he’d always preferred experienced women—both in bed and when dealing out of it.
And yet, from the moment he’d seen her standing outside his office, awareness had hummed in his blood.
Today, she looked the part of an elementary teacher with her black-framed geeky glasses, her brown hair in a messy knot precariously held together with a wooden stick, he realized with a grin, and a frilly, floral blouse and worn-out denim shorts that clung to her nicely rounded buttocks and displayed her mile-long legs.
With no makeup on, she should have looked ordinary. But he’d already looked past the surface. Knew that beneath the plain facade was a woman who felt everything keenly. Knew that if he touched her, she would be as responsive and ravenous as he was.
The summery blouse made her look more fragile than usual. He wanted to trace the jut of her collarbone with his fingers. And then maybe his tongue. He wanted to pull that stick in her knot so that her hair tumbled down. He wanted to slowly peel those shorts down until he found the silky skin of her thighs so that he could...
Fingers at his temple, he forced the far too vivid, half-naked image of her from his eyes. Christ, even as a hormonal teenager he hadn’t indulged like that. For one thing, he’d never had a spare minute.
“You had a PI dig into my background?”
He shrugged, glad that he was sitting. “Gio has been hoodwinked by three ex-wives into not only marrying them but settling fat alimonies on them.”
She got up, walked around the coffee table that separated them and sat down at the other end of the sofa he was sitting on. Tilting her chin up, she gave him a haughty look. “I’m waiting, Raphael.”
He grinned. “For what?”
“An apology. What do you think?”
“Didn’t you just tell me you don’t want apologies for things I’m not really sorry about?”
“You’re the most arrogant, annoying man I’ve ever met.”
“Tell me what brought you here, despite that.”
“Last night we had a really bad argument. He was pushing me into a corner and I... I said something really awful.” Big fat tears filled up her eyes. And just like that Raphael went from mild irritation to a strange tenderness in his chest.
Raphael leaned forward and took her tightly clasped hands in his. Even as he fought it, awareness seeped through him from her hands. The rough calluses on her hands, the slender wrists, the blunt nails—everything about her enthralled him.
He looked up and his gaze snagged on her wide mouth, pinched in sadness. “What happened?”
She tugged at her hands and he let go with the utmost reluctance. “Of all the men who have been...pursuing me, for lack of a better word, I like Enzo the best and it was easier to spend time with him than run around trying to avoid the rest of them. I enjoy his company and we’ve been pretty inseparable the last two weeks. He’s kind, genuine and he told me the first moment that—”
“Enzo Castillaghi?” Raphael snapped. Everything inside him came alert.
“He’s gay and he told me within two minutes of meeting me. He said his family would lose it if they knew. Both Giovanni and his father, Stefano, are pushing really hard for this to go through.”
Raphael jerked up straight, his blood curdling. “Stefano? He was there?”
Pia nodded, her gaze searching his. “I didn’t realize Gio knew so much about my thing with Enzo. Anyway, yesterday afternoon out of the blue Enzo and Stefano arrived for lunch. After lunch, we... Enzo...proposed to me in the garden while they watched from the terrace. He said he liked me, and we could marry as a convenience for now. It would get his parents off his back and I... Gio and the unwanted attention. Just as a stopgap measure.”
Raphael cursed hard and long.
For Gio to make a deal with Enzo’s father, Stefano Castillaghi, when he knew how much Raphael loathed Stefano, and with good reason... Something wasn’t right. The thought of Pia married to Enzo while Stefano pulled his strings from behind, while Stefano got his hand into Vito Automobiles... His blood boiled.
What the hell kind of a game was Giovanni playing?
“Raphael, you look downright scary. Is the Castillaghi family that bad?”
Somehow, he managed to swallow the poison that swirled within. “Enzo is harmless but completely under his father’s thumb. Stefano, on the other hand...”
“What about him?”
Raphael wondered if she realized she was touching him. That all he’d have to do was tilt his head and his mouth would touch hers. A thread of her scent warmed by her skin teased his nostrils. Damn Giovanni!
“What about Stefano, Raphael?”
He ran a hand through his hair. This day was going from bad to worse. “Stefano was my father’s business partner for twenty years. Even as families, we were very close. As a business, my father, Stefano and the third partner made some unwise, risky investments. When the investments failed to pan out and the business went under, we found that Stefano and the other partner had cleverly claused themselves out of the debt.
My father was the only one responsible. We lost everything—our house, the business, the cars—overnight because he was determined to pay everyone back. But it wasn’t enough.”
“Couldn’t Stefano and the other guy be held responsible by law?”
He hated talking about that time. Talking about the man he’d once hero-worshipped. Being reminded that the void his father had left had only hardened with bitterness. “No.”
“You’re not telling me something.” Distress rang in her voice. “Your father...what happened to him?”
How could she know what he had left out? “He killed himself.”
Her hands clasped his tightly, her silence saying more than words ever could. He didn’t know why he held on to her fingers as if she were a lifeline. He didn’t know what magic she wove but something shifted in his chest.
“Was he a good man, Raphael?” she asked in a soft voice. It was a question no one had ever asked, and it burrowed through his flesh and blood like an arrow, lodging deeply and painfully.
“He was a coward,” he said harshly. And flinched, for his own words hurt him. Still. After all these years.
“You...how old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Raphael, you don’t think—”
He pushed away from her, loath to discuss his father and the past any longer. “I owe Giovanni everything but I’ll be damned if I let Stefano’s shadow touch Vito Automobiles. What was your answer to Enzo?”
Her gaze turned searching, and then she sighed. “I refused him. Enzo is sweet. And this offer...it will get everyone off my back, and maybe provide a measure of relief to Gio too. But marriage is sacred.”
He
