He pulled a chopping board from behind the stovetop, placed it on the table, then rinsed the tomatoes.
“So?” She sipped her wine. “What would you like to hear?”
“Let’s start with the basics. How old are you?”
“I thought I was telling a story, not being interviewed,” she responded drily.
“Is your age a secret?”
Her half-smile twisted something inside of him. “No. I’m twenty six.”
“Knife?”
She hesitated for the briefest moment. “In the drawer.”
“Grazie.” He pulled out the sharpest blade and returned to the tomatoes, chopping each until there were at least forty halves scattered across the bench top. “How many books have you written?”
“Written? Oh, about a dozen. Published? Two.” She held two fingers in the air. At his quizzical look, she shrugged her shoulders. “I started writing when I was a kid, finished my first book at thirteen. It’s a teen sleuth story, lots of angst and mystery and stormy nights that end in disaster for my protagonist. The stories became a little more nuanced as I got older.”
“Is that what you write now?”
She nodded. “More or less. I write a series of books for young adults. They’re mysteries, and my main character is a kickass school girl who isn’t afraid of anyone or anything.”
“Did you always know you wanted to write?”
She was quiet for a moment. “I did, yeah. I loved to read, but I would often get frustrated by the way a story ended. I wanted to reach inside the pages and rearrange them, to give the characters something different. The only way I could do that was to write my own book, so I did.” He looked towards her as a faraway look overtook her eyes. Rather than interrupt her, he hunted around until he found a spoon and bowl, and began to scrape the seeds from the tomatoes, placing them all into the bowl. “We didn’t have a lot growing up. My mum’s a doctor, but she works for War Zone, the charity, so didn’t earn a huge salary, and she’s away almost all the time. It was pretty much just dad and me.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s a high school English teacher.”
“Uh huh, so this is where you get your love of books?”
“Undoubtedly.” She nodded. “Every Friday night, we’d go to the library and borrow as many books as they’d let us. Our weekends were spent reading.” She reached for a sprig of rosemary that was in a vase on the counter and ran her fingertips over the blades. As with before, he admired the deftness of her slim fingers, momentarily distracted not just by her body but by her words. “In the summer, we’d throw the books into a basket with some grapes and cheese and go and find a park. We’d spend all day on a picnic blanket, reading, snacking, cloud-watching. It was bliss.”
A jolt of something a lot like envy speared Nico, surprising him with its intensity. “He sounds like an attentive father.”
“He was. Is.” She nodded, but there was a cloud over her expression now.
“You’re close to him still?”
“Sort of.” She looked away and he knew there was so much more to this than she was saying. Before he could think of a way to tease out some more information, she smiled brightly and leaned forward a little. “What about you? You’re a Montebello, you help run your family corporation – as you do -,” she added teasingly. “You spend summers in this idyllic town. What else?”
“What do you want to know?” He thought of how much information there was about him on the internet. He was an open book because he was basically forced to be. As a teenager and in his early twenties, he hadn’t yet learned the discretion that was now his stock in trade. So much of his life had been played out for the tabloids and it lived online to this day – a stark reminder to guard what he said and did with great care.
“Are you close to your parents?”
“No.” Finished with the tomatoes, he pulled an onion from the bowl on the bench. He began to chop it, but he could feel her eyes on him the whole time. “My upbringing wasn’t conventional.” He lifted his shoulders. “Then again, whose is?”
“A lot of peoples,” she offered. “But yeah, I can imagine you grew up in a pretty rarefied way.”
“You could say that.” He placed the knife down and her eyes followed the blade’s journey. “Now, I need a really big pot.”
She lifted her eyes heavenwards. “Up there.” He turned around and saw all the pots were above the cupboards. He reached for the largest and when he turned around to face her, there was a look of bemusement on her face. “Maybe you need to reach for something else?” He frowned, not understanding, but then her eyes roamed his body and he laughed, her obvious admiration spreading answering desire through him.
“You do realise I have to grab a stool anytime I want to get a pot down?”
“You do realise you’re about a foot shorter than me?”
He turned the stove top on, placed the pot down and added a dash of olive oil then the onion and a clove of garlic he crushed quickly.
“You really are a good cook,” she admired after a moment, when the air was thick with the savoury aroma of the spices.
“You haven’t eaten it yet.”
“I can tell already.”
“My Yaya,” he said after a moment, a smile on his lips as he thought of the grandmother who’d raised him, and his brothers and cousins. “She insisted we all learn to cook – with varying degrees of success. I was probably the most willing of her students, but by the time we went off to high school, we could all make a few meals. And when we came home on holidays, she’d draw up a roster to make sure we each had a turn doing dinner.”
“That sounds like a very humble way to grow up, given you probably had a trust fund the size of a small country.”
“It was.” He added the tomato shells, stirring them until they were coated in garlic and onion, then placing a lid on top to let them sweat for a few minutes. “Yaya didn’t grow up with money. In fact, she grew up – how did you say it? With not a lot? And despite Gianfelice’s success and means, she never stopped being frugal. Even now, she saves newspapers to wrap Christmas gifts in.” His smile was indulgent. “She is the reason I will freeze that pulp,” he nodded to the bowl on the bench, “rather than throwing it out. It will make a good passata,” he imitated Yaya’s Greek accent.
