“What is it, Helena?” He cupped my chin, drawing my gaze away from my knees. His eyes landed squarely on my lips, and I couldn’t help but dart my tongue out to slick over them.
“I told you she’s getting married, right?” With his nod, I continued. “She wants me to bring a date, a suitable one in her eyes. And when she found out about you today, she wanted to know if you were my date.” I chewed the inside of my lip, fidgeting with the bottom hem of my sundress before I added, “I kind of told her you were an old friend.”
“Helena, what do you want?” The deeper tone of his voice almost sounded like a command, a demand for honesty, for truth. And it sent an unnecessary jolt of desire straight to my core.
“I want to keep you to myself. I want you to want to draw me, to be inspired by me. And I’m afraid if you meet Daphne, you’ll be just as smitten with her as everyone else in the world, and you won’t see me anymore.”
“Beautiful women are a dime a dozen. They come and go like the breeze off the ocean. But women like you? Enchantresses with a magnetic draw that commands attention and demands to be immortalized in art? You’re one of a kind.” He gestured vaguely out toward the beach. Toward the blonde, model-perfect women playing in the sand and the surf. “You know what I see when I look out there?”
I followed his gesture, trying to figure out what he would see. What an artist would see. But all I could see were people I could never hope to measure up to.
“There’s plenty of beauty out there, but they don’t inspire anything. I don’t want to keep watching them, I don’t want to chase the sadness away in their eyes, and I certainly don’t want to draw them. But with you, I see depth. I see a strength, a resilience. I see truth.” He reached for my hand and squeezed it. “It was obvious from the moment I saw you, and I knew I had to capture it.”
“Surely there are more polished subjects for your art.”
“The imperfections are what make us perfect. The world is unpolished and raw. I don’t know what you think you’re lacking, but I assure you, I don’t see it.” He reached up and tucked my hair behind my ear. “These things you fear make you less than beautiful simply enhance your beauty. You can’t see them because you’ve been looking through the wrong lens.”
He pulled away and reached in his bag. A moment later, he had a camera in hand. “May I?”
I nodded, and quickly shifted into what my mother and my sister called my best pose.
“Just relax. Breathe. Talk to me. It’s just you and me, Helena.”
How did he do that? How did he have the power to make me feel like I was really the only woman he could see?
“This wedding. Why is it important for you to have a date?”
“It’s a destination wedding. Nearly a whole week leading up to the big event. And she’s my little sister.”
The click of the camera startled me, but before I could say anything or shift toward posing again, he said, “But why is it important to have a date? Will you not be able to go without one?”
“My mom already thinks I’m going to die alone in the back of my shop or end up with my carcass eaten by cats I don’t even own. And I’ve already heard the questions about when it’s going to be me, and aren’t I so sad that Daphne’s getting married before I am. If it were a local wedding, one that I could go to and then leave again, it would be fine. I could handle it. But this isn’t just one evening.”
He nodded. “A man would help soothe their fears and keep the questions at bay.”
“My fears too, I guess.” Although, I doubted just a casual boyfriend would really get them off my back. “Really, a fiancé would be better. But I’m not going to get one of those in two months.”
“Why not?”
I laughed. “Are you kidding? I’m not the sweep off her feet damsel in distress kind of heroine from some romance novel.”
He repeated, “Why not?”
I shook my head and got up, walking back toward the hotel for a few steps. “No one looks at me that way, Giovanni. No one sees me that way. I’ve got a history of men who just end up uninterested.”
“You said two months?”
I turned and nodded at him.
“I’ll do it.”
“What?”
“I have a family birthday in late March, but after that, I’ve got a few weeks off. I could go with you to this wedding. Pretend to be your fiancé. Make sure everyone sees you as beautifully as you deserve to be seen.” He got up and moved so he was standing next to me. “On two conditions.”
“Which are?”
