“Okay,” she said, “you’re right. I’m starved. Is there a diner around here? A McD’s? My treat.”
Her treat.
He wanted to laugh.
Or maybe not.
Women bought him gifts. Nothing new in that. An expensive watch for what one breathlessly called a one month anniversary. A ridiculously expensive case of wine from one lover who’d somehow learned the date of his birthday. From others over the years, a gold pen, sapphire studs, diamond cufflinks.
And each time, he said, “Thank you, it’s a wonderful gift, but I can’t let you spend your money on me.”
The real message was that he would not let a woman forge a relationship intimate enough for him to accept a gift.
But no woman had ever offered him something like this. A hamburger and fries. He couldn’t even imagine any of the women he knew admitting to liking hamburgers and fries.
For the first time in his life, Rio wanted to say yes.
Hell, no.
What he really wanted was to pull to the side of the road and kiss the lovely, messy, quirky, altogether delectable Isabella.
Rio took a deep breath.
And did neither.
Kissing her was absolutely out of the question. Hadn’t he made that vow to himself just a few minutes ago?
As for going to a restaurant, even a diner or a fast-food joint …
No way.
He wasn’t naive. There were a handful of other places that drew people who shunned publicity. Ski resorts, islands in the sun. He’d been to a few of them, enough to know that a town’s laissez-faire attitude toward its rich and famous visitors could change after dark when the movers and shakers of the world vied for just the right table in just the right place.
For all he knew, that even applied to diners and burger places in a town frequented by high-profile names.
The very last thing he wanted was for someone to recognize him now. Living a lie, he thought as his guilty conscience gave a nasty twinge, was not easy.
“Tell you what,” he said. “We’ll make something when we get home.”
“Home? Is that how you think of his estate?”
“Of his … Oh. D’Aquila. Well, sure. I live there.”
“Will he object? To you having an overnight guest. I mean—”
“I know what you mean. Just for the record, I haven’t had any overnight guests. Not the way you meant it.”
“I didn’t …”
“You did.” His tone roughened. “What you really want to know is have I had a woman stay there with me.”
Isabella flushed. “Why would I care?”
“That’s an excellent question. Why would you?”
Why indeed? Isabella thought, and searched for an answer that made sense.
“Because—because I’m a little uncomfortable at the thought of staying in a house without the owner knowing it.”
It wasn’t the answer he’d wanted, and wasn’t that ridiculous? This had nothing to do with the reason a man generally takes a woman home with him.
This was about expediency.
There was nothing else he could do with her.
You could tell her the truth.
And his conscience could just shut the hell up. Hadn’t he already gone through this internal debate? Hadn’t he concluded, and logically so, that there was no harm in continuing the deception for another few hours?
After that, Isabella Orsini would be a memory.
Rio shrugged.
“D’Aquila wouldn’t object. Besides, he’ll be away for the next few days.”
“And you have—what? An apartment over the garage? A house on the grounds?”
The real caretaker lived a couple of miles away, but he could hardly tell her that.
“Over the garage,” he said. When it came to telling lies, Pinocchio had nothing on him. “But it isn’t finished yet. For the time being, I live in the house itself.”
“Your employer doesn’t mind?”
“You know,” he said carefully, “it might be a mistake to judge men by the size of their bank accounts.”
That won him a sigh.
“You sound like Anna.”
“Your sister.”
“She says I’m too judgmental when it comes to men.”
Perhaps this Anna was more insightful than he’d thought.
“A woman like you should be judgmental,” he said gruffly.
“A woman like me?”
A woman who’s bright and beautiful, innocent and sexy, a woman any man would be taking to his bed and not to a guest room, he almost said. Thankfully, the gate to his estate loomed up just in time.
“A woman on her own,” he said, and for once, grazie a Dio, the gate opened without difficulty and he put the moment, and the thought, behind him.
Rio headed straight for the kitchen, switched on all the lights, opened the fridge—and then realized Isabella was still standing in the breakfast room that adjoined it.
“Now what?”
She looked at him, then down at herself, then at him again.
“I’m a mess.”
She was. A lovely mess, but a mess nonetheless. The torn and stained suit, the smudged blouse, the panty hose with so many runs they looked more like ribbons than nylons.
He was pretty much a mess himself.
“Is there somewhere I can wash up?”
There were five places where she could wash up, five huge bathrooms with five huge tubs and five huge shower stalls, and suddenly he saw himself with her in one of those bathrooms, saw himself slowly undressing her, baring her to his eyes, saw himself lifting her, carrying her into one of those enormous shower stalls, turning on the water so it poured down on them as gently as a summer rain, saw his hands on her breasts, his mouth on her nipples …
“Matteo? If you could just tell me where to find a bathroom …”
“No problem,” he said, his voice hoarse, his erection almost painful. It was a damned good thing he was standing behind the open refrigerator door.
He gave it a minute. Then he flashed what he hoped was a smile, shut the door and led her up the stairs to the guest suite farthest from his own rooms, though how in hell he was going to explain his using the master suite was beyond him.
Everything was beyond him now.
