A Valentine from Harlequin: Six Degrees of Romance

Chapter One

Charlotte winced as an inebriated party-goer stepped on her foot, but she kept moving determinedly toward the doors that led to the balcony. The Duncans would be delighted with their party; it was clearly the event of the season, and their daughter had been successfully launched into society.

Unfortunately, the noise, the heat, and the crowd combined with Charlotte’s pounding headache to make her want to escape for a breath of fresh air. Reaching the balcony doors, she opened them to find two people engaged in a passionate kiss.

“I’m sorry.” The words escaped her mouth before she realized it would have been better to make an exit without being noticed. The couple jumped apart.

Charlotte felt the blood drain from her face as she stared at her fiancé. “John! I thought you were dead!”

Seeing her own horrified fascination mirrored on his face, she groped for the nearest object—anything solid enough to keep her from keeling over—and found herself grasping the edge of one of the spindly wrought-iron tables scattered the length of the balcony.

Clearly, he hadn’t heard the sound of the balcony doors opening, which wasn’t surprising, given the amount of heavy breathing he’d been enjoying. As for noticing a third party had arrived, he’d only had eyes—not to mention lips and hands!—for the dimpled blond pressed so snugly against him that, for one briefly hysterical second, Charlotte wondered if their bodies were held together by a strip of Velcro.

Tearing himself free, he spun around and squinted disbelievingly into the light blinding him from the room behind Charlotte, the winsome brown eyes she’d once thought reminded her of an eager puppy seeming now more appropriately likened to a shortsighted troll. “Charlie? Is that you?”

“Who else?” she said, rallying her pride. “Unless, of course, false rumors of your death have been broadcast to a host of other fiancées, too?”

He opened his mouth to reply, then apparently finding himself completely at a loss, snapped it closed again. Of the two of them, he, it appeared, was vastly more taken aback. Just as well, Charlotte decided. There was nothing like the element of surprise to startle a man of limited wit into spilling out the truth—and John, she belatedly realized, didn’t have much to offer in the way of sparkling intellect.

“Fiancée?” Dimples adjusted her cleavage, pulled the neckline of her dress back where it belonged, and fixed him in a reproachful stare. “I’m the one wearing your ring, so what’s she talking about, Johnnie?”

“Nothing,” he said, pointing her firmly toward the party taking place beyond the club’s elegant French doors. “It’s a joke in very bad taste that I don’t expect a lady of your breeding to appreciate. Go inside, precious, and leave me to deal with it.”

“It?” Charlotte mocked, once they were alone. “Is that what I’ve been reduced to in your estimation, John? A tasteless, inconvenient ‘it’?”

“A figure of speech only,” he shot back irritably. “Your problem, Charlie, is that you take every word coming out of a man’s mouth literally.”

“Should I interpret that to mean you had something other than wedded bliss in mind when you proposed to me, six months ago in Barbados?”

Growing more rattled by the moment, he went on the offensive. “Look,” he huffed, “this party wasn’t arranged by that outfit you work for, so I don’t know how you managed to wangle an invitation to an upscale affair far beyond what you’re used to, but I can tell you this: If you think bulldozing your way in here and making a scene is going to accomplish any sort of positive outcome, you’re sadly mistaken. I will not be coerced into resurrecting what can only be described as a moment of madness. Holiday romances aren’t designed to last, as any fool can tell you.”

“You’re right.”

“Glad you agree.” He swiped one palm against the other, as if he’d found something downright nasty crawling over his hand, and straightened his black bow tie. “So may we please forget Barbados ever happened, and simply go our separate ways?”

“No, we may not,” she said. “I’m not quite finished with you yet.”

He flung her an outraged glare. “Don’t be difficult, Charlie. We are finished. Not that we ever really got started. But the woman I fully intend to marry is waiting for me in the banquet hall, and nothing you can say or do is going to keep me from her.”

“Perhaps you should bring her back out here again, then,” she said. “Perhaps she should hear what I’ve got to say. It might spare her a lot of grief down the line.”

He paled a little at that. “I never figured you to be the sort of person who’d go out of her way to hurt an innocent bystander.”

“Appealing to my better nature isn’t going to work, John,” she said flatly. “I have questions begging to be answered, and I’m not going to disappear into the woodwork until my curiosity’s been satisfied. That much, at least, you do owe me. So either make your excuses to the future Mrs. Weatherby and afford me the courtesy of a few more minutes of your time, or else we can have this conversation inside and let everyone listen in. I can’t speak for you, of course, but I don’t have anything shameful to hide.”