“You let me draw you more. Take your pictures. Paint you if there’s time.” He held up the camera with the last picture he’d taken, one of me laughing under the tree. “And, you call me Gio.”
6
Giovanni
My curator was going to kill me. I didn’t have any paintings at all ready for the gallery show, which I’d stupidly set my own deadline for.
And now I was suggesting I go to Italy for a week with a woman I barely knew?
“I don’t know, Gio.” Helena scuffed at the sand along the edge of the sidewalk, looking down.
I really hated it when she hid those beautiful eyes from me.
“What part don’t you know about, Helena?” I frowned at her, even though she couldn’t see it since she was still staring at the ground.
“I can’t make you pretend to be someone you’re not. It wouldn’t be right. And what happens when he wedding’s over, and I have to tell everyone we broke up?”
“You’ll tell them that I was a cad and a ponce, and not good enough for you. That you broke my heart into a million pieces, because I was a sorry excuse for a fiancé.”
“Cad? Ponce? Where are you from?”
“Sorry, my father’s a Brit. But I’m from Brazil, originally.” I chuckled. “I suppose that’s something you should know if we’re going to be engaged soon.”
“You really don’t have to do this. It was a ridiculous suggestion.”
I dropped my voice down into that deeper register she’d responded to earlier. “Helena, do you want me to go with you to your sister’s wedding?”
She sighed. “Yes, but it’s ridiculous.”
“I would love to take you to the wedding. And I’d love to go to dinner with you and your sister tonight.”
Her cheeks flushed slightly. “Really? You’d do that for me?”
I wrapped my arm around her shoulders and smiled. “It’s entirely selfish, I assure you.” I winked at her. “I get to spend more time with my muse, with the beautiful woman who inspired me to draw again.”
Helena still seemed nervous about the whole thing, so I steered her back to the bench and sat down. “We should come up with a cover story. If we’re old friends, I should probably know some things about you, so that it doesn’t seem like I just met you yesterday.”
We talked for over an hour, getting to know each other, getting a backstory hammered out. Throughout the whole thing, all I could think about was picking up my camera or pulling out my sketch pad again. I wanted to capture every moment of her animated beauty, the lively excitement as she talked about her family, about her shop in Austin.
Helena Stratton was full of passion, full of life, and so much more interesting than most of the women I’d interacted with over the years.
And so far, she hadn’t mentioned my implant, or stared at it even once. It was almost like she just didn’t care.
“Are you just ignoring them or what?”
“Ignoring who?” I smirked at her, lifting the camera to snap another picture of her.
She pursed her lips, as if she didn’t want to say it, even though she brought it up. “That’s at least the tenth woman I’ve seen go past to smile at you flirtatiously or blatantly eye-fucking you, but you don’t even look. And this one was barely wearing anything at all, aside from a sneer for me.”
I didn’t even see the woman she was referring to, but it didn’t matter enough to try to look around or find her
. “Stop waiting for me to find someone more interesting. I’m happy right here with you.” I set my camera down and leaned in closer, letting my tone drop back down into that deeper register that she’d responded to so well. “You are a goddess, Helena, and I won’t let anyone, even you, tell you otherwise.”
She noticeably swallowed before she broke my gaze and looked toward the ocean again. “We should get back to the hotel. I probably need to shower before dinner. Do you have something to wear? Marcus probably picked somewhere fancy.”
“I’m sure I can come up with something suitable.” I smirked at her. “Not all of my clothes have paint smudges on them. I think you’ll be quite impressed with how I can clean up.”
“I wasn’t trying to suggest…” Her cheeks turned a bright pink that spread down into her chest and neck. “I just meant, you’re on vacation, you probably didn’t pack lots of fancy going out clothes.”
I chuckled. “Helena, if we’re going to pretend to be engaged in a couple weeks, you’re going to have to learn my sense of humor. I’m teasing.” I stood before saying, “And you’ve got to stop immediately assuming you’ve done something wrong.”
