Carla forced a pleasant smile to curve her lips. “I didn’t hear you ask a question.”
Those piercing gray eyes narrowed to slits. “I asked if you would like to dance.”
“Did you?” Carla feigned surprise. “‘Dance with me.’” She did a recognizable facsimile of the gruffness of his voice, causing his eyes to widen incredulously at her daring. “It sounds more like an order than a request to me.” She ignored a muffled throat clearing from behind her as the Steele brother she’d been talking to—Lucan, that was his name!—no doubt tried to warn her against antagonizing the other man.
Which, from the tightening of Leon’s sculpted lips, along with the narrowing of those cold gray eyes, told her that was exactly what she’d done.
But she’d only spoken to this man once before, and at the time, he’d been holding her best friend prisoner and tied to a chair with a bag over her head while he threatened to have his men kill her if she didn’t do as she was told and stay away from his future son-in-law.
Not exactly an auspicious first meeting!
Oh, that situation had been resolved to everyone’s satisfaction, and no one had died, thank goodness, but Leon Brunelli still wasn’t a man Carla wanted anything to do with.
She was Italian—with a name like Carla Andretti, she had to be—and she knew her Uncle Vinnie had worked for the London don, Matteo Zalotti’s father, before now working for the son. But her uncle was the only one in Carla’s family who worked for La Famiglia. None of her other relatives wanted anything to do with the criminal underworld.
Even if Carla found Leon the sexiest and most intense and enticing man she’d ever met, she had no intention of letting herself be seduced by him.
One broken heart was enough for a lifetime.
Not that she hadn’t been totally aware of him during today’s wedding service. Of course she had. Impossible to miss Leon when he exuded that unmistakable don’t-fuck-with-me-or-mine attitude.
She’d also felt his piercing gaze on her several times during the ceremony, to the degree it had been enough to put her whole body on sexual alert. Her nipples had hardened inside the bodice of her dress, and between her thighs had become hot.
But Leon Brunelli was too much. Of everything.
Too hot.
Too sexy.
Too dangerous.
Too damned sure of himself and his own powerful attraction.
Even if he wasn’t all those things, Carla doubted many women ever refused his attentions. That they ever wanted to refuse. Why would they when he was the promise of hot and raunchy sex on two strong and powerfully muscular legs?
Even his stillness was unnerving. Like waiting for the other shoe to drop. Probably on someone’s throat!
Which, Carla recognized self-disgustedly, wasn’t an altogether unsexy thought…
As evidenced by the fact her nipples were tingling again and that heat between her thighs was making her panties uncomfortably damp.
“Isn’t it traditional for the bridesmaid to dance with the uncle of the bride?” he drawled.
Yes, she was one of Grace’s two bridesmaids, and she was wearing a tomato-red, ankle-length, figure-hugging gown to prove it. Even so… “It’s the best man who traditionally dances with the bridesmaids, and we both know that isn’t you in any way, shape, or form.”
His mouth quirked at her insult. “How do you know unless you try me?”
Carla felt the warmth color her cheeks at his deliberate innuendo. “I have no wish to ‘try you.’”
“No?”
She wasn’t fooled for a moment by the mildness of his tone. “Absolutely not. If you wish to dance, I suggest you ask the other bridesmaid, your daughter, Natalia.” She still found it hard to believe this sexy man was the father of a twenty-year-old daughter.
Carla had discovered during the weeks before the wedding, when the two women were required to go for fittings for their bridesmaid dresses, that Natalia was spoiled and slightly reckless, but also impossible not to like. The way she tormented her gorgeous Irish bodyguard, Killian Price but called Killjoy by Natalia, was hilarious.
“I asked you,” Leon rasped.
“You told me,” Carla insisted. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, Lucan and I were in the middle of a conversation before you interrup—” She broke off as, having turned, she discovered Lucan had very wisely left them to it and rejoined his wife and brothers across the room.
The Steele brothers, all six of them, owned and ran the Steele Security company, and the reason the whole family was here today was because Matteo Zalotti’s sister, Bella, was married to Bryce Steele. The rest of the wedding guests were comprised of members of the New York and London Mafias, along with those representatives of that organization from all over the world. Noticeably there were also members of the London Bratva present. Gregori Markovic was its head, and his second-in-comment, Nikolai Volkov, along with their beautiful wives.
But of these dangerous men, Leon Brunelli was without a doubt the most powerful and intimidating. Capo dei capi indeed.
Gray eyes glittered with his amusement. “I guess Lucan is wise enough to know when his company is no longer necessary,” Leon drawled.
“By you, perhaps, but I was enjoying— What are you doing?” Carla squeaked as, obviously running out of patience with her, Leon grasped one of her wrists to pull her across the room toward where couples were dancing to the music being played by a quartet of classical musicians, three violinists, and a cello player.
“Cutting out the crap,” Leon snapped as he came to a halt in a space—surprise, surprise!—in the middle of the dance floor.
The same dance floor where, a short time ago, Grace and Matteo had danced the tango together for the first time as man and wife. To say it had been sensual to watch the two of them would be an understatement. Whew.
Carla hadn’t been able to look away from them, or deny the feelings of wistfulness and longing for someone to dance with her as if they weren’t aware of anyone else, in the same way that Matteo
