Читать книгу Modern Romance April 2017 Books 1-4 - Линн Грэхем, Annie West - Страница 15
ОглавлениеELLIE BREATHED IN deeply and slowly released her breath in the hope of chasing away the brain fog afflicting her ability to think. She was struggling to perform little mental calculations around her menstrual cycle, very quickly realising that their timing had been little short of catastrophic. She had chosen the worst possible moment to abandon her usual caution, she recognised in steadily deepening dismay.
What if Rio made her pregnant? The consequences of unprotected sex were not something she wanted to contemplate, particularly when she had a very poor relationship with the potential father. She suppressed a fearful shudder and told herself to be strong. Whatever happened, it would happen and she couldn’t change that. In the meantime it would be best to go on as though nothing had changed.
‘Please take me back to my hotel or call me a taxi or something,’ Ellie muttered in desperation.
‘You still haven’t told me what you’ve done to Beppe—’
‘I haven’t done anything to him!’ Ellie proclaimed in a sudden fury roused by the stabbing of her conscience. After all, if Beppe Sorrentino was troubled, it was her fault because she had told him something that had upset him. She had been selfish and thoughtless, dwelling only on her right to know who her father was without ever considering the cost that that information might inflict on anyone else. Even worse, Rio was Beppe’s godson and Beppe had no idea that Ellie had already met Rio and was currently involved with the younger man. But was she involved with him?
Ellie grimaced at the concept because that word, involved, lent a gravitas to their entanglement that it didn’t deserve. They had engaged in a foolish and irresponsible sexual encounter, nothing more. They weren’t in a relationship, nor were they likely to be. And how did she feel about that reality? And the answer was that that reality saddened and wounded her heart and her pride. With Rio, she was slowly and painfully learning that she was more vulnerable than she had ever appreciated. She had made a mistake with him two years earlier and almost unbelievably had made an even bigger mistake this time around. Sex might be a field that Rio played in but Ellie didn’t play at anything she did. She didn’t do casual either.
‘Ellie...’ Rio breathed impatiently.
Ellie rose from her seat to move back out to the hall. ‘I can’t discuss Beppe with you. I’m sorry but that’s how it is—’
‘What are you hiding from me?’ Glittering dark eyes full of suspicion locked to the pale triangle of Ellie’s face.
Ellie lifted her chin. ‘People have secrets, Rio. Secrets they don’t want to share. Dragging them out into the light of day isn’t always the right thing to do,’ she reasoned uneasily.
‘Beppe has no secrets... He’s not that kind of man,’ Rio argued with sublime assurance. ‘So, if you’re not judging, you’re preaching. Are you so perfect?’
‘No, I know I’m far from perfect and I wasn’t preaching. I was just speaking my thoughts out loud. I’m a little confused right now,’ Ellie admitted tightly, her eyes suddenly stinging while she wondered if her entire trip to Italy had been an outsize blunder. Maybe she should have left the past buried, maybe she should’ve tried harder to suppress her curiosity. All she knew was that she felt very guilty at the knowledge that Beppe had been distressed by her visit. He had dealt with her kindly but perhaps she hadn’t deserved that kindness.
‘I’ll take you back to the hotel,’ Rio murmured without any expression at all. He had reached the conclusion that it would take a hacksaw to extract anything from Ellie that she did not want to share. What secrets was she concealing? What he had read in that investigative report? Or was there more?
‘Yes, thank you. I have a da—’ Ellie bit off the word before it could reach the tip of her tongue but she saw Rio’s dark gaze switch fast to her face and she felt her cheeks burn.
‘You have a date?’ Rio pressed in growling disbelief, staring at her as she stood there in the comparative dimness of the hall, a glowing beauty with a sexily tousled mane of vibrant coppery curls, translucent skin and a mouth that would’ve tempted a saint. And he had never been a saint. Even less was he known as a possessive lover, because he didn’t allow himself to become attached: once bitten, twice shy. So why did the very thought of Ellie becoming intimate with another man infuriate him? Disconcerted by that rush of anger, he tamped it down hard and gritted his teeth.
‘A guy I met in the village invited me out to dinner tonight,’ Ellie confided in a rush.
