to do with her as possible during the remainder of her stay here—she needed to get right away from the villa’s immediate environs for the few hours she desperately needed.
And so when she’d found a wooden door in the high stone perimeter wall she’d pushed it open and found herself out on the open hillside, where she’d sunk down on the grass and scrunched up in a bundle of exhausting emotions, knowing she would need far more than a few hours to get her silly self sorted.
She’d fallen in love with Paolo Venini.
She’d done her best to convince herself that what she felt was nothing more serious than a normal female reaction to a powerfully charismatic and sexy male. Lust. Something that would thankfully and quite rapidly fade when she was no longer constantly in his presence, when all the contact with him she had would be his promised regular and long-distance funding of the charity organiser he’d set in place back in England. A case of out of sight, out of mind.
But he would never be out of her mind. That was the stark, unpalatable truth of it. He would always have a place in her heart, and her heart would ache for him. And her body would cringe with shame whenever she remembered how she’d stood before him, naked and needy.
He had turned his back on her and walked away. After pointedly draping a robe around her, demonstrating his uninterest. And why wouldn’t he walk away? she asked herself brutally. He could grit his teeth and act a part when they were in his mother’s company, for the sake of the deception he had instigated, and he might be highly sexed—one only had to look at the succession of busty blonde bimbos who passed through his life—but skinny, unsophisticated nobodies would leave him cold.
She was just someone he’d paid to play a part. Someone he would never have noticed if he hadn’t had a brainstorm and decided to manufacture a fiancée to ease his mother’s mind, back when it had seemed unlikely she would survive her operation, let alone recover from it. She had to remember that. It would help her recovery from the illness of falling in love. Someone, somewhere had likened it to an illness, hadn’t they?
About to get to her feet and walk off some of her pent-up emotions, Lily tensed, her breath solidifying in her lungs, her pulse going haywire.
She sensed his presence even before he spoke, and her mouth ran dry.
‘Lily, are you hiding?’
Deny it? Pretend that bedroom scene hadn’t happened? Or face it out? A split second to make up her mind.
She lifted her head. Watched the effortlessly graceful way he sank to the ground beside her and mentally cursed his raw sexual magnetism. But she drew on some reserve of courage and gave him the truth, her small features tight. ‘Yes. Hiding. I’m embarrassed about what happened before dinner yesterday, OK? And, if you’re wondering, I don’t normally make no attempt to cover up when a man walks in on me in my birthday suit. Right?’
And, having said her piece, she quickly changed the subject. ‘And I’m mad as blazes at you because you didn’t put a stop to that engagement party nonsense when I’m sure you could have done!’ She saw him smile and turned her head away sharply, biting down on her soft lower lip, because that smile of his was enough to turn the sanest woman into a gibbering wreck.
‘And you have much experience of men surprising you in a state of nakedness?’ His voice was as rich and dark as chocolate.
Lily’s skin quivered. ‘No, of course not!’ Why didn’t he just drop it? Was he cruel enough to be getting a kick out of embarrassing her?
‘I thought not. You are truly an innocent.’
He was sitting so close she could feel his purr of amusement. Or was it more like satisfaction?
Either way, it was one more strike against her! He wouldn’t rate lack of experience highly, much less fall in love with an ‘innocent’ as he had named her. That meant she just had to stop living in cloud-cuckoo land, moping and pining and wishing he would catch the same illness she had come down with! He didn’t even fall in love with the type of woman he bedded—cool, blonde, sexy and knowing. He just used them, grew bored, and tossed them aside! So what chance would she have?
He might laugh at what he would have seen as an attempt to entice him, so it was up to her to show him she had a mind of her own and wasn’t to be sidetracked or poked fun at!
‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘And that is?’ he asked, with provocative smoothness, stretching out his long muscular legs, angling his body into hers so that she wanted to move away, right away, but couldn’t make herself.
Hot colour scorched her cheekbones. What was the matter with her? She craved his nearness like an addict craved a fix. She knew how bad it was for her, but she couldn’t make herself get up and put distance between them. She was a hopeless case where he was concerned!
Furious with herself, she grumped at him. ‘That awful engagement party your mother’s busy organising! You must stop her before even more people get drawn into our shameful lies!’
‘Ah, that.’ He touched the side of her face with the backs of his fingers, then withdrew his hand and reached into a pocket to produce a small velvet-covered box.
Her skin still burning from his touch, Lily could only stare transfixed as he slid the dazzling ring onto her wedding finger. ‘A perfect fit now. I told you I’d get it altered.’
The smugness in his voice fired her to blazing anger. ‘I could slap you!’ she hissed, scrambling round so that she was on her knees, facing him. ‘I told you not to mess with the family heirloom when it’s only going to be a stage prop—you stupid, arrogant—’
‘My refreshing Lily!’ Almost lazily he reached forward, hands on her shoulders, pulling her down to his level, one of his legs pinioning hers. ‘You are the first woman to remind me that I am not perfect! The only woman apart from Mamma who has the spirit to argue with me—I like that.’ He dropped the lightest of kisses onto the end of her nose. ‘I like it very much. It reminds me that I am human.’
His nearness, the heat of his body against hers, the scent of his skin, were desperately tantalising, and made her tremble. She loved him so much, and she hated herself for loving him. She just knew that her resolve to keep him firmly at arm’s length was rapidly dwindling, like mist in the heat of the sun, even though she also knew that he was doing what he’d done before. Distracting her to take her mind off her objections to a fake engagement party that he wasn’t going to veto because this further descent into deceit didn’t bother him.
Her body stiffening, where before it had been weakly melding with his, she fisted her hands against his chest and pushed. ‘I’m warning you—if that fake party goes ahead, I won’t be there!’
‘Neither will I, cara.’
Her smooth brow furrowed at that, her hot words swallowed. Was he going to put a stop to it after all? It seemed like it. Gradually her fists unfurled, her palms lying against his chest where she could feel the steady beat of his heart, the heat of his skin beneath the soft fabric of his collarless shirt.
Brilliant golden eyes searched hers. Her breasts felt heavy and her skin tingled as a shameful heat coiled deep inside her, intensifying as one of his hands slid down her body to rest against the curve of her hip.
She tensed. Did he know what he was doing to her? Did he care? Probably
