The Bride's Awakening - By Kate Hewitt Page 0,16

voice and cringed inside. Why should she feel let down? Everything she’d wanted and felt—that had been in her own head. Her own body. Not Vittorio’s. She turned to gaze at him once more, her expression direct and a little flat. ‘So just how is marriage a business proposition?’

Vittorio felt the natural vibrancy drain from Ana’s body, leaving the room just a little bit colder. Flatter. He’d made a mistake, he realized. Several mistakes. He’d gone about it all wrong, and he’d tried so hard not to. He’d seen her look around the room, watched her take in all the trappings of a romantic evening which he’d laid so carefully. The fire, the wine, the glinting crystal. The intimate atmosphere that wrapped around them so suggestively. It was not, he realized, a setting for business. Fool. If he’d been intending to conduct this marriage proposal with a no-nonsense business approach, he should have done it properly, in a proper business setting. Not here, not like this. This room, this meal promised things and feelings he had no intention or desire to give. And Ana knew it. That was why she looked so flat now, so…disappointed.

Did she actually want—or even expect—that from him? Had she convinced herself this was a date? The thought filled Vittorio with both shame and disgust. He could not, he knew, pretend to be attracted to her. He shouldn’t even try. He shouldn’t have brought her to this room at all. He needed to stop pretending he was wooing her. Even when he knew he wasn’t, he still fell back on old tactics, old ploys that had given him success in the past.

Now was the time for something new.

Vittorio leaned forward. ‘Tell me, Ana, do you play cards?’

Ana looked up, arching her eyebrows in surprise. ‘Cards…?’

‘Yes, cards.’ Vittorio smiled easily. ‘I thought after dinner we could have a friendly game of cards—and discuss this business proposition.’

She arched her eyebrows higher. ‘Are you intending to wager?’

Vittorio shrugged. ‘Most business is discussed over some time of sport or leisure—whether it is golf, cards, or something else entirely.’

‘How about billiards?’

Vittorio’s own eyebrows rose, and Ana felt a fierce little dart of pleasure at his obvious surprise. ‘You play billiards?’

‘Stecca, yes.’

‘Stecca,’ Vittorio repeated. ‘As a matter of fact, the castle has a five pins table. My father put it in when he became Count.’ He paused. ‘I played with him when I was a boy.’

Ana didn’t know if she was imagining the brief look of sorrow that flashed across Vittorio’s face. She remembered hearing, vaguely, that he’d been very close to his father.

It’s all right to be sad, rondinella.

She pushed the memory away and smiled now with bright determination. ‘Good. Then you know how to play.’

Vittorio chuckled. ‘Yes, I do. And I have to warn you, I’m quite good.’

Ana met his dark gaze with a steely one of her own. ‘So am I.’

He led her from the cosy little room with the discarded remains of their meal, down another narrow corridor into the stone heart of the castle and then out again, until he came to a large, airy room in a more recent addition to the castle, with long sash windows that looked out onto a darkened expanse of formal gardens. In the twilit shadows Ana could only just discern the bulky shapes of box hedges and marble fountains. The room looked as if it hadn’t been used in years; the billiards table was covered in dust sheets and the air smelled musty.

‘I suppose you haven’t played in a while,’ she said, and Vittorio flashed a quick grin that once more caused her insides to fizz and flare. She did her best to ignore the dizzying sensation, pleasant as it was.

‘Not here, anyway.’ He pulled the sheet off the table and balled it up, tossing it in a corner, then opened the windows so the fresh, fragrant air wafted in from the gardens. ‘The cues are over there. Do you want something to drink?’

Ana felt reckless and a little bit dangerous; she knew why Vittorio had asked her if she played cards, why they were here about to play billiards instead of back in that candlelit room. This was business. She was business. He could not have made it plainer. And that was fine; she could handle this. Any disappointment she’d felt—unreasonably so—gave way to a cool determination. ‘I’ll have a whisky.’

Vittorio gazed at her for a moment, his expression thoughtful and perhaps even pleased, his mouth curling upwards into