down with him. If we make love here—in my real world—I would be in grave danger of falling in love with you.’
He shot back in his seat, his eyes filling with horror. The pulse in his throat pounded. ‘I...’ He gulped. ‘That would be seriously unwise.’
She snorted. ‘It’d be a disaster.’ And if they were being honest... ‘I doubt I’d make a particularly gracious jilted lover.’
He raised both hands. ‘Point taken. We keep our hands to ourselves, keep things strictly platonic and...friendship.’ He nodded vigorously. ‘We focus on friendship.’
* * *
Ryan stared at Marianna, his heart doing its best to pound a way out of his chest. There couldn’t be any sex between them. Ever again. She’d just presented him with his nightmare scenario and... Just, no. It would wreck everything.
He swallowed and tried to slow his pulse. If only he could forget the satin slide of her skin or the dancing delight of her fingertips as they travelled across his naked flesh, not to mention the sweet warm scent of her and the way he’d relished burying his face in her hair and breathing her in.
He stamped a lid on those memories and shoved them into a vault in his mind marked: Never to be opened.
Marianna lifted another spoonful of cake to her lips. He glanced at his fettuccine, but pushed the plate away, his stomach now too acid. Marianna had told him the food here was superb, world class, but it could’ve been sawdust for all he knew.
He glanced across the table and his gaze snagged hers. ‘You really don’t mean to make it difficult for me to see our child?’
Very slowly she shook her head. ‘Not if you want to be involved.’
He wanted to be involved all right. He just didn’t know what involved actually entailed. ‘So...where do we go from here?’
She halted with a spoon of cake only centimetres from her mouth.
He tried not to focus on her mouth. ‘I mean, what do we do next?’
She lowered her spoon. ‘I don’t really know. I...’ She frowned and he went on immediate alert. It had to be better for her health and the baby’s if she smiled rather than frowned.
Also, it had to be seriously bad for her health—her blood pressure—to go about hurling vases at people. He made a mental note to try and defuse all such high emotion in the future.
Her spoon clattered back to her plate and she gestured heavenwards with a dramatic flourish. ‘It feels as if there must be a million things to do before the baby arrives!’
Were there? Asking what they were would only reveal the extent of his ignorance. He hadn’t been able to shake off her horrified expression when she’d realised he’d never so much as held a baby. So, he didn’t ask what needed doing. Instead he asked, ‘What can I do?’
She folded her arms and surveyed him. She might only be a petite five feet two inches, but it took all of his strength to not fidget under that gaze.
‘You really want to help?’
‘Yes.’ That was unequivocal. He needed to help.
‘I plan to move out of the family home and into a cottage on the estate.’
He wondered if her brothers knew about this yet.
‘It’s solid and hardy, but I’d like to spruce up the inside with a new coat of paint and make everything lovely and fresh for the baby.’
It took a moment before he realised what she was asking of him. His heart started to thud. She’d told him that if he was serious about becoming a good father, his time would no longer be his own. His mouth dried. Could he do this?
He had to do this!
He reviewed his upcoming work schedule. He set his shoulders and rested both arms on the table. ‘How would it be if I spent the next month—’ four whole weeks! ‘—in Monte Calanetti? I can work remotely with maybe just the odd day trip back to Rome, and in my spare time I can help you get established in your cottage, help you set up a nursery...and in return you can tell me what you see as the duties and responsibilities of a good father?’
Her eyes widened, and he was suddenly fiercely glad he’d made the offer. ‘You’d stay for a whole month?’
It wouldn’t interfere with the Conti contract, and he didn’t kid himself—he’d only have one chance to prove himself to the mother of his yet-to-be-born child, and he wasn’t going to waste it. ‘Consider it done,’ he said.
MARIANNA STARED AT him and Ryan found himself holding his breath, waiting for her answer...her verdict.
She folded her arms. ‘That would help me out a lot.’
‘And me,’ he added, wanting her to remember that she’d just promised to tutor him in the arts of fatherhood.
She stared down at her cake and bit her lip. Her hair fell around her shoulders in a riot of dark waves, and it suddenly struck him how young she looked. He pushed his plate further away and glanced at her again. ‘How old are you, Marianna?’
‘Twenty-four.’
She was so young!
‘And you?’
‘Twenty-nine.’ It was one of the many pieces of information they hadn’t exchanged during their week in Thailand.
‘If you researched me on the Internet, then you know what I do for a living.’ As a specialist freelance consultant brought in, usually at the last moment, to turn the fortunes of ailing companies around, he enjoyed the adrenaline surge, the high-stakes pressure, and the tight deadlines. He shifted on his seat. ‘What about you? What’s your role at the vineyard? Are you a winemaker?’
She shook her head and those glorious curls performed a gentle dance around her face and shoulders. ‘Nico is the vintner. I’m a viticulturist. I grow the grapes, look after the health of the vines.’ She pushed a lock of hair behind her ear. ‘The art of grape growing is a science.’
He knew she had a brain. It shouldn’t surprise him that she used it. ‘Sounds...technical.’
‘I grew up on the vineyard. It’s in my blood.’
The smile she sent him tightened his skin. He tried to ignore the pulse of sexual awareness coursing through him. That was not going to happen. No matter how much he might want her, he wasn’t messing with her emotions.
‘What?’ she said.
He shook himself. ‘So your job is stable? Financially you’re...secure?’
He could’ve groaned when her face turned stormy.
He raised both hands. ‘No offence meant. Difficult conversations, remember?’
She blew out a breath and slumped back, offered him a tiny smile that speared straight into the centre of him. ‘I feel as if you’re quizzing me to make sure I’m suitable mother material.’
‘Not what I’m doing.’ He’d be the least qualified person on earth to do that.
She kinked an eyebrow. ‘No?’
He shook his head. ‘When I said I wanted to make things easier for you, I meant in every way.’
He saw the moment his meaning reached her. The hand she rested on the table—small like the rest of her—clenched. He waited with an internal grimace and a kind of fatalistic inevitability for her to throw something at him.
In amazement he watched as her hand unclenched again. ‘I keep forgetting that you don’t really know me.’
He