Page 18 of Forbidden Until Midnight

She doubted he knew it, but his entire expression had changed. His face had relaxed, for once losing some of the intensity that marked him as different to almost everyone else here. And it was as if the shadows that haunted his gaze had lifted for a moment. Before he shook his head, his eyes clearing from the memory and focusing on her.

She could see it. The temptation to ask her the same question, the debate, the war in him.

‘Truth or dare?’ he asked slowly.

‘Truth.’

She wanted him to ask her about her first kiss. She wanted him to open the door, even just a little, to where she wanted to go. To what she wanted to do. The sensual pull she’d denied the year before had become insistent as she skated the edges of whatever this was between them. She wanted it to be something more. She needed it to be tangible.

‘Did you sleep with Fairchild?’

Instantly her cheeks flushed. The raw gravel tone of his voice scratched over every sensitive part of her body. She should have been surprised by the question, but she wasn’t. It had been there, simmering between them. She’d wanted it, Santo just had the confidence to dig that deep. Her heart thundered in one powerful pump, rushing blood through her body and making her skin tingle so much that she felt the echoes of it reverberating around her heart while she held her breath. She bit her lip, knowing that this was a line she couldn’t come back from. That the door she had opened a little was about to be pushed further.

‘No,’ she said, holding his intent gaze. She wanted him to see the truth. To know it. ‘Truth or dare?’ she asked before she could chicken out.

‘Dare,’ he replied, sending sparks down into her core.

She closed the step between them, her heart in her throat, her pulse beating at a furious rate.

‘I dare you to kiss—’

‘Eleanor?’

Shocked, Eleanor spun round to come face to face with her father.

Edward Carson glared between her and Santo, and she took a step back just as Santo took a step forward, drawing her father’s attention. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he had put himself between her and her father.

‘Sabatini.’

‘Carson,’ Santo replied likewise.

Eleanor could feel the hostility between the two men, which seemed excessive for the context of the situation. She had never asked whether her father had investments in the Sabatini Group, or whether Santo had investments in her father’s businesses, but it was clear, whatever the case was, there was contention between the two.

‘Come. We’re leaving,’ Edward announced, not even holding out his hand for her as he might once have done.

‘I—’

‘Do not try me, Eleanor,’ her father warned.

Everything that had just been within her reach was slipping through her fingers like sand. She bowed her head, giving up the fight, and followed in her father’s footsteps. Just before the last step took her away from Santo she looked up to find something like regret in his gaze, before it was quickly blinked away.

It gave her hope. It made her think that perhaps next year things might be different.

And Eleanor was right. Thingswouldbe different next year, but not in a way that she’d ever imagine.

CHAPTER FIVE

New Year’s Eve five years ago, Paris

‘OFCOURSETHEDubois wouldn’t be so crass as to arrange their event at the Eiffel. It’s been done todeath.’

‘Naturally. But this is...acceptable.’

‘Quite,’ came the insincere response.

Santo ground his teeth together and checked his watch. He was late and impatient. His eagerness to see Eleanor had grown into almost monstrous proportions now that he was actually here. The two elderly ladies, a Müller and an Allencourt, conversing in English, hovered by the entrance, in the way. One of them peered meanly over her shoulder at him, disdain evident the moment she recognised him.

Those of her generation had been less inclined to accept his father’s marriage to his mother and, as such, less inclined to accepthim. However, as he made them and their children obscene amounts of money they tended to consider him a necessary evil.

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