The Bride's Awakening - By Kate Hewitt Page 0,20

was why she hadn’t dismissed him immediately and utterly. It was why she was asking questions, voicing objections as if this absurd and insulting proposal had any merit. Because, to some small suppressed part of her soul, it did.

Ana stood up and reached for her cue stick. ‘Let’s play,’ she said, her voice brusque. She didn’t want to talk any more. She didn’t want to think about any of it. She just wanted to beat the hell out of the Count of Cazlevara.

Vittorio watched as Ana shrugged off her boxy jacket, tossing it onto a chair. She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes dark and smoky with challenge. ‘Ready?’

Vittorio felt his insides tighten with a sudden surprising coil of desire. One sharp dart of lust. Without that awful jacket, he could actually see some of Ana’s body. She wore a hugging top of creamy beaded silk that pulled taut over her generous breasts as she leaned forward to line up her shot. Vittorio found his gaze fixed first on the back of her neck, where a long tendril of dark hair lay curled against her skin. Her hair wasn’t brown, he realized absently, it was myriad colours. Brown and black and red and even gold. His gaze dropped instinctively lower, to her backside. Bent over the billiards table, the fabric of her trousers pulled tightly across her bottom. The realization caused another shaft of lust to slice through him and he found he was gripping his cue stick rather tightly. He’d thought she had a mannish figure because she was tall. Yet, seeing her now, her curves on surprising and provocative display, he realized she wasn’t mannish at all.

She still wasn’t the kind of woman he normally took to bed, and he would never call her pretty. Even so, that brief stab of lust reassured him, made him realize this could work. He would make it work. Ana was intrigued, interested; she hadn’t said no. He’d expected her to say no immediately, a gut reaction. But she hadn’t betrayed her own desire—he’d seen it before, at dinner, a flaring in her eyes—as well as, perhaps, her own sense of logic.

When he’d spoken to Enrico about the match, the old man had been surprised but accepting.

‘Ana is a practical girl,’ he’d said after a moment. ‘She will see the advantages.’

Vittorio could see her now, considering those advantages, wondering if the comforts he could give her outweighed the lack of feeling. And yet there would be feeling…affection, respect. He wanted to like Ana; he simply didn’t want to love her.

And, Vittorio acknowledged with a surprised wryness, he would desire her. Somewhat, at least.

Ana took her shot and then stepped aside so Vittorio could take his. As he passed by her, he inhaled her scent; she wore no perfume and smelled of soap and something else, something impossible to define. Dirt, he realized after a moment and nearly missed his shot. She smelled of sunshine and soil, of the vineyard he’d seen her stride through only days ago, as if she owned the world, or at least all of it that mattered.

It was not a smell he normally associated with a woman.

He straightened, stepping back so Ana could take her shot, making sure to step close enough to her so his elbow brushed her breast, as if by accident, just to see how she reacted. And how he reacted. Ana drew her breath in sharply; Vittorio shifted his weight to ease the intensifying ache of need in his groin.

She was untouched, he was sure of it. Untouched and untamed. And, despite the terrible clothes, the complete lack of feminine guile or charm or artifice, at that moment he wanted her. He wanted her, and he wanted to marry her.

He would.

She won. Ana knew she should feel triumph at this victory, yet in the light of everything else she found she felt little at all.

‘It seems I must concede the game,’ Vittorio said as he replaced his cue stick in the holder. ‘Congratulations. You did warn me.’

‘So I did.’ Ana replaced her cue stick as well. She felt awkward now the game of stecca was over; a glance at her watch told her it was nearly midnight. They hadn’t spoken of the whole wretched business proposition in over an hour, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to bring it up now.

‘So,’ Vittorio said briskly, ‘you’ll need a few days to think about my business proposition?’

Vittorio obviously did not share her reluctance. ‘A few days?’