I didn’t like how she practically apologized for existing. Who would allowed her to be so hard on herself all the time?
Helena let me walk her back to the hotel lobby, but she didn’t get into the elevator with me this time either. I couldn’t help but wonder what was going through her head; she would let me pretend to be her fiancé, she trusted me to meet her sister, her brother-in-law, but she wouldn’t let me walk her to her room.
It was just as well. As soon as I got upstairs, I realized that I didn’t pack anything worthy of a nice meal out. I came out expecting time on the beach, hanging out with Matt and his family. I couldn’t have begun to prepare to meet Helena. I couldn’t have dreamed I’d find a woman like her, a muse, this gorgeous, curvy sex bomb who deserved to be wined and dined, who deserved a man to dress up for her.
Grabbing my phone, I sent out a quick text to Matt.
Gio: I need a suit. Where’s the best place to go?
I didn’t wait for an answer. I took off the external pieces of my implant and hopped in the shower, wanting to be fresh and clean for Helena and her family.
A quick trip to Armani later, I was dressed and ready to impress.
But I wasn’t prepared for the leggy goddess stepping out of the elevator.
“Gio!” Helena beamed at me as she sauntered over, her arms out like she wanted a hug.
With the couple following behind her closely, looking at me with scrutinizing eyes, I embraced her and pressed a soft kiss on to her cheek before whispering, “You look lovely, Helena.”
She tensed, only slightly, and then relaxed into me as she turned to face her family. “Gio, this is my sister, Daphne, and her fiancé, Marcus.”
I slid my hand along her lower back, pulling her in a little closer as I smiled. “It’s so nice to meet you. Helena has told me so much about you.” It was a bit of a lie, but I didn’t need to hear their whole life story to get a read on them.
“That’s so funny, Hellie hasn’t mentioned you at all.”
Hellie? I wanted to shake my head at the terrible nickname. It didn’t suit the vibrant, strong woman next to me at all.
“I suppose she wanted to keep me a secret. She’s always saying how perfect the two of you are together, and with the big day coming up so soon, the last thing she’d want to do is steal your thunder.”
Helena’s grip tightened on my hip, almost as if she were trying to warn me.
But it seemed like exactly what Daphne wanted to hear, as she said, “Well, now that the cat’s out of the bag, I want to hear everything. Where did you meet? How long have you been going out? Are you—”
Marcus interrupted, “Why don’t we get to dinner, and you can interrogate him there, love? The man’s going to starve to death if you keep him here in the lobby with all your questions.”
I chuckled. “Lead the way.”
We ended up in an obviously trendy restaurant, surrounded by too many people and dim lighting. It was going to mean lip reading and probably asking for people to repeat themselves. It wasn’t the end of the world, but I wanted to make a good first impression on Daphne and Marcus. I wanted Helena’s approval and to see that we would be able to pull this off. She already worried over things like being single as if it were somehow a bad thing, and I wasn’t going to add to it. People never seemed to have their priorities straight when it came to other people’s lives—like how it was above all none of their fucking business.
The host led us to a private room, and I internally let out a sigh of relief.
As Marcus held out a chair for Daphne, Helena pressed her palm to my arm and stopped me from doing the same.
She leaned in and whispered, “Just be nice, and we’ll get through it. Let me lead.”
I chuckled, but I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d noticed my discomfort at the restaurant choice. “What are you afraid of?”
“I just don’t want them to have any reason to suspect anything. If we’re going to do this, I need them to believe that you could be in love with me.” The sadness, the worry in her tone, made me wonder just who had hurt her, who had left this sexy woman feeling less than perfect.
“I don’t think you have to worry about that.” I winked at her and kissed her cheek before pulling out her chair. “Helena tells me you all went wedding dress shopping today?”
Daphne started yammering on about the dress, the wedding venue, all the plans they’d been making, but I couldn’t help but keep my eyes on Helena.
