Kitabı oku: «The Gold Collection», sayfa 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEY had dinner that evening on the terrace which overlooked lush green farmland and fields of tall ripe corn that rippled like a golden lake. In the distance the mountains towered majestically, their jagged outline softened by the mellow light as the sun sank slowly beneath the horizon.

The panoramic view was breathtaking. ‘It’s like a painting by one of the Old Masters,’ Rebekah commented as she sat with her chin propped on her hand and drank in the beauty of the Tuscan landscape. ‘How can you ever bear to leave this place?’

‘I enjoy a busy life in London, a demanding career and good social life, but I must admit I miss the tranquillity of the Casa di Colombe.’ Dante took a sip of the particularly good red wine that was made from grapes grown on his estate. ‘One day I’ll move here permanently and learn to make wine and press olives—’ he slanted a smile at her ‘—perhaps even learn how to cook as well as you do. The dinner you made tonight was divine.’

‘I’m glad you enjoyed it.’ Rebekah gave a contented sigh as she drained her glass of pomegranate juice. Her fear that things would be strained between her and Dante after she had reacted so badly about the clothes he had bought her had been unfounded. During dinner he had been a charming and entertaining companion and had made her laugh with his dry humour. She had slowly started to feel relaxed and been fascinated when he had told her more of the history of the house and when it had been a monastery hundreds of years ago.

‘Where I come from in North Wales is beautiful too, and we have mountains. You can see Snowdon from my parents’ farm,’ she told him. Her expression grew wistful. ‘I think home is where the heart is—where the people you love are.’

‘I guess there’s some truth in that,’ Dante agreed. His grandmother had lived here in Tuscany, and perhaps that was why he loved this house so much. But Lara hadn’t liked it here. She had found the quiet, remote location boring and on the couple of occasions she had visited Nonna with him she had been impatient to get back to the city. He should have realised they were too different for their relationship to have succeeded, he thought heavily.

He glanced at Rebekah, noting how the last golden rays of the sun burnished her hair so that it looked like a stream of shimmering silk, and he felt a peculiar sensation, as if his insides had twisted.

‘Tell me about your family. How many brothers did you say you have?’

‘Seven—there’s Owen, Aled, Cai, Bryn, Huw, Morgan and Rhys, who is the baby, only he’s twenty-two now. My mother is from a big family too and I am the seventh child of a seventh child, which, according to my grandmother, means I have the sixth sense. But I don’t believe in superstition. If I possessed psychic powers I would surely have known about Gareth,’ Rebekah said unthinkingly. She flushed when Dante shot her an intent look.

‘Gareth, I take it, is the Welsh ex-boyfriend. What would you have known about him?’

Strangely, Rebekah discovered that she wanted to talk to Dante about what had happened.

‘That he was having an affair with my best friend and chief bridesmaid.’

‘You mean you were engaged?’ Dante did not know why he was so surprised. Presumably, if she had been hoping to marry her boyfriend she had been in love with him. Was she still? he wondered.

‘For five years. But we had been dating for longer than that. We met at school, Gareth lived on the farm close to my home and we grew up together. I thought I knew him. I thought we would always be together and have a long and happy marriage like my parents—’ she swallowed ‘—but it turned out that I never knew him at all.’

‘It must have been a shock when you discovered your fiancé had been unfaithful.’ Dante frowned. Had Rebekah felt the same gut-wrenching sense of betrayal that had ripped through him when Lara had confessed she had been sleeping with another man? He had heard the lingering hurt in her voice. Irrationally, he wished he could meet the Welsh farmer and connect his fist with the guy’s jaw. ‘So what happened—how did you find out?’

‘He confessed that he didn’t want to marry me two weeks before the wedding.’ She could not bring herself to tell Dante of the painful event that had prompted Gareth to admit he did not love her, she thought bleakly.

She sighed. ‘I had no idea that Gareth had secretly been seeing Claire for months. In retrospect, things hadn’t been right between us for a while, but I was so busy with the wedding preparations and I assumed that once we were married our relationship would go back to how it had been. I couldn’t believe it when he admitted that he and Claire were having an affair. But it explained a lot,’ she said wryly.

‘What do you mean?’

She shrugged. ‘Before we split up Gareth had lost interest in … well—’ she flushed ‘—the physical side of our relationship. I knew he was working hard, and all relationships go through flat patches. I felt he didn’t find me attractive any more and I put it down to the fact that I’d put on a few pounds. Being around food all day tends to be bad for your waistline,’ she said ruefully, remembering how confused and humiliated she had felt when Gareth had regularly fallen asleep in front of the television when she had been desperate for him to take her to bed. ‘I should have guessed that he didn’t want to have sex with me because he was having it with someone else.’

Dante nodded, as if he understood, which puzzled her because she did not see how he could know how it felt to be rejected. It was not something a handsome millionaire was likely to experience, she thought.

