There’s a challenge in his eyes and I want to meet it with every part of me so I smile, unable to help myself. ‘What about you? I wouldn’t want to take you away from this very important gala.’ I’m teasing and it feels a bit like I’m pulling on a tiger’s tail, but that excitement is fizzing in my blood and it’s overtaking me.
He continues to stare at me like a botanist examining some rare and precious undiscovered flower. ‘I don’t like galas,’ he says. ‘But I like you.’
It’s such a simple sentence, yet I feel warmth bloom in my chest. He can’t know me well enough to like me, not when we’ve only just met, but it makes me feel good all the same.
This is not a good idea.
Of course it isn’t and I shouldn’t even be contemplating it. Ulysses would have fifty fits if he knew what was happening. Then again, Ulysses has been controlling my life since I was ten years old and I’m tired of it, no matter how much I worry about him or how much I owe him. I’m tired of being Rapunzel in the tower and I want to escape. I want to let down my hair, have my prince find me, rescue me.
He is not a prince.
No, he’s not. Even me, sheltered virgin that I am, can sense his dark aura, intense and cold and sharp, violent almost. He’s an arrow flying towards a target and that target is me. It’s an alarming thing to think yet I’m not alarmed. I’m thrilled.
Oh, Ulysses has told me all about the evils of men and certainly I remember how I was treated by my foster father. It’s not as if I can forget that early part of my life. But not all men are evil, and I can’t be imprisoned in my tower for ever. Rafael Santangelo, whether he knows it or not, has opened the door and I want to walk through it.
‘I like you too,’ I say, knowing even as I say it that I’m being too honest, too unguarded, which was another thing Ulysses told me not to be. ‘But… I’ve only just met you.’
He smiles and my gaze is drawn by the curve of his mouth. The shape of it is cruel and yet when he smiles all I can see is the softness of his bottom lip. It makes me feel as if my heart is heating up from the inside. ‘I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,’ he says. ‘Tell Georgios he is welcome to accompany us so he knows where we’re going.’
It’s gallant of him and yet…it’s not quite what I wanted.
‘We can leave him at the door,’ Rafael goes on, already seeing the expression on my face and instantly guessing the issue. ‘It’s very public inside the bar. There are lots of people around. We won’t be alone together.’
A small thread of annoyance winds through my excitement. I appreciate his care for my comfort, but I’m tired of people being careful with me. I’ve been coddled and cosseted ever since Ulysses rescued me from the violence of my foster family. He treats me as if I’m made of china, a figurine to be kept in a glass cabinet and never taken out, never touched.
I know he means well, and it’s not that I’m ungrateful for what he’s done for me. But I don’t want to be treated like that. What I want is to go to the famous hotel and have the famous drink with this incredibly attractive man.
‘I bet serial killers say that,’ I say. ‘Before they serial kill.’
Something like surprise flashes through his dark eyes and then he laughs, and it’s as if the sun has come out in the dead of night, warm and bright and shining down on me. ‘I’m not a serial killer,’ he says, still laughing. ‘But I have to say, that’s the first time I’ve been accused of being one.’
I don’t know him at all yet I get the sense that he’s not a man who smiles easily, and the fact that I’ve managed to get him to do so within seconds of meeting him makes me feel as if I’ve won a lottery.
‘I could be a serial killer of serial killers,’ I say, intoxicated with my own cleverness. ‘So you might be in danger from me.’
Amusement glitters in his eyes and I feel very pleased with myself. ‘That could be,’ he says. ‘Beautiful women wearing red silk are always very dangerous.’
Perhaps it’s a practised compliment. Perhaps he says things like that to women all the time, and yet I can’t shake the sense that I surprised it out of him. Which makes me feel even more pleased with myself. I know Ulysses thinks I’m beautiful, but he’s my big brother. He kind of has to say that. So coming from this man, this stranger, the compliment goes straight to my head as the champagne did.
‘Come on, then.’ Impulsively, I reach for his free hand. ‘Let’s go before Georgios says it’s too late for me to leave.’
Yet more surprise flickers across his face as I thread my fingers through his, and then something hot blazes in his eyes, and for the first time I wonder if this is somehow a mistake. But then his large, warm hand grips mine, and every thought vanishes from my head, except for the knowledge that if this is a mistake then it’s one I’m happy to make.
I put down my glass and move through the crowd, pulling Rafael along with me. We pass by Georgios, but I don’t stop. ‘Mr Santangelo is taking me to Raffles for a Singapore Sling,’ I inform him over my shoulder.
Georgios says something, but I’m already past him and Rafael is no longer being pulled, but walking beside me. ‘I have a car,’ he says. ‘I’ll get the valet to bring it up.’
‘Do you live here?’ I ask him curiously as we take the lift to the parking level.
‘No,’ he says. ‘My home is in Sicily. I am only here for the gala.’
Ah, so I was right about his accent. ‘So why do you have a car?’
‘I bought it yesterday,’ he says. ‘I like driving.’
‘So you like me and you like driving. That’s two things I know about you, which makes you definitely not a stranger any more. In fact, we’re basically friends now.’
Something glitters in his dark eyes. ‘I’m not your friend, dragonfly.’
