Page 6 of Forbidden Until Midnight

She chose to ignore the taunt, for surely that was all it was. A cruel tease at her expense.

‘You startled me, that’s all.’

‘I was here first, so that makes ityouwho startledme,’ he said.

‘You don’t look startled. You look...angry,’ she replied truthfully.

Something flashed in his eyes and the muscle at his jaw clenched reflexively. ‘I get that a lot,’ he said in a tone she couldn’t quite decipher.

He raised his glass and took a mouthful of amber liquid without taking his gaze from her face. So why had she suddenly become incredibly conscious of herself? As if she thought he was trying to avoid looking at any other part of her.

‘If you’re expecting my congratulations, you’ll be waiting some time,’ he informed her in a bland tone.

The about-turn of their conversation pulled her focus back to Tony, or perhaps it wasn’t an about-turn. Was he angry that she was engaged? She dismissed the thought as ludicrous.

But clearly whatever moment they had shared last year, whatever intimacy she had imagined might have formed between them, was gone. And in its place rose a defensiveness Eleanor wasn’t used to.

‘I suppose common decency would be too much to hope for,’ she bit back.

‘And there I was on my best behaviour,’ he replied.

‘Formality is not civility,’ she reprimanded.

Something like surprise passed across his gaze before it was quickly masked, and somewhere deep inside her she preened at the realisation that she had caught him off-guard. Before his next words landed with all the weight of a prize punch.

‘Civility?’ he repeated with a laugh. ‘You’re marrying Antony Fairchild. The boy is rash and callow at best. Spoilt and mean at worst. You have only my commiserations,’ he said with a wave of his glass.

‘Are you drunk?’ Eleanor demanded, shocked by his rudeness.

‘Sadly, not enough,’ he replied as if genuinely upset by the thought.

‘Antony is not like that,’ Eleanor said, ignoring his response.

And as if her words had sprung him to life, Santo closed the distance between them, peering down at her from nearly a foot of height above, and said, ‘Illuminate me, Princess. Just how is it that your fiancé is none of those things?’

Her heart trembled in her ribcage, the scent of whisky, the woodsy trace of his aftershave, the heat of his body pressed close to hers, and everything in her felt...electrified. Something forbidden and dark shivered deliciously across her skin and made her squirm deep inside.

Santo looked at her again as if sensing the warring within her, as if knowing what was happening to her when she didn’t even know herself. His gaze flickered between her eyes and her lips and for a heart-stopping moment she thought,hoped, that he might actually kiss her.

With a self-control he wasn’t used to exercising, Santo stepped back from Eleanor and the moment. It would have been so easy. So easy to take what she didn’t know she was offering, to give what she didn’t know she needed. But to do so when she was so young, so innocent still, engaged or not...that would be unconscionable. He didn’t play with girls who didn’t know what they wanted, nor women who wanted more from him than he was willing to give.

He’d not been surprised by the news that she had become engaged, but the disappointment he’d felt was that it was Antony Fairchild of all people. He hadn’t been lashing out at Eleanor when he’d called the Fairchild brat those things—Antony really was that and more. But Pietro had only asked that he make sure that Eleanor was safe, not to guard her from her own terrible choices. But was it really her choice, when Edward Carson would use Eleanor to make a financial match that would suit him and his business? Whether she knew it or not, if it hadn’t been Fairchild it would have been someone else.

His chain of thought led him to the argument he’d had with his mother. One that still rang in his ears.

‘Find a good girl, Santo... Settle down, Santo... Make me grandbabies, Santo...’

It amazed him that she couldn’t understand why he had absolutely no intention of doing such a thing.

Eleanor looked at him, hurt still shimmering in her eyes from his callous words, and shame rose, strong enough to make him regret them.

‘I apologise.’

She nodded in a way that told him he wasn’t forgiven in the least.

‘Truly,’ he added sincerely, which seemed to soften her slightly.

He was in a foul mood. Between his mother and the demands of the Sabatini Group, he was having a rough year. The wildfires had come again and the Sabatini olive groves were suffering, along with a large section of Southern Italy and other parts of Europe. But no one seemed to want to invest in the kind of infrastructure that would actually tackle an immediate, on the ground response to the climate emergency that had near global reach.

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