lie and tell her polo player lover that he was the father of her youngest daughter because he had impressed her as a better financial bet than Vittore.

  ‘You look very thoughtful,’ Vittore quipped.

  Topsy glanced up from her coffee cup and blinked in consternation at the tall male figure striding across the square towards them: it was Dante as she had never seen him before, his lean powerful thighs sheathed in tight-fitting faded denim, a blue-striped short-sleeved shirt casually open at his brown throat. Black hair ruffled in the slight breeze, strong face cool and calm, he looked breathtakingly beautiful to her stunned gaze. She moistened her lower lip with a nervous flick of her tongue. ‘Dante’s coming this way,’ she warned the older man.
r />   Vittore frowned, his air of relaxation vanishing. ‘He didn’t even mention that he was coming into town today.’

  Topsy was covertly engaged in admiring the gloriously neat fit of Dante’s jeans across his narrow hips and long muscular legs and in the midst of that wholly inappropriate appraisal drained her cappuccino in an effort to suppress her thundering pulses and an almost painful attack of self-consciousness. Soft pink highlighted her cheeks as Dante approached their table. ‘I thought I’d find you here. According to my mother this is your favourite breakfast bar,’ Dante remarked silkily.

  ‘It is and your timing is excellent because I was about to abandon Topsy to keep an appointment,’ Vittore remarked, turning his head to smile at Topsy. ‘You could find no better guide to this city than Dante. Florence is the original home of the Leonetti Bank and where he embarked on his gilded career.’

  ‘Is it really?’ Topsy pushed away her cup and rose upright, keen to stress her independence, reluctant to be foisted on Dante like some hapless tourist in need of guidance and attention. She watched his eyes follow Vittore as he vanished through a door on the other side of the busy street.

  ‘I didn’t even know my stepfather had a job until today,’ Dante commented.

  ‘Your mother doesn’t approve because it takes him away from her but he does only work four mornings a week,’ she proffered, instinctively defensive on the older man’s behalf. ‘I would’ve thought you would be pleased that he makes the effort.’

  ‘When I consider the size of my mother’s income, it strikes me as a pointless demonstration of independence,’ Dante said drily.

  ‘Is financial worth your only marker of good character?’ Topsy asked with spirit. ‘Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity would see that Vittore is very well aware of his position and determined not to take advantage of it!’

  His designer sun specs clasped in one hand, Dante gazed down at her, green eyes radiating irritation. ‘Why are you defending him?’

  ‘He adores your mother and he makes her happy,’ Topsy countered in quiet reproof. ‘I like him, I like both of them and it distresses your mother that you so obviously think so little of the man she chose to marry.’

  A muscle pulled taut at the corner of his unsmiling mouth, his stunning green eyes silvering with cold anger at the reproof. ‘Maledizione! What right do you have to interfere in the private affairs of my family?’ he ground out with disdain. ‘Or even to express an opinion?’

  Topsy paled and then reddened, feeling both embarrassed and irritated, knowing very well that she should have kept her thoughts to herself. The icy look of hauteur stamped on his face mortified her and she spun away to cross the square. A hand closed over her arm to hold her back.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘The Uffizi.’

  He sent her a derisive look. ‘At this time of day? It will be a suffocating crush of tourists and you will only gain entry if you have a pre-arranged ticket.’

  ‘I haven’t,’ she acknowledged ruefully.

  ‘It would be a nightmare. Give up on the Uffizi and I promise I’ll arrange a special pass for you some day so that you can browse in peace.’ His eyes locked with hers and her tummy hollowed, her muscles pulling tight while her world rocked dizzily on its axis as if someone had given her a sudden violent shove. In the grip of that almost intoxicating sense of disassociation from planet earth Dante was all that mattered, filling her mind with insane thoughts that turned her inside out, filling her body with frighteningly familiar reactions she couldn’t fight. She wanted him, wanted him in a way she had never wanted anyone before, craved him with every breath that she drew.

  A slow, exultant smile slashed Dante’s expressive mouth as he flipped down his sunglasses, closing her off from that visual connection that had made her entire body hum with excitement. She blinked, momentarily dazed by the clawing lash of desire unfulfilled and dropped her head, fighting for self-control and staring in surprise at the hand that now gripped hers.

  ‘You haven’t even told me what you’re doing here,’ she breathed unsteadily.

  ‘My mother forgot to ask you to pick up her contact lens prescription,’ he said prosaically.

  ‘Oh...I should have remembered. She always has stuff for me to do here but I didn’t want to wake her up so early to ask.’ Topsy pushed her knuckles against her pounding brow as if she could force logical thought back into being again.

