Page 38 of Out of Office Nights
His face hardened. ‘This isn’t about me.’
‘Are you sure, Teo?’
His face hardened a touch. ‘An inch wasn’t enough? Now you wish for a mile?’
‘If it’ll help in mutual goal achievement, why not?’ A light query, yet it immediately weighed like an anvil, linking them together that way, plucking at emotions she needed to keep far away from this exercise.
His nostrils flared at the clear challenge. Picking up his wine, he swirled it as he watched her, a deadly viper staring down its prey. ‘Very well. You get one chance. Ask your question.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘There’s a rumourthat you—’
‘I don’t deal in rumours. I go to the source if it’s important enough or not at all.’
She paused, gathered her breath. ‘Is it true you seduced your friend’s older sister into teaching you fashion design?’ she blurted. Then cringed as his eyebrows slowly rose in clear derision and flames devoured her face.
Had she gone insane? Of all the questions, she chose to ask him this?
His gaze dropped to his wine glass for a long pause. ‘You’ve been reading the tabloids. I wouldn’t have pegged you for a gossipmonger.’
She scrambled to regain composure that’d fled in acute mortification, her cover-up shrug almost disintegrating when his gaze dipped to her bare shoulder. ‘When you hear the same story repeatedly, it’s hard not to believe there’s no smoke without fire.’
His quicksilver gaze rose, unapologetic, to lock hers in place. ‘First of all, he wasn’t a friend. He was the arrogant son of an aristocrat who believed himself better than me because I was born out of wedlock.’ He paused, smiled humourlessly. ‘I would’ve let it go if he hadn’t dragged Valenti into his denigrating slurs.Thenhe needed to be taught a lesson. I chose the most effective one.’
Her breath strangled in her throat. ‘You seduced her as payback for whatever her brother did?’
‘You sound surprised. And yet you don’t hesitate to look down that sexy nose at me for being an amoral playboy.’
‘I—’ She bit her tongue to avoid stating a clear untruth. Her hesitation earned her another derisive stare. It raked her face, exposing her every thought before he took a lazy sip of his wine.
‘I promise you she wasn’t an unwilling participant. Turned out she was equally peeved about her brother’s antics. So we collaborated.’
‘Then carried on collaborating?’
Another flash of pristine white teeth in a smile that didn’t quite meet his eyes. ‘Indeed. It was a productive summer that turned out to be life-changing.’
Something sharp and poisonous lanced low in her gut. That infernal jealousy. ‘Because you discovered you had an affinity for reducing women to pools of lust? Or was it more a challenge to see if you could give Lothario a run for his money?’
The glint in his eyes sharpened. Turned dangerous and ominous. ‘You seem entirely fixated on my epic sexual chronicles. Some might even say you’re obsessed.’ His mighty regal head tilted, and she wanted to hate the way the golden terrace lights poured over him, casting him perfectly in that fallen-angel illusion of light and shadows that had mesmerised her from the moment she’d first set eyes on him. She wanted to rail at the unfairness of it, but if life was fair, she wouldn’t be in this position. Wouldn’t be tolerating this insufferable situation.
Tolerating?Really? Drinking fine wine in a gorgeous villa with even more breathtaking company?
She pushed the droll taunting away. ‘You’ve foisted relaxation on me. The least you can do is make conversation. If you’re too scared to delve deep, then I’m happy to sit in silence.’
‘Delve deep?’ he enquired, the weighty silkiness draping his questions layering every inch of her skin in gooseflesh. It didn’t help that the words projected wildly carnal images in her mind. A searing reminder of how long it’d been since she’d permitted sex to come within a whisker of impeding her thoughts or life.
‘Is that what we’re doing? Are you sure you want to go there,cariña?’
Heat surged higher, engulfing her whole being. And while it wasn’t the wisest thing in the world, she couldn’t back down from his blatant challenge. ‘It isn’t the strangest thing in the world to want to know a little bit about your boss after working for him for this long, is it? I don’t even know your middle name.’
She’d expected another one-two punch of derision, maybe even a flash of his spine-melting but empty smile. She wasn’t prepared for the wave of icy chill that spilled over his features, the dimming of the glint in his eyes or the tension that gripped and held him for a handful of heartbeats before he visibly slouched against his chair.
For the longest time, he remained silent until she thought he didn’t intend to answer.
‘My middle name is Alfonse, after my father,’ he eventually offered without a single inflection, his gaze rising to track a flock of birds racing across the horizon. ‘By deliberate and trenchant intention on my mother’s part.’
‘Why?’ she asked, acutely aware of the deepening rasp in her voice. The stiffness in his body. But she was helpless to push the implications back. She cared about his answer. Cared about why a middle name had peeled back layers of the veneer she was used to seeing, granting her a hazy glimpse beneath. A glimpse of…anguish?