‘His name?’ Rio demanded.
‘Bruno Nigrelli.’
Rio’s nostrils flared. ‘I think he did some work for Beppe once. Lawyer?’
Ellie nodded uncomfortably.
Rio gritted his teeth even harder in the smouldering silence. Was she expecting him to object? Even waiting for him to do so? Wasn’t that how women sucked a man in, by assigning strings and conditions and making him want and demand more?
‘I’m not much in the mood for dinner now, but I don’t like letting people down—’
Rio’s dark eyes flared golden as the sunset. ‘Then cancel him and spend the night here with me instead.’
Ellie froze in bewilderment, green eyes flying over his lean, darkly handsome features. ‘Spend the night?’ she repeated shakily.
‘It would make more sense—’
Ellie dropped her gaze defensively. ‘Nothing about us makes sense—’
‘We make perfect sense. You decided I was a bastardo two years ago and even if I saved the world you wouldn’t budge an inch from that conviction,’ Rio derided.
‘I think a lot of women would think the same after that night at the wedding, but let’s not get into that,’ Ellie counselled heavily as she yanked open the hefty front door. ‘We have enough differences without raking up the past. I can’t stay, Rio—’
‘Ellie... When will you know?’
Ellie dropped her head as she settled into the passenger seat of his sports car. ‘In ten days to two weeks,’ she framed jaggedly. ‘I’ll do a test as soon as I can.’
In the sunlight, Rio stood very still. What would he do if Ellie conceived his child? He recalled his own sordid origins with an inner shudder of recoil, knowing in that instant that there would be no sacrifice too great were it to mean that his child could look back with pride and contentment on his or her early years. Only when Beppe and Amalia took an interest in him had Rio learned what it was to have self-respect. Being cleverer than everyone around him had only attracted the bullies. Being prettier as a boy had also drawn the abusers. His lean, strong face was stamped by the grim lines and hollows of bitter recollection and experience. As an adult, Rio Benedetti might be as rich as the fabled Croesus but he had never forgotten his humble beginnings in that dumpster.
Ellie glanced up to see what was preventing Rio from joining her in the car and ended up staring, because it was a revelation to see that Rio, all lean, mean and magnificent six-foot-plus of him, could look haunted and almost vulnerable. She scolded herself for that imaginative flight as soon as he started up the car but his rebuke about her tendency to judge was still nagging at the back of her mind. Sometimes she was kind of black-and-white about situations, she acknowledged uneasily, but just as she had learned all her life to follow rules she had learned to compromise and understand what motivated people to do the things they did, as well. She supposed she was still holding the events of two years earlier against Rio because his colourful sex life had shocked her. As someone who had never pushed against conventional boundaries, possibly she was a little too conservative for a passionate free spirit like Rio.
Rio pulled the car to a halt in the hotel car park. He shot Ellie a glance, noting the fineness of her delicate bone structure and how clearly it showed beneath her pale skin. She was exhausted and he could see it and he compressed his mouth on the urge to make another comment about Beppe. He refused to think about the dinner date she had. He refused to admit that the idea annoyed him. After all, he wasn’t possessive and he wasn’t jealous. He didn’t ever get attached to a woman—well, at least he hadn’t in almost ten years.
And when Rio had got attached—to Franca—it had been a disaster, he recalled grimly. Treachery laced with infidelity and a woman’s greed. Rio had learned the hard way that loving could be a one-way ticket to hell.
No, he definitely wasn’t jealous. He already knew that Ellie was a gold-digger, he reminded himself resolutely. He would only care about Ellie Dixon’s future if she became pregnant with his child. In the short term his sole interest in her lay in uncovering her mysterious connection to Beppe.
Rio sprang out of the car and strode round to open the passenger door. Disconcerted by that unexpected attention, Ellie climbed out and as she looked up warily into his glitteringly beautiful dark golden eyes, the sunlight hot on her skin, her conscience screamed like a fire alarm. She had been downright nasty about the sex even though he had been considerate and concerned and, bearing in mind that he had given her two climaxes, she had been unjust. Her skin flushed beet red.
