Bella felt herself begin to tremble as she was overwhelmed with an impending sense of doom. If Claudia left then Bella would be completely alone with—

‘You don’t mind, do you, Bella?’ Claudia’s eyes were glowing with excitement. She had confided in Bella earlier today, after being introduced to Benito the previous evening, that she definitely wanted to get to know Dahlia’s older brother better.

Obviously the attraction was reciprocated—which didn’t help Bella in the least when she had no inclination whatsoever to be left alone with Gabriel Danti!

‘I assure you, Claudia, your sister will be perfectly safe with me,’ Gabriel replied with dry mockery before Bella had a chance to say anything.

Bella shot him a glance beneath her long lashes. She still had absolutely no idea whether or not Gabriel remembered her from their night together five years ago—and she didn’t want to know, either.

She remembered him, and that was bad enough!

But before she could add anything to his reply Claudia gave her arm a grateful squeeze. ‘Thanks, Bella,’ she whispered before moving away to accompany Dahlia over to where the dark and handsome Benito stood waiting.

The sudden silence the two women left in their wake seemed deafening to Bella.

The room was full of people, at least a hundred or so of the guests invited to the wedding tomorrow, all of them chatting or laughing as they either renewed old acquaintances or met new ones. And yet as far as Bella was concerned she and Gabriel could have been alone on an island in the Arctic—the air between them was certainly frigidly cold enough for them to be on one!

‘There is a more—private sitting area next to this one in which we might talk,’ Gabriel bit out abruptly.

Bella raised apprehensive eyes, knowing that wariness was justified as Gabriel looked down his nose at her with a glacial brown gaze, his mouth—the mouth she had once found so sensually mesmerising!—flattened to a thin, uncompromising line above that cleft chin.

She moistened suddenly dry lips. ‘I’m perfectly happy where I am, thank you, Mr Danti.’

His eyes became even more icy as he reached out and curled his fingers compellingly about the top of her arm. ‘It was a statement of intent, Bella, not a question,’ he assured her grimly as he began to walk towards the exit, Bella firmly anchored to his side, the stiffness of his left leg barely noticeable.

‘But—’

‘Do you really want to have this conversation here, in front of Dahlia and Brian’s other guests?’ he asked harshly as he came to a halt halfway across the crowded room to look down at her through narrowed lids.

Bella swallowed hard as she saw the unmistakeably angry glitter in that dark gaze. ‘I have absolutely no idea what conversation you’re referring to—’

‘Oh, I think that you do, Bella,’ he retorted menacingly.

Bella thought that she did, too!

She only wished that she didn’t. But Gabriel’s behaviour since Claudia and Dahlia’s departure all pointed to the fact that he did remember her from five years ago, after all…

‘I REALLY have no idea what the two of us could possibly have to talk about, Mr Danti,’ Bella told him stiltedly as he sat perfectly relaxed in the armchair across from hers in the quiet of the otherwise deserted small reception-room just down the hallway from where the family party was being held.

Gabriel’s eyes narrowed on the paleness of her face as she sat stiffly upright in her own chair. ‘Considering our—past acquaintance, shall we say?—I believe refraining from addressing me as “Mr Danti” in that superior tone would be a good way to begin.’

She raised her brows in what she hoped was a querying manner. ‘Our past acquaintance…?’

Gabriel’s mouth thinned. ‘Do not play games with me, Bella!’

She shot him another glance before looking sharply away again. ‘I wasn’t sure you had remembered we’d met before…’

‘Oh, I remember,’ he growled.

She swallowed hard before speaking. ‘As do I—Gabriel,’ she conceded tightly.

He gave a humourless smile. ‘You had absolutely no idea I would be here tonight, did you?’

Those eyes flashed deeply purple at his mocking tone. ‘Why should I have done? Dahlia’s name is Fabrizzi.’

‘Her mother, my aunt Teresa, is my father’s younger sister,’ Gabriel supplied evenly.

Bella’s mouth twisted. ‘How sweet that you flew all the way from Italy to attend your cousin’s wedding!’

Gabriel’s mouth thinned at her obvious mockery. ‘I no longer live in Italy, Bella.’

She looked startled. ‘You don’t?’

Gabriel shook his head. ‘I spend most of my time at the Danti vineyards about an hour’s drive away from here, but I also have a house right here in San Francisco.’

Bella could easily guess exactly where in San Francisco that house was!

She and the rest of her family had gone for a tour of the city earlier today, and part of that tour had been through an area known as Pacific Heights, where the houses were grand and gracious—and worth millions of dollars!

‘Do you like living in America?’ she asked curiously.

Gabriel shrugged. ‘It has its—advantages.’

Bella just bet that it did! She also couldn’t help wondering if Gabriel’s move to America didn’t have something to do with the fact that Janine Childe, the woman Gabriel had once been in love with—perhaps was still in love with?—now lived in California, too…

‘Have you now finished with the polite exchange of information?’ Gabriel asked.

Bella forced her gaze to remain level on his. ‘What do you want from me, Gabriel?’

What did he want from her? That was an interesting question, Gabriel acknowledged grimly. Until he had arrived at the party earlier, and seen Bella across the room as she chatted with the young woman he now knew to be her sister, Gabriel would have liked to believe he had cast Bella from his mind after that single night together. But having recognised her instantly, he knew he could no longer claim that to be the case…

If anything, Isabella Scott was even more strikingly lovely than she had been five years ago, maturity having added self-assurance to a beauty that had already been breathtaking. Her violet eyes were still as stunning as ever, her hair was still long and the colour of ebony, but styled now in heavy layers so that it swung silkily against her cheeks and her throat, before cascading wildly down the length of her back. And the close fit of her violet gown revealed that her waist was still delicately slender beneath the full thrust of those perfect breasts…

What did he want from her?

He wanted not to have noticed any of those things!

His mouth set in a grim, uncompromising line. ‘What do you have to give, Bella?’

Her gaze was searching as she eyed him warily, and Gabriel knew that Bella would see that he, at least, was visibly much changed from their last meeting.

The darkness of his hair was styled several inches shorter than it had once been, but the scar that ran the length of his left cheek—a constant reminder, when Gabriel looked in the mirror to shave each morning, of the guilt he carried inside—was a much more visible reminder of how much he had changed in the last five years.

Was Bella repulsed, as Gabriel was himself, by the livid ugliness of that scar?

‘What do I have to give to you, in particular?’ Bella repeated incredulously. ‘Absolutely nothing!’ she scornfully answered her own question.

Gabriel’s hand moved instinctively to the jagged wound that marred his cheek. ‘That, at least, has not changed,’ he rasped coldly.

Bella eyed him frowningly. Why was he looking at her so contemptuously? He was the one who had seduced her only because the woman he had really wanted—the beautiful supermodel, Janine Childe—had told him their relationship was over, and that she was involved with one his fellow Formula One drivers.