He pursed his lips—lips Charlotte had once found acceptably kissable. But she doubted that would have been the case if he’d pinched them together in the sort of tight disapproval directed at her now. It must, she decided, have had something to do with too much tropical moonlight, rum punch, and hypnotic steel bands.

“Wait here,” he said, wrenching open the balcony doors. “I’ll be right back.”

Not until he’d disappeared into the house did aftershock set in. The self-control which had carried her this far seeped away. Numbly, she staggered to the guardrail edging the balcony and fought to draw breath into her beleaguered lungs.

She thought she was alone. That no one had witnessed her humiliation.

She was wrong. From the deep shadows at the other end of the balcony came the sound of slow, deliberate applause. “Very good!” a baritone voice, laced with amusement and a slight Italian accent, declared. “After a performance like that, cara, I can hardly wait for Act Two.”

Chapter Two

Another bombshell, following so close after the first, was one more than Charlotte could handle. Practically jumping out of her skin, she gave vent to a tiny shriek and collapsed weakly against the balustrade. A sob popped out of nowhere and hung in the still night air like a waterlogged bubble.

Footsteps approached. A darker shadow, imposingly tall and broad, emerged from the obscurity cloaking the far end of the balcony. “No tears, please!” that same deep voice ordered. “Crying’s not going to change anything.”

“I don’t know who you think you are, dishing out unsolicited advice,” she choked, surreptitiously wiping away a tear, which owed everything to humiliation and nothing to grief. “And in case no one’s ever told you this before, gentlemen don’t stoop to eavesdropping.”

“This one does when a couple puts on a floor show such as just happened here. Furthermore, if the specimen who just slithered back inside is anything to go by, I suspect you wouldn’t know a gentleman if you fell over one.”

He’d stepped into the bright glow spilling through the French doors by then, allowing Charlotte to get her first good look at him. The play of light and shadow on his face emphasized the sweeping curve of his dark eyebrows and lean, square jaw, and stippled his aristocratic cheekbones with the reflected imprint of lashes so long and dense, they ought to have been outlawed. Right on the heels of that observation, though, came another: that she knew him from somewhere—not well, but such a face was too striking to be easily forgotten.

“Have we met—before tonight, I mean?” she asked. “You look…” Magnificent! Mesmerizing! Too devastatingly handsome to be real! “…familiar.”

His smile, brilliant in the semigloom, shot a thrill of awareness from her throat to her thighs. “I’m flattered you remember. The recently-resurrected John Weatherby monopolized you so thoroughly, we barely exchanged a dozen words the only other time we found ourselves at the same party.”

Of course! Memory flooded back: Barbados, early last fall, and her last off-shore assignment for her former employer; the grand old plantation house; the well-bred murmur of guests flocking around a banquet table set on a terrace; a velvet night sky spattered with stars. John, flattering her with his attention, overwhelming her with his charm…

And this man, regarding her now with ironic amusement. Yes, she remembered him! His height and sheer physical presence had been enough to make him stand out from the crowd, even without the flock of hangers-on dogging him and inhaling his every word.

That he’d noticed her had been unexpected. She’d happened to look up from some checklist or other to find him staring at her across the room and, just for a moment, everything else—the mob of people, the noise—had melted away and it had seemed there was no one else in the world but the two of them, connected in a glance so riveting she’d hardly known how to draw her gaze away. The next morning, he’d passed her on his way to the breakfast room and complimented her on the fine job she’d done the night before.

“The banquet,” he’d said, “was a triumph. Whoever hired you deserves a medal.” His gaze had lingered on her face, drifted past her bare, sun-kissed shoulders and all the way down to her legs, then returned to dwell with unsettling intent on her lips. He’d cleared his throat, opened his mouth…and she’d been filled with a sense of expectancy, of elation.

But before he could speak again, his followers had closed ranks around him. He must, she’d decided, swallowing her disappointment as they’d spirited him away, wield a great deal of corporate clout for them to guard him so diligently.

“We met at the Jacoby Plantation,” she said now. “How could I have forgotten?”

“You had a great deal on your mind. And we never were formally introduced.” He offered his hand. “I’m Paolo Angelli, and you’re Charlie.”

“Charlotte,” she said. “Charlotte Fraser. I really don’t care for ‘Charlie.’”