‘Che cosa... What?’ Rio pressed in the strained silence.
‘I shouldn’t have said what I said back at your house,’ Ellie gabbled before she could lose her nerve. ‘It was a train wreck... Us, I mean, and me being...well, you know what. But you were good, I mean—’
Rio wanted to laugh but he fought the urge because she was so embarrassed, so utterly different from him in her attitude to sex. ‘Okay...’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ellie said curtly. ‘I was... I was upset.’
And with that apology she spun on her heel and walked into the hotel. Her head had a natural tilt, her hips a shapely sway, the skirt dancing above her long slender legs and, that fast, Rio was hard as a rock again, his hands clenching into fists by his sides. She drove him crazy, he reminded himself unnecessarily. But he had had her now and that should be that, game over. Hit it and quit it, he repeated to himself. He didn’t still want her. Of course he didn’t, so walk away, a little voice in his brain instructed.
Rio swung back into his car. The sound of Ellie moaning as he kissed her engulfed him, the surprised look of ecstasy on her face when she came, the exquisite feel of her soft, satiny skin. He swore vehemently, emptied his mind and dug out his phone. He needed a woman, any woman just as long as she wasn’t Ellie.
* * *
In a daze, Ellie went for a shower. She still ached. There would be no forgetting what she had done. And the incredulous way Rio had looked at her in the car park would stay with her until the day she died. Her face burned afresh. She should have kept quiet, she shouldn’t have said anything, should have left that short-lived intimacy and all memory of it back in his house in the hills where it belonged. A mistaken moment and not an important one in her scheme of things. Only sex. Although it would not be only sex if she fell pregnant, she conceded wretchedly, and refused to think about that angle on the grounds that it was stupid to worry before she knew she actually had something to worry about.
Although for the first time ever, Ellie desperately wanted to confide in someone and she thought about phoning Polly. She didn’t think Polly would tell her husband, Rashad, about that. But how did she know for sure? She covered her face with wet hands, all the stress of the past forty-eight hours piling up on her along with every doubt and insecurity she possessed. She still didn’t know how she had ended up having sex with Rio, but she knew she had wanted it to happen as much as he had. Being unable to put the blame on him stung, as well. He hadn’t sweet-talked her, filled her up with booze or seduced her—my goodness, anything but, she conceded ruefully.
Beppe called her on her mobile and asked her to meet him at a doctor’s surgery on the outskirts of Florence the next day. She refused the lift he offered her and assured him that she had satellite navigation and was happy to drive herself there. He invited her to dine at his home in the evening and she agreed, keen to take the opportunity to get to know him a little better, regardless of how Rio might feel about it. Should she tell Beppe that she knew Rio? Or would it be wiser to remain tactfully silent? She brooded about that while she got dressed to dine with Bruno.
It was a long evening. Bruno might have ticked all the basic boxes in the tally of what made a man attractive but he bored on about his work ambitions while asking little about Ellie. He kissed her on the cheek outside her hotel. He invited her out again and she made a polite excuse and she didn’t linger, speeding indoors, keen to get to bed.
Opening the door of her hotel room, she drew back with a sound of consternation when she saw the light burning beside her bed and the male reclining there. ‘How on earth did you get in here?’ she demanded.
Rio uncoiled fluidly off the bed and stretched with lazy assurance, not one whit perturbed by her attitude. ‘It wasn’t difficult. The staff know we’re...close,’ he selected with precision and the angry flush on her cheeks bloomed hotter still with chagrin. ‘I also own a large stake in the hotel.’
‘We are not close!’ Ellie contradicted, tossing her bag down on the chair in the corner.
Rio shrugged a broad shoulder, gracefully and silently evasive. He was as effortlessly beautiful as a dark angel sent to tempt even with his black hair tousled, his jawline shadowed and his tie missing. Her heartbeat had picked up speed. Her tiredness had taken a mysterious step back and she was already breathing as if she had run up a hill. And there was the craziest melting sensation in that place where she still ached from his sheer sexual energy. Yet she didn’t want that again, did she? It was a badly timed thought to have in Rio’s presence because her entire body quickened as if she had punched a button to switch it on to supersensitivity. Her nipples stung and her thighs pressed together as if to silence the squirming readiness low in her pelvis.