‘Infidelity and the betrayal of trust can be devastating,’ he said harshly.

Rebekah stared at him, taken aback by his statement and the bitterness she had heard in his voice. How could a self-confessed playboy understand the pain caused by hearing that someone you loved had been unfaithful?

‘Are you saying that from the point of view of the betrayer or the betrayed?’

He did not reply, and his shuttered expression gave no clue to his thoughts. But then he said tautly, ‘Let’s just say I learned the hard way that men and women are drawn together by lust but our so-called civilised society insists on romanticising what is essentially just a physical need and calling it love.’

‘So you don’t believe in the concept of everlasting love?’

‘Do you, after the man you loved and were expecting to marry turned out to be a liar and a cheat?’

She turned away from Dante and watched the dying rays of the sun streak the sky with fiery flames of pink and orange. The beauty of it touched her soul and with a little flare of pain she thought how heartbreaking it was that her child had never seen a sunset.

She was shocked by the realisation that Dante must have been hurt in the past. She had believed him to be a womaniser who had no interest in meaningful relationships—a perception he promoted because it was what he wanted people to believe, she thought with a flash of insight. She was curious about the identity of the woman who had hurt him, and wondered if he had loved her. For some reason the idea evoked a needle-dart of pain inside her.

‘I do believe in love,’ she said quietly. ‘I see it in my parents’ eyes when they look at each other. They haven’t had an easy life; the farm has never earned much money. But Mum and Dad have weathered the storms together and they’re devoted to each other. I had a bad experience with Gareth, and I admit that for a while I thought I would never want to risk being hurt again. But I don’t want to be alone all my life, and one day I hope I’ll have a relationship with someone that leads to marriage and a family.’

She glanced at him. In the rapidly fading light he looked so stern and remote that it was hard to believe he had ever allowed anyone into his heart, and she sensed that he would not do so again.

‘Can you really be happy having one meaningless affair after another?’ she murmured.

Perfectly happy, Dante assured himself, refusing to acknowledge the traitorous thought that for the past couple of months he had felt a growing sense of restlessness and discontentment with his life. It was pure coincidence that this feeling had begun soon after he had employed his new chef.

‘Absolutely,’ he drawled. His chair scraped on the patio stones and he stood up and walked around the table to Rebekah. She was wearing a simple white sundress and, with her long hair falling around her shoulders, she looked achingly beautiful and innocent. But she had proved two nights ago that she was no inexperienced virgin. The wild abandonment with which she had made love with him had been exciting and strangely humbling. She had held nothing back and the sweet honesty of her response to him had made sex with her a mind-blowing experience that he was impatient to repeat.

‘While we’re here in Tuscany I will prove to you how satisfying sex without emotional involvement can be,’ he told her as he pulled her to her feet and stared down at her flushed face. His eyes blazed with a feral hunger that caused Rebekah’s heart to miss a beat.

‘Dante …’ The word don’t trembled on her lips and was muffled as he slanted his mouth over hers and kissed her. It was a hot, passionate kiss that demanded her response. She would be a fool to succumb to him warned a voice in her head, but she could already feel heat spreading through her body and a melting sensation in the pit of her stomach.

‘You want me, mia bella,’ he muttered when he finally broke the kiss to allow them to drag oxygen into their lungs. ‘And my hunger for you is patently obvious,’ he added sardonically as he cupped her bottom and pulled her up against him so that the hard length of his arousal pushed insistently into the cradle of her pelvis. ‘Why not enjoy what we have for as long as either of us wants it to last?’

What they had was sex, pure and simple. Although pure was not how she would have described the tumultuous passion that had blazed between them when he had made love to her after the party, Rebekah thought, blushing at the memory of how he had taken her to the pinnacle of pleasure with his hands and mouth and his powerful, muscular body. She sensed the inherent danger of an affair with Dante. The discovery that, beneath his playboy image, he was a man of complex emotions had left her feeling confused. Her brain told her to resist him but her heart was softening and her body was completely in his thrall, she thought ruefully as he claimed her mouth once more. Excitement shot through her when he closed his hand possessively around her breast and stroked her nipple through her thin cotton dress.

She was shaking, or was it him? She was unaware that he had undone the buttons at the front of her dress until he pushed the material aside and she felt him caress her naked flesh. It was too much, her desire for him was too overwhelming to be denied and she melted into his hard body and kissed him back with an eagerness that caused him to groan.

Suddenly the world tilted as he swept her up into his arms. ‘Put me down,’ she gasped, struggling against the temptation to rest her head on his shoulder. She loved being held in his arms, loved the feeling of being safe and cared for. But she was far from safe, she realised when she saw the sensual gleam in his eyes. ‘I’m too heavy. You’ll injure your back carrying me,’ she muttered as he strode through the quiet house and up the stairs with a purposeful intent that made her heart thud.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Why do you have a problem with your body image?’ he demanded as he shouldered the door to his bedroom and set her down by the bed. ‘You have a gorgeous, voluptuous, sexy shape that I find such a turn-on.’

