Challenging Dante

by Lynne Graham

  She was lying in bed around midnight reading an absorbing research paper on non-equilibrium dynamics and random matrices when her door opened, breaking her concentration. Closing the door, Dante strode towards her, his tall well-built physique bare but for a towel rather negligently looped round his lean hips. The very sight of him shook her up, her tummy flipping at the explosive effect of him in the flesh. He looked absolutely gorgeous. Her mouth opened but no sound came out.

  ‘I warned you that I didn’t do one-night stands,’ he quipped, dropping the towel without an ounce of self-consciousness and sliding into bed beside her. He glanced at the article and raised a brow. ‘Light reading?’

  ‘One of my favourite fields,’ she admitted.

  ‘A doctorate in advanced maths,’ Dante recounted. ‘You could have an incredible career in a bank.’

  ‘I’m not particularly interested in quantitative finance or statistics,’ Topsy told him, settling back against the pillows and striving to seem relaxed even though every nerve ending was jumping at his arrival. ‘I think I’d like to go into theoretical research. I want to take my time about choosing where I work.’

  Dante pressed his sensual mouth against the remarkably sensitive slope between her neck and shoulder and she shivered violently. ‘You can’t,’ she told him baldly.

  Luxuriant black lashes lifted enquiringly on emerald-green eyes and her heart lurched.

  Topsy turned to face him, her cheeks hot as fire. ‘I can’t...I’m...um...sore,’ she confessed grudgingly. ‘Seems there is a drawback to being a virgin. I’m off the menu for now.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have been so very greedy this afternoon, gioia mia.’ Dante sighed.

  Topsy rubbed her cheek over a broad bare shoulder smooth as golden satin, a small hand travelling across his pectoral muscles and wandering south, feeling whipcord muscles flex and tense every step of the way. ‘That doesn’t mean we can’t do other things,’ she told him with a hunger she couldn’t hide, couldn’t suppress, and simply couldn’t deny.

  He expelled his breath when she found him hot, hard and ready for her attentions. She loved touching him, literally could not bear to take her hands from him while she watched him respond to her every tentative caress, his inky lashes dropping lower over smouldering, wildly appreciative eyes.

  ‘I might be a bit clumsy at this,’ she warned him in advance.

  ‘I’m all yours,’ Dante breathed hoarsely, fingers gliding slowly through the silken fall of her hair where it lay across his thigh. ‘Experiment all you like...’

  And she did, revelling in the reactions he couldn’t hide, triumphant only when he finally let go of his iron-clad self-control and shuddered and groaned his pleasure. Yet inexplicably it felt even better when afterwards he wrapped his arms round her and, even though he put out too much heat for comfort and took up too much room in her bed, she resisted the idea of waking him and sending him back to his own bedroom and could not understand why she wasn’t being more sensible.

  * * *

  Over the breakfast table the next morning she studied his bold bronzed profile, remembering how she had made him feel, how he had made her feel, wondering when the infatuation would start to burn out and let her return to normal. She didn’t like the out-of-control sensation he gave her. She liked to know exactly where she was going and what she was doing at all times.

  After breakfast, Dante drove Topsy to a coffee morning for his mother’s favourite charity, which was being held in a local town. It had been Sofia Leonetti’s repeated experience of miscarriage that had first persuaded her to set up a local support group for fellow sufferers and the organisation had eventually become a charity. Topsy left Dante being fussed over by several middle-aged women and plied with coffee and cakes while she sped off to deliver the short speech Sofia had written for her. The older woman had already personally informed the committee members that she was standing down as chairwoman with immediate effect but Topsy gathered that Dante hadn’t known because he studied her with frowning eyes when she referred to his mother’s resignation.

  ‘So, when are you planning to tell me what’s really going on with my mother?’ Dante enquired, tucking her back into his car.

  Topsy directed a strained glance at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Don’t play games with me,’ Dante advised impatiently. ‘My mother’s not herself. Stepping down from the charity she struggled to build up is not normal behaviour for her. There’s something badly wrong.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Topsy said woodenly, knowing it was not her place to reveal what Sofia preferred to keep secret while hoping that the older woman would decide to come clean soon.