‘Are you planning to tell me what you’re doing here?’ Ellie enquired stiffly, tamping down all those disobedient thoughts and responses.
‘I wanted to be sure you came back alone,’ Rio told her.
‘And how is that your business?’
‘You were with me today,’ Rio murmured.
Ellie tilted her chin, emerald eyes gleaming like chips of ice. ‘Doesn’t mean you own me.’
Rio shrugged again. ‘I’d still have beaten the hell out of him had you brought him upstairs.’
Ellie’s lips parted and then closed again because there really wasn’t much she could say to that. ‘You do a lot of that sort of thing?’ she prompted a split second later, honest curiosity gripping her.
‘Get physical? Once it was a regular activity.’ Dark eyes spilling a glittering gleam of gold from below lush curling black lashes, Rio strode past her to the door. ‘I had to, to protect myself. I grew up in a tough environment.’
‘You’re leaving?’ Ellie framed in disconcertion and then could have bitten her tongue out because she was making it sound as though she wanted him to stay. And she didn’t.
‘Sì...’ Rio treated her to a slow burning appraisal. ‘Somehow I doubt that you’d be up for anything else tonight, principessa.’
Fury splintered through Ellie. Leave it to Rio to tell it as it is. He would stay for sex but not to chat or share a drink or supper or anything more civilised. The claustrophobic silence of the room enclosed her, increasing her nervous tension. The tip of her tongue stole out to moisten her dry lower lip.
‘I love your mouth,’ Rio husked soft and low, his attention locking to the sultry fullness of her pink lips.
Gooseflesh pebbled Ellie’s arms and a wicked little quiver snaked down her taut spinal cord. She was so aware of him that her very skin prickled and tingled with it. For an insane moment she imagined pushing him backwards down on the bed and teaching him that he didn’t know everything about her. And then she blinked, sane Ellie swimming back to the fore, and she spun and opened the door for him so that he would leave more quickly.
‘Sometimes you crack me up, bella mia,’ Rio confided with unholy amusement, recognising her defensiveness in that almost desperate pulling open of the door to hasten his departure. ‘When you’re thinking about me in bed tonight, will you be kissing me or thumping me?’
Ellie breathed in so deep she almost spontaneously combusted while she watched Rio clatter down the stairs without an ounce of discomfiture in his bearing. She had never met anyone quite like Rio Benedetti before and that was probably why he knocked her for six every time she saw him, she told herself soothingly. He was bad, he was brash, he was incredibly sexy and insolent and he had the kind of charismatic confidence that burned like a solar flare. She was too polite and inhibited to deal with him as he should be dealt with. Her hands clenched into fists.
He embarrassed her too. The staff had seen her going out with Bruno Nigrelli and now knew she had returned to find Rio waiting in her bedroom. Ought she to complain about that invasion? Or, having already been seen in Rio’s company and kissing him, perhaps it was wiser to ignore the situation lest she end up even more embarrassed. Had Rio made her look slutty? Or like a femme fatale? She went to bed on that thought, deciding that Rio’s pursuit, if she could label it with that word, made her look like a much more exciting woman than she actually was. But she still wanted to kill him for being so careless of appearances, so arrogant and incomprehensible.
Why would he have beaten up Bruno had she brought the other man back to her room? Presumably that had been a joke, although she had not seen the humour in it. She could not credit that Rio could be jealous or staking some sort of male claim to her. He wasn’t the type. And instead of finding the sleep she badly needed the riddle of his complex personality ensured that she couldn’t stop her brain running on and actually relax enough to drift off.
* * *
The following morning she met up with Beppe outside a smart suburban surgery near Florence. The older man looked perfectly calm and collected and there was no sign of strain or distress in either his expression or his friendly, easy manner. Had Rio exaggerated? Overreacted? They went inside the surgery and swabs were taken. Beppe passed over a tiny gold locket, which he quietly admitted contained a lock of his brother’s hair. Ellie flushed and made no comment. After all, her mother, Annabel, had named both brothers as her daughter’s possible father, and to do so, she had presumably been uncertain as to which had fathered her child.
