body turned so rigid that her muscles hurt but even that reality couldn’t block the tide of physical awareness flooding her every skin cell. With deep bitter chagrin, she felt the pulse at the aching heart of her thighs and the swollen sensitivity of her breasts.
‘Angry sex could be a lot of fun, principessa. It would loosen you up. You are very, very tense and I know exactly how to take care of that,’ Rio purred, cool as ice water, his pride soothed by her dilated pupils and revealing flush. After all, if he had to tolerate being constantly aroused around her, why shouldn’t she have to suffer the same? But in contrast to him why couldn’t she be practical and honest about it? Did she still expect and demand the fake flowers-and-diamonds approach from the men in her life?
‘That’s enough.’ Ellie lifted her chin and closed a hand into his sleeve to yank him off the door so that she could reach for the handle, but it was like trying to move a very large and heavy boulder and he didn’t budge an inch.
‘You really do enjoy getting physical with me in other ways, don’t you?’ Rio derided huskily, looking down at her from his intimidating height, wicked amusement dancing in his beautiful dark eyes. ‘Is that a hint about your preferences? I’m not into bondage but I can definitely picture you in one of those dominatrix outfits, twirling a whip—’
And that was it for Ellie. He wouldn’t move from the door and he wouldn’t shut up and frustration made her temper spontaneously combust inside her and shoot up through her like a rocket. ‘If you don’t get out of here, I’m going to call the police!’ she screamed at him.
Rio flicked an imaginary speck of fluff from the sleeve her tight grip had creased infinitesimally. ‘Fortunately the polizia locale are unlikely to arrest a native for making a pass at a beautiful woman—’
‘I don’t care!’ Ellie lashed back at him, all patience and restraint stripped from her. ‘I hate you... I want you out of my room...now!’
‘When you tell me what you really want from Beppe I’ll leave,’ Rio bargained softly. ‘I want the truth.’
‘It’s private and it’s none of your business and I won’t allow you to bully me!’ Ellie retorted angrily. ‘Does your godfather even know that you’re here tormenting me?’
Rio fell very still, reluctantly recognising that he was dealing with a quarry worthy of his mettle. Beppe was an old-fashioned gentleman and particularly protective of the female sex and he would be shocked by Rio’s interference.
‘I didn’t think he did,’ Ellie declared in the telling silence. ‘The letter he sent me was kind and friendly. So back off, Rio, or I’ll—’
‘Or you’ll what?’ Rio growled in raw interruption. ‘You think that you can threaten me?’
‘Unlike you I’m not in the habit of threatening people,’ Ellie countered, lifting her chin, her green eyes deeply troubled.
‘Well, then let us reach an agreement here and now,’ Rio suggested silkily. ‘I could approach Beppe with the results of the investigative report I’ve had done on you and, if I did so, you would be turned away from the door tomorrow because there are enough dynamite allegations against you in that report to make him very wary.’
Ellie took an uncertain step backwards, hugely disconcerted by that accusation coming out of nowhere at her. ‘I haven’t done anything wrong, so I can’t imagine what you’re talking about—’
‘Of course you’re going to say that,’ Rio parried, unimpressed. ‘But the point is that serious allegations have been made against you and by more than one person.’
Ellie fell silent because, although she was innocent of any wrongdoing and had been cleared during an internal enquiry, a serious allegation had been lodged against her, which could have had a most negative impact on her career as a doctor. Fortunately for her, she was protected by National Health Service rules there to safeguard staff in such situations and the allegation had been withdrawn and the complaint dismissed. Tears stung the backs of her eyes because that same allegation had caused Ellie a great deal of stress and many sleepless nights before it had been settled and she had viewed her Italian holiday as a much-needed period of rest and recuperation. To have that unpleasant business, in which she had been truly blameless, flung in her teeth by Rio Benedetti was seriously offensive.
‘Those allegations were dismissed a week before I flew out here,’ she spelt out curtly, struggling to control the wobble in her voice. ‘And what were you doing getting an investigative report done on me, for goodness’ sake?’
‘I will always protect Beppe from anyone who could take advantage of him and I don’t trust you or the coincidence that brings you here,’ Rio stated grimly, noting the sheen in her eyes, wondering if it was fake, deciding not to be impressed because tears in a woman’s eyes were nothing new to his experience. Virtually every woman he had ever been with had done the crying thing at some stage and all it had ever done was chase him off faster.
‘That’s not my problem,’ Ellie traded with an unapologetic little sniff that strangely enough impressed Rio much more than the hint of tears. ‘And why would it even occur to you that I would try to take advantage of Beppe? Obviously you don’t believe it but I’m not a dishonest person—’
At that claim, Rio quirked a sardonic ebony brow and thought about the diamond brooch she had somehow prevented her uncle from inheriting. ‘Aren’t you? Even though you can’t even bring yourself to admit that you want me—’
‘You know why—because nothing is going to happen between us,’ Ellie told him piously, superiority ringing in every syllable. ‘Why acknowledge it?’
And there it was again, that intonation that made Rio want to do or say something totally outrageous. It shot him straight back to his misspent youth when he had been regularly carpeted for his sins in Sister Teresa’s school office. There was something so incredibly frustrating about Ellie’s blanket ban on normal sexual behaviour, he reasoned angrily. He could not understand why a woman with so much pent-up passion should repeatedly strive to ignore the sizzle in the air between them. As if attraction was a weakness? Or a risk she wasn’t prepared to take?
His own convoluted and uncharacteristic thoughts on that score exasperated him as much as they had in Dharia. The evening of her sister’s wedding had been a washout but that hadn’t been his fault, had it been? Ellie had been totally unreasonable and unjust when she’d blamed him for that episode. He had been honest with her, as well, too honest, and where had that got him? A slap on the face and a shedload of insults. They would never have worked anyway, he told himself impatiently, not with a woman seemingly hardwired to be touchy, angry and super judgemental.
‘Non c’è problema... Don’t worry about it,’ Rio advised drily as he swung round and pulled open the door. ‘But when you fall, I’ll still be the one to catch you.’
‘I won’t be falling. Can I hope this is the last I’ll be seeing of you?’ Ellie dared as he strode out into the corridor and involuntarily she too stepped over the threshold.
‘You have nothing to fear from me unless you distress or damage Beppe in some way,’ Rio warned, his voice roughening at the mere thought of any harm coming to the older man. ‘I don’t know why you’re being so secretive anyway. Beppe will eventually tell me what this was all about.’
Pretending sublime indifference to that prospect, Ellie shrugged a slight shoulder. ‘Why would I care?’ she said breezily, keen to discourage his suspicions that she was hiding anything of
