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By Root 1175 0

room, and he smiled at her. “And I love you,” he said loudly. Let them talk, let them think what they wished. Sometimes he thought he really did love India Haven. She was probably the only truly nice female he had ever known in his life. And she was his friend as well as his occasional lover—not so often nowadays as he would have liked, but he was a busy man, and also Marisa was becoming suspicious of his every move. That India was also a little bit in love with him was good too; it stroked his ego to think of her when Marisa was sulking and complaining that he neglected her for the business. If it weren’t for the children he would be tempted to fall in love with India, and when she looked as adorable as she did tonight he was very definitely tempted. India was sexy and she was fun. But there were the children and he adored them, too, and he never wanted to lose them. Marisa’s family was powerful; he would never stand a chance in a dispute over custody.

“Come on,” he said firmly, thrusting a glass of champagne into her hand. “You should be circulating and chatting up the cream of international society who are here ruining our carpets and pretending to admire the lines of my designs. Tell them a few prices and make them gasp; if it’s expensive enough they’ll have to have it.”

India laughed. It wasn’t entirely true, but there was enough of a grain of truth from which to make a pearl. They were almost all of them people who had to be told what was good. “The public are like bad Hollywood agents,” her mother had said bitterly. “They’re basically people of undefined taste who have to be told by others that something is good before they believe it. When they read it in the trades or in the dailies, then they’ll claim they always knew it was good and use it as a model for new and aspiring artists. Be like that, they’ll say, and then you’ll be a star. Copies! That’s all they want. And the reassurance of everyone else knowing it’s good.” And that was the reason for this party, so that it would be printed in the glossies and the dailies and read about from eternal Rome to sunny Beverly Hills, from the palaces of the Middle East to the boulevards of Paris and even, eventually, to the rain-washed streets of London.

India leaned quietly against a pillar of faux-malachite, sipping her champagne, staring somberly at the crowd. If these were your clients, then these were the people you had to deal with. This was the one thing that bothered her about the business. Catering to rich women’s whims was definitely not her strong point. But rich women were the ones who bought what you offered. It might be their husbands who were paying, but it was the women who must be wooed. A gusty sigh escaped her. It was, after all, damn it, still a man’s world. Rich women wanted to deal with men, they wanted a little extra attention….

“Is it that bad?”

The sound of the voice close to her ear startled India and the champagne slopped from her glass over the sleeve of the man in the dark suit standing next to her.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” Oh, my God, now she’d probably ruined his suit and lost Paroli an important customer. India mopped futilely at the arm with a tiny cocktail napkin. It was very wet. “Oh, dear,” she said. Her apologetic brown eyes lifted from the sleeve and met his equally deep brown ones.

“Snap,” said Aldo Montefiore.

India’s gaze was puzzled; she was still concentrating on the damage she’d inflicted. Who would have thought one glass of champagne could be so wet!

“Our eyes, I mean. They are the same color.”

“Oh. Oh, I see.” India gazed at him with new interest. He didn’t seem in the least bit bothered about his jacket. He was smiling at her, and he was quite attractive. Dark hair, faintly curling after a firm brushing and still wet from the shower. He wore it long on the neck, and slightly shaggy. She liked that. And she liked his brown eyes with the curling lashes. And the smile was gentle, tentative even, as though he wasn’t quite sure what her reaction would be. Like her, he wasn’t too tall—five eight or nine maybe. In her high-heeled