His fingers closed around hers. “Charlotte Fraser.” The syllables rolled off his tongue, rich and warm as Demerara sugar left melting in the Caribbean sun. “Well, Charlotte Fraser, wait until you’ve dispatched the deplorable Mr. Weatherby before you fall apart—unless you want to leave him with the impression that you’re still carrying a torch for him?”

“Good grief, no!” She hiccupped, aghast at the idea. “That’s what makes this whole incident so absurd. If he wanted rid of me, he didn’t have to go to such extreme lengths. A simple ‘I’ve changed my mind about us’ would have sufficed. It’s not as if we were ever really engaged.”

“He never gave you a ring?”

“No. He died before things progressed that far. At least, I thought he did.”

Paolo Angelli’s gaze scoured her face. “And were you terribly grief-stricken?”

She averted her eyes and searched for the right words. She didn’t want to come across as cold and heartless, but nor did she wish to convey the wrong impression. He, though, misunderstood her hesitation, let go her hand, and stepped back.

“Forgive me,” he said, and there was no missing the reserve cloaking his voice. “I had no right to ask such a question, nor do I wish to revive memories that you obviously find painful.”

“It’s not that,” she began, anxious to set the record straight.

But he waved her to silence and nodded toward the French doors behind her. “Your not-so-dead fiancé is headed back this way. Save your explanations for him.”

And with that, he melted into the shadows again.

Chapter Three

“All right, let’s get this over with!” John leaned against the balcony doors and folded his arms. “And make it fast. I don’t want to arouse Louella’s suspicions any more than I already have.”

“Louella being your latest fiancée, I assume?”

“My only fiancée, Charlie,” he snapped. “I never made it official with you.”

“Some might consider that to be a mere technicality, John. A less forgiving woman than I might even go so far as to sue you for breach of promise.”

He flushed with anger. “Don’t even think about threatening me! You’ll merely make a laughing stock of yourself and—”

“Oh, relax!” she said, disgust sour on her tongue. “You’re not worth the effort it would entail. Nor have I any more wish to prolong this meeting than you have. I’d merely like you to clarify a few things, that’s all.”

“If I must.” He buffed his fingernails on the sleeve of his dinner jacket. If body language really did speak volumes, his shouted boredom to high heaven.

Refusing to be put off, she said, “For a start, how did you persuade your friend to write and tell me you’d died?”

“There was no friend, dear.” He inspected his nails and gave them a final polish. “I wrote the letter myself.”

And clearly did so without a twinge of conscience. Was quite proud of himself, in fact. “And I suppose your ski cabin didn’t burn to the ground, either?”

“Certainly it did. I made sure of that. Overloaded the woodstove and left its door open. The place went up like a rocket in 30 minutes flat.”

Puzzled, she shook her head. “Why on earth would you take such drastic and risky measures just to end your involvement with me?”

“Oh, you really are naive, Charlie!” he sneered. “You played no part in it, at least not directly. I did it for the insurance.”

More mystified by the second, she said, “I don’t understand.”

He gave a long-suffering sigh. “I’m a high-maintenance man. The kind of lifestyle I enjoy costs money. More, I’m afraid, than I’m willing to go out and earn. When I first met you, I thought you might be the solution to my problem.”

“You thought I was well-off?”

“No, dear. I thought you were loaded. Filthy rich.”

“But why?” Astonished, she stared at him. “I never gave you reason to believe that.”

“Not in so many words, perhaps. But there you were, on a first-name basis with half the bigwigs at that conference. Consulting with titans of industry dripping with old money. Naturally, I assumed you were somebody. So I made my move before anyone else got his foot in your door. You’re not all that bad-looking, you know, especially when you do yourself up, although I have to say that dress you’re wearing tonight makes you look a bit like a black widow spider. But I’ve come across a lot worse. Being married to you would have been tolerable, if only you hadn’t turned out not to be a member of society at all, but a corporate social convener working for someone else, for Pete’s sake!”

Charlotte didn’t often lose her temper but his scorn left her foaming with rage. “Not any longer, you arrogant stoat!” she spat, sorely tempted to wipe the smug expression off his face with the back of her hand. “Unlike you, I don’t mind working for a living—and hard enough that I’m my own boss now and doing very well. But you…! You are, without question, the most despicable excuse for a man I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across. And to think I was taken in by you for even an instant!”

“Well, there you have it, dearie. I played you like a violin, and you bought every second of it. As I said before, you’re so hopelessly naive, it’s laughable.”

“Not quite as naive as you’d like to think,” she told him acidly. “At risk of denting your oversize ego, you should know that I’d already had second thoughts about continuing our association, long before your letter arrived. Unlike you, though, I prefer to be more direct, so I planned to tell you to your face when we met at Thanksgiving.”

