“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 …