the incredulous way Rio had looked at her in the car park would stay with her until the day she died. Her face burned afresh. She should have kept quiet, she shouldn’t have said anything, should have left that short-lived intimacy and all memory of it back in his house in the hills where it belonged. A mistaken moment and not an important one in her scheme of things. Only sex. Although it would not be only sex if she fell pregnant, she conceded wretchedly, and refused to think about that angle on the grounds that it was stupid to worry before she knew she actually had something to worry about.
Although for the first time ever, Ellie desperately wanted to confide in someone and she thought about phoning Polly. She didn’t think Polly would tell her husband, Rashad, about that. But how did she know for sure? She covered her face with wet hands, all the stress of the past forty-eight hours piling up on her along with every doubt and insecurity she possessed. She still didn’t know how she had ended up having sex with Rio, but she knew she had wanted it to happen as much as he had. Being unable to put the blame on him stung, as well. He hadn’t sweet-talked her, filled her up with booze or seduced her—my goodness, anything but, she conceded ruefully.
Beppe called her on her mobile and asked her to meet him at a doctor’s surgery on the outskirts of Florence the next day. She refused the lift he offered her and assured him that she had satellite navigation and was happy to drive herself there. He invited her to dine at his home in the evening and she agreed, keen to take the opportunity to get to know him a little better, regardless of how Rio might feel about it. Should she tell Beppe that she knew Rio? Or would it be wiser to remain tactfully silent? She brooded about that while she got dressed to dine with Bruno.
It was a long evening. Bruno might have ticked all the basic boxes in the tally of what made a man attractive but he bored on about his work ambitions while asking little about Ellie. He kissed her on the cheek outside her hotel. He invited her out again and she made a polite excuse and she didn’t linger, speeding indoors, keen to get to bed.
Opening the door of her hotel room, she drew back with a sound of consternation when she saw the light burning beside her bed and the male reclining there. ‘How on earth did you get in here?’ she demanded.
Rio uncoiled fluidly off the bed and stretched with lazy assurance, not one whit perturbed by her attitude. ‘It wasn’t difficult. The staff know we’re...close,’ he selected with precision and the angry flush on her cheeks bloomed hotter still with chagrin. ‘I also own a large stake in the hotel.’
‘We are not close!’ Ellie contradicted, tossing her bag down on the chair in the corner.
Rio shrugged a broad shoulder, gracefully and silently evasive. He was as effortlessly beautiful as a dark angel sent to tempt even with his black hair tousled, his jawline shadowed and his tie missing. Her heartbeat had picked up speed. Her tiredness had taken a mysterious step back and she was already breathing as if she had run up a hill. And there was the craziest melting sensation in that place where she still ached from his sheer sexual energy. Yet she didn’t want that again, did she? It was a badly timed thought to have in Rio’s presence because her entire body quickened as if she had punched a button to switch it on to supersensitivity. Her nipples stung and her thighs pressed together as if to silence the squirming readiness low in her pelvis.
‘Are you planning to tell me what you’re doing here?’ Ellie enquired stiffly, tamping down all those disobedient thoughts and responses.
‘I wanted to be sure you came back alone,’ Rio told her.
‘And how is that your business?’
‘You were with me today,’ Rio murmured.
Ellie tilted her chin, emerald eyes gleaming like chips of ice. ‘Doesn’t mean you own me.’
Rio shrugged again. ‘I’d still have beaten the hell out of him had you brought him upstairs.’
Ellie’s lips parted and then closed again because there really wasn’t much she could say to that. ‘You do a lot of that sort of thing?’ she prompted a split second later, honest curiosity gripping her.
‘Get physical? Once it was a regular activity.’ Dark eyes spilling a glittering gleam of gold from below lush curling black lashes, Rio strode past her to the door. ‘I had to, to protect myself. I grew up in a tough environment.’
‘You’re leaving?’ Ellie framed in disconcertion and then could have bitten her tongue out because she was making it sound as though she wanted him to stay. And she didn’t.
‘Sì...’ Rio treated her to a slow burning appraisal. ‘Somehow I doubt that you’d be up for anything else tonight, principessa.’
Fury splintered through Ellie. Leave it to Rio to tell it as it is. He would stay for sex but not to chat or share a drink or supper or anything more civilised. The claustrophobic silence of the room enclosed her, increasing her nervous tension. The tip of her tongue stole out to moisten her dry lower lip.
‘I love your mouth,’ Rio husked soft and low, his attention locking to the sultry fullness of her pink lips.
Gooseflesh pebbled Ellie’s arms and a wicked little quiver snaked down her taut spinal cord. She was so aware of him that her very skin prickled and tingled with it. For an insane moment she imagined pushing him backwards down on the bed and teaching him that he didn’t know everything about her. And then she blinked, sane Ellie swimming back to the fore, and she spun and opened the door for him so that he would leave more quickly.
‘Sometimes you crack me up, bella mia,’ Rio confided with unholy amusement, recognising her defensiveness in that almost desperate pulling open of the door to hasten his departure. ‘When you’re thinking about me in bed tonight, will you be kissing me or thumping me?’
Ellie breathed in so deep she almost spontaneously combusted while she watched Rio clatter down the stairs without an ounce of discomfiture in his bearing. She had never met anyone quite like Rio Benedetti before and that was probably why he knocked her for six every time she saw him, she told herself soothingly. He was bad, he was brash, he was incredibly sexy and insolent and he had the kind of charismatic confidence that burned like a solar flare. She was too polite and inhibited to deal with him as he should be dealt with. Her hands clenched into fists.
He embarrassed her too. The staff had seen her going out with Bruno Nigrelli and now knew she had returned to find Rio waiting in her bedroom. Ought she to complain about that invasion? Or, having already been seen in Rio’s company and kissing him, perhaps it was wiser to ignore the situation lest she end up even more embarrassed. Had Rio made her look slutty? Or like a femme fatale? She went to bed on that thought, deciding that Rio’s pursuit, if she could label it with that word, made her look like a much more exciting woman than she actually was. But she still wanted to kill him for being so careless of appearances, so arrogant and incomprehensible.
Why would he have beaten up Bruno had she brought the other man back to her room? Presumably that had been a joke, although she had not seen the humour in it. She could not credit that Rio could be jealous or staking some sort of male claim to her. He wasn’t the type. And instead of finding the sleep she badly needed the riddle of his complex personality ensured that she couldn’t stop her brain running on and actually relax enough to drift off.
* * *
The following morning she met up with Beppe outside a smart suburban surgery near Florence. The older man looked perfectly calm and collected and there was no sign of strain or distress in either his expression or his friendly, easy manner. Had Rio exaggerated? Overreacted? They went inside the surgery and swabs were taken. Beppe passed over a tiny gold locket, which
