Page 6 of ‘I Do’ for Revenge

‘You...what...?’

Flora looked at something over his head and hissed, ‘Please leave me alone.’

She muttered to herself as she continued picking up shattered glass. ‘I’m in so much trouble. There’s no way they’ll take me on after this—’

Vito put his hand around her wrist. It felt unbelievably slender and delicate. Her scent hit him then too, floral with a hint of musk. Instantly pleasing.

She looked at him. ‘What are you doing?’

He looked down. ‘You’re bleeding.’

She looked down to see blood seeping from a finger. She groaned. ‘Now I’m really in for it. Theyhateblood.’

Before Vito could make sense of that, someone was arriving and apologising profusely. ‘So sorry, sir, please, let us deal with this.’

Vito was all but pulled to standing by a veritable team of event staff who huddled around Flora and within seconds, like magic, she and the tray and all the broken glass were gone. The place was pristine again. For a second Vito wasn’t even sure if he hadn’t hallucinated it.

But then he noticed the slightly pink stain on the floor. Her blood. And that made him feel a surge of such a mix of emotions that he couldn’t even name them. What he did feel was an urgency to go after her, to see if it really was her.

‘Hey, Vitale, didn’t that waitress look very like the Gavia woman you stood up at the altar?’

Vito looked at the man who’d come to stand beside him. He forced a smile again. ‘I have to go, if you’ll excuse me?’

Vito didn’t wait for a response. He strode off the ballroom floor and out to the lobby. He stood there for a moment, not even sure where to start looking, but then he saw a figure with hair pulled up into a bun. Black skirt. A denim jacket over her shirt. A crossbody bag. Black sheer tights. Flat brogues.

She was walking quickly towards the entrance and Vito didn’t think. He moved, and caught her just before she was about to disappear out of a side door. She looked up at him and went pale again. ‘You.’

‘Yes, me,’ Vittorio Vitale said grimly, with his hand wrapped around her arm. Flora’s finger was still throbbing under the makeshift tissue bandage but she was hardly aware. Of all the luck, and all the people she could have bumped into, it had to be him, in her moment of total and utter humiliation. She couldn’t think of anyone who would get more out of this.

‘Well?’ she said pugnaciously. ‘When you’ve stopped looking at me and getting pleasure out of seeing me scrabbling around the floor picking up broken glass in front of the most important people in Rome, I’d like to get on.’

If anything, the man looked even more gorgeous than Flora remembered. He was dressed in a classic black tuxedo and the material did little to disguise his powerful body. She could see the bunched muscle of his biceps and felt a little woozy.

Lack of blood.

That was it.

He was shaking his head. ‘What are you doing here?’

She looked at him and then gestured at herself with her free hand. ‘Do I really need to spell it out?’

He didn’t answer, he just looked over her head and then tugged her with him, across the lobby to the reception desk, where a manager jumped to attention, barely glancing at her. ‘Signore Vitale, how can I help you?’

‘I’d like a room, please.’

Flora’s mouth dropped open as she watched the manager issue Vittorio with a room key without so much as an eye-flicker. Now he was leading her across the lobby to the elevator. They were inside the small but luxurious space before Flora pulled her arm free and found her voice. ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’

Vittorio stabbed at a button. He said, ‘That’s what I’d like to ask you.’

Flora said, ‘As it happens, before you accosted me I was going home because I’ve just lost my job. Tonight was part of a month’s trial, and I failed.’

Vittorio looked at her as the elevator ascended. ‘Since when are you working as a waitress?’

Flora pretended to look at her watch and said tartly, ‘As of about ten minutes ago I’m no longer a waitress. It was a short-lived career.’

The elevator doors opened onto a quiet corridor with plush cream carpets, soft lighting and walls painted in hues of cream and gold.

Vittorio stepped out but kept a hand on the door, stopping it from closing again. He sounded impatient. ‘Please, Flora, I think we need to talk.’