Kate Hewitt - The Chatsfield - Series 2

She felt silly all over again, like a child playing dress-up, even though it was something she’d never indulged in because she’d been too busy adoringly trailing her father and looking for the smallest sliver of attention.

Also, she had not been prepared for the physicality of Gianni Delucca, or that he would have such an effect on her. It was disconcerting to say the least. She recalled the way his dark gaze had rested on her breasts and how a flash of heat had bloomed in her solar plexus. It had almost knocked her off her feet with its force.

She’d put blinkers on where men were concerned for a long time, after a traumatic incident in her last year of secondary level school. She’d allowed herself to be vulnerable one time too many in a bid to seek the kind of male attention she’d been starved of from her father and it had resulted in a nightmare scenario that had shocked her out of her teenage angst and rebellion, and forced her to grow up overnight.

And until now no one had managed to make her feel remotely interested...but one look at Gianni and a slumbering part of her had woken right up.

She struggled to refocus and not think about her disturbing reaction to him—had she at least helped to convince him that she was a dizzy, overindulged, spoilt, shopaholic heiress with nothing between her ears except which celebrities might be staying in the hotel? The fact that she’d pulled that nugget of information from a headline she’d seen recently was a pure fluke.

She hoped it was doing the trick, and yet her act felt tawdry and flimsy now. She itched to get out of the too-tight dress and back into her favourite jeans and shirt, hair pulled messily into a knot on top of her head. She also longed to get out and see some of Rome’s best known sights but unfortunately she couldn’t play the part of herself right now. The stakes were too high.

For a long time Keelin had been weak enough to believe that a man’s love and attention could fill the aching chasm in her soul, until she’d realised that it was only herself she could rely on for that sustenance, and that any such notions had been borne out of the lack of love her parents, and father in particular, had shown her. Freud would have analysed her in seconds, she’d been so pathetically transparent.

She’d come to understand that her focus had to be on concrete things like staking her claim on her family business—not wishy-washy notions that the unconditional love of a man would heal something that had broken a long time ago.

She assured herself she could do this. Gianni Delucca, and his disturbing brand of masculinity and fathomless dark eyes that had watched her far too carefully, was not going to deter her from her path.

* * *

That evening Gianni looked at his watch impatiently. Keelin was late, over half an hour late to be precise. For someone who was a stickler for punctuality, this grated on his still-jangling nerves. He’d never waited for a woman in his life. And he really did not relish overhearing the bar staff discussing rumours about a merger between the Harrington and the Chatsfield hotels. The last thing he wanted was a blaze of publicity to accompany this wedding. He was about to take out his mobile when he heard a hush descend on the exclusive Harrington Hotel bar and the hairs on the back of his neck prickled just before he looked up.

Keelin stood silhouetted in the doorway. Every head turned towards her. Gianni’s eyes felt like they might explode out of his skull with a mixture of horror and unwelcome desire. He’d thought her dress earlier was short, but what she wore now would have made it look like a nun’s habit. Her legs were completely bare, all the way up to where her modesty was just about preserved by the multicoloured lamé material of her dress. If it could even be called that.

A dress that skimmed out over womanly hips, dipping in to her small waist before curving sinuously over perfect breasts, tantalisingly visible in the open V that showed her flesh from neck to navel. The whole apparatus seemed to be precariously held in place by a gold hoop necklace that showed off her bare shoulders and arms.

That glorious red hair was bigger than it had been earlier, tousled and falling down behind her shoulders. Gianni was stunned. In shock. She looked like a call girl, but he felt the sharp kick of a lust so powerful it shocked him. Even as he was vowing that she would never, ever, appear in public with him again dressed like this.

And then that green, heavily made-up gaze settled on him and she raised an arm and called across the muted dimly lit bar, ‘ There you are!’

Gianni winced and hated himself for it, as those long legs ate up the luxuriously carpeted distance and every head swivelled to follow her leonine progress. Dio. He’d seen more clothes on a Las Vegas showgirl. Even if she did move with an innately sensual grace that made his lust kick even more, confounding him. Was he really so rough underneath the respectable sheen he’d acquired that he appreciated this?

She reached him and stopped, her feet strapped into insanely delicate and ornate-looking gold high-heeled sandals. She obviously misread his interest and lifted one foot and said chummily as if he really cared, ‘Just off the catwalk.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘Like, this is ridiculous. I could happily live and shop here for ever.’

Then she looked at him and clapped a hand to her mouth, eyes widening comically before she said, ‘I can’t believe I just said that! That’s exactly what I’ll be doing when we get married!’

Gianni was conscious of people looking and whispering and felt the prickle of that public scrutiny. And the need to get away from it. Which is what Keelin O’Connor should be helping him with, along with the kudos of joining forces with O’Connor Foods.

Angry that she was putting doubts in his mind again, Gianni took her elbow and said tightly, ‘We should go, they’re waiting for us in the restaurant.’

He gritted his jaw as a wave of that noxious perfume assaulted his nostrils again. Keelin was resisting ever so slightly and he looked at her. She made a small pout. ‘Not even time for a weensy glass of prosecco?’

She gushed, ‘I love prosecco, it’s my new favourite drink. I had it in the spa this afternoon while I was getting my nails done.’

She shoved her hand under his nose then and waggled her fingers, showing off blood-red talons with a diamanté sparkle in the center of each one. His stomach lurched.

‘You like?’

Gianni swallowed a sense of doom and took advantage of her momentary distraction to keep moving. ‘They’re fantastic.’

As they walked out of the bar and across the marbled lobby, Gianni noticed a few men almost get whiplash, their heads jerked so hard when they saw Keelin. To his disgust, he felt a very uncharacteristic urge to go and snarl at every one of those men to keep their gazes on their own women.

Keelin was chattering away, blissfully unaware, ‘...and I’m sorry I was late but I saw the most divine ruby necklace that would set off the peach resort dress I bought today, and then they had this thing on the Discovery channel about dogs—’ She gripped his arm just as the maître d’ of the restaurant caught his eye and ushered him in.

Gianni stopped and looked at her impatiently. ‘Yes?’

She was gazing up at him, wide green eyes hopeful. ‘Can we have a dog, please? I’ve always wanted a dog and Daddy never let me have one because he said I wasn’t responsible enough.’

Her lower lip trembled. Cristo , was she about to cry? Gianni felt a clawing sense of claustrophobia, desperation. He dragged in a breath and reassured himself she was just excited and overwhelmed. It had been a mistake to give her the credit card; clearly she couldn’t be trusted with unlimited funds. They’d talk over dinner and she wouldn’t be as silly as he feared she was. She couldn’t be.