  ‘This is the original home of the Leonetti Bank founded centuries ago by one of my ancestors.’ Dante paused outside a tall sandstone building that bore all the hallmarks of ancient Florentine architecture. ‘I started work here when I was twenty-one and a few years later we centralised operations in Milan and donated the building to the city to become a museum.’

  ‘Twenty-one? You were young. Didn’t you ever want to be something other than a banker?’

  ‘What I would be was set in stone on the day of my birth,’ Dante informed her drily. ‘My father would have allowed nothing else and, fortunately for me, I inherited the Leonetti business gene and the affinity with numbers. You still haven’t told me how you managed to spot the error on that document the other night.’

  Topsy flushed. ‘I could just see that it was wrong.’

  ‘But you only saw that document for seconds.’

  ‘I can’t help it if my brain works like a computer sometimes,’ she admitted soft and low, uneasy with the subject of the high IQ that had made her a gifted child and an even more gifted adult. ‘Where are you taking me?’

  He walked into the lively and very busy little medieval streets between Via Maggio and Piazza Pitti, the artisan quarter of workshops. It was like stepping back in time as she walked past studios displaying the wares of bookbinders, violin makers, metal workers, sculptors and cobblers. Topsy was enchanted because it was a taste of Renaissance Florence as only a local could have shown her. She had spent several mornings wandering round the city with a guidebook in a never-ending crowd of equally studious tourists until after a while the sights began to blur and intermingle and her brain went into overload mode.

  In a design studio she chose a pretty enamelled photo frame for Kat in her sister’s favourite colours and frowned in surprise when Dante attempted to pay for the purchase.

  ‘It isn’t for me, it’s a gift for my eldest sister,’ she commented as she politely refused to allow him to buy it for her.

  He had more success when he bought her a lemon ice cream, so rich and creamy and smooth in texture that she loosed a helpless moan of delight as the icy concoction engulfed her taste buds. Dante lifted a napkin and dabbed at the tip of her nose and the corner of her mouth where ice-cream stains lingered. ‘You’re worse than a child for making a mess, carissima mia.’

  Mesmerised by his flashing smile of amusement at her clumsiness, she looked up at him, amber eyes unusually serious. He could hurt her and only the night before that fear had held her back but now that pronounced caution felt more like an excuse for not living than truly living and she was regrouping, hungry for new experiences and wildly curious about him and what he could make her feel.

  ‘We’ll go for lunch now,’ Dante decreed.

  ‘I should be getting back to work,’ Topsy protested.

  ‘My mother isn’t expecting you back. She has friends joining her for lunch,’ he told her.

  He walked her back to a Bugatti Veyron surrounded by a small crowd of admiring teenaged boys. He pressed a banknote into the hand of the tallest youth, thanked him for taking care of his car and tucked Topsy into the passenger seat.

  ‘Where’s the Pagani?’ she finally asked stiffly.

  ‘In a workshop for the foreseeable future.’ Dante groaned out the admission and cast her a glimmering sidelong glance. ‘You’re a menace.’

  ‘At least nobody was hurt,’ Topsy parried, a flush on her cheeks. ‘Where
are we going for lunch?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Her attention fell on a lean, powerful thigh encased in denim and she dragged it away again, struggling to get a grip on the weird, wild promptings assailing her. She might be curious but she wasn’t foolish. Nothing was going to happen between her and Dante unless she allowed it to and she was in too much control to make that mistake, she told herself urgently. Her head was all over the place; one minute she wanted him, the next she was telling herself that she had to resist him.

  ‘So, where did you go with Vittore this morning?’ Dante asked casually.

  ‘He wanted my advice about a gift he’s buying for your mother’s birthday,’ Topsy admitted, since she saw nothing wrong with sharing that.

  ‘Why would he need your advice?’

  ‘Because he always gets it wrong.’

  ‘Wrong?’ Dante pressed. ‘How?’

  ‘Vittore likes bling.’

  A husky laugh of understanding unexpectedly sounded from Dante. ‘I can see that that would be a problem.’

  * * *

  About half an hour later when they were in familiar countryside, he drove up a winding mountain road and, turning into a stony lane, he switched off the engine. When she looked at him in surprise, he shrugged and said lightly, ‘I’m afraid we have to walk from here.’

  Topsy climbed out into the sunshine and hung over the door, enjoying the view of the forested slopes and the city now far in the distance. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘On the edge of the Leonetti estate.’ Dante emerged from the boot gripping a substantial picnic basket and he tossed her a rug to carry.

  Topsy gave him a startled glance. ‘We’re picnicking?’

  ‘I think the food will be a cut above the usual picnic. Though I say it myself, my chef is unbeatable.’

  Topsy anchored the rug uncertainly beneath her arm. ‘I didn’t think you were the picnicking type.’