‘We will know within twenty-four hours,’ Beppe assured her with quiet satisfaction. ‘And now that I have you here in my beloved Firenze, I will play tourist with you and show you the sights as they should be seen.’
Relieved by his mood and the welcome offer of his company, Ellie relaxed and over a cup of coffee and a pastry in a sun-drenched square found herself admitting that she knew Rio and had first met him at her sister’s wedding.
The older man did not hide his astonishment. ‘He should’ve told me that—’
‘To be honest,’ Ellie added hurriedly, ‘Rio and I didn’t get on very well, so it wasn’t an acquaintance either of us was likely to pursue.’
Beppe sighed. ‘You surprise me. Women are drawn to my godson. Obviously you’ve seen him since your arrival—’
‘He called in at the hotel on my first day. I didn’t tell him anything,’ Ellie assured him, her cheeks colouring when she was forced to think of what else she had done with Rio since that day, but it was a major relief for her to admit simply that she knew Rio.
‘Rio put me on a pedestal a very long time ago,’ Beppe confided wryly. ‘If you and I discover that we are related by blood, it will be a huge shock for him and that is why I have told him nothing as yet.’
‘Were you friends with his parents? I know he’s your godson.’
‘No, my wife and I never knew his parents,’ Beppe admitted dismissively and changed the subject to ask her to choose where she would like to go first with him.
Beppe took her to see Michelangelo’s sculptures in the Galleria dell’Academia before showing her his favourite paintings in the Uffizi. Her frank admission that she knew nothing whatsoever about art did her no disservice in his eyes and when she liked something he asked her why she liked it, evidently set on forming her taste. He also told her a little about his own family background. The palazzo had been in his family for several generations and the Sorrentino prosperity had originally been built on the production of internationally acclaimed wines. His younger brother, Vincenzo, had once managed the vineyards. Beppe had always been academic and had worked as a university professor before his wife’s ill health had forced him to take a step back from his career. From that point on, he had become more involved in his wife’s charitable endeavours, which had been very much focussed on the needs of disabled and disadvantaged children.
‘What time is dinner this evening?’ Ellie asked when Beppe had finally returned her to her car. She noted that he was out of breath and perspiring and she scolded herself for letting him do so much on a hot day when he was clearly by his girth and indoor habits not usually a physically active man.
‘Nine o’clock. And it will be formal,’ Beppe warned her. ‘But don’t worry about that if you have no formal wear with you. Everyone will understand that you are on holiday.’
Ellie smiled at that recollection as she returned to her hotel. Thanks to Polly’s holiday shop, Ellie had a dream of a dress hanging in the wardrobe. In fact, uninterested though she had always been in fashion, it was the sort of dress that brought stars to her eyes because it was wonderfully feminine and flowing. Fashioned of peach lace, it was a daring colour for a redhead, but remarkably flattering against her pale skin and bright hair. She showered and paid more heed than usual to the minimal make-up she wore while wondering if Rio would be at the dinner. Would he be annoyed that she had gone ahead and told his godfather that they already knew each other? Staying silent on that score had become impossible for her because Beppe was so very straightforward and plain-spoken and she did not want to risk losing his good opinion by keeping secrets from him.
The gravel in front of Beppe’s home was a sea of luxury-model cars, which disconcerted Ellie because evidently the dinner party was a much bigger, fancier event than she had assumed it would be. Her fear that she would prove to be overdressed receded as soon as she was shown into a crowded salon filled with clusters of very elegant laughing and chattering guests. Beppe hurried straight over to welcome her and tucked her hand over his arm protectively as he took her to join the group he was with. Within a few minutes, Ellie had relaxed.
And then the door opened again and she glanced across the room to see the new arrivals and saw Rio entering with a tall willowy blonde clinging to his arm. Her heart sank and she couldn’t stop it from doing that. Her pleasant smile lurched and her tummy flipped and all of a sudden she felt ridiculously sick and shaky. What the heck was the matter with her? She was not in a relationship with Rio, was she? Why should it bother her that he was already showing off another woman? After all, she had known from the outset that he was a notorious womaniser with few moral scruples.
