‘Why secretly?’ Her delicate brows furrowed in genuine confusion, making her look every bit as innocent as she had been—unknown to him—before he took her to his hotel room in London.
‘To protect you from press attention, of course—except that it didn’t go according to plan, as the Celebrity Spy! article will prove, giving me the perfect opportunity to refute its claims.’
‘And where will these meetings have taken place?’ She spoke in an efficient manner and might have been conducting a business meeting.
‘London and Rome. What do you like doing? Where would you have wanted to go?
She looked at him, the hardness in her eyes softening slightly. ‘Art galleries.’
‘Art? I had no idea.’ He was genuinely surprised, but couldn’t allow himself to get sidetracked now.
‘Why should you have? Neither of us expected the night we shared to become anything more than one night. We didn’t even exchange names.’
She strolled across the terrace, folding her arms about her as if trying to keep every detail about herself protected from him. He watched as she stood and looked out across the rise and fall of the landscape he loved so much, interspersed as it was by clusters of ancient villages.
He hadn’t expected anything from those few hot hours in bed with her, and certainly not to wake up alone the next morning. Was that why she’d lingered in his mind, teasing his memory with the passion of that night? Now, as he watched her, his gaze taking in her petite and slender figure showcased to perfection in another creation suggested by Elizabeth, he really did want to know more about her. What did she like? What was her favourite music and food? Questions raced through his mind.
‘And what of your family?’ He had to know at least something of her family background.
‘My family?’ She looked at him, suspicion in her eyes. ‘It is just my mother and myself. We moved to London, her place of birth, after my father died.’
A jolt of something akin to sympathy raced through him. She knew what it was to lose someone she loved too.
‘But you grew up in Australia?’ He walked over to her, conscious of her watching him carefully, keeping her attention fully focused on him, just as she had done that first morning in his office.
‘Yes, in Sydney. Anything else about my childhood you feel it’s necessary to know?’
The scathing tone of her voice should have warned him off, but knowing she too had lost her father drew him to her, as did a strange urge to talk of something he’d long since buried.
‘You at least knew your father, had a bond with him, which is more than I ever experienced.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The sympathetic look in her eyes as she looked up at him, placing her hand on his arm, conveyed her shock at the unexpected revelation which had come from him.
‘Don’t be.’ He shrugged off her touch and focused his gaze into the Tuscan countryside. ‘I barely knew my father, which is just as well. He wasn’t a man I would have wished to know.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Her shock rushed over him in waves. ‘Every child needs a father.’
‘Not one who walks out on a woman, a young boy and a newborn son. No child deserves a father like that.’
‘That happened to you?’ Her gorgeous green eyes were filled with sympathy and he gritted his teeth against it. He didn’t need sympathy from anyone—least of all her.
‘Sì.’ His overpowering anger made functioning in English briefly impossible.
‘Where is your brother now?’
Piper’s question rocked him to the core as memories of the time when that had been the only question he’d wanted an answer to flooded back faster than a high tide.
‘He died.’ The hounds were after him again, dragging out the horror of those years when he and his mother had had no idea where the teenage Alessio had gone. He couldn’t do this now. He didn’t want to share any of this with anyone, and definitely not a fiancée acquired through a deal. ‘He was missing for several years before I discovered the truth of his untimely death.’
‘That makes all I went through as a child seem so trivial.’
He turned to her just as she looked down, as if ashamed of even admitting such a thing. ‘What did you go through?’
She still didn’t look at him. ‘I was born without sight in my left eye, and before I had an operation to make it look normal I was teased mercilessly by other children. Then I was knocked down by a car when I was seven. I didn’t see the car, which thankfully wasn’t going fast, but after that my parents—especially my father—wrapped me up and tried to keep me from all harm. I just wish I could have done the same for Dad. Maybe then he wouldn’t have been killed when a car he was a passenger in crashed.’
Before Dante could think what he was doing he’d taken Piper in his arms and hugged her. Her willing body moulded against him and he stroked her hair, inhaling the scent of her shampoo, wanting only to make her pain go away.
‘I had no idea,’ he said, thinking again of what she had first said, and the way she always kept her focus on him, especially in his office that first morning. It made sense now.
‘I don’t like to talk of my father.’ She looked up at him and he studied her closely.
‘I meant about your sight.’
Before she could drop her gaze he caught her chin with his thumb and finger, forcing her to look at him. ‘Nobody would ever know.’
She pulled away from him, a flush of embarrassment colouring her cheeks. ‘We can talk more later. I’m not feeling too good.’
He watched her go, wanting to call her back, to hold her to him again and give her comfort. Because, strangely, just having her in his arms gave him comfort. It was a sensation he was not at all sure about and so, feeling like a child learning to swim, enjoying the warm water and yet finding it terrifying, he moved swiftly to the water’s edge and out of danger. Sentiment was something he’d never dabbled with, and now was not the time to start.
* * *
Piper’s nerves were almost frayed as she and Dante entered the villa of the man he wanted to do business with—the man she had to convince their relationship was real.
She’d put on the emerald-green dress that Elizabeth had selected for the dinner, still ruffled by the fact that Elizabeth had known more of what was expected of her than Piper had. But that indignation had melted away when Dante had first seen her, looking at her not with the scrutiny she’d expected, but with genuine pleasure. And if she wasn’t mistaken there had also been a hint of something else which had sent a shiver of anticipation through her...
But now was not the time, and she focused herself. She had a role to play—her part of the deal they’d struck a week ago in Rome.
‘Dante,’ Bettino said as he met them, taking Dante’s hand and shaking it firmly. ‘I confess that I was sceptical about the news that you had become engaged, but now I can see exactly why a man such as yourself would succumb to the need for marriage.’
Piper smiled graciously at Bettino and tried to ignore the frisson of tension which had transferred itself from Dante to her at the other man’s words.
‘Bettino, meet Piper Riley—my fiancée.’ Remarkably Dante supressed the tension and pride shone out in his voice. Piper felt her stomach flip over with nerves, still unable to believe she’d actually agreed to this charade.
She wanted to shy away from Bettino, despite his friendly smile and grandfather-like eyes. All she wanted to do was step back from his scrutiny and the limelight to a place where she felt safe, but this was part of the deal she’d made with Dante and she would do it so well even he wouldn’t question her authenticity.