Ava noisily zipped up her suitcase. There was a sharp rap on her door. Room Service with her late breakfast.
‘It’s open!’ she called out, her voice a little shaky as she pushed aside the painful memory.
‘You should be more careful, bella. This is not a safe city for a woman on her own.’
Gianluca strolled in before she could so much as move to slam the door in his face.
‘Good to see you’ve packed—but you need to put some clothes on.’
Ava squeaked her dismay.
‘How much luggage do you have? There’s not much room in the Jota.’
‘I am not going anywhere with you,’ she protested, even as she drank in the scent of him so close to her, absorbed the strength of those shoulders clad simply in an open-necked shirt and a sports jacket. How did he manage to look so stylish and at the same time supremely masculine? What was wrong with her that everything female in her leapt at the sight of him? She folded her arms across her traitorous breasts, well aware, given how sensitive they were to him, that everything would be on display.
‘Come now.’ He smiled down at her, pinched her chin. ‘No more games, Ava. We go now.’
She wrenched her chin free, shocked by the intimacy the gesture implied. It made her shriller than she needed to be. ‘This isn’t a game, Benedetti. I have a car booked. I intend to see Tuscany.’
‘Monday.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I will fly you there myself. Next Monday. But first you must do the right thing, si? Join the family.’
‘Your family. Not mine.’ Something lurched in her chest, because she’d met the Benedettis and they had looked down their noses at her.
‘It depends,’ he said, brushing the tangle of damp hair out of her eyes as if he had every right to touch her.
Ava tried to avoid his hand but he hooked an unruly lock over her ear.
‘Your brother is in some financial difficulty with the vineyard.’
Ava stopped dodging his hand. Now he had her attention.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Perhaps his marriage is not in good shape because of this?’
Ava frowned, trying not to enjoy his fingers tangling in her hair, trying to focus on what he was saying about Josh.
She really ought to make him stop.
‘Your presence might be—what is it called?—the elixir they need.’
‘His marriage is in trouble?’
His hand dropped away from her hair and he picked up her suitcase.
Ava digested this startling news and told herself she wasn’t thinking I told him so. I warned him. I was right. Josh needed her.
She touched her hair where Gianluca’s fingers had played so intrusively.
Suddenly Tuscany didn’t seem at all important.
‘Why should I believe you?’
He merely hefted her suitcase off the bed.
‘Go and put some clothes on, cara. We leave in ten minutes.’
* * *
He was waiting outside, leaning against the same low-slung machine she’d seen him in the other day.
He looked as if he’d stepped out of the pages of GQ—six and a half feet of Italian cool.
Swinging her handbag over her shoulder, she told herself to get moving and to stop ogling him. He was a gorgeous man, but if he knew the power he had over her he was sure to use it against her.
‘Well, let’s get this over with,’ she said.
Gianluca simply stared.
In receipt of his loaded silence, Ava lifted a hand uneasily to her hair, neatly pulled back into what she’d thought was a fetching ponytail.
‘What are you staring at?’
‘Why are you dressed as a man?’
Convinced she hadn’t heard him right, Ava repeated, ‘Dressed as—?’
A man?
He was frowning at her. She’d heard him right. Her skin began to feel tight all over and then to prickle.
He thought she looked like a man?
Gianluca Benedetti’s expression was a study in masculine perplexity even as Ava wished the ground would swallow her up.
Not looked like a man, she reminded herself. Dressed as a man. It’s not the same thing.
‘It cannot be that you are now a lesbian?’
In any other situation Ava would have reminded herself that she celebrated human sexuality in all its richness and diversity. Right now, under the scrutiny of the most aggressively heterosexual man she had ever known—moreover a man who had kissed her last night and this morning with such a devastating effect on her senses she was still under its influence—she felt as if he’d slapped her.
With a handful of words he’d scraped off the layers of confidence she’d painted on over the years and exposed the sensitive young girl who’d never known her place in the world until she’d toughened up and gone out and made a place for herself. This man had been born gorgeous, entitled and rich. A man who never doubted his place in the world.