Rio was taken aback by Ellie’s presence because Beppe hadn’t mentioned that his visitor would be attending. Nor did it help that Ellie looked stupendous in an apricot dress that smoothly shaped her lush curves at breast and hip while highlighting her porcelain-pale skin and the sheer vibrancy of her coppery tumbling mane of hair. His physical response was swift and urgent, the swelling at his groin an unwelcome reminder that ‘hit it and quit it’ hadn’t worked for him where she was concerned. Above her breast, she had fastened a diamond brooch in the shape of a star and it was the only jewellery she wore. So, she did have the diamond brooch her uncle had accused her of stealing, Rio recognised in sudden disgust, the brooch she had denied all knowledge of after her grandmother’s death. For Rio, it was a timely reminder of the kind of woman he was dealing with in Ellie Dixon. At heart she had to be a greedy, gold-digging liar who had learned how to put on a good show as a caring, compassionate doctor.
Rio strode straight up to Beppe and introduced his gorgeous companion, who seemed unable to take her eyes off Ellie’s dress. The blonde’s name was Carmela and she was unquestionably beautiful and very different in style from Ellie. She was taller, thinner, blue-eyed and possessed enviably straight, long silky blond hair. Her dress was much more revealing than Ellie’s but then she had a perfect body to reveal. A long slender leg showed through the side slit in the dress while the plunging neckline showed a great deal of her improbably large, high breasts. Gorgeous but kind of slutty, Ellie decided, discomfited by the speed with which that shrewish opinion came to her mind.
‘Of course, Ellie needs no introduction to you, Rio,’ his godfather, Beppe, pointed out smoothly as an opening salvo. ‘Since you first met at her sister’s wedding.’
Rio was transfixed by that bombshell reminder coming at him out of nowhere and unadulterated rage roared through his big powerful frame as his attention shot to Ellie, who evaded his gaze while slowly turning as red as a tomato, her guilt writ large in her face. Ellie had chosen to come clean with Beppe and had dropped him in it without conscience, Rio registered grimly. A power play? Or was it a warning? What else might she choose to tell his godfather about him? Shot through with anger and frustration at his inability to respond with the truth, Rio was incapable of even forcing a smile.
‘We didn’t hit it off,’ Ellie said abruptly. ‘That’s why he didn’t mention it.’
Shot from rage to wonderment at that apparent intervention on his behalf, Rio dealt Ellie a suspicious look from glittering dark-as-jet eyes semiveiled by his lush lashes and shrugged. ‘First impressions are rarely reliable,’ he quipped as he turned away to address someone else who had spoken to him.
Ellie was appalled that something she had revealed had caused tension between Rio and Beppe. Her trip to Italy and her search for her father were definitely beginning to feel like a minefield she was trying to pick her way across.
As Rio moved to grasp a glass from a tray and pass it to her, Carmela hissed, ‘That redhead’s wearing a Lavroff!’
Rio shot the fashion model on his arm a blank appraisal.
‘That dress was the star of the Lavroff show I walked for in the spring.’
A designer gown, surely a little rich for a junior doctor’s salary? Although perhaps not too expensive for a doctor whose dying patient had left her everything she possessed, Rio reflected sombrely. It was starting to occur to him that he had underestimated Ellie and how much trouble she was capable of causing. He could see at a glance that she already had Beppe wrapped round her little finger. In fact, her hand was resting comfortably on the older man’s arm. Rio dragged in a sudden breath, his lean, darkly handsome features tensing into tough lines of restraint. Was that what he had to fear?
Ironically that risk hadn’t even crossed his mind because Beppe lived a celibate life and had never been known to seek out female companionship. But Beppe had been acquainted with Ellie’s mother, and if Ellie’s mother had been even half as beautiful as her daughter, she would hardly have been forgettable. Back then, however, Beppe had been safely married and now he was not and he was making no attempt to hide his delight in Ellie’s company. Rio stationed himself where he could watch his godfather and he was sharply disconcerted by the level of familiarity he could already see developing between the pair. Ellie whispered something in Beppe’s ear and he chuckled and patted her hand fondly. He moved her on with him to another group of guests, giving her no opportunity to stray.