‘Do you?’ Rebekah murmured weakly, trying to dismiss the image of his whippet-thin ex-mistress Alicia Benson.

‘Believe me, cara, no other woman has ever made me feel so out of control,’ Dante admitted roughly. His hands shook as he peeled off her dress and cupped her breasts in his palms. He delighted in the weight of them and the creamy softness of her skin. His body tightened with anticipation as he bent his head to each of her nipples. The feel of them hardening beneath his tongue drove him to the edge and when she made a high, keening sound of need he quickly stripped off her panties, pulled off his own clothes and drew her down onto the bed.

Rebekah sensed Dante’s urgency, and shared it. His olive skin felt like satin beneath her fingertips and the faint abrasion of his chest hairs against her palms was innately sensual as she trailed a path over his flat stomach. He gave a low growl of encouragement when she curled her fingers around his erection. He was already fiercely aroused and the knowledge that in a few moments he would be inside her evoked a flood of heat between her legs.

Dante slipped his hand between her thighs and made a hoarse sound when he discovered the drenching sweetness of her arousal. But, instead of lowering himself onto her as she was impatient for him to do, he trailed a line of kisses over her breasts and stomach. Rebekah’s heart lurched when he moved lower still. This was new to her and she stiffened when he gently eased her legs wider and ran his tongue over her so that he could access the heart of her femininity.

‘I’m not sure …’ she began in a startled voice, her faint protest turning to a gasp of pleasure.

‘Relax,’ he murmured, ‘and let me pleasure you, mia bella.’

Dear heaven, Rebekah thought shakily, as Dante continued his intimate exploration. She was on fire, so hot down there that she twisted her hips restlessly, not wanting him to stop, but afraid that if he didn’t she would not be able to hold back the orgasm that she could feel building deep in her pelvis.

‘Please …’ It was unbearable torture, and she clawed at the silky bedspread beneath her as the first spasms of her climax made her body tremble. Pausing briefly to take a condom from the bedside drawer and slide it on, Dante positioned himself over her and entered her with a fierce thrust that elicited a ragged groan from his throat as he felt her relax to accept him.

Rebekah closed her eyes for a few seconds—her body and her soul, she would swear, utterly enraptured by the feel of Dante inside her, filling her, completing her. He began to move, slowly at first so that each thrust seemed to fill her even more as he slid his hands beneath her bottom and angled her for maximum effect. Then he set a rhythm that echoed the drumbeat of her blood, faster, faster, while she clung to his sweat-slicked shoulders and hurtled towards the peak. He kept her there for timeless moments, laughing softly when she implored him to grant her the release she craved, until with a final devastating thrust they climaxed simultaneously, their bodies shuddering as waves of ecstasy pounded them.

For a long while afterwards they lay replete in each other’s arms while the serene silence of the house closed around them and the outside world seemed far away. But at last Dante lifted his head and dropped a light kiss on her mouth, surprised by how reluctant he felt to disengage from Rebekah.

Her ex-fiancé was an idiot, he mused, as he shifted onto his side and trailed his fingers over her body. Rebekah was everything a man could want in a wife. It was almost a pity that he had absolutely no desire to try wedded bliss again, because she would be a strong candidate for the role of his wife.

Frowning at the disconcerting train of his thoughts, he rolled onto his back and curled his arms behind his head.

‘You know I’m not going to let you go,’ he murmured, watching her long hair spill around her shoulders as she sat up.

Rebekah tried to control the way her heart leapt at his surprising statement, and it was lucky she did because reality quickly doused her excitement as he continued, ‘I don’t know what Gaspard Clavier said he would pay you to work at his new restaurant, but I’ll better his offer. The Caribbean’s not all it’s cracked up to be, anyway.’ He reached out and touched one of her nipples, smiling when it instantly hardened and she drew a shaky breath. ‘If you carry on working for me I can promise there will be lots of perks,’ he drawled.

‘Mmm, but none that will further my career as a chef, I suspect,’ Rebekah said drily.

Not for the world would she allow Dante to see how much he affected her. He had made love to her with fierce passion but there had been an unexpected tenderness in the way he had kissed and caressed her and it would be easy to pretend that what they had just shared had meant something to him. Fortunately, her common sense reminded her that it had just been great sex, and probably for him it had been no different to sex with any of his previous mistresses.

