At Dante's Service by Chantelle Shaw Read Free Book Online Page B

elbows on the stone balustrade. The night air felt cool on her hot face but her heart was stillbeating painfully hard. When she allowed her mind to rerun her conversation with Dante she wanted to die of embarrassment.
    She could not continue to work for him now. It would be too awkward. It was bad enough that she had spent the past two months mooning over him like a lovesick teenager, but the realisation that he had known about her infatuation was so humiliating. First thing tomorrow she would hand him her resignation, she decided. And then she would phone Gaspard Clavier and discuss the possibility of working at his new restaurant in St Lucia.
    Her mind was whirling as she took a long sip of her drink. Behind her, she heard the sound of footsteps striding across the terrace, and she stiffened.
    ‘I’d go easy on the punch, if I were you. I overheard a waiter telling a guest that one of the ingredients is limoncello,’ Dante murmured.
    That explained why her head had started to spin when she’d come outside into the fresh air, Rebekah thought ruefully. The Italian lemon liqueur had a high alcoholic content, but she hadn’t noticed it mixed into the fruit punch.
    ‘Well, as this is my fourth glass, I’m probably tipsy and you can have a good laugh when I make a fool of myself.’
    The moonlight threw his chiselled features into sharp relief and accentuated the sensual curve of his mouth. Rebekah hated herself for the physical pang of longing that made her tremble. She tore her gaze from him. ‘Although, actually, I don’t need alcohol to make me act stupidly,’ she said miserably.
    Dante frowned when he saw the faint quiver of her lower lip. ‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded, catchinghold of her shoulder to prevent her from walking away from him. ‘Are you angry because I admitted I find you attractive?’
    It was not what Rebekah had expected him to say. She had been certain he would taunt her about her awareness of him.
    ‘I’m concerned it will make it difficult for me to carry on working for you,’ she mumbled.
    ‘I’m not a savage brute at the mercy of my hormones,’ he said drily. ‘I’m capable of controlling my libido.’ He lifted his hand and brushed her hair back from her cheek, his eyes narrowing speculatively on her flushed face. ‘Although it would help if you stopped looking at me like you’re doing at the moment.’
    Was it the sudden sensual roughness of his tone that brought Rebekah’s skin out in goose-bumps or the hard glitter in his eyes that caused the ache inside her to intensify until it consumed her?
    She bit her lip. ‘How am I looking at you?’ she whispered, and did not recognize the husky voice as her own.
    ‘Like you want me to kiss you.’ Dante gave a low laugh when she did not deny it. He stared into her incredible violet eyes, watched them darken as her pupils dilated and read the invitation she could not hide. But he also glimpsed a faint wariness that made him hesitate.
    He recognized there had been an undercurrent of sexual awareness between them for weeks, long before she had taken his breath away by wearing an evening gown that revealed her hourglass figure. But he had determinedly ignored his attraction to her—partly because he preferred not to get involved with a member of his staff, but also because he had sensed a vulnerability in her that had made her off-limits. Yesterday, at the christeningparty, he had glimpsed an expression in her eyes that he could not forget. He suspected that she’d had her heart broken by the guy in Wales, but if she hoped he could fill an emotional void inside her she would be disappointed. Bitter experience had taught him that life was a lot simpler without emotions to screw it up.
    But, as he’d watched her dancing tonight and noticed the attention she had received from other men, he had felt an unexpected surge of possessiveness that had prompted him to stride onto the dance floor and pull her into his arms. She had been