At his elbow, Carmela was still whinging on enviously about the Lavroff gown. Rio wasn’t interested. He often paid for the designer clothes his lovers wore but he took no interest in the names or the cost, writing the expenses off as the cost of maintaining a reasonable sex life. His entire focus remained on Ellie. He listened to her making intelligent conversation, heard her laugh several times and learned that she had toured the Uffizi gallery with Beppe. Inferno, she certainly didn’t need to be taught how to best please a much older, lonely man with a lifelong love of art. But she would soon learn her mistake if she persisted on her current ambitious trajectory. Rio would destroy her before he would allow her to hurt Beppe Sorrentino.
And what if she’s pregnant? Rio backed away a step as Carmela tried to get closer to him. He studied Ellie as they were seated at the dining table and strove to imagine that shapely body swollen with his child. The idea unnerved him but it also excited him in a peculiar way, which only had the effect of unnerving him even more.
Ellie barely touched the food on her plate. She eavesdropped on Carmela’s airheaded views on suntans as affected by climate change. She noticed that Rio didn’t listen to a word his companion said and appeared to be tuning her out like an irritating noise. She watched him, as well, catching the downward slant of his beautifully shaped mouth, the tension in his exquisite bone structure that hardened his exotic cheekbones and placed hollows beneath them. He was furious with her, she knew he was. Rio had a temper like a flamethrower and he was boiling like a cauldron of oil.
But Ellie was angry too. Only the day before he had been with her and last night he had been waiting for her in her hotel room. And now he was with a beautiful blonde model, who operated off one very talkative brain cell. Why was she hurt? Why the hell was she hurting over his rejection of her as a woman? Time after time over the years Ellie had learned that men didn’t really want career-driven, independent women. She wasn’t feminine enough, she wasn’t soft enough, she could deal with a spider just fine but a mouse sent her screaming. She was stubborn and contrary and choosy and he didn’t fit the bill for her either, so why was she agonising? Why would she want a gorgeous, arrogant, shameless man whore in her life anyway? She was far too sensible and strait-laced for a male of his ilk. Sheer lust had put her in his arms and she had got what she deserved, she told herself repressively.
Beppe took her and several other guests to admire his latest painting acquisition in the hall. Rio and Carmela joined them. Carmela wondered out loud if the seventeenth-century subject of the portrait was wearing hair extensions. Ellie whispered a polite, ‘Excuse me...’ in Beppe’s ear as he guided the group into his library to show them something else and she walked down the corridor to the cloakroom instead. Freshening up, she grimaced at her anxious reflection in the mirror. Why was it that when Rio was around he dominated everything? Including her thoughts?
When she emerged, Rio was standing waiting for her, his lean, dark face stormy and tense. ‘I want a word,’ he told her grimly.
‘But I don’t,’ Ellie told him as he snapped a hand round her wrist and pulled her outdoors onto the cool, formal loggia with pillars that ran along that side of the house.
‘You’re such a bully, Rio!’ Ellie objected, rubbing her wrist the instant he released it as though he had bruised her.
Rio backed her up against the stone wall behind her by the simple expedient of moving forward, shutting out any view of the gardens and forcing her to tip her head back to look up at him. ‘What did you tell Beppe about us?’ he demanded in a raw undertone.
‘Very little. That we met at the wedding and that you called on me at the hotel the day I arrived,’ Ellie proffered. ‘I didn’t tell him what you said or threatened or anything of that nature. I simply wanted to clear the air. Pretending we were strangers... I mean, why would I mislead Beppe like that? I’ve got nothing to hide—’
‘Not according to the report I had done on you,’ Rio reminded her darkly.
Ellie bridled at that reference, fully convinced that any close and proper check on her background would reveal that she was innocent of any wrongdoing. ‘I didn’t intend to cause friction between you and Beppe. I didn’t think of that angle,’ she admitted guiltily. ‘But I’m sorry that I embarrassed you like that—’
‘Are you really?’ Rio lifted a sardonic ebony brow, staring down at her, noting the mere hint at her neckline of the pale valley between her full breasts and entranced by the new discovery that showing so little could actually be sexier than showing a lot. As he tensed, inescapably recalling his own response to those luscious curves the day before, he whipped his gaze up to her face in the hope of lowering his temperature. ‘I think you dropped me in it deliberately to cause trouble,’ he contended.
