CHAPTER ONE
SALVATORE LUCHESICAREFULLYeased his body away from that of the woman who was pressing ardently against him.
‘Gia—no...’ he began, keeping his voice temperate.
‘Oh, Salva! Don’t you know how crazy I am about you?’
The woman’s voice was a mix of cajoling and demanding. She’d turned up uninvited at Salvatore’s Rome apartment, pushing in impetuously on the grounds of long acquaintance, coaxed a cocktail from him and was now, quite literally, throwing herself at him.
Salvatore tried not to sigh heavily. Si, Dio mio! He most definitely knew how crazy Giavanna Fabrizzi was about him! But even if she hadn’t been the daughter of his closest business associate, her dark, sultry beauty as much as her youth—she was barely twenty, if that—was not to his taste at all. His taste in women ran to cool, long-legged blondes.
They, he freely acknowledged, made a perfect foil for his own looks—tall for an Italian, but with the typical olive-toned skin and dark hair and eyes. Plus, he also acknowledged, without vanity, he had the blessing of a face arranged in features that women found highly attractive and a tautly honed body that men envied.
‘Gia, cara,’ he said now, stepping away from her to hold her at arm’s length. ‘I’m immensely flattered—what man wouldn’t be? But you are Roberto’s daughter—I’d be mad if I dared to mess around with you!’
He tried to keep his tone humorous. Gia was a pain, but she was also notoriously volatile—over-indulged by a doting father—and he did not want to trigger a scene.
Gia’s almond-shaped eyes widened. ‘I don’t want an affair with you, Salva!’ she cried.
Her scarlet mouth lifted yearningly to his, and Salvatore could feel her pushing forward against his restraining hold on her arms.
‘I want much, much more!’
He stared down at her. A bad feeling was starting to form in the pit of his stomach, and at her next dramatic announcement he knew exactly why.
‘And so does Papa! He’s told me! And he’s right—totally right! It would be perfect—absolutely perfect!’ She gave a lavish sigh, lips parting as she gazed hungrily at him. ‘I want to marry you!’ she trilled.
The bad feeling in Salvatore’s stomach turned to concrete.
Lana’s feet hurt in their killer platform shoes as she stood in the wings with the other models, then, as her turn came, stalked out on to the runway to the pounding music. After ten years in the modelling business she could do these shows with her eyes shut.
Did I ever really think all this was glamorous and exciting? she thought with an inward sigh as she swivelled expertly at the end of the runway, hand on hip, holding her pose for the correct amount of time, before stalking back up again. She had once, years ago, but now, with twenty-seven looming, she wanted to call it quits finally.
Except that she could not afford to.
Tiredness lapped at her. She’d been working non-stop with photoshoots and back-to-back shows during this frenzied fashion week, and it wasn’t over yet. There was still the after-party for the VIPs to get through, which all the models had to grace.
Some half an hour later she was doing the requisite mingling, wondering when she might be able to make her escape, knowing she had a heavy work schedule the next day. Helping herself to a glass of calorie-free mineral water, she glanced uninterestedly around at the wall-to-wall models, stylists, editors, all the glittering entourage of haute couture, clustering around the designer and his top assistants.
Male eyes were coming her way, but she took no notice. Her mouth tightened. The one time she had she’d made the biggest mistake of her life.
How could I have been so stupid? Letting Malcolm into my life.
Mal by name and mal by nature, she thought darkly. But she’d not seen it. Wanting only, she knew with a pang in her heart, someone—anyone!—in her life to stop her feeling so alone.
Bleakness fleeted in her eyes. That nightmare time, nearly four years ago now, when both her parents had been killed in a motorway pile-up, had been unbearable. Letting Mal into her life had helped her bear it, helped her blot it out. And her eagerness to have someone had blinded her, she knew with hindsight, to Mal’s character. She’d imagined he cared about her—but all he’d cared about was having a model as a trophy girlfriend, to make him look good as he grafted his way upwards as an aspiring actor.
Black fury replaced bleakness in her face. It turned out, though, that there was something else he’d cared about. The flat she’d bought in Notting Hill, paid for out of her savings from years in the modelling business and with what she’d inherited from her parents on their death. Mal had been very interested in that flat of hers...
She gave a mental shake. She was here to mingle, not to brood on Malcolm’s perfidy. Resignedly, taking a sip of water, she glided forward again.
Salvatore accepted a glass of champagne from a passing server and took a brooding sip, looking with indifference at the party in full swing going on all around him. As an investor in the fashion house he’d been invited to the London show, but his mind was back in Rome. And the problem he faced there.
Gia—or rather, her father. Because Roberto, just as Gia had declared, saw things his spoilt daughter’s way too.
‘It’s an ideal match!’ Roberto had told him fulsomely. ‘You couldn’t ask for a more beautiful bride,’ he’d said fondly. ‘And I would be more than happy to entrust her to you, safe from fortune-hunters!’ His eyes had narrowed. ‘Do you have any objections to marrying my daughter?’ he’d demanded, a discernible edge in his voice.
Salvatore had kept his face expressionless.