The Real Rio D'Aquila

“Really,” he said, widening his eyes.

“You laugh, but something always goes wrong. Like yesterday. The traffic. The directions. The car. And then, poof, so much for my schedule. It went up in smoke.” She smiled. “But if it hadn’t, would I have met you?”

Damned right you would have, he thought.

Hell.

He had to tell her.

Soon.

But first …

First, he thought, looking at her tousled curls, her kiss-swollen mouth, first there was that schedule.

Showering together.

Breakfasting together.

Going back to bed together.

“Isabella,” he said thickly, and he brought her down beneath him and forgot everything but the woman in his arms.

Forget everything, including a condom.

Dawn was tinting the sky crimson.

Rio awoke alone in his bed. He could hear the shower running.

Isabella, he thought, smiling—

And then his smile faded as he remembered that he hadn’t used a condom the last time they’d made love.

Cristo.

He had never been that careless before. He always used protection, even when a woman said she was on the Pill. Only a fool took chances. He knew the possibility that Isabella might become pregnant was small. Miniscule, really. One ejaculation? Things didn’t happen that way. He knew couples who’d tried for years to conceive.

Still, he would mention it to her.

Ask if this was her so-called safe time of the month. Tell her that, of course, if anything happened, he would—he would help her with whatever had to be done.

It was a sobering thought.

Even more sobering was the fact that he hadn’t remembered to use a condom.

That his naive, inexperienced Isabella had driven every logical thought from his head.

No woman had ever done that before.

His smile wavered.

He wasn’t sure he liked the feeling.

The sound of the shower stopped. Rio sat up, swung his feet to the floor, went to the bathroom and quietly pushed open the door. His lover stood before the mirror. She’d knotted a bath towel around her like a sarong; she was using another to dry her hair.

Botticelli, he thought, Venus, rising from the sea—and, all at once, nothing mattered as much as coming up behind her and wrapping his arms around her waist.

She smiled at him in the mirror. “Hello,” she said softly.

Rio drew her back against him. “Isabella,” he whispered.

It seemed all he was capable of saying and when she sighed his name—Matteo—he thought, once again, how right his name, his true name, sounded on her lips.

She was Isabella. He was Matteo. Two strangers, brought together by chance.

And now, they were lovers.

Lovers.

Something swept through him. An emotion that had nothing to do with sexual pleasure and everything to do with—with—

With what? Dio, he had no answers for anything.

Except for this.

“I have an idea,” he said.

She smiled. “I can tell.”

He laughed.

“That, too. But I have another idea.”

Isabella turned in his arms, placed her hands against his chest, looked up at him.

“What?”

“Don’t go back to the city. Not just yet.”

“But I have to. I—”

“Stay with me.” He bent to her, brushed his lips over hers. “I want to show you something.”

She touched her fingers to his lips.

“What is it?”

“A place. One that’s all mine.”

She smiled. “And where is this place?”

“You’ll see.”

“Ah. A secret.”

“One I want to share only with you. Spend the weekend with me, cara. Please.”

Isabella thought of all the reasons to say no.

It was Saturday, and she always worked the Union Square Outdoor Market on Saturday. Initially, she’d sold bouquets and plants; now, increasingly, she sold more elaborate flower arrangements. It was excellent and inexpensive advertising for her business.

There was more, too.

She did her weekly food shopping Saturdays: staples at

Costco, fresh stuff at—naturally—the Union Square market and at Whole Foods. Plus, she was supposed to meet Anna for lunch and—oh, hell—return her car. Okay. That was another story altogether.

“Isabella,” Matteo said, “stay with me.”

The towel fell away as she went up on her toes and gave him her answer with a kiss.

CHAPTER NINE

A LITTLE after dawn, Isabella announced it was time for breakfast, and that she would prepare it.

“Not to boast or anything,” she said, fluttering her lashes, “but I make the world’s best scrambled eggs. And bacon. And toast. And coffee.”

When Rio said he’d help, she pointed to a kitchen chair and said, “Sit.”

He laughed.

He couldn’t remember the last time someone had told him what to do, even in a teasing way. He could just picture the looks on the faces of his staff if anyone had.

But this wasn’t anyone, it was Isabella.

And he certainly couldn’t recall a woman making him breakfast. Not that women didn’t offer. He simply never took them up on it. There was something far too intimate in letting a woman cook your breakfast, even if she’d spent the night in your bed.

Sex was one thing.

Breakfast was another.

It was the kind of logic only another man could understand.

In fact, he’d once had that conversation with Dante Orsini, when Dante was still a bachelor.

They’d bumped into each other at a Starbucks a little past eight one morning, Dante paying for a caffé Americano just as Rio ordered a caffé Macchiato.

For some reason, they’d exchanged slightly embarrassed looks.

Dante had spoken first.

“I, ah, I didn’t have time for coffee at home this morning,” he’d said.

“Me, neither,” Rio had said, his tone as uncomfortable as Dante’s. Then he’d laughed a little shamefacedly and admitted that the problem was a woman who’d wanted to make coffee for him, and Dante had grinned and admitted to the same thing.

“Too much togetherness,” Rio had said. “Last thing I want to face in the morning is a woman hell-bent on showing me her domestic side.”

Dante had grinned and agreed.

Talk about your own words coming back to haunt you, Rio thought. What would Dante say right about now, if he knew his relative was in this kitchen, doing exactly that?

It was not a good thing to dwell on.

“Matteo.” Rio blinked. Isabella, arms folded, gave a dramatic sigh. “I don’t see you sitting down and leaving this to me.”

He grinned.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and then he grabbed her, lifted her off her feet and kissed her.

Then he sat down and hoped he was remembering correctly, and that there actually were bacon and eggs in the refrigerator.

There were. Free-range eggs, Isabella said with approval, and explained why hens should be kept cage-free. There was bacon, too, from—he lost track of the “from” part, but Isabella pronounced it perfect.

She was what was perfect, Rio thought.

And made a mental note to thank his caretaker for laying in the right foods.