‘But then you would think that because you always think the worst of me,’ Ellie shot back at him in exasperation. ‘Exactly what is your problem, Rio?’
Rio ran his fingertip along the succulent curve of her lower lip and watched a tiny pulse flicker fast at the base of her elegant white throat. ‘You’re my only problem, principessa,’ he told her huskily. ‘We had our moment and that was supposed to be it—’
‘It is it!’ Ellie seethed, furious that he was cornering her when he had brought another woman to dinner.
‘Not for me,’ Rio confided, letting a coppery corkscrew curl coil round his finger like a vine, his stunning dark golden eyes hot and hungrily gripping hers by sheer force of will. ‘I’m not done yet—’
‘But I am,’ Ellie spelled out thinly. ‘You’re ruining my holiday—’
‘When we’re done, I’ll tell you,’ Rio asserted, bending down to nip at her full lower lip with the edge of his teeth.
A violent shiver ran down through her taut body, that tiny sting of pain somehow setting off a chain reaction of electrified awareness and sensitivity. He lowered his head and he took her mouth with a raw sexual demand that momentarily stole Ellie’s wits. She fell back against the wall, knees weak, melting heat surging in her pelvis.
‘Rio!’ a voice interposed curtly, and both of them froze.
Rio lifted his dark head and stepped back to study his godfather, keen to interpret his expression. Beppe looked angry and protective. Ellie straightened, her face flushing as mortification consumed her.
‘Carmela’s looking for you,’ Beppe murmured flatly. ‘I suggest that you take her home. I would also suggest that you stay away from Ellie.’
Rio released his breath in an audible hiss. ‘Although I’m always ready to listen to suggestions, Beppe,’ he conceded, ‘I’ve always forged my own path.’
With a nod of acknowledgement to Ellie and the older man, Rio strode back indoors, not one whit perturbed by the scene Beppe had interrupted. Or, at least, if he was bothered, he wasn’t showing it, Ellie acknowledged.
‘I have no right to interfere,’ Beppe said uncomfortably to Ellie. ‘I love Rio like a son but I also know him. He had some unfortunate experiences with women in his youth and I would advise you to keep your distance. He plays with women. He doesn’t take them seriously. He would hurt you and I would hate to see that happen. Furthermore, if you prove to be either my niece or even my daughter, you will often meet Rio and that—’
‘Could get very awkward,’ Ellie filled in ruefully for herself. ‘It’s all right, Beppe. I kind of worked out that stuff about Rio anyway, so don’t worry about me. I’m a big girl and I can look after myself.’
Rio and Carmela were nowhere to be seen when they rejoined the rest of the guests. Ellie stayed quite late but insisted on returning to her hotel when Beppe offered her the use of a guest room. She drove back in a contemplative state of mind and wondered if she would find Rio in her room again. Not this time however.
Soberly she lay in bed, wondering about the results of the DNA test. Would she prove to be half-Sorrentino? Or was she in for a shock on that score? It was perfectly possible, after all, that some time after Beppe’s rejection her mother had spent a night with some other man. Well, at least she would soon know one way or another, even if she didn’t actually manage to identify her father, she told herself soothingly.
But how would Rio react if she was a Sorrentino? Ironically she didn’t want to upset him but nor was she willing to apologise for an act of fate. She was already wondering what Beppe’s mention of Rio’s ‘unfortunate youthful experiences’ with women had entailed. But then surely no intelligent male could be so innately distrustful and cynical about her sex without cause?
And what did it matter? She relived the teasing sting of his teeth on her lip and a forbidden little quiver snaked through her. With a groan she rolled over and pressed her offending mouth into the pillow. Rio was as potent as poison and equally toxic and Beppe was right, she needed to keep her distance. To do anything else would be to court disaster because Rio had no off switch, no respect for boundaries...and probably even less respect for her, she conceded unhappily.