  ‘You’re a lousy liar. I have sufficient respect for Vittore to assume that he wouldn’t be walking around whistling if my mother were seriously ill,’ Dante told her, strong jaw line hardening. ‘For that reason alone I’ve kept quiet but I expect more from you.’

  Topsy paled at that unexpected admission. ‘Vittore and Sofia have private affairs about which I know nothing,’ she pointed out uncomfortably.

  ‘But you’re remarkably cosy with them both. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that fact, gioia mia. And you may work for my mother but I expect your first loyalty to be to me.’

  Topsy turned stunned eyes to his lean, hard-boned face. ‘You can’t be serious.’

  Dante examined his expectations and realised to his surprise that he was deadly serious. His mother might pay her salary but Dante demanded one hundred per cent loyalty from Topsy when it came to anything that he considered to be important to him. He expected to be put first, he acknowledged, possibly he even took it for granted because women had always been so eager to please him, but he saw nothing wrong with his outlook.

  ‘You’re not being fair.’

  ‘And you’re not being honest or realistic,’ Dante condemned without hesitation. ‘Reverse our positions and ask yourself how you would feel if I was lying to you about your family. You know more than you’re willing to admit.’

  ‘We’re having our first row,’ Topsy commented stiffly.

  ‘No, we’re not,’ Dante parried, skimming a forefinger down over her thigh in a teasing gesture. As he smoothly demonstrated his complete sexual power over her, a chill of apprehension assailed Topsy because he made her feel vulnerable. ‘When I lose my temper you’ll know about it.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE FOLLOWING EVENING, Dante gave Topsy a wonderful surprise by keeping his promise to arrange a tour of the Uffizi art gallery for her. He had secured tickets for a private viewing. Sofia surveyed Topsy’s glowing face, her mouth tightening as her gaze briefly skimmed to her son’s nonchalant expression. ‘It’ll be a very dressy occasion, Topsy. Those champagne viewings always are.’

  Having piled her hair up on top of her head, Topsy dug a sleek black cocktail frock from her wardrobe and clasped her diamond necklace round her throat. Feet encased in fashionable and perilously high heels, she walked downstairs to join Dante.

  ‘Between the hairstyle and the shoes, you’ve gained about a foot in height, cara mia,’ Dante commented, the very epitome of designer elegance in a well-cut dinner jacket and narrow black trousers. Superbly elegant, he looked, as always, stunning.

  ‘You suit diamonds,’ he added, noting how the white-fire sparkle of the jewels seemed to reflect the brightness of her dark eyes.

  Topsy involuntarily touched the diamonds at her throat. ‘An eighteenth birthday present.’

  ‘Kusnirovich?’ Dante surmised.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Obviously you’ve known him a long time,’ Dante commented, oddly irritated by the realisation and resisting an even stranger urge to tell her to take the necklace off. ‘It looks like a very generous gift.’

  Topsy simply nodded agreement, not wanting to say anything e
lse and encourage more questions. Naturally he was curious about her friendship with Mikhail, who only socialised in the most exclusive circles, and while she didn’t want to reveal the truth about her wealthy and powerful relatives neither did she want to lie to Dante.

  The gilded event at the Uffizi was a true art lovers’ dream. Beautifully dressed people sipping champagne strolled at their leisure through the rooms of magnificent artworks. There was no noise, no queues, no crush to struggle through and this time around she could even appreciate the splendid ornate interior of the building itself.

  When she paused rapt before Raphael’s Madonna of the Goldfinch, Dante remarked that she seemed to know exactly what she wanted to view.

  ‘This is one of my sister’s favourite paintings. She used to be an art restorer in a museum and, when I was growing up, she took me to all sorts of places to see wonderful pieces of art,’ Topsy confided. ‘She wanted to be sure that I got a really well-rounded education and she didn’t quite trust my boarding school.’

  ‘You attended boarding school?’

  Topsy sent him an amused look as she paused in front of Caravaggio’s Bacchus. ‘I was a gifted child and, obviously, I was a scholarship girl. Kat could never have afforded the fees.’

  ‘How gifted were you?’ Dante prompted.

  ‘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...’