LITMIR.BIZ

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lingering pathetic need for some kind of male approval.

      Her mother gave a completely unsubtle look to Keelin and excused herself with a wholly inappropriate girlish giggle. Keelin rounded on Gianni when they were alone, dislodging his arm from around her.

      ‘What’s with the PDA? I don’t think anyone could care less how authentic we are.’

      She glanced around at the chattering crowd and surmised, ‘It’s not as if all these people are actually in love with their partners.’

      Gianni tutted and drawled, ‘So cynical and so young. What made you like this, Keelin?’

      She looked at him. ‘And you’re not?’ The man oozed cynicism. She hated that he could slide a blade under her skin so neatly and declared, ‘I need a drink.’

      He looked pointedly at her champagne and she answered expressively, ‘Of something I actually like.’

      She went to move around him and he stopped her with a hand on her upper arm again, fingers brushing far too close to the swell of her breasts.

      ‘No one else might care how authentic we are, Keelin, but I do. Do I need to remind you how authentic we can be if I touch you? So when we’re in public we are together.’

      Keelin fought down the panic at the thought of Gianni demonstrating how weak she was in front of all these people and said as witheringly as she could, ‘I wouldn’t have had you down as a romantic fantasist, Gianni.’

      Childishly pleased that she’d had the parting shot, she pulled her arm free and walked away, steering well clear of where her parents were talking to another couple nearby. The last thing she needed now was for her father to join in loading on the pressure.

      By the time Keelin got to the discreet bar in the corner of the room and ordered a drink, she was wondering what was stopping her from just walking out the door and to hell with the lot of them.

      She turned around and surveyed the room. Some of the world’s most powerful and important people were here. People whose opinions counted and mattered. And that’s why she couldn’t walk away. Not yet. Because she wanted this too—to be counted and listened to. Given a chance. And also, disturbingly, Gianni’s darkly handsome face kept flashing into her mind.

      As if loath to let her have that parting shot, he approached her through the crowd now, eyes on her in such an assessing way that her skin rose up in goosebumps of anticipation.

      He stopped before her and looked at the bottle of beer in her hand. ‘Must you?’

      She gritted her jaw and vowed that she would get through this experience and come out on the other side with everything she’d ever wanted. And for it to make not walking away worth it.

      In answer, she took a healthy swig from the bottle and dared him to take it off her and replace it with something far more genteel and ladylike.

      * * *

      Gianni swallowed down the urge to rip the bottle out of Keelin’s hands. But if drinking out of a beer bottle was going to be the worst of her behaviour tonight, then he’d put up with it.

      She stood out with her pale skin and red hair like a bird of paradise against a much duller background. And it galled him that he’d observed her smiling at people all evening, only for that smile to fade as soon as he came close.

      It wasn’t a smile as wide as the one he’d seen in the photo at her father’s office but it was close. And since when had that become some kind of barometer? He cursed himself now as he steered Keelin back towards the crowd to introduce her to some colleagues. And he also pushed down the niggle of curiosity about how she’d been with her parents. She’d almost recoiled when he’d mentioned that they’d arrived and it certainly hadn’t been a happy family reunion.

      God knew, he had the experience of despising his father until the day he’d died, so he knew antipathy when he saw it. But in spite of that relationship, he and his mother were close, even if she did insist on living outside of Rome in the family home, keeping the house like some kind of mausoleum to his father’s memory. Gianni had never been able to understand his mother’s slavish devotion to the man who had made her life miserable on a regular basis. He’d decided long ago that if that was love, then he could quite happily live without it.

      Thinking of that now made Gianni feel a little raw. He knew he didn’t want love so why was he even remembering that? But right then he also didn’t want a wife who was hell-bent on thwarting him at every turn. Acting on impulse, counting on Keelin’s ambition, he pulled her aside just before they entered the throng again and said in a low voice, ‘If you do want out, Keelin, truly, then this is your chance.’

      * * *

      Caught by surprise Keelin looked at Gianni and saw the gleam of challenge in his eyes just before he deftly caught a passing waiter and swapped her bottle of beer for a glass of champagne. Then he took up a small spoon from a nearby table and tapped his glass so that a melodic ring chimed out and everyone stopped talking and turned to face them.

      Keelin’s stomach went into freefall. What the hell was he up to?

      When they had everyone’s attention, and Keelin could see her parents looking at them with faux fondness, Gianni said in a voice that commanded attention, ‘Thank you all for coming this evening to help celebrate my engagement to this beautiful woman.’

      Keelin’s sense of nausea rose. Gianni pulled her close and raised his glass. ‘To my fiancée, Keelin, with whom I look forward to a very successful, long and enduring partnership.’

      Everyone clinked glasses and saluted them, taking drinks of the sparkling wine. When they’d done the toast Gianni let her go slightly and looked down. Keelin met his gaze with a murderous one of her own. As every second passed she felt as if she were being hurtled further and further away from where she wanted to be.

      But he wasn’t finished. He added now, ‘If you could indulge us a few moments more, I do believe my fiancée has something she wishes to say.’

      Comprehension sank in. He was daring her to do her worst. To declare in front of everyone that this was a sham, or worse? Walk out the door? She recognised that this was a moment of no return. Everything would be dictated by what she did now. Gianni was calling her bluff, asking her to prove how badly she wanted out of this arrangement.

      All she had to do was to say the words and walk away. She could already imagine the look on her parents’ faces. Her father’s going red, her mother’s shock and embarrassment in front of all these important people.

      And for a moment she was sorely tempted. She opened her mouth. And then she caught Gianni’s eye; he was taunting her for his amusement. And that was the thing that firmed her resolve. She would not let him goad her into jeopardising everything.

      So she channelled her anger and frustration to be so caught and smiled brightly. ‘I’m a woman who believes that actions speak louder than words.’

      And then she deliberately put her drink down on a nearby table and turned to her fiancé. She put both hands around his face and caught his look of shock a second before their mouths met. She poured all of that anger and frustration into a bruising-hard kiss.

      * * *

      Gianni recovered swiftly, snaking his free arm around Keelin’s waist and hauling her even closer. He could taste the rage in her kiss and it infected his blood with an urgent need to dominate and seduce.

      He moved his hand up her back and caught her hair in his fist, tugging her head back gently, but just enough so that she had to ease the pressure on his mouth. And as soon as he had that tiny space, he took over, coaxing her to open to him, sensing her resistance but using every trick in the book.

      When he felt resistance give way and those lush lips open under his, the sense of triumph was faintly disturbing. He shouldn’t be feeling so buoyant just from a kiss. But there was something about this woman giving in to him, even as minutely as this, that made him ridiculously triumphant.

      Gianni

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