Dangerous Alliance. HELEN BIANCHIN

named a restaurant that was not only ruinously expensive, but well-known for its fine cuisine.

      Paige’s eyes took on a luminous sheen. ‘Is it a celebration of some kind?’

      ‘Not quite,’ Dimitri drawled, and Leanne felt his fingers tighten slightly over the fine bones at the edge of her collarbone. ‘I’m hopeful that the combination of an excellent vintage wine and superb food will persuade Leanne to accept my proposal.’

      The air became trapped in her lungs, impeding her breathing, and she could have sworn that the beat of her heart stopped before it went racing into overdrive. Words froze in her throat as he curved his free hand round the sensitive arch of her nape.

      You bastard, she longed to cry out at him. An angry denial rushed to her lips, then died as she caught sight of her mother’s expression.

      Joy, pure joyous relief intermingled with a happiness so vivid it lit her features and turned them into something so incredibly beautiful that it brought any verbal negation that Leanne might have uttered to a halt.

      As Dimitri had known it would. Just as he knew she wouldn’t have the heart to do anything other than go to her mother’s outstretched arms and accept the loving embrace, share her tears, then watch with a sense of stunned disbelief as Dimitri extracted a slim pouch and slid a large, pear-shaped diamond on to the appropriate finger of her left hand.

      ‘You didn’t breathe a word this afternoon,’ Paige said huskily.

      ‘Quite simply because I had no idea of Dimitri’s intention,’ Leanne responded with a calm she was far from feeling. The ring felt heavy, and she barely resisted the temptation to tear it from her finger.

      ‘Yanis would have been so happy. As I am.’ Her mother’s words were faintly breathy, emotion-filled, and somehow Leanne managed a suitable response.

      Presenting the façade of a newly engaged fiancée took all her acting ability, and it was a minor miracle that she managed to emerge almost forty minutes later from Paige’s suite without having resorted to histrionics.

      Leanne was silent all the way to the car, and she didn’t utter a word as he reversed out of the car park and eased the vehicle on to the main thoroughfare, then her tightly controlled anger erupted in a heated flow of words designed to blister his hateful hide.

      ‘How dare you?’

      ‘Pre-empt your decision? It was a foregone conclusion, knowing the depth of your love for Paige.’

      ‘That doesn’t give you the right—’

      ‘I care for Paige very much. Enough to give her pleasure for what limited time she has left. Surely we can put aside our own differences long enough to perpetuate an illusion?’

      ‘That isn’t the point!’

      ‘What is the point, Leanne? Your resentment, your anger? Surely the focus should be Paige herself?’

      She was too incensed to accede to his dictum, and she flung furiously, ‘I don’t want to have dinner with you.’

      ‘I’ve made a reservation, and we both need to eat. Why not share a meal together?’

      ‘Because I’m so mad, I’ll probably pick up the soup plate and tip the contents over your head!’

      ‘I shall consider myself forewarned.’

      ‘Or the salad,’ she muttered direly as he pulled into a car park adjacent to one of Toorak’s well-known restaurants.

      The ring was an alien manacle, and she slid it off, ready to hand it to him the instant he cut the ignition.

      ‘Leave it on,’ Dimitri ordered as she thrust it at him.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘It stays on, Leanne.’

      ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s far too valuable, and too—’ She had been going to say beautiful, because the stone in its setting was exquisite. ‘Everyone will notice.’

      ‘Precisely,’ he conceded with dry cynicism, and her eyes widened in shocked disbelief.

      ‘You mean to go public with this?’

      ‘Paige has a phone beside her bed,’ he enlightened her. ‘Her weakened state doesn’t prevent her from making calls.’ He viewed Leanne’s dawning horror with musing cynicism. ‘It will take only one friend to spread the news and within a matter of days it will have circulated among the social set.’

      ‘You really mean to go through with this pretence openly?’

      ‘Of course. It has to be seen to succeed.’

      ‘Define succeed, Dimitri,’ she insisted, aware that the whole thing was rapidly getting out of hand. Like a snowball accumulating in size as it gained momentum and assumed the very real threat of becoming an avalanche.

      ‘A formal announcement in the Press tomorrow.’

      ‘You mean you’ve actually gone that far?’ Her voice rose. ‘You damned egotistical, proprietorial bastard!’

      ‘Watch your unwary tongue,’ he warned silkily.

      ‘Forgive me,’ Leanne flung with unaccustomed sarcasm. ‘I wasn’t aware I shouldn’t put up any resistance to a scheme I’m not happy with—or,’ she added vengefully, ‘dare to upbraid you for taking charge without my sanction.’

      ‘Come and eat.’

      ‘I don’t want to eat, and I especially don’t want to eat with you.’

      ‘Nevertheless, you will.’

      ‘I refuse to sit at the same table and pretend. The food would choke me.’

      ‘Aren’t you being overly dramatic?’

      ‘Don’t patronise me, Dimitri,’ she said darkly.

      ‘You used to be such an obedient child,’ he relayed musingly.

      ‘What would you know?’ she flung. ‘You were rarely there.’

      ‘Did you want me to be?’

      That was too close to the bone for comfort, and her eyes were startlingly clear in the subdued overhead lighting. ‘You were thirteen years my senior, more sophisticated, and a thousand light-years ahead of me. Besides, a teenage stepsister would have cramped your style.’

      ‘Yet there were occasions when I partnered you to several functions Paige and Yanis chose to attend,’ he alluded with deceptive mildness.

      She remembered them well, each one etched permanently in her brain. Now she felt resentful that he’d adroitly defused the immediate situation by orchestrating a subtle shift from her heated anger.

      ‘This restaurant is one of your favourite haunts,’ she reminded him stoically, then added the rider, ‘What if Shanna is there?’

      ‘We’re all civilised adults,’ Dimitri returned smoothly.

      ‘This—this farce,’ she said in a tight voice, ‘is solely for Paige’s benefit. If you dare to act out the part of adoring fiancé anywhere else but at the hospi-tal—’

      ‘Difficult to confine our actions, when it will be news in a variety of papers tomorrow,’ he drawled.

      ‘I’ll never forgive you,’ she vowed with renewed vehemence.

      ‘Our first public appearance à deux is inevitable,’ he told her drily. ‘Besides, what excuse will you give Paige for a change in plan? That we couldn’t wait to be alone together?’

      She barely restrained herself from hitting out at him, and angry resolve prompted her to reach for the door-catch. ‘Do you always use such devious tactics in a bid to achieve your objective?’

      She