The Sicilian's Marriage Arrangement

His usually mobile face remained impassive. “Is it?”

He was still angry about her choosing to go with Luciano instead of him the night before. “Did you end up going back to the Psiri?” she asked with a tentative smile.

“What’s it to you if I did?”

She started at the belligerence in his voice. “I think I’ll order my breakfast.” She signaled for the waiter.

“Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” What was the matter with him this morning?

“Your boyfriend might take offense to you eating breakfast with me.”

“I don’t have a boyfriend.”

“That’s not the way it looked last night.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry if you were disappointed I didn’t have dinner with you last night, but you shouldn’t have taken for granted that you could schedule my time.”

“I realize that now.”

Good. At least that had worked out from last night’s fiasco. She smiled. “No harm done.”

“Not for you. It must be nice having two men fighting for your attention, but personally I think your ploy was juvenile.”

“What ploy?” she demanded, getting irritated by his continued innuendo that she did not understand.

“You should have told me you belonged to someone else. You let me think you were unattached.”

“I am unattached.” Did all men think in terms of belonging? Perhaps only the strong, arrogant ones. “Furthermore, this is the twenty-first century for heaven’s sake. I belong to myself, thank you very much.”

David snorted at that. “Not according to your Italian boyfriend.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” she gritted out between clenched teeth.

“Right. That’s why you went with him last night instead of having dinner with me.”

She wasn’t going to admit she’d been virtually kidnapped after making her grand declaration about eating alone. It made her seem feeble and she wasn’t, but she had been outflanked.

“Are you saying that my having dinner with a man automatically makes him my boyfriend?” He was more medieval than Luciano.

“It was a hell of lot more than dinner from where I stood.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was in my room when you returned to the hotel last night.”

“So?”

“I saw him kiss you. Afterward he paid me a visit and told me in very clear terms just whose woman you are.” Anger and wounded pride vibrated in David’s voice.

“He had no right to do that.” More importantly though was why had he? She could not wrap her mind around the concept of Luciano being so possessive of her.

David’s blue eyes narrowed. “He had his hand on your butt and his tongue down your throat. If he’s not your boyfriend, what does that make you?”

The offensive description of Luciano’s passionate good-night kiss shocked her. Up until the night before, David had been an affable and rather mild companion.

“What exactly are you implying?”

David tossed the paper on the table and stood up. “You let him paw you in a public hallway and you’ve never even given me the green light to kiss you good-night. You figure it out.”

She watched David walk away feeling both grief and anger. It hurt that David was willing to dismiss their friendship so easily, but his implication that she lacked morals really rankled. She was an anachronistic virgin in a world of sexual gluttony, for goodness’ sake. She did not sleep around.

Had Luciano been right in his assessment of David’s motives? David had not reacted as a simple friend to the events of last night. Had he been angling to share her bed?

It wouldn’t be the first such relationship to develop in their tour group, but she would have considered herself the least likely candidate for one. She didn’t have any experience with men wanting her.

David certainly seemed offended this morning that she’d allowed Luciano to kiss her last night, but she still could not quite believe it was about David wanting her. More likely it was that dog fighting over a bone thing again.

However Luciano’s actions weren’t as easy to explain, at least not in a way that didn’t seem too far-fetched. Luciano di Valerio wanting to marry Hope Bishop? Not likely. Yet, that is what he had implied. Then he had gone out of his way to warn David off.

Put together, those two items were enough to prevent relaxed slumber over the next four nights.

Hope woke up feeling cranky and out of sorts the day they were scheduled to tour Pompeii. This was their fifth day in Italy and Luciano had not made another appearance. He’d managed to find her in Greece, but now that they were in his home country…nothing. And Naples was not exactly the other side of the world from Palermo. The man was a billionaire. He had a helicopter, not to mention a jet.