He laughed scornfully. “So you say! But if that’s the case, how come you’re making such an issue now of a situation that withered on the vine before it properly took root?”

“Because, you insensitive clod, thanks to you, I’ve been carrying around a load of guilt that was completely unnecessary! I soon realized that two weeks of fun in the sunny Caribbean wasn’t enough on which to base any sort of relationship, but I don’t enjoy letting people down and wasn’t looking forward to having to tell you I’d changed my mind, especially since you gave the impression you were totally besotted with me.”

“Appearances can be deceiving, Charlie.”

“With you, they certainly can! But I didn’t know that then, and I was ashamed of the relief I felt when I learned I wouldn’t have to hurt you. Ashamed at how soon I recovered from the shocking news of your ‘death.’”

“That’s just your pride talking,” he said imperturbably. “The truth is, you’re really eaten up with envy because I’ve found true love and you’re still looking for it. Which reminds me, Louella’s waiting. So if you’ve finished your inquisition…?”

“Heavens, yes!” She wiped a weary hand across her eyes. “Go. Please! Before the sight of you makes me sick!”

He complied with unflattering haste. She heard the French doors bang shut, followed within seconds from the other end of the balcony by the faint, expensive chime of cobweb-fine crystal.

Paolo’s hand swam into her line of vision, two slender flutes of the vintage Dom Perignon she’d recommended to the Duncans suspended between his lean, elegant fingers. “Another masterful performance, Charlotte. I suggest we celebrate with a glass of our host’s very excellent champagne.”

“You listened in again?” Her stomach heaved unpleasantly.

“Certainly,” he said, with a marked lack of remorse. “John Weatherby isn’t the kind of man who’s squeamish about how he goes about getting his own way. I wasn’t about to leave you to face him without proper backup if you needed it.”

“I’m sure you meant well, but I already feel a big enough fool. I really don’t appreciate having everyone else believing it, too.”

“I’m not ‘everyone else,’” he said, tipping the rim of his glass lightly against hers. “And just for the record, you are no fool.”

She grimaced. “No, I’m a black widow spider.”

Just as he had in Barbados, he examined her at leisure, from the ankle-length black silk sheath John Weatherby had dismissed so callously to the upswept coil of her dark hair. “Spider, Charlotte?” he murmured, looping a finger beneath the small diamond pendant nesting just above her breasts. “I see only a woman whose natural beauty is enhanced by the classic simplicity of her gown.”

At his touch, a tiny current of pleasure chased down her cleavage. Suddenly parched, she took a sip from the glass of champagne. “Thank you. I needed this.”

“Because this last performance cost you so dearly?”

“Not at all. That was no ‘performance’ you witnessed, at least not on my part. I meant every word I said. If I seem upset, it’s merely because I’m embarrassed at how easily I was duped.”

“You’ve nothing to be embarrassed about,” he declared. “That’s Weatherby’s department. He’s a felon, guilty of arson and fraud, to say the least, and never mind his lesser crimes. So enjoy your champagne, Charlotte, stop looking so woebegone, and tell me what it’ll take to make you feel better.”

“Showing him who’s really emerged the winner in this fiasco!” she told him grimly.

Something of her humiliation melted as Paolo bathed her once again in his dazzling smile. “Consider it done, cara. I already have it choreographed down to the last detail.”

Chapter Four

Oh, Charlotte was tempted to go along with him! But although Paolo’s sympathy was soothing, she barely knew him and if she hadn’t yet learned her lesson about throwing in her lot with a stranger, she deserved all the grief she’d undoubtedly reap.

“You’re very kind, Mr. Angelli,” she said, retreating to the far side of the nearest wrought-iron table, “but you’ve done enough. I really can’t allow you to become further involved in a mess entirely of my own making.”

“I’m already involved, Charlotte,” he said, that rich Demerara-sugar voice sliding over her name and turning into something at once sultry and exotic. Reaching across the table, he laced his fingers through hers. “You’re a woman of courage under fire, but that’s no reason to turn down my help.”

It took considerable strength to withstand his coaxing words, never mind the gentle steel of his hold. But she wasn’t about to leap blindly from one bad situation to another. “Not until you tell me what you have in mind.”

“Nothing disastrous. We’re simply going to rejoin the party.”