“My dad’s just the same,” Maddie nodded. “He reuses everything, wastes very little.” She tilted her head to one side. “Then again, he kind of had to be like that. Your Yaya could have gone the other way and become spoiled by what she had.”
“True. But I think childhood indelibly shapes the person you become.” He paused a moment, thinking of how true that was. Being pushed out of his mother’s life at four years of age had left him with a cold stone in the centre of his being that nothing had ever managed to shake free. “The lessons Yaya learned never left her. She always used to say, knowing what true hunger is like makes you desperate never to feel it again. She doesn’t like to talk about her childhood much but I know it was traumatic, difficult.”
“So she’s…”
“Still alive? Si,” a smile curved his lips. “She’s frail and growing old in a way I never thought she would – she’s one of those women that just seems youthful despite her years – but she’s still Yaya.”
“She sounds like a fascinating woman.”
“That’s one word for her.”
“You have another?”
“That’s not what I meant.” He took the lid off the tomatoes and sloshed in some white wine and a sprinkle of salt, then turned to Maddie. “She’s a contradiction, in some ways. It’s only since Gianfelice died that I’ve seen that.”
“What do you mean?”
Good question. He was voicing an opinion he hadn’t owned to himself yet. “She’s incredibly strong and fiercely independent, but she deferred to Gianfelice in all things. Even when it cost her greatly, she allowed him to make their decisions. I wonder at that, given what I know of her now.”
Maddie was very still. He couldn’t help but notice the way her body had stiffened, her expression shifting from one of idle interest to one of…what? It was impossible to say. “I suppose relationships are hard to read from the outside.”
Her words were stiff, they didn’t invite any further inquiry.
“They were happy,” he clarified, feeling a little uneasy at the confidences he’d shared, given the fact he didn’t make a habit of discussing his family with anyone, generally.
“But you think she muted herself for him?”
“Yes.”
Maddie nodded slowly. “That happens, doesn’t it?”
Did it? Nico shifted his shoulders. “I have very limited experience in relationships.” And the one time he’d actually opened himself up to one, he’d learned what a foolish idea that had been.
“Really?”
“Mmmm. Too busy with world domination.” He wiggled his brows, making light of it rather than going into the sordid, sad truth, and she laughed softly – he was glad to see it, glad to see the little lines of tension around her eyes ease.
“Do you have any stock?”
“Um, I think there’s some in the freezer? The landlady keeps dropping things off. I think she’s trying to fatten me up.”
He pulled the freezer open and discovered the stock she’d mentioned. It was a large block. “I’m going to need another pot,” he teased, turning around and deliberately taking his time reaching for a saucepan from the top of cupboard.
She was unashamedly ogling him so he dumped the stock as quickly as he could, put the heat on the stove and then delivered a challenging glance to her as he stripped his shirt. “It was a little wet,” he offered with mock apology.
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Are you?”
“Nope.” She grinned. “Not even a little bit.”
His laugh was a husky sound. Their eyes met and he felt it – a promise passed between them, a simmering, sensual heat that would be answered, and soon.
He rushed the melting of the stock, and when it was only halfway done, added it to the tomatoes – trying not to think of what Yaya would say about such an ill-advised corner-cutting – then turned the heat on the tomatoes right down.
“That’s going to take around a half hour to simmer and soften.”
“Thirty minutes?” She lifted her brows and pushed off the bench, coming towards him. “Goodness. What should we do while we wait?”
“Do you have any board games? Monopoly?” He prompted, reaching for her shirt and pushing it over her head. Madre di Dio, she wasn’t wearing a bra. How had he failed to notice that before now?
“Scrabble’s more my thing.”
“I’m not surprised.” He pulled her towards him so her breasts flattened against his chest, her softness to his hair-roughened hardness. “How about twister?”
“No board, but I think we could get inventive.”
“Me too. Where’s your bedroom?”
Chapter 5
THE SOUP WAS DELICIOUS. After they’d made love, and God, it had been even more mind-blowing than the first time they’d come together, he’d gone back to the kitchen. And he’d sung while he cooked, so she learned something else about him. Not only did he know his way around a recipe, he liked rock songs from the nineties. There was a Metallica one first, then some Nirvana, then some Radiohead. She smiled as she listened, pretty sure he didn’t even realise he was singing.
She set the table on the terrace. It was still raining, but this space was undercover and it was a beautiful, balmy temperature. The air smelled of electricity, making her think of books she’d read about exotic, tropical places where summer storms like this were de rigeur.
When he presented the soup with a ‘voila’, she stared at it. Because it looked…
“Kind of disgusting, I know,” he supplied, before she could say it.
And it did.
“What is it?”
“Bread, torn up and added towards the end of cooking.” To that, he’d added some finely grated parmesan, roughly torn basil, a glug of olive oil and some salt and pepper. So far as appearances went, it was certainly… “Rustic,” she supplied after a moment.
