Melanie Milburne - The Scandalous Sabbatinis

She swallowed tightly. ‘And… and after that?’

He kissed the backs of her bent knuckles, still holding her gaze. ‘If you don’t want to see me again I will have to accept it,’ he said.

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. ‘You’ll let me go? Just like that?’

Luca stroked away the frown that had appeared between her brows. ‘If you frown all the time you will get wrinkles.’

She arched her head away from his touch. ‘You didn’t answer my question, Luca.’

Luca let out a sigh as he dropped his hand back by his side. ‘I didn’t have to blackmail you into my bed in the past,’ he said. ‘I don’t see why I should need to do so now.’

Her chin came up and her eyes flashed blue fire at him. ‘So you think I’ll just dive in head first then, do you?’

He examined her taut expression for a moment or two. ‘I think what will happen will happen, cara ,’ he said. ‘We should leave things to fate, sì ?’

She continued to regard him warily. ‘Fate, huh? Like it’s fate that you’re suddenly my landlord.’

‘You’re not in any danger of being kicked out on the street,’ Luca said.

‘Can I have that in writing?’ she asked.

He stood looking down at her for a long moment, breathing in her scent, that hint of honeysuckle and sun-warmed sweet peas that unfurled inside his nostrils, making them flare to take more of her in. ‘You really don’t trust me, do you?’

She folded her arms across her chest. ‘No, strange as it may seem, I don’t trust you. I don’t like you and I can’t wait to see the last of you.’

Luca felt his spine tighten with irritation. Did she have to keep reminding him of how much she hated him? Did she think it would make him want her less? If anything, it made him want her more. Or was that her intention? Was she playing hard to get to teach him a lesson, or to get more out of the relationship this time around? Maybe the last couple of years had toughened her up. Maybe she had enrolled in the academy of gold-diggers and now knew how to use men to serve her own ends. Either way, it didn’t matter. He wanted her any way he could get her. If she had changed, well, so had he. He was not the same person he had been two years ago. How could he be? Too much had happened.

He went over to where he had put their champagne glasses down before. He picked up her glass and brought it back to where she was standing. ‘It would be a shame to let such good champagne go to waste,’ he said, offering it to her. ‘Why not stay a few minutes more and help me finish it?’

She looked at the glass as if he was handing her a poisoned chalice.

‘It’s just champagne, Bronte,’ he said. ‘Let’s finish our drink and catch up on the last two years.’ He took a sip from his glass, hoping she would follow suit. Anything to prolong the time he had with her in case she didn’t show up tomorrow. ‘Tell me about your teaching. Do you enjoy it?’

She took a tiny sip of her champagne and then held the glass with both of her hands around the stem. ‘I do, yes,’ she said. ‘The children are lovely.’

He patted the sofa, indicating for her to sit down. She sat on the edge of the seat again, ready for instant flight. ‘How many students do you have?’ he asked, trying to put her at ease.

‘We have sixty at the moment but I would like to see it go to about two hundred,’ she said. ‘I have plans for extension of classes. I would like to hire a couple more teachers for jazz and tap, and I want to incorporate some adult classes.’

Luca took a sip of his champagne. ‘You teach adults?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t it too late for an adult to learn? I thought ballet was something you had to learn at a very young age, the younger the better.’

‘That’s true, but there are lots of women and some men, when it comes to that, who have studied dance in the past and have let it slip,’ she said. ‘Doing a weekly or twice weekly class with other adults is a good way of keeping in shape.’

Luca let his eyes run over her slim form. ‘Yes, well, it certainly hasn’t done you any harm,’ he said with a crooked smile. ‘You’re as slim as ever. How often do you practice?’

A light blush shaded her cheeks and she looked down at the contents of her glass again. ‘A couple of hours a day,’ she said. ‘I would like to do more but with El…’ She stopped mid-sentence and sank her teeth in her lip before continuing falteringly, ‘… I mean with everything there is to do around here I… I haven’t got a lot of time.’

Luca watched as her colour deepened even further.She reminded him of a shy schoolgirl, nervous, timid, not sure of herself in spite of all of her talent. It was so endearing he felt as if a large hand was pressing down on his heart. He thought of all the streetwise women who had thrown themselves at him in the past. They had used their looks and glamour and wily ways to get his attention. Bronte, on the other hand, had done nothing of the sort. She had always been reserved and held a lot of herself back. It made him all the more determined to draw her out of herself. She was such a rare find, so pure and unblemished. Like a rare diamond.

She got up from the sofa and put the glass down. ‘I’m sorry, Luca, but I have to go.’

‘What’s the hurry?’ he asked, rising to his feet.

She turned and faced him, her gaze quickly falling away from his as she searched again for her clutch purse. ‘My mother will be wondering what’s keeping me. I said I was only going out for a quick drink.’

‘Bronte, you are twenty-five years old,’ he pointed out. ‘Do you really have to check in and out with your mother as if you were fifteen?’

Her eyes gave him a hard little glare. ‘My mother has been very good to me. She has stood by me and supported me unconditionally. I don’t have to answer to her, but I choose to out of respect for all the sacrifices she has made for me.’

‘Surely she won’t begrudge you a night out,’ he said. And then, after a beat, added with a curl of his lip, ‘Or has it more to do with this other man you’re seeing?’

She sent him a challenging look. ‘What if it does?’

Luca felt a rush of jealousy hit him like a tsunami. His stomach clenched as he thought of her with another man. His skin broke out in a sickening sweat as he imagined them together. He felt nauseous thinking about it. He didn’t want to think about it. He wouldn’t think about it. ‘What is his name?’ he asked in a cool unaffected tone when inside his guts were churning.

Her small chin rose. ‘I don’t have to tell you.’

Luca put his glass down before he snapped the fragile stem. He surreptitiously clenched and unclenched his hands, fighting for control. She was deliberately goading him, dangling her lover in front of him like a red rag to a raging bull. ‘Are you sleeping with him?’ he asked, not wanting to know but asking anyway.

‘That is none of your business.’

He watched as she snatched up her purse, which had slipped down between the loose cushions of the sofa. She clipped it shut and stalked to the door, throwing over her shoulder, ‘Thank you for the drink. Goodbye.’

‘We have a date for tomorrow,’ he reminded her.

She stiffened as if she had been snap-frozen from head to foot. ‘I won’t be able to make it,’ she said, not bothering to turn around and face him.

‘Damn it, Bronte, I am only asking for one night,’ he said in rising frustration. ‘Is that so very much to ask?’

She turned then, slowly, meeting his eyes with a glare of deep, bottomless blue anger in her own. ‘Yes, Luca, it is too much to ask. You never gave me a single night of your time the whole time we were together.’

Luca felt his jaw snap together like a steel trap. His teeth ached with the pressure of forming the words to speak. ‘So this is payback, is it?’