me, cara.”
“I…” She swallowed.
“I told her you are like my sorello piccola.”
Like his little sister? Yes, she knew he saw her that way, but she did not look on him as a big brother and her senses were running riot with his hand on her cheek and his fingers entwined with hers. “Right.”
He brushed his thumb across her lips and she shivered.
Silver eyes turned gunmetal gray. “You are cold?”
“No,” she whispered. Why was he touching her like this?
“What is going on in here?” Chiara’s voice raised in furious censure, broke the spell of Rico’s touch and Gianna jumped back.
She forgot her hand linked with his and was pulled up like a dog at the end of its leash as his hold on her did not lessen.
She tugged against her hand, but Rico didn’t let go. He was looking at Chiara, his expression unreadable. “I am visiting with Gianna. She is not too busy to spend more than five minutes in my company.”
Two things became apparent to Gianna at once. Chiara was jealous and Rico knew it.
“I’ve spoken to Gianna about letting you take your rightful place at my side, but you must be here to do so, bella.”
Chiara’s beautiful face turned red with temper and she glared at their entwined hands. “I am on assignment. You know I cannot spend every waking moment at the hospital like your pet limpet.”
“She has her own job. Yet she finds the time.”
He hadn’t even bothered to protest the pet limpet remark, so she did it. She yanked on her hand. Hard. He let go. “I’m no one’s pet, Chiara. I’m a friend and I didn’t realize my visiting Rico would upset you so much.”
Chiara’s glare did not lessen. “You expect me to believe that, the way you’ve carried on for the last week. Andre treats me with contempt and you, he insists on keeping in his own suite at the hotel.”
“You are staying with Andre?” Rico demanded, a tone in his voice that sounded very much like disapproval.
“There are two bedrooms in the suite. I’m using one until your parents arrive.”
“They aren’t coming.”
“Because you won’t call them,” she said with some exasperation.
He ignored that. “It is not seemly for you to stay with an unmarried man alone in his hotel suite.”
“It would be even less seemly for me to sleep in my car.”
“Per favore, spare us the dramatics,” Chiara jeered.
Gianna wanted to smack the beautifully painted red lips, but she wasn’t a violent person…at least she never had been. She supposed there was a first time for everything. “Where I stay is neither of your business,” she said firmly.
Chiara’s eyes shot disdain at Gianna. “It is when you take advantage of the generosity of my fiancé’s family to keep yourself underfoot and in the way.”
“Stop playing the shrew and come here. I want my kiss of greeting,” Rico demanded of Chiara.
He hadn’t bothered to deny she was in the way and for all Gianna knew, he felt the same as his fiancée. He’d told her not to visit him as much. But he had taken Chiara to task for being rude. That was something at least.
Still, perhaps it was time for Gianna to go back to Massachusetts. She hadn’t had her position long enough to accrue significant vacation time and since she wasn’t related to Rico by blood, the university administration did not see her absence as a family emergency. The department head had already made one not very veiled threat regarding her job if she wasn’t in class teaching the following Monday.
Chiara was obeying Rico with an overkill of enthusiasm. Gianna turned to give the couple some privacy, but the kiss lasted minutes. Finally, the pain of being in the room with the man she loved while he kissed another woman got to her and she walked out, sure they wouldn’t notice.
“I told you she had a crush on you.” Chiara’s voice floated out the open door and down the hallway to where Gianna waited for the elevator.
Gianna felt waves of mortified color sweep up her skin. She’d spent eight years nursing a secret love and to have it laid bare for that witch to mock was more than she could bear. She was furious with Rico too. He’d used her to make his barracuda of a fiancée jealous. All that touching that had meant so much to her had been nothing more than a ploy to keep Chiara in line.
Evidently Rico didn’t approve of his fiancée’s flying visits any more than Gianna and Andre did.
“Gianna’s feelings for me are of no concern to you.” Rico could hear the bite in his voice and did nothing to mitigate it.
Chiara’s kiss had not blinded him to her vicious attitude toward Gianna, an attitude he would not tolerate. “And you will not speak to her again as you did when you arrived. Her genuine concern for me is not something to mock.”
Chiara’s eyes widened in shock. “How can you say these things? Another woman’s feelings toward you are definitely my concern.”
“Gianna is no threat to you.” But even as he said the words, he wondered at their truth. Would he have kissed the younger woman if Chiara had not arrived when she did? He didn’t like to believe he was capable of such a dishonorable act. His affections were committed to Chiara, but he hadn’t wanted to let go of Gianna’s hand and the feel of her soft lips under his fingertips had caught at his emotions in a way Chiara’s extended kiss had not.
“She’s a little schemer and it devastates me that you can’t see that.” The tears welling in his fiancée’s eyes did not move him as they once would have done.
She’d spent too little time at his bedside and her complaints about Gianna simply did not ring true. He wondered just who the schemer in this situation really was.
Gianna waited until the following evening to visit Rico again.
He was talking on a hospital phone and typing on a laptop set up on a desk across his legs when she came in. She smiled wryly to herself. Nothing and no one could keep Rico out of business circulation for long. He looked up and spotted her. He motioned to a chair near the bed and she sat down, waiting patiently for him to finish his call.
Lines around his eyes made him look tired, but he had more color and his jet black hair had been washed and styled in its usual neat fashion. He wore a navy-blue silk pajama jacket that looked brand new. It probably was. She didn’t imagine Rico was the type of man to wear pajamas to bed.
He rang off and moved the desk with the portable computer aside. “Been busy sightseeing?” he asked with an edge to his voice.
“Sightseeing?” she asked incredulously.
“You have not been in to see me since yesterday morning.”
He needn’t sound
