me, for lack of a better word, I like Enzo the best and it was easier to spend time with him than run around trying to avoid the rest of them. I enjoy his company and we’ve been pretty inseparable the last two weeks. He’s kind, genuine and he told me the first moment that—”
“Enzo Castillaghi?” Raphael snapped. Everything inside him came alert.
“He’s gay and he told me within two minutes of meeting me. He said his family would lose it if they knew. Both Giovanni and his father, Stefano, are pushing really hard for this to go through.”
Raphael jerked up straight, his blood curdling. “Stefano? He was there?”
Pia nodded, her gaze searching his. “I didn’t realize Gio knew so much about my thing with Enzo. Anyway, yesterday afternoon out of the blue Enzo and Stefano arrived for lunch. After lunch, we... Enzo...proposed to me in the garden while they watched from the terrace. He said he liked me, and we could marry as a convenience for now. It would get his parents off his back and I... Gio and the unwanted attention. Just as a stopgap measure.”
Raphael cursed hard and long.
For Gio to make a deal with Enzo’s father, Stefano Castillaghi, when he knew how much Raphael loathed Stefano, and with good reason... Something wasn’t right. The thought of Pia married to Enzo while Stefano pulled his strings from behind, while Stefano got his hand into Vito Automobiles... His blood boiled.
What the hell kind of a game was Giovanni playing?
“Raphael, you look downright scary. Is the Castillaghi family that bad?”
Somehow, he managed to swallow the poison that swirled within. “Enzo is harmless but completely under his father’s thumb. Stefano, on the other hand...”
“What about him?”
Raphael wondered if she realized she was touching him. That all he’d have to do was tilt his head and his mouth would touch hers. A thread of her scent warmed by her skin teased his nostrils. Damn Giovanni!
“What about Stefano, Raphael?”
He ran a hand through his hair. This day was going from bad to worse. “Stefano was my father’s business partner for twenty years. Even as families, we were very close. As a business, my father, Stefano and the third partner made some unwise, risky investments. When the investments failed to pan out and the business went under, we found that Stefano and the other partner had cleverly claused themselves out of the debt.
My father was the only one responsible. We lost everything—our house, the business, the cars—overnight because he was determined to pay everyone back. But it wasn’t enough.”
“Couldn’t Stefano and the other guy be held responsible by law?”
He hated talking about that time. Talking about the man he’d once hero-worshipped. Being reminded that the void his father had left had only hardened with bitterness. “No.”
“You’re not telling me something.” Distress rang in her voice. “Your father...what happened to him?”
How could she know what he had left out? “He killed himself.”
Her hands clasped his tightly, her silence saying more than words ever could. He didn’t know why he held on to her fingers as if she were a lifeline. He didn’t know what magic she wove but something shifted in his chest.
“Was he a good man, Raphael?” she asked in a soft voice. It was a question no one had ever asked, and it burrowed through his flesh and blood like an arrow, lodging deeply and painfully.
“He was a coward,” he said harshly. And flinched, for his own words hurt him. Still. After all these years.
“You...how old were you?”
“Seventeen.”
“Raphael, you don’t think—”
He pushed away from her, loath to discuss his father and the past any longer. “I owe Giovanni everything but I’ll be damned if I let Stefano’s shadow touch Vito Automobiles. What was your answer to Enzo?”
Her gaze turned searching, and then she sighed. “I refused him. Enzo is sweet. And this offer...it will get everyone off my back, and maybe provide a measure of relief to Gio too. But marriage is sacred.”
He snorted. She glared at him. “It is for me. I could no more marry Enzo as a convenience than I could marry...you to make Gio happy.”
“There’s one point in my favor over Enzo, si?” That she distracted him enough to joke less than a minute after thinking of Stefano Castillaghi said something about his attraction to her.
“Fat good that does me,” she mumbled.
“What does that mean?” he asked, genuinely curious now. Dio, no woman sent him on a roller coaster as she did.
Color stole up her cheeks. “Can I finish telling you what happened?” she said tartly.
He grinned, liking her all riled up like this. “Si.”
“After they left, Gio told me I should accept Enzo, that he would be a kind husband. When I said I had no intention of marrying in the near future, he got...agitated. I told him I’d had enough of him manipulating me. He said it was his right to select a husband for me, to make sure another man didn’t cheat me like Frank did.
“We yelled at each other some more and I said if he kept pushing me like that, if he... I’d leave and never return, like Nonni had done.” She rubbed a hand over her eyes, but the tears fell anyway. “His face went white...he couldn’t speak. One of the staff called his physician.
“This was not like one of his usual temper tantrums, Raphael. The doctor took ages to get there and I thought—God!” Her tears turned into soundless sobs and Raphael pulled her into his arms.
She came to him as if she had no strength left. Arms vined around his neck, she buried her face in his chest.
A strange sort of weight seemed to lodge in his own throat. He wasn’t worried about Gio. The mean old bastard would live to a hundred and torture Raphael and Pia in the process.
No, it was the sound of Pia’s wretched grief that shook him.
He had never seen anyone grieve like that. With everything of themselves poured into it. His belief that all she wanted was easy money from this trip—suddenly, his cynicism, his hard shell, felt dirty near her.
Her back was slender against his broad palm; even now he was unable to stem the awareness of her soft body against his. “Pia, nothing will happen to Gio.”
“We don’t know that. I can’t lose him. Not when I’ve only just found him. To see him lying on the bed, helpless like that... All I could think of was my Nonni. I can’t... I couldn’t forgive myself if anything happened to him. I can’t let him go on worrying about me.”
“You can’t marry a gay man however decent you think he is,” he added softly, just to make sure they were on the same page. Right now, he couldn’t even try to fathom the underpinnings of his godfather’s Machiavellian mind.
She sniffled elegantly and wiped her cheeks. “No, I can’t. I couldn’t sleep. I was working on a toy and finally I hit on the perfect solution.”
Raphael pulled her hands away from his neck because the graze of her breasts against his chest was more than he could take in his current mood.
And because, while she was obliviously dwelling on her worries over Gio, his attention had wandered from her grief, from Stefano, to the pressing weight of her thighs against his. To the span of her tiny waist and the flare of her hips in his hands. To how soft and sweet she smelled.
To the semi hard-on that was fast swelling into something else.
He only meant to create some distance between them.
But the moment she realized what he’d done, her eyes widened. Furious