She didn’t say much and spent most of her time looking at her plate, as if the small salad and few bites of scallops and risotto would be enough to make her happy. She didn’t indulge in the avocado, bacon, mac and cheese egg rolls appetizer Marcus insisted we get for the table, and she’d hardly touched her wine.
Watching five sisters was more than enough proof that most women didn’t willingly starve themselves at restaurants. And with the way Helena kept picking at her food, I could tell she was nervous.
My only question was, was it because of me, or because of her sister?
I intended to find out. “You have to try a bite of this, Helena.” I held out my fork, intentionally making sure there was a bite of everything on my plate. The filet mignon was cooked perfectly, and the parmesan mashed potatoes and red wine demiglace blended perfectly to make an exceptional bite, but with as little as she dared to eat off her plate, I doubted she wanted to risk red meat or potatoes.
Helena glanced at me, a look of nervousness in her eyes, and then she slowly leaned forward and took the fork between her lips.
The soft groan she made almost made me regret sharing.
If just a perfect bite of steak and mashed potatoes could elicit that sound, what sort of tempting noises would she make in the bedroom? I really wanted to find out, and she wasn’t even really mine.
But the moan gave me hope; if I could get her to eat, at least off my plate, maybe I could give her other reasons to smile, to enjoy life.
“I think we should order dessert.” I leaned over and trailed kisses down Helena’s neck, not caring if Daphne or Marcus were watching. I wasn’t really here for either of them. I was here for Helena, and Helena alone. “Or you could come back to my room at the hotel, and we could order something in. Something chocolate?” I winked at her as I tugged her chair closer to mine before sliding my hand up her thigh.
I stayed above her skirt, never venturing into any territory that would give her reason to slap me, or to give up the game, but enough that the couple across the table could make assumptions.
I wanted them to. I wanted Daphne and Marcus to know how hot I thought Helena was. I wanted it to be obvious, not only to them, but to Helena herself.
“Hellie doesn’t really eat desserts. And besides, she’s going to have to fit into her bridesmaid dress.” Daphne smiled, but it was the sort of saccharine, fake
smile. The kind that said I don’t care what you think, you know I’m right.
The kind that made women like Helena feel ashamed of their curves, of their sexy, voluptuous bodies.
“Maybe you should let Helena decide if she wants dessert.” I stared pointedly at Daphne, even as I wrapped my arm around Helena’s shoulders and pulled her a little closer. “I, for one, would love the chocolate souffle. And if we’re really worried about it, I’m sure I could come up with several ways to help burn calories that would be a hell of a lot of fun.” I leaned over again, this time pointedly kissing along Helena’s neck, and then I took a chance and claimed her mouth, sliding my fingers up into her hair.
Helena tensed at first, but as my tongue slid over her lower lip, she let out a soft moan and leaned into me.
I just barely let our tongues dance together before I pulled back, grinning at the new flush in her cheeks. “So, dessert?”
Helena nodded, her mouth curving up. “Okay.”
Daphne shook her head. “I can see now why Hellie wanted to invite you out tonight. I haven’t seen her this smitten with a guy… well, ever.”
I smiled and wove my fingers together with Helena’s. “If truth be told, I’m the one who’s smitten.” I looked over at her, mimicking looks I’d seen my brothers give to their wives the past few years. I knew Helena was already on edge, already nervous about this evening, and I didn’t want to give her any reasons to fear that I wouldn’t hold up my part of the bargain.
I didn’t want to give her any reason to not let me draw her again.
It didn’t take much convincing for Helena to dive into the rich, chocolate dessert I ordered. I couldn’t help but wonder if she’d given in because she really wanted dessert, or if I’d just left her a little dazed, like she’d left me.
And the soft moans she was making when the chocolate cake hit her tongue were like a private torture for my cock. How did she not see how gorgeous she was? How incredibly sexy? It made no sense to me, and I really wanted to help her figure it out.
The Fiancé Agreement Page 5