‘I never said I didn’t like it,’ Aislin protested, sensing his back had gone up. ‘I live in a dinky house with Orla and Finn. This is a little much for me to get my head around.’
The tiny two-bed house was the same one she had grown up in. The one decent thing their mother had done for them, before she had decided to reclaim her lost youth by backpacking her way around Asia, was to transfer the tenancy of the house to Aislin and Orla. That had been five years ago. When she planned to return to Ireland was anyone’s guess. Her eldest daughter’s head-on car crash that had resulted in horrific injuries to Orla and the premature birth of her first grandchild had not been lure enough to bring Sinead O’Reilly back to her family.
The space in Dante’s home was mind-blowing. Sunlight poured through the abundant windows and danced over the obviously expensive dark furnishings, creating light where the dark woods and dark leathers would have made it feel gloomy. She estimated her entire house could fit in the living area alone.
Seeing the richness of Dante’s life with her own eyes was very different from imagining it, was so much more, in the exact same way Dante was so much more vibrant and sexier in the flesh.
‘How are we going to convince anyone that I belong in your world?’ she asked, suddenly anxious.
His startling green eyes held hers for a moment before his lips lifted into a grin. ‘But that is the reason you are so perfect for the role of my fiancée. You’re different. I am not used to people telling me my home is anything but the work of a creative genius. You are not like my usual lovers and are not from my world. Riccardo is going to love you.’
‘Who’s Riccardo?’
‘Riccardo D’Amore is the man we need to convince.’
‘But what do we need to convince him of? You still haven’t properly explained why you’re paying me to be your fiancée.’
They’d passed through a room dedicated to modern art, paintings adorning the walls, quirky sculptures on plinths, and now stood on a mezzanine overlooking another vast living area.
‘I have been working on an important business deal with Riccardo’s son, Alessio. It’s an exclusive software deal that will allow me to break into the American market. My father’s death attracted much publicity. All the obituaries spoke in length about his love of women and addiction to gambling. The stories sowed doubt in Riccardo’s mind about my character. He believes I am too much like my father to be trusted and that doing business with me will have a detrimental effect on the D’Amore reputation. He has put a stop to the business deal.’
Dante caught the flash of outrage in her eyes. ‘Can he do that?’
He nodded grimly. ‘He can and he has. Alessio runs the company but Riccardo is still the majority shareholder.’
‘So how will us pretending to be engaged change anything?’
‘Riccardo married young, has always been faithful to his wife and had lots of babies. He believes that family is sacrosanct, that gambling is the work of the devil—I understand his point there—and that sex is for marriage. My family is famous for pursuing pleasure—in my mother’s case marrying and divorcing on a whim—gambling, sex without discretion...all the things he believes are sins. He believes in family and roots. You are nothing like my usual lovers. You study, you’re intelligent, you have a strong loyalty and attachment to your family.’
The textbooks on medieval Europe she had brought with her, which he had flicked through while waiting for her to dress the night before, had been well-thumbed, pages turned over at the corners, notes in a lively penmanship made in the margins. The books had been heavy in his hands, the words dense on the pages.
She stared back, drawing her plump lips in before saying, ‘But how are we going to explain us? Sure, you say people know you as a fast mover, but this is rocket fast.’
Her lips were the perfect shade of pink, bringing to mind fresh raspberries. What would they taste like...?
The flame of desire he’d smothered s
ince leaving the cottage earlier reignited.
Dante fought the heated tendrils snaking through his bloodstream and willed his body to remain passive.
He was not an adolescent. He was an adult male who’d had so many lovers their names and faces were indistinguishable from each other.
‘We will stick to the truth as much as we can. You came to Sicily to meet me on your sister’s behalf. We can pad the timing.’
‘Our sister,’ she corrected obstinately.
‘Our sister,’ he agreed with a sigh. He’d known Aislin for less than a day but already he was fully aware she could argue for Ireland. She had passion in her soul and was refreshingly unafraid to show it. ‘We were immediately attracted to each other.’ That was not a lie. Not for him. Dante could not remember ever having felt such an immediate attraction to anyone. ‘In fact, we would go so far as to say it was love at first sight. You were so different to everyone I’ve ever known that I was helpless not to fall in love with you. In you I knew I’d found the woman I wanted to settle down with and spend the rest of my life with.’
As he finished speaking, he realised his voice had dropped to a whisper and that his body was straining towards her. There was an itch in his fingers to reach out and touch her, to brush a thumb against her cheek...
Her face tilted back as she gazed right back at him, her neck elongating with such grace his mouth prickled to graze over the delicate skin.
‘Because I’m so different?’ Her voice dropped to a whisper that mimicked his.
‘Sì.’ Compellingly different in all the ways that mattered. A beautiful russet fox that made his senses dance to a rhythm he’d never felt before.
He wanted to taste those lips. He wanted to touch those high cheekbones.