stayed too long in there.” His voice had gone husky, deep.
She shivered again.
“Sit,” he commanded, and Pia obediently sat on the lounger. He handed her a glass of wine and it was exactly what she wanted.
Silently, she took a sip.
For a few minutes, they sat like that, side by side on loungers, not talking. Not even looking at each other. But that awareness that had consumed her in the ballroom thickened the air around them. His touch, impersonal, still lingered.
Her attraction to him was natural.
He was the most strikingly handsome man she’d ever met.
She refused to be ashamed by it. But neither did she want to keep confronting it, to keep thinking that she was somehow less than him because she wasn’t sophisticated or beautiful or polished enough. She’d had enough of Frank manipulating her insecurities. “All I want is to spend the summer with my grandfather. I really don’t see why that should be any of your business,” she said softly.
“I am Giovanni’s friend. I am more friend than all of his useless, bickering, social climbing family put together. I would do anything to protect Giovanni and his interests. It is my business if you put one step wrong with him.”
“What have I done that offends you so much?”
“You seem to have no scruples about cheating an old man who has done nothing but welcome you into his life with open arms without even checking if you truly are who you claim to be.”
“So now I’m not only a gold digger of the worst kind but also an impostor?”
“All evidence points to it, si.”
Pia fisted her hands, the urge to strike that smug condescension from his face burning through her. “Gio’s lover, Lucia, was my nonna. She left him after they had a huge row and settled in the States. My parents died when I was three and she raised me.” She stood up, her pulse skittering all over. “I found Lucia’s letters to him after she died and called him. That’s the truth.”
“It’s also true that he’s given you thousands of dollars in the one month you’ve been here.”
If only the ground could open up and swallow her whole! Mortification filled her cheeks.
She couldn’t even be mad at Raphael, because from his point of view it looked like she was a grasping, greedy woman. But to be so cynical as to question her whole motive for visiting Italy...? “Gio wouldn’t have told you,” she mumbled half to herself.
“I keep an eye over Gio’s finances. His three ex-wives learned it was better to live with what he provides them than to take me on.”
She forced herself to meet his eyes. “You’re making assumptions based on one transaction and out of context.”
“I assume based on facts and not feelings. I learned to do so a long time ago.”
The towel slipped from her shoulders so her hair was dripping onto her back. And the one-piece she wore was not the most convenient costume when wet. But Pia was determined to make him see. Even if it meant admitting the most humiliatingly painful episode of her life. Even if it meant giving voice to her foolishness. “Giovanni gave me that money to pay off...credit card debt.”
“So you did your research before you contacted him,” he said in a silky, almost bored voice.
Her grip far too tight on the stem of the wineglass Pia stared at him. “This is pointless if you won’t even give me a chance.
“You have to protect Giovanni, true, but one would think you’d at least give me a chance when his happiness is involved.” She wouldn’t beg him to believe her. Shaking with hurt and humiliation, she stood up.
He reached out and caught her wrist. A jolt of fiery sensation raced from her wrist to her breasts, to the spot between her thighs. Pia jerked her hand away, breath coming in hard and fast.
“Stay.” Tension radiated from him, confusing her. “I will listen, si? Whether I will believe...”
She sat down and looked at her hands. Words came and fell away again. Taking a deep breath, she blurted it out. “I racked up that debt because I was foolish enough to fall for a con man.”
His expression instantly turned thunderous. “Fall for a con man? What do you mean?”
“I believed a colleague when he said he loved me. I went back to work after nursing Nonni for two years and he was the new gym teacher at the school where I worked. He...cultivated a friendship with me for weeks, then asked me out. After a few months, he...told me he’d fallen in love with me.
“I trusted him and loaned him money when he said he was in trouble. Again and again. I gave him the little Nonni had left me, and then when that was done, I...” The words stuck like glass in her throat. “I emptied my savings, and took a loan on my card when he said he desperately needed money to avoid a loan shark.”
His expletive punctured the silence around them. Did that mean he believed her? Pia found she didn’t give a damn. Frank had deceived her in the worst possible way. Nothing Raphael said or believed could be any worse.
There was a strange strength in the fact that she’d already been through the worst.
“So you’re as naive and meek as you look? How could you trust any man so much that you risk everything you have?”
She flinched as if he’d slapped her. Tight lines emerged around her mouth and she blinked rapidly. Moonlight flickered on her delicate jawline that was clenched taut.
Raphael killed the thread of regret that hit him. He wasn’t going to coddle her.
She looked down at her hands and then around her. When she spoke, her voice had lost that husky timbre. It was as if she was forcing herself to say the words. Just for his benefit.
“I was lost, lonely after Nonni passed away. I hardly had any friends after being her full-time caregiver for two years. He was charming, attractive. He singled me out almost immediately after I went back to work. He even did me the favor of explaining to me that he had done his research and picked me as the prime target. The other teachers had unwittingly given him enough ammunition.”
Even as he’d cruelly called her weak, she was anything but in that moment. He knew that it took guts to pull yourself up when everything was lost. And yet, she’d not only done it, but she was facing him down too. “How?”
“They told him that I was...shy, and inexperienced. That they thought I needed to start living now that Nonni had passed away. They told him I’d never had a boyfriend and would probably be grateful for his attention.” When he growled, she hurried on. “I think they meant well. They couldn’t have known he would prey on all my insecurities.”
“This man? Is he following you here?”
“No.” Conviction resonated in her tone. “When he realized I didn’t have any more money, he couldn’t dump me fast enough. Making it very clear that the only reason he’d been with me was because I was such a pushover.”
“So