She breathed a sigh, part relief and, if she were honest, part regret. Despite her common sense warning her to proceed carefully, the more daring voice in her heart urged her to toss caution to the breeze. Paolo Angelli had intrigued her from the first. Now that the opportunity had presented itself, she wanted to get to know him better and there was no use denying it. “Is that all?”

“Not quite,” he said. “I came here alone, as did you, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Well, things have changed. Now we’re a couple.”

“The woman hired to put together the Duncans’ elaborate coming-out party for their daughter being seen on the arm of one of their guests? Good heavens, Mr. Angelli, do you have any idea of the ripples that’s going to create?”

“I’m not a snob, Charlotte, and neither are you, so let’s not get carried away with that kind of nonsense. We’re a man and a woman powerfully attracted to one another, whether or not you’re ready to admit it. It’s as simple—or as complicated—as that. But I’m not a bully, so the choice is yours. You can put a brave face on things and go back inside to exercise a little vengeance by showing Weatherby he’s not the only one to have moved on, or you can remain out here. Either way, I’m staying with you.”

“Why?” Truly baffled, she stared at him. He was unquestionably wealthy because she knew from what she’d seen in Barbados that he belonged to that select segment of society that she’d only glimpsed from the sidelines. If he wasn’t already spoken for, there must be at least a dozen women inside the clubhouse who’d be only too willing to rectify the matter; women who’d grown up in his kind of world, not hers.

“Because I prefer your company to anyone else’s here. Because I long ago grew tired of the sort of silly, superficial women strutting around in that room there.” He stepped around the table and drew her close enough that she could smell the distant echo of his cologne and feel the heat of his body drifting out to entrap her. “Because I want to be seen with you.”

How confident he was; how disturbingly attractive! Under different circumstances…oh, what was she thinking! “Mr. An—”

“Paolo,” He stroked her wrist, and then the palm of her hand in slow, tantalizing circles. “This is the 21st century, and Jane Austen’s been dead a very long time. Couples today don’t stand on foolish ceremony. They make their desires plainly known.”

Well, he certainly did! If reducing her to melting acquiescence with his touch was his intention, he succeeded in a disgracefully short time. Her breathing raced as fast as her galloping pulse. As for ‘caution,’ it might just as well have been a foreign word past her understanding!

“Come with me, Charlotte,” he cajoled. “Make this a memorable evening in more ways than one and teach that miserable wretch the lesson he deserves.”

“Yes,” she said, not because she cared one iota about John Weatherby, but because she couldn’t say no to Paolo Angelli.

He squeezed her hand, tipped her face up to his, and kissed her full on the mouth. Not aggressively. Not with arrogant intimacy, as if, because he’d come to her rescue, he had the right to take liberties. His lips were cool and dry, their touch firm but brief. Still the effect sent a delicious shock of electricity shooting through her blood.

“Just a little rehearsal before we go on stage,” he said, lifting his head and smiling down at her.

“Um…” she mumbled, pressing her lips together to hold on to the taste of him. There’d been stars in the sky all evening long. When had they fallen down to blind her with their brilliance and addle her brain? When had she lost the power to articulate clearly and sanely?

He tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and caught her fingers in his. “My feelings, exactly, cara,” he said, leading her toward the balcony doors. “Some emotions defy the words and speak directly to the heart.”

Chapter Five

Now that the live music had started, the party had really come to life, making it possible for Charlotte and Paolo to slip into the crowd unnoticed. Without asking, he drew her into his arms and onto the dance floor.

“The Duncans might not like this,” she muttered, glancing around nervously. “I’m here to work, after all.”

“They will like,” he assured her, “not only because Gerald Duncan is anxious to enlist my support in his latest venture and will do nothing to displease me, but because you’ve exceeded all their expectations and made this the perfect evening for their daughter.”

Sensing she wasn’t entirely convinced, he again tipped up her chin. “Listen to me, cara. I’m no Weatherby. I don’t lie in order to win a woman’s heart.”

She heard candor and integrity in his voice. It gave her the courage to ask, “Is that what you’re trying to do, Paolo? Win my heart?”

His hand slipped to the small of her back and urged her closer. “Most certainly.”

“I’m not sure I’m ready to give it quite yet.”

“I’m a patient man, Charlotte, and prepared to spend however long it takes to persuade you that my intentions are honorable.”

“How can you be so sure, when we’ve only just met?”

“We met months ago and the spark ignited left a lasting impression.” His voice dropped a captivating half octave. “That moment of recognition did not die, cara. It rekindled itself tonight.”

“Still,” she said, struggling to step warily through the minefield of his persuasion, “we’re starting out afresh now.”