Reclining indolently on the pillows with a satisfied smile on his lips, he looked like a sultan who had just been pleasured by his favourite concubine. His chiselled, masculine beauty made her heart ache, but his arrogant, faintly calculating expression sent alarm bells ringing inside her head. Dante was used to being adored by women and no doubt he expected that because she had fallen into his bed she found him irresistible and would agree to his every demand—including withdrawing her resignation. It was vital she showed him that their affair was on her terms.

‘One day I hope to open my own restaurant and my ambition is to gain the highest awards,’ she told him. ‘The chance to work for Gaspard will be an invaluable experience that I simply can’t turn down.’

He could count himself lucky that Rebekah was clearly not going to turn into a clinging vine, Dante told himself. It was good she understood he did not want a long-term relationship, and from the sound of it neither did she. He respected that her career was important to her. So why did he feel irritated and strangely let down by her casual attitude? He was tempted to pull her back into his arms and see how cool she remained when he kissed every inch of her body. The memory of how she had writhed beneath him a few moments ago when he had dipped his tongue into the honeyed sweetness of her womanhood had a predictable effect on his body.

But when he rolled towards her and saw her long eyelashes fanned out on her cheeks, a different feeling swept through him. Recounting how her fiancé had dumped her shortly before their wedding and gone off with her best friend must have been emotionally draining and it was no wonder she had fallen asleep. He had a whole month in which to sate himself with her beautiful body, he mused, as he settled her comfortably against his chest. No doubt he would have broken free from the spell she seemed to have cast on him by then.

Rebekah found that she was alone when she opened her eyes. Alone, but in Dante’s bed, and the indentation on the pillow beside her was a clue that she had not been dreaming and she had really spent all night in his arms. But where was he now? Had he left to give her privacy to get up, and would he expect her to be gone when he returned to his room? She wished she was more experienced in the rules of having an affair.

She was about to slide out of bed when the door opened and he strode into the room. Dressed in faded jeans that clung to his lean hips and a cream polo shirt, he looked heart-stoppingly sexy and disgustingly wide awake, which made her painfully conscious that she had just woken up, even though it was—she glanced at the clock—nine-thirty, and sunshine was streaming through the half-open blinds.

‘I can’t believe I slept so late. You should have woken me. If you give me a minute to get dressed, I’ll go and make your breakfast.’

‘Stay where you are,’ he ordered. ‘I’ve made you breakfast for a change.’

She had been so focused on his handsome face that she hadn’t registered the tray he was holding. Her eyes widened when he set it down on her knees. On it was a pot of coffee, a plate of toast, butter and jam, and a plate covered with a lid. Lying on the napkin was a single pale pink rosebud, just unfurling and so exquisite that Rebekah felt a lump form in her throat.

‘I’ve never been served breakfast in bed before,’ she said huskily.

Dante’s smile stole her breath. ‘It was my fault you were so tired,’ he murmured with a wicked gleam in his eyes that made her blush. ‘I thought it was only fair to let you sleep in.’ He lifted up the lid covering the plate with the air of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat. ‘I cooked scrambled eggs. I hope they’re done.’

To death, she thought as she stared at the congealed greyish mass on the plate.

‘The toast might be a little crisper than the way you make it.’

And considerably blacker, Rebekah discovered when she picked up a piece and saw the charred underside. ‘Everything looks wonderful,’ she assured him. She was touched that he had gone to so much effort, especially when she noticed that his thumb was bleeding. ‘What happened to your hand?’

‘The rose put up a fight,’ he said ruefully. To tell the truth, Dante was faintly embarrassed by the moment of impulsiveness that had made him pick a rose from the garden for her. It was not the sort of thing he ever did. When he wanted to give flowers to a woman he instructed his PA to phone a florist and arrange for a bouquet to be delivered. It was a far less painful method, he mused, glancing at the tear on his thumb inflicted by a thorn. But Rebekah’s smile had made it worth it. He lowered his gaze to the creamy upper slopes of her breasts and wished she would finish eating so that he could push the sheet she’d wrapped around her aside.

‘How are the eggs?’

‘Excellent.’ Rebekah took a gulp of coffee to help the rubbery eggs slide down her throat. She picked up the rose and inhaled its delicate fragrance. ‘Thank you,’ she murmured shyly. Her heart skipped a beat when he leaned forward and dropped a light kiss on her mouth. The gentle caress wasn’t nearly enough. Greedily, she wanted more, and parted her mouth beneath his.

The sound of a car horn from outside made him reluctantly draw back and he stood and walked over to the window which overlooked the courtyard.

‘Nicole’s here. She phoned earlier to say she was coming over to discuss taking photos for your cookery book.’ Dante glanced at his watch. ‘I have a few things to see to this morning. But you can thank me properly later, cara,’ he drawled, his eyes gleaming with sensual promise and something else that surely could not have been tenderness, Rebekah told herself as she watched him stroll out of the door. Don’t look for things that don’t exist, she warned herself, and went in search of a vase for the rose.