An Invitation to Sin(46)
Dizzy with it, Taylor looked up at him, expecting to see mockery, but he wasn’t laughing.
And she wasn’t laughing either.
‘Let’s get out of here.’ It was the most serious she’d ever heard him and suddenly she was relieved she’d thought about this earlier before he’d fused her brain with the skill of his mouth.
‘I’ve already planned tonight. I have a surprise for you—tickets for the opera in Palermo.’ The idea had come to her halfway through the day when she’d been desperate to do something that allowed them to be ‘seen’ together, but still gave her privacy from the public. What better place than a dark box high above the auditorium? And it had the added benefit that she’d be saved from intimate conversation.
She had no idea if he even liked opera and no opportunity to ask him with the journalists surrounding them. One of them pushed against her in an attempt to elbow the competition out of the way and Taylor would have stumbled but a strong arm came round her waist. Holding her safe in the protective circle of his arm, Luca snapped something in Italian that Taylor didn’t understand. Whatever it was that he said turned the man several shades paler and he backed away, giving them space, hands raised in a gesture of apology.
‘Get in the car, dolcezza.’ Luca was calm and in control. ‘I’ll get you out of here.’
Grateful to him, Taylor slid into the Ferrari thinking how much easier it was to handle the press when he was with her. He wore the Corretti power as lightly and elegantly as his immaculate suits but there was strength and steel under the casual sophistication and she knew the press found him intimidating. They treated him with a degree of caution they never afforded to her.
‘Thank you.’
He didn’t have to ask what she was thanking him for. ‘I’m starting to understand why you’re so scared of the press. They never leave you alone.’ He was frowning as he weaved through the heavy Palermo traffic. ‘Has it always been like that?’
‘Yes. Right from the beginning. I had a mother who knew how to give them exactly what they wanted. She was the master at drawing media attention and using it.’
‘Just what you want when you’re an awkward adolescent.’
‘It’s got worse since then. I’ve come to accept I’ll never shake them off. My dream is to go out and for no one to recognise me. Once, just once, I’d love to live life like a normal person, not having to worry about who is pointing a camera and how what I do will be interpreted. Can you imagine that?’ She gave a short, desperate laugh because she knew it was never going to happen.
‘What would you do? If you could go out and not be recognised—what would you do?’
‘I don’t know. Just go to a concert or something and stand in the crowd. Blend in. But seeing as that isn’t going to happen, I choose to do things that give me some privacy. Do you even like opera? It seemed like a good idea but now I’m not sure.’
‘I’m Sicilian. I love opera.’
She relaxed slightly. Even the most persistent observer was unlikely to interrupt the opera to ask them questions about their relationship, and the bonus was that they wouldn’t be able to talk. He wouldn’t be able to make some sharp comment that showed how easily he saw through to the person she really was.
He already knew far too much about her.
An evening at the opera should be perfect.
Except that it didn’t turn out that way.
She’d thought that the dark would protect them from prying eyes, but it turned out she was wrong about that too.
Seated close together in the privacy of a box, his leg brushed against hers and she immediately ceased to focus on anything that was happening on the stage. She was aware of heads turning towards them in the darkness and felt a brief flicker of frustration that even here, in the protected atmosphere of the opera theatre, they couldn’t escape the scrutiny of the public.
But that irritation gave way to deeper, darker concerns. Like the fact that although their engagement might be fake there was nothing fake about the sexual tension simmering between them. It was raw, hot and real and becoming harder to ignore with each burning look they exchanged. And the intensity of the feeling confused her. He was insanely handsome, of course, but she’d met enough handsome men during the course of her career to be immune to the combination of perfectly proportioned features and a powerful physique. No, the connection came from something deeper. Something she saw beneath the surface layers of eye-catching masculinity. And whatever it was that drew her, drew her now as they sat close together, thigh pressed against thigh in the dark intimacy of the opera house.