He knew it, knew that he should never have brought her here because his vaunted self-control was gone, gone, gone—
“Okay,” he said briskly, as he flung open the door to the suite, “there should be clean towels in the bathroom. New toothbrushes, soap, shampoo, all that stuff.”
Isabella nodded. “Thank you.”
“Hey, don’t thank me. Thank the decorator. You know how these guys are. Somebody tells a guy who has a PhD in ribbons and bows to furnish a house, he goes all the way.”
She laughed. Good. Keep it light. Anything to keep his mind from wandering to the one place it wanted to go.
He stepped back.
“The kitchen,” he said. “Fifteen minutes.”
“Yessir,” Isabella said, and gave a quick salute, the same kind he’d given her hours before.
Rio narrowed his eyes. Then he pulled the door shut so hard it sounded like a thunderclap and marched resolutely down the hall.
As soon as the door shut, Isabella sagged back against it and let out a long breath.
The way he’d looked at her right before they’d started talking about toothpaste and towels … The way she’d felt, knowing he was looking at her that way …
Isabella, a stern voice that sounded a lot like Anna’s said, whatever are you doing here?
The answer was simple.
She was spending the night because her car was in a ditch and the trains weren’t running.
Could a voice in your head really say, Pshaw? Or as close to pshaw as it could get? And, so what if the trains weren’t running? A town like this, there were sure to be private car services.
And you didn’t think of that until now because …?
Because she couldn’t afford the zillion bucks a car service would surely charge for taking her from here to the city, and yes, she had a rich father and rich brothers and a sister who was married to a prince. So what? She’d always insisted on making it on her own.
Damned if she’d stop now.
Isabella turned the lock and began peeling off her clothes. She looked at the suit jacket, then the skirt.
Ugh.
Anna, she decided, using two fingers to pick both items from the tile floor, would surely not want this stuff back. Ditto for the blouse. Grimacing, she dropped all three items into a discreetly disguised wastebasket in the corner of a discreetly disguised bathroom that had been designed to look more like an Asiatic spa than a room meant to contain a tub, a sink, a toilet and a shower.
Not that she’d ever seen an Asiatic spa but if she ever did, it would probably look like this. At least, she hoped it would. Silk wallpaper meant to look like golden meadow grass. A soaking tub big enough to double as a houseboat. A shower that could easily host a party or, at least, a man and a woman.
A man with dark hair and blue eyes, broad shoulders and narrow hips. Long legs and, wait a minute, what about that square jaw, that tiny scar she’d noticed, that unabashedly sexy grin …
Isabella frowned, peeled off what remained of her panty hose, her bra and her panties—she’d never been sure whether you were supposed to wear them over or under your panty hose but it didn’t much matter because she lived in jeans. As for all this stuff, bra and panties and pathetic panty hose—it went into the trash, too.
Soap, she thought. And shampoo. Matteo had said—and yes, once she’d opened a few drawers, she found it all. Soap and shampoo and conditioner, toothpaste and toothbrushes and towels. Big, fluffy towels.
She plucked a wrapped bar of soap from its shelf and sniffed it. Mmm. Vanilla. Were they all …? No. There were half a dozen different scents. Lemon. Jasmine. Lavender. Tea rose. Ginger.
Lemon, she decided. Lemon was always her favorite. And for her hair … She opened a small bottle and brought it to her nose. Lemon, again.
Perfect.
Did Matteo like the smell of lemon?
Not that it mattered, she thought quickly, as she stepped into the enormous glass shower. Why on earth would it matter? She liked it. That was all that was important. She wasn’t interested in Matteo Rossi as a man. Well, he was a man, of course. An incredible man. Gorgeous. Sexy. Funny and clever, but so what?
She wasn’t looking for a one-night stand.
Even if she had been—
Matteo wasn’t interested in her.
He’d kissed her. So what? You didn’t have to be sexually knowledgeable—and, good Lord, there had to be a better way to put it than that—to know that a kiss was just a kiss.
She had four brothers, all of them settled now into happy married lives, but she’d grown up with them, she’d overheard conversations she wasn’t supposed to overhear. Meaning, Isabella thought as she rinsed conditioner from her hair, meaning a guy might well kiss a woman for no better reason than because he could.
A good-looking man saw a good-looking woman …
Not that she was good-looking, she thought, catching sight of her reflection in the mirror across from the glass shower stall.
She turned a little. To the side. To the back. To the front again.
Okay. She wasn’t beautiful. She wasn’t homely. What she was, she decided, was medium.
Medium height. Medium build. Medium everything, legs and hips and breasts.
Would Matteo want to kiss a medium woman? If he saw her now, would he? With her hair loose and wet, the long curls hanging down her back. With her skin glittering with droplets of water. With her nipples tightly budded by the coolness of the water.
Or by imagining him, in the stall with her.
Isabelle moved the soap slowly over her skin.
His body, hard and muscled and sleek, supporting hers as she leaned back against him. His hands, cupping her breasts; his fingers on her nipples. His mouth on the nape of her neck. His leg separating her thighs, and then his hand between them, seeking, finding, touching—
The soap fell from her fingers.