He grinned. “That’s putting a PR spin on it.”
She took a spoonful and made a moaning noise. “Oh my God, Nico, it’s so good.”
She immediately took another scoop, and another, and then placed her spoon down when she realised he was watching her.
“What?” Self-consciously, she wiped her fingers over her chin.
“I just didn’t anticipate how much I’d enjoy cooking for you. Nor watching you eat.”
“Don’t watch me eat,” she complained. “It’s embarrassing. You eat.”
“I will,” he picked up his spoon. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed. You are beautiful, always.”
She dropped her head forward, shaking it a little. She didn’t like compliments. They made her skin crawl. Another hangover from Michael’s handiwork.
“I’m impressed. The soup is really, really good.”
“I know.” It was her turn to watch. He ate several spoons full then lifted his gaze to her. “You like the cottage?”
“I love it.”
“But you’ve just rented it for the summer?”
She nodded.
“You’re not moving here?”
“No.” She stilled. Staying longer term hadn’t even occurred to her. She supposed because it felt a lot like giving up – as though by walking out on London completely she’d be handing all the power to Michael and letting him win, by shoving her right out of her life. “It’s just a break.”
“A long break.”
“Yeah. Sometimes you need to reset, right?”
He frowned. “Right.”
“Isn’t that what you do, every summer?”
“Why do you say that?”
“To come here year after year, surely that’s for a reason? To get away from the pace of your every day life and reconnect with something a bit more natural, slower in speed?”
He frowned.
“I’m just guessing,” she supplied. “I imagine your work life is pretty frenetic. Your social life too, probably.”
He lifted a brow. “You mean my love life?”
Heat infused her cheeks. “I guess so.”
“The tabloids generally exaggerate all elements of my life.”
“I haven’t read anything about you,” she said immediately. “I’m just going by your…skills.”
He burst out laughing. “Thanks.”
Embarrassment spilled through her. “Like you don’t already know.”
He shook his head.
“What?”
“You’re just…”
“What?” But doubt surged inside of her. She’d said something wrong, something stupid. He thought she was stupid. Oh boy. She wished the world would swallow her up.
“Refreshing.”
He said ‘refreshing’ but she felt like he meant gauche. “Thanks?”
“It’s a compliment,” he assured her, a frown briefly marring his features before he continued to eat his soup.
“But you do this a lot?” She prompted. “Tabloid exaggeration not withstanding?”
“Not really.”
She arched a brow. “You don’t need to obfuscate to protect my feelings. This is just a fling, remember?”
He laughed. “Refreshing,” he said again, and this time, a hint of a smile touched her lips.
“So?” She took another mouthful of soup. It was truly one of the nicest things she’d ever eaten. Or perhaps it was sharing it with this man, here in Italy, the rain drizzling around them, the night warm, the air thick with summer and magic.
“I enjoy the company of women,” he shrugged his shoulders. “I prefer short affairs to relationships, so I’m always open about that from the start.”
She expelled a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. It was reassuring to hear him discuss th
is in such clinical terms. Like there was nothing new here for him, nothing unexpected. They were on a track he ran often. She was nothing special. Nothing special, just like Michael said… God, get out of my head, she thought with a stifled groan.
“And the women you date are happy with that?”
“If they’re not, I don’t get involved with them.”
“That’s clinical.”
“Yeah.” He lifted his shoulders, but there was something a little jaded around his eyes. “I’ve learned it’s better to be open and honest. Always.”
“Was there a time when you weren’t?”
His expression shifted. “No. But I’ve been on the receiving end of dishonesty once or twice. Enough to know I’d never knowingly inflict that on anyone else.”
A frisson ran down Maddie’s spine as it occurred to her that by concealing her connection to him she wasn’t being completely honest. It sounded like he had every reason to be angry about that, to resent her for it.
She hated that, but she wouldn’t let anything stand in the way of her having what she wanted, what she deserved: a fun fling with the sexiest man she’d ever known. To hell with the future, to hell with everything. She was sick of worrying, sick of stressing. She just wanted to feel, and no one had ever made her feel quite like Nico Montebello did.
* * *
Nico grinned as he peeled the skin off a banana, his eyes on the beach. The storm of a few nights ago had washed right out to sea, leaving Ondechiara sparkling and vibrant. His beach was pristine. Rolling waves glistened in the morning’s sun, the sand shone white like crystals and the sky was the most striking shade of blue, almost as stunning as Maddie’s eyes.
His smile grew broader.
It had been a couple of days since he’d seen her, since that night in La Villetta when he’d made love to her slowly, thoroughly, enjoying her piece by piece until she’d fallen asleep. He’d left her like that, perfect, heavenly, angelic, but he’d written a note and propped it on the pillow beside her.
Dinner, Friday night. I’ll pick you up.
Short, simple, to the point. Of course, it was only Wednesday and he was already craving her in a way that had caught him completely off guard, but even that was good. Good because he felt alive and excited in a way he hadn’t for a long time. Since Gianfelice had died? No. Since Claudette.
Billionaire Brides: An Anthology Page 51