The Gold Collection. Maggie Cox

a strength born of desperation, she pulled out of his arms and flew out of the kitchen and down the stairs to her apartment on the basement level.

      Ten minutes later, she emerged from her bathroom to find Dante sitting on the end of her bed.

      ‘That’s not the reaction I usually get from women,’ he said drily.

      ‘Please go away.’ A glance in the mirror told her she looked even worse than she felt and the knowledge compounded her humiliation. She was just thankful she had pulled her dressing gown around her half-naked body.

      Dante stood up from the bed as she sank weakly onto it, but he remained in the room, looking unfairly gorgeous with a shadow of dark stubble shading his jaw and his hair falling onto his brow. His eyes narrowed on her white face and there was a faint note of concern in his voice.

      ‘Are you ill?’

      Rebekah shook her head wearily. ‘No, I just react badly to alcohol, even small amounts. I wasn’t drunk last night.’ She flushed as she recalled how Dante had insisted she had known exactly what she was doing when she had slept with him. ‘But my body sometimes reacts badly to alcohol, and I’ll continue being sick until all traces of it have gone.’

      She had barely finished speaking when another wave of nausea sent her running back into the en suite bathroom. It was so unglamorous—she couldn’t imagine what Dante must think of her. On the plus side, she thought as the sickness finally passed and she splashed her face with cold water, she had probably killed his desire for her stone-dead. Surely he wasn’t seriously expecting her to go to Tuscany with him?

      When she staggered back to the bedroom she saw that he had placed a jug of water by the bed and drawn back the covers.

      ‘You had better try and sleep it off. How long do you think it will be before the sickness passes and you can travel?’

      ‘I expect I’ll be fine in twenty-four hours,’ she admitted wearily.

      Dante unearthed her nightdress from beneath her pillow and handed it to her. ‘Come on, get into bed,’ he urged, frowning when she simply stood there.

      ‘I’ll get changed once you’ve gone,’ she muttered, faint colour stealing into her white face.

      ‘It’s a bit late now for modesty,’ he said drily, but he turned around and she quickly slipped off her dressing gown and trousers and pulled the nightgown over her head.

      ‘Can I get you anything? Something to eat, perhaps?’ he asked, walking back over to the bed.

      Rebekah grimaced as the queasy sensation returned when she lay down. ‘Not in this lifetime,’ she said with feeling.

      ‘Poor cara.’

      She tensed as Dante drew the bedcovers over her. The unexpected note of tenderness in his voice was the last straw. She hadn’t expected him to be kind. She felt weak and wobbly and silly tears filled her eyes. The prospect of spending a month in Tuscany with him filled her with foreboding. How would she cope with her infatuation with him, especially now that she knew he was every bit the dream lover of her fantasies? Of course she did not have to sleep with him, her common sense pointed out. He couldn’t force her to. But the shameful truth was that he would not need to. He only had to kiss her and she turned to putty in his arms.

      ‘Please don’t insist on me working out my notice,’ she said tensely. ‘There must be hundreds of women who would be willing to go to Tuscany with you. I’ll forgo my last month’s wages if you agree to let me go now. I really want to concentrate on finishing the cookery book of my grandmother’s recipes, and I need to find a photographer who will take pictures for it.’

      ‘That’s not a problem. A friend of mine who lives in Siena is a photographer. I’m sure Nicole will be happy to work on the book with you.’

      Was Nicole one of his mistresses? Angrily, Rebekah pushed the thought away. She could not see a way out of spending the next month in Italy with Dante and, with a heavy sigh, she flopped back against the pillows.

      ‘What are you afraid of?’ he asked gently.

      Startled, her eyes flew open. ‘I’m not afraid of anything,’ she lied.

      ‘I think you are. I think you’re terrified of lowering your guard and allowing anyone to get close to you.’ He recognized the barriers she put up because for years he had put up his own, and he had no intention of taking them down, Dante brooded.

      Rebekah refused to admit that Dante’s words were too close to the truth for comfort. Instead she turned onto her side and burrowed under the covers. ‘I’m really very tired,’ she muttered. He continued to stand by the bed for a few moments, but then he moved, and only when she heard the click of her door being closed did she realise she had been holding her breath.

CHAPTER SIX

      THEY flew to Tuscany two days later. Rebekah’s stomach still felt delicate and she had been dreading hanging around at the airport waiting for a commercial flight. The discovery that they were to travel by private jet was a shock but not an unwelcome one.

      ‘I can’t believe you own a plane,’ she said as she followed Dante up the steps of his jet and looked around the cabin at the plush leather sofas, widescreen television and polished walnut drinks cabinet. The plane’s interior looked more like a small but expensively furnished sitting room. This was the first time she had really appreciated that he was immensely wealthy. He came from a different world to a Welsh farmer’s daughter, she thought wryly.

      ‘It’s the family plane,’ he explained as he sat down next to her. ‘My father uses it mainly to fly between the Jarrell estate in Norfolk and his chateau in southern France. He keeps a mistress at both places and shares his time between them.’

      It wasn’t hard to see where Dante’s attitude towards relationships stemmed from. ‘How old were you when your parents’ marriage ended?’

      ‘I was nine when they divorced, but I’d never known them happy together. They have very different personalities and argued constantly. I never understood how they got together in the first place,’ he said drily. ‘Fortunately I was packed off to boarding school and escaped the tense atmosphere at home most of the time.’

      Rebekah thought of the chaotic, noisy, happy home where she had grown up with her brothers. Her parents were devoted to one another, and their strong relationship was the lynchpin of the family.

      ‘Did either of your parents marry again?’

      ‘My father had two more attempts, but with each subsequent divorce he had to sell a chunk of the estate to pay the alimony bill and he finally realised that marriage is a mug’s game. I’ve taken steps to ensure that his mistresses, Barbara and Elise, will be provided for if he dies before them, but they can’t make a claim on the Jarrell estate’s remaining assets.’

      ‘What about your mother?’ Rebekah asked curiously.

      ‘She’s halfway through her fourth marriage. They last on average about six years,’ he said sardonically.

      She did not miss the cynical tone in Dante’s voice. ‘I suppose it’s not surprising you have such a warped view of marriage when your parents both had bad experiences.’

      ‘I wouldn’t say I have a warped view,’ he argued, ‘just a realistic one.’

      Nor was his attitude towards marriage based entirely on the hash his parents had made of relationships, Dante brooded. Inexplicably, he found himself tempted to tell Rebekah about Lara. Maybe she would lose that judgemental tone in her voice if he explained how his wife had betrayed him and deceived him and played him for a fool.

      But what was the point? He did not care what she thought of him, did he? He was only taking her to Tuscany with him for one reason—two, he amended—she was a fantastic cook and an exciting lover. He was looking