‘Have you delivered Mia this pre-function lecture?’ Ariana goaded. ‘Have Stefano and Dante been summoned too? No!’ She answered for him. ‘Because you don’t trust me.’
‘No, because I—’ Gian abruptly halted himself, because he didn’t want to admit, even to himself, that he cared about Ariana more than he wanted to. ‘Because I know how you feel about Mia, and I also know that you want the night to be a success.’
‘Then we want the same thing,’ Ariana replied tartly.
They did indeed want the same thing and now they were face to face in no way that could be construed as professional.
She looked up at him through narrowed eyes. She wanted to exit in a huff, but his hands were on her bare arms and she liked the odd comfort of him, of someone, the first person ever, pulling her back before she went too far.
They were both breathing hard, as if they had just kissed.
Ariana looked at his mouth and unshaven jaw and felt his fingers holding the top of her arms. He turned her on so easily that she could feel the heat at the top of her legs, and the ache of her breasts in her flimsy bra. She knew he was hard, she just knew, the same way she did not need to look at the sky to know it was darkening.
‘Ariana,’ Gian said in a voice that sounded a touch gravelly, ‘if there are any issues tonight, then you are to come to me.’
She always did, Ariana realised.
Whether it was stolen chocolate, or her father’s widow showing up, she always leaned on Gian, yet she could not when it came to the urgent matter of her heart, for he was the one who was quietly stealing it.
‘I need to get on,’ Ariana croaked.
‘Of course,’ Gian politely agreed.
‘And you need to shave.’
When she had gone, Gian opened up the safe and took out the black box and envelope.
He would not break his own rules and deliberately did not look inside.
He would go and get ready and then drop off the gift to Mia, and then get through this night and once that was done, hopefully he wouldn’t have to see Ariana for some considerable time.
Except that was easier said than done. First he had to dance with her and hold her and for the first time ever he found he wanted someone in his life.
And so he reminded himself of all the reasons why he did not want someone in his life.
When he should have been meeting with the barber in his apartment and then seeing to the final preparations for this important night, instead he took out the official papers he did his level best to avoid.
It was all there.
The drugs, the debauchery, the findings... The absolute hell of love.
For he had loved them.
Even if his parents had not wanted him.
And he had loved his brother Eduardo, even if it had been safer to stop caring, to detach and close off his heart.
To refuse all drama.
And Ariana really was pure drama.
‘Gian?’ Luna knocked on his door a long time later and found him sitting almost in the dark. ‘Should you still be here?’
‘No,’ he admitted, and stood. ‘Luna,’ he said, ‘can you...?’ He was about to hand over the papers to shred. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Gian said, and returned them to the safe in case he ever needed another reminder of why he refused to let someone into his life.
And, by and by, the Romano Foundation Ball was here.
CHAPTER TEN
ARIANA WORE BLACK.
A simple black velvet halter neck and the diamond studs her parents had given her for her eighteenth.
She put on her red lips, though, and lashings of mascara. There was a ridiculous pit of anticipation building at the thought of dancing with Gian, for she was still floating from the encounter in his office and getting her hopes up as she made her way down for the ball.
His warning, however poorly she’d taken it, meant that Ariana was at least slightly prepared when her father’s widow made her entrance. And what an entrance. Mia was standing at the top of the stairs in crimson! Her blonde hair was piled up, and heavy diamond earrings glittered at her ears as she made her way down. Ariana saw red—as red as the dress that Mia wore.
‘So much for the grieving widow,’ she hissed to Dante.
She was, in fact, grateful to Gian for the heads-up and even managed a somewhat stilted greeting to the widow in red, but then all rancour drained from her when she saw Gian approach.
He was still unshaven, but sexily so.
His attire was immaculate and his black hair gleaming but it was such a change from his more regular suave appearance at such an event that she felt a pull, down low. He simply hollowed her out with desire.
‘Eloa,’ he said in that low, throaty drawl. Even the happily engaged, blissfully-in-love Eloa had the hormones to blush when bathed in his attention. ‘You look exquisite.’ He kissed her cheeks and then shook Stefano’s hand. ‘Dante.’ He nodded to his friend. ‘I trust everything is satisfactory.’
‘Absolutely.’ Dante agreed.
He turned to Ariana, finally acknowledging her. Sort of. His eyes did not as much as dust over her body, and she felt the chill of a snub, even as he spoke politely. ‘Ariana, you look beautiful.’
They were the same words he said every year when he greeted her at the ball, and he kissed her on the cheeks as he always did when they met, except he barely whispered past her skin.
As if she were an old aunt, Ariana thought.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Everything looks beautiful.’ And then she leaned in and murmured, ‘Even the grieving widow.’
He didn’t smile, and neither did he return her little in joke.
There was an edge to him that she couldn’t quite define, an off-limits sign she could almost read. He was essentially ignoring her.
Damn you, Gian, she thought as she headed into
