by Lynne Graham
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 rest
ing 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 s
ee 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.