Page 35 of Awakened in Her Enemy's Palazzo

Grace shook back her freshly blow-dried hair so that it fell river-straight and silky around her shoulders and down her narrow back. There was a hint of defiance in her face as she stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror.

She was not dressing for Theo, she told herself firmly.

‘I’m dressing for myself, and this is not a date,’ she announced to the room.

Which was probably just as well. She’d never been very good at dates—perhaps through her inability to read the room, or maybe just men. She had dressed up for George and had thought he was attracted to her, and look how well that had turned out.

She pushed away those thoughts and told herself that looking good was about confidence and feeling good about herself. She focused on her reflection, smoothing down the dress, and feeling quite pleased with what she saw.

She might not be a clothes horse, but she always felt good in this dress, because it made her look as if she actually had hips and elongated her legs.

It looked way better with heels, obviously, but that was not an option. So Grace embraced her vertical challenge in a slim pair of slingbacks, butter-soft, with a barely-there kitten heel, which were beautiful and kind to her ankle.

Giving her reflection one last critical look, she tried a swish of her blonde hair and stopped dead.

Why is your stomach cramped in knots, Grace? Why are you even joining Theo for supper?

Because he had asked.

Which in itself was strange—the asking part, at least. To her mind he was more of an ultimatum man, she decided. An image of his tall dark personage floated through her head, accompanied by an upping of the intensity in the uncomfortable shivery feeling in the pit of her belly.

The man had saved her life, so she reasoned it would have been churlish, under the circumstances, not to agree to eat with him. And today he had seemed less confrontational—lessdangerous.

The word slipped into her head unbidden, and she shivered. If there was a way to break this standoff that didn’t involve her giving in, obviously, she was not going to allow her antipathy to get in the way.

To be honest, if antipathy had been the only gut reaction she had towards Theo there wouldn’t have been so much of a problem—but it wasn’t.

There was no point in pretending that she was immune to his aura of sheer raw masculinity. The way he had of making a glance feel like a caress. And his sensuous mouth was...

She inhaled and closed down this dangerous line of thought. She intended to keep it closed this evening—it was just a casual dinner.

She glanced down, a frown pleating her brow. So maybe she was going overboard with the dress?

She dismissed the idea. It didn’t matter what she was wearing—this was about listening. Ultra-wary of his apparent change of attitude, she was quite prepared not to like what she heard. And there was still a big question mark over his motivation. But there was only one way to find out.

She didn’t want to be early and appear eager—which she reallywasn’t—so she took her time and an indirect route, which took her past Salvatore’s study.

The door was ajar.

The eyes of the portrait on the wall seemed to follow her as she stepped into the room and over to the desk, where the papers she had started sorting at the start of the week were still stacked in piles. She ran a hand over the chair where Salvatore had sat and felt a deep welling of sadness that the man had gone but his paperwork remained.

When Marta had tentatively suggested that she begin to go through his papers Grace had been reluctant. It had felt like an intrusion. But she could see the logic of the request. If she didn’t, who would?

Well, now maybe his son would. It was one of the things she would ask this evening.

She sat down—not in Salvatore’s chair, but in a smaller, straight-backed version—with her back to the portrait and her elbows on the desk. She glanced at the clock on the wall opposite and one of her elbows slipped on the shiny polished surface of the desk, sending a stack of the assorted papers awaiting her attention sliding to the floor.

She swore softly and pushed her chair back. Then, anchoring the curtain of her hair away from her face with one forearm, she began to gather them up and return them to the desk.

The last item she retrieved was a slim leatherbound book. As she picked it up a scrap of paper that appeared to have been used as a bookmark fluttered out of it. After retrieving that too, she saw that it was not a piece of paper at all, but a snapshot, its glossy finish faded and dulled with years of handling.

Leaning back in her chair, Grace looked at it.

How old would Theo have been when it was taken? Eight or nine, maybe? He was dressed up in a shirt and tie, his youthful face shiny and scrubbed, and the woman whose hand he was holding was waving at the camera. Theo was not looking at the camera. He was looking up at the woman. His mother.

The expression on his youthful face made her throat thicken with emotion. She could not even begin to imagine the empty space that losing a mother at such an early age would leave in a child’s life—the empty space where a mother should be.

It was so unfair, she reflected with a deep sigh. She might complain about her parents, but she knew how lucky she was to have them.

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