‘I wanted to be sure you came back alone,’ Rio told her.
‘And how is that your business?’
‘You were with me today,’ Rio murmured.
Ellie tilted her chin, emerald eyes gleaming like chips of ice. ‘Doesn’t mean you own me.’
Rio shrugged again. ‘I’d still have beaten the hell out of him had you brought him upstairs.’
Ellie’s lips parted and then closed again because there really wasn’t much she could say to that. ‘You do a lot of that sort of thing?’ she prompted a split second later, honest curiosity gripping her.
‘Get physical? Once it was a regular activity.’ Dark eyes spilling a glittering gleam of gold from below lush curling black lashes, Rio strode past her to the door. ‘I had to, to protect myself. I grew up in a tough environment.’
‘You’re leaving?’ Ellie framed in disconcertion and then could have bitten her tongue out because she was making it sound as though she wanted him to stay. And she didn’t.
‘Sì…’ Rio treated her to a slow burning appraisal. ‘Somehow I doubt that you’d be up for anything else tonight, principessa.’
Fury splintered through Ellie. Leave it to Rio to tell it as it is. He would stay for sex but not to chat or share a drink or supper or anything more civilised. The claustrophobic silence of the room enclosed her, increasing her nervous tension. The tip of her tongue stole out to moisten her dry lower lip.
‘I love your mouth,’ Rio husked soft and low, his attention locking to the sultry fullness of her pink lips.
Gooseflesh pebbled Ellie’s arms and a wicked little quiver snaked down her taut spinal cord. She was so aware of him that her very skin prickled and tingled with it. For an insane moment she imagined pushing him backwards down on the bed and teaching him that he didn’t know everything about her. And then she blinked, sane Ellie swimming back to the fore, and she spun and opened the door for him so that he would leave more quickly.
‘Sometimes you crack me up, bella mia,’ Rio confided with unholy amusement, recognising her defensiveness in that almost desperate pulling open of the door to hasten his departure. ‘When you’re thinking about me in bed tonight, will you be kissing me or thumping me?’
Ellie breathed in so deep she almost spontaneously combusted while she watched Rio clatter down the stairs without an ounce of discomfiture in his bearing. She had never met anyone quite like Rio Benedetti before and that was probably why he knocked her for six every time she saw him, she told herself soothingly. He was bad, he was brash, he was incredibly sexy and
insolent and he had the kind of charismatic confidence that burned like a solar flare. She was too polite and inhibited to deal with him as he should be dealt with. Her hands clenched into fists.
He embarrassed her too. The staff had seen her going out with Bruno Nigrelli and now knew she had returned to find Rio waiting in her bedroom. Ought she to complain about that invasion? Or, having already been seen in Rio’s company and kissing him, perhaps it was wiser to ignore the situation lest she end up even more embarrassed. Had Rio made her look slutty? Or like a femme fatale? She went to bed on that thought, deciding that Rio’s pursuit, if she could label it with that word, made her look like a much more exciting woman than she actually was. But she still wanted to kill him for being so careless of appearances, so arrogant and incomprehensible.
Why would he have beaten up Bruno had she brought the other man back to her room? Presumably that had been a joke, although she had not seen the humour in it. She could not credit that Rio could be jealous or staking some sort of male claim to her. He wasn’t the type. And instead of finding the sleep she badly needed the riddle of his complex personality ensured that she couldn’t stop her brain running on and actually relax enough to drift off.
*
The following morning she met up with Beppe outside a smart suburban surgery near Florence. The older man looked perfectly calm and collected and there was no sign of strain or distress in either his expression or his friendly, easy manner. Had Rio exaggerated? Overreacted? They went inside the surgery and swabs were taken. Beppe passed over a tiny gold locket, which he quietly admitted contained a lock of his brother’s hair. Ellie flushed and made no comment. After all, her mother, Annabel, had named both brothers as her daughter’s possible father, and to do so, she had presumably been uncertain as to which had fathered her child.
‘We will know within twenty-four hours,’ Beppe assured her with quiet satisfaction. ‘And now that I have you here in my beloved Firenze, I will play tourist with you and show you the sights as they should be seen.’
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.