Quickly, she picked it up. Rinsed herself. Shut off the water, grabbed an oversize bath towel and wrapped herself in it as she padded into the bedroom.
Fantasizing about George Clooney was one thing. Not that she ever did but if she did, well, George Clooney was George Clooney. A face, a body on the screen.
Matteo Rossi, on the other hand, was a real person. A real, real person, someone she knew. Someone in another room, just down the hall, maybe standing in the shower right now, naked …
Isabella bit back a moan.
What was wrong with her?
She didn’t think about naked men. She didn’t think about men, period. It was silly and she had better things to do with her time, like retrieving the yucky suit and equally yucky blouse from the trash because, damnit, she had nothing else to put on, and the fifteen minutes Matteo had mentioned were just about—
Knock, knock, knock.
Isabella spun toward the door. “Yes?”
“It’s me.”
Her heart pounded. Matteo. Who else would it be?
“I know.” She winced. That was clever. “I mean, I’ll be ready in—”
“I have some stuff you can wear.”
She blinked. So much for his not having brought women here before.
“Isabella? Open the door.”
“No, that’s okay. I mean, I don’t need—”
“You do,” Matteo said, sounding amused. “Unless you really prefer that ‘I’ve been dragged through the mud’ look that’s so popular this year.”
She laughed. Carefully. Not loud enough so he’d hear it, but how could she not laugh at such a perfect description of how she’d certainly looked in what had once been a designer outfit?
She looked down at herself. The towel was tucked tightly under her arms and went all the way down to her knees. She wore less than this to the pool.
“Okay. You want to put that stuff back on, I’ll just—”
The door swung open. Wrong. Isabella had cracked it maybe an inch. Rio saw an eye, half a mouth, a tumble of dark, wet curls and a naked shoulder.
A wet naked shoulder.
His mouth went dry.
There was a long silence. Then he cleared his throat and forced his gaze to her face.
“I, ah, I brought you some things.”
“What size?”
He blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I wondered what size clothes the women you haven’t brought here left be—”
Isabella’s voice trailed off. Oh, God! Such a dumb thing to say? What did it matter how many women he invited home? She was spending the night out of expediency, not spending it with him.
“Why, Izzy,” he said softly. “You’re jealous.”
Heat flooded her face. “Certainly not! I simply meant—”
“I know exactly what you meant.”
“No,” she said quickly, “you don’t. Why would I—”
“They’re sweats. And socks.” He smiled. “Mine.”
“Oh. Well, I knew that. I mean, I figured that. I mean—”
Rio put his hand against the door. Before she had time to react, he’d pushed it open, leaned in, bent his head and captured her lips with his.
Dio, she tasted wonderful. Mint toothpaste and essence of Isabella. It was an amazing combination and when she moaned and melted toward him, he dropped the stuff he was holding and wrapped his arms around her.
She was soft. Warm. She smelled of lemon. And he wanted her, wanted her, wanted her …
It took all the willpower he possessed to slowly drop his hands to his sides and step back. Isabella was breathing hard. Well, merda, so was he.
“I don’t,” she whispered, “I really don’t understand any of this. I’m not like this. I’m not. I’m really not—”
He bent to her
and kissed her again. Deeper. Harder. With a hunger that he knew he’d never felt before. Then he scooped the sweats and socks from the floor and held them toward her. She looked at them. Looked at him. Then, clutching the towel to her with one hand, she took the things and pressed them against her breast.
“I’ll meet you in the kitchen,” Rio said gruffly.
One last kiss. One soft brush of his lips over hers. Then he stepped away, closed the door …
And wondered what she’d say if he told her he didn’t understand any of it, either.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HER knees were wobbly.
Which was silly.
How could a man’s kisses turn your knees to jelly?
They did, though. Isabella plopped down on the edge of the bed. Maybe it was safer to contemplate a thing that was clearly a physical impossibility sitting down.
Her lips tingled. Her heart was racing. She was breathing fast. She was a cliché-ridden mess, a bad romantic movie translated from the screen to real life.
Brilliant. Truly brilliant.
The clothes Matteo had given her lay in her lap. She looked down and choked back a laugh. Workout clothing. A sweatshirt and pants, a pair of socks that looked big enough to fit the feet of a yeti.
And she’d accused him of bringing her stuff another woman had worn.
The laugh turned into a groan, and Isabella buried her face in her hands.
Forget silly. She’d gone straight to stupid. Why was he doing this to her? Turning not just her bones but her brain to jelly?
She drew a long, ragged breath, pushed her hair from her eyes and sat up straight.
Except—except he wasn’t “doing” anything. Well, he was kissing her, sending shivers up and down her spine each time he did, but she was equally guilty.
She let him do it. Let him? An understatement. She was encouraging him by kissing him back, each and every time.
The why of that was easy.
She was doing it because she loved how he kissed her. How he held her. She loved the feel of his hard body against hers, the heat of his hands, the tightly controlled power she could sense when he held her.
Forget what she’d told herself about his kissing her because he could.
He wanted more. Lots more.
And, oh, my, so did she.
Which was absolutely, totally, completely incomprehensible.
The Real Rio D'Aquila Page 7