He shrugged. “Of course. How else does a great romance start, but at the beginning?”

She sighed. “You make it all sound so reasonable, I half believe you. If it weren’t for the way John—”

Unmindful of the fact that they were surrounded by others, he silenced her with another kiss, this one so darkly intoxicating that she quivered. “Hush,” he said against her lips. “I’m nothing like him. Do you really think that, having let you slip through my fingers six months ago, I’m about to risk my carefully engineered second chance by telling you lies now?”

“Engineered?” Unnerved, she stared at him. “Are you saying you knew I’d be here and arranged this meeting? Is that what you meant when you said you had everything choreographed down to the last detail?”

He shrugged again, a continental lifting of one broad shoulder she wished she didn’t find so attractive. “Not exactly, but word travels quickly in my circle of acquaintances. I knew weeks ago that Gerald intended to hire you to organize this party, that my name would be on the guest list, and that the man who’d monopolized your time in Barbados had moved on to greener fields.”

“Pastures,” she said distractedly. “It’s ‘moved on to greener pastures.’”

“Such a strange tongue, this English. I must teach you Italian, the true language of love.”

“Now just hold your horses, Paolo—!”

He interrupted with a laugh she could only compare to the slow trickle of warm molasses running from a hot spoon. “As I said, a strange language. But if horses are what it will take to win you, I’ll give you horses.”

Clinging rather desperately to her dwindling sense of survival, she protested. “Stop talking like that! You could be married with eight children, for all I know. And I could have a husband—”

“But you don’t,” he said calmly. “You wouldn’t be here in my arms and allowing me to kiss you if you had. And anyone here can vouch that I have neither a wife nor children. However, if you prefer to hear it from my parents and sisters—”

“I don’t know even your parents and sisters!”

“You will, cara. Very soon. I shall take you to our family villa overlooking the Adriatic Sea to meet them.”

“I don’t think so! In your own way, you’re just as devious as John, pretending we met here by accident when, in fact, you’ve been stalking me from a distance for months.”

“Keeping track, perhaps, but never stalking.”

“Call it what you like, it adds up to the same thing.”

“It was necessary for both our sakes,” he said reasonably. “You needed time to establish yourself as an independent entrepreneur, and I needed assurance that you’d recovered from your brief infatuation with Weatherby before I declared myself.”

“You’re very sure you’ll have things your way, aren’t you, Paolo Angelli? What are you going to do if I don’t fall in with your plans—throw me over your shoulder and carry me off to your cave?”

“I’m no Neanderthal, Charlotte. If I’ve presumed too much, I apologize and will, of course, withdraw from the picture.”

He paused, giving her time to consider before she framed a reply. The music slowed to a stop. Couples started drifting back to their tables. Finally she and Paolo were the only two left on the dance floor and still she hadn’t answered. She stared at the front of his dress shirt and tried to be sensible. To behave like a mature, intelligent woman.

“Well, Charlotte? Have I misread the signs? Shall I thank you for the dance, escort you off the floor, and disappear from your life for good?”

She met his gaze. His eyes, blue as his Adriatic Sea, smoldered with fire. As for his mouth…oh, a woman could weave a lifetime of dreams around that mouth! “Everything’s happening too quickly, Paolo,” she whimpered. “You’re asking for too much.”

“I’m asking you to take a leap of faith,” he said. “To join me on a journey that stands a very small chance of coming to nothing but is far more likely to lead to a future together. I won’t tell you I love you or that I want to marry you. Not yet. Not until I’m ready to say the words and you’re ready to hear them. But in the meantime I will court you, if you’ll let me, Charlotte. Is that so very much to ask?”

He pulled her closer, close enough that she could feel the hard, male angles of him pressed against her. Close enough that she could feel the beat of his heart beneath her hand. She knew a stirring in her blood, a sense of hovering on the brink of wonderful discovery.

“When you trust me enough, I will make love to you,” he went on, his voice a seductive whisper in her ear. The promise alone was enough to cause a spasm of delight to uncurl within her and leave her moist with anticipation. “I will hold you in my arms throughout the night and cherish every moment we share. I will respect and honor you. And if, after all that, you decide I’m not the man you want to spend the rest of your life with, I will let you go. The question is, has that moment arrived already?”

The answer came to her not in a rush or a flood, but with a slow, tingling warmth that seeped along her veins with quiet deliberation and the promise that the best was yet to come. “No,” she said. “I want to take that journey with you, Paolo. I believe in our tomorrow.”