for you. I can say I’m your PA…’
Briefly, she thought she saw something light in his eyes, and then with a curt nod of agreement he withdrew his hand, leaving her to pick up the phone.
‘Pronto?’ She shot Rigo a glance. People had different ways of expressing emotion when someone close to them died. Carlo Ruggiero had been part of Rigo Ruggiero’s life once—he must be feeling something, though he was hiding it well.
Refocusing on the call, Katie continued to talk in fluent Italian, and only slowly realised that Rigo was staring at her in astonishment.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you spoke Italian?’ he said accusingly as she ended the call.
‘I didn’t realise it would be of any interest to you.’
He looked taken aback, but quickly recovered. ‘No, you’re right. Well?’ he said impatiently. ‘Are you going to tell me who it was?’
She managed her feelings. This was none of her business. ‘It appears you have forgotten a rather important engagement…’
He jumped up immediately when she explained. Extracting a phone from his pocket, he placed a call and began to pace.
He would only break off this meeting before he found out everything for one reason and this was it. The scheme he had set up to fulfil children’s dreams came ahead of his personal concerns. If taking a child around the track in his sports car was being brought forward then there must be a very good reason for it. ‘Of course he can come right away,’ he told his friend.
Moving out of earshot so Katie Bannister couldn’t hear, he explained his schedule for the day had been thrown thanks to missing the solicitor he was due to meet at the airport—and, yes, he had found the young woman, eventually.
‘A young woman?’ his friend murmured with a knowing air.
‘A very quiet and respectable young woman,’ he emphasised, staring at the back of Katie Bannister’s head. She had thick, glossy hair the same shade of honey as her eyes, but she wore it scraped back cruelly in a way that did her no favours. He refocused on his conversation and shut her out. His friend brought her back in again.
‘What a disappointment for you, Rigo,’ he drawled, ‘but no doubt you have a plan in mind to change this young woman’s way of thinking?’
Actually, no, he had no plan, and his friend’s comment had left him feeling vaguely irritated. ‘I’m leaving now.’ He ended the call. This was not the moment to be discussing such things, and something about Signorina Bannister called for the role of protector, rather than seducer. She was far too young for him, and almost certainly a virgin—or at least incredibly inexperienced; ergo, she was not his type at all. He stowed the phone in his shirt pocket and turned back to her. ‘You’ll have to keep this reading on hold. I’ve been called away. We’ll reschedule—’
‘But my flight home…’ she said anxiously.
‘I can only apologise.’
Katie frowned. It wasn’t up to her to judge the client, but this was unforgivable. Rigo Ruggiero intended to leave something as important as the reading of his stepbrother’s will to race his sports car around a track. Couldn’t he do that some other time? His equally arrogant friend hadn’t been prepared to tell her much more, but she gathered that was the plan. ‘There’s no need to apologise,’ she said coldly, remembering the senior partner’s words. ‘After all, you’re paying for my time—’
‘Plus ça change,’ he interrupted and his expression registered nothing more than resigned acceptance of the way of things.
Now she was insulted. Her motive in coming to Rome had not been money. The fact that she had come here to fulfil his stepbrother’s last request didn’t matter to him at all, apparently.
He saw this change in her and emphasized, ‘This is something I cannot miss—’
‘And I cannot miss my flight,’ she said, standing up.
‘You can change it—’
‘I’m not sure I can—’
‘Why not?’
Because she would have to buy a new ticket—an expense that would mean nothing to this man and that in their present parlous state her firm probably wouldn’t reimburse. She had bills to pay—and the prospect of no job to return to ahead of her.
She had tried so hard to strike the right tone and be professional, but she was growing increasingly agitated as she faced Rigo Ruggiero across the desk. Like it or not, they were in conflict now. ‘Couldn’t you change your appointment?’ she suggested hesitantly.
‘No.’
‘But you are eager to get this over with?’ she reminded him. And not put off by a drive around the racetrack with the boys.
‘I assure you I am every bit as eager as I was before, but now I must go—’
‘Shall I wait for you?’
Already halfway to the door, he spun around. ‘Make yourself at home.’
Tension had propelled her to breaking point. She might be a small-town solicitor, and dull as ditchwater if you compared her to the blistering glamour of a man like this, but she wasn’t anyone’s doormat. ‘Signor Ruggiero, please,’ she called, chasing after him. ‘This just can’t wait—’
‘And neither can my appointment,’ he called back to her from the door. ‘You must be content—’
Content?
As he spoke one strong, tanned hand flexed impatiently on the door handle. ‘I will return as quickly as I can—’
‘But my flight—’
‘Book another flight.’
The next sound she heard was the sound of the door slamming on his private quarters.
Great, Katie thought, subsiding. She was going to miss her flight.
So what would she do? She would have to stay in Rome. But since the fire privacy was all-important. She’d never stayed away from home since the fire. She had never risked anyone seeing her scars. What if a hotel maid or a porter walked in on her by accident? The thought of it made her blood run cold.
She wasn’t ready for this—maybe she never would be. And where would she stay? Could she even afford to stay in a city as expensive as Rome on her limited budget?
‘Ciao, bella.’
On the point of tears, she swung around clumsily, almost crashing into the fabulous desk as Rigo Ruggiero stormed out of the apartment in a cloud of testosterone and expensive cologne. Ciao, bella? He must have mistaken her for someone else.
But her nipples were impressed, Katie realised with astonishment. Well, she could dream, couldn’t she? Ciao, bella…
Her sensible self lost no time telling her she should be concerned at these unmistakeable
