The Italian's One-Night Baby
‘What do you think I’m doing here?’ Rio enquired smoothly, turning her own question back on her.
Ellie shrugged a shoulder and concentrated on her cappuccino. She didn’t even want to speak to him but could she be that rude? After all, he was her brother-in-law’s best friend and she liked Polly’s husband. ‘Did Rashad tell you I was going to be here and ask you to check up on me?’ she asked abruptly, thinking that that was just the sort of protective thing Rashad would do, believing that he was doing her a favour when she was staying in an unfamiliar place.
‘No. I don’t think Rashad knows you’re in Italy,’ Rio admitted.
‘So, I don’t need to be polite, then,’ Ellie assumed with satisfaction, reaching out for another pastry.
A sizzling smile slashed Rio’s wide, sensual mouth. ‘No, neither of us need be polite.’
That smile of his engulfed Ellie like a blast of sun on a wintry day and she wanted to turn into it and smile back in reward. Suppressing that reaction took the exercising of several seconds of strained self-control. But Rio had still won in one sense because although she didn’t return the smile her whole body was reacting to him in the most unnerving manner. Her teeth gritted as she recognised the stinging tightness of her nipples and the warm liquid feeling between her thighs. He could tempt her wretched hormones with just a glance and she hated him for having that much power over her treacherous body. Had she no pride? And after what he had done to her, had he not a single honourable streak in his character?
‘So, if we don’t need to be polite...’ Ellie hesitated only for a second before giving him a very honest response. ‘Go away, Rio.’
A very faint stab of bewilderment penetrated Rio’s sharp-as-a-tack brain. He had decided in the absence of any other evidence that Ellie had most probably dreamt up some vague link between her late mother and his godfather purely to gain fresh access to him. And either she was now playing ridiculously hard to get in the hope of stoking his interest...or, he was actually nothing whatsoever to do with her reasons for visiting Tuscany.
‘I don’t believe in coincidences,’ Rio asserted, his sculpted lips compressing as his coffee arrived along with the hotel owner, who lingered to exchange greetings both with Rio and Ellie.
‘I don’t believe in coincidences either,’ Ellie told Rio with a freezing smile once they were alone again. ‘I mean, it was bad enough meeting you at Polly’s wedding...but this—this is overkill of the worst kind—’
‘Is it really?’ Rio was fearful of getting frostbite from that smile, marvelling that Ellie could dare to treat him with such disdain, and his strong and aggressive jawline clenched hard.
‘Yes, I do appreciate that this is your home country but I can’t believe we’re running into each other again...accidentally,’ she admitted.
‘And you would be correct. My presence here is no accident,’ Rio confirmed softly as he sipped his espresso, contriving to look relaxed.
But Ellie knew he wasn’t relaxed. Rio had certain tells. She had picked up on them at Polly’s wedding. His eyes were veiled, his jawline tight, his fingers too braced round the tiny cup he held. Rio was tense, very tense, and she wondered why and then she wondered why she would even care. He was the man whore she had almost slept with, and she was very grateful that she had found him out for what he was before she shared a bed with him. Having carefully ensured that she’d never visited Dharia when he was also visiting, there was no reason for her to waste further words or time on him.
‘So, why are you calling on me? And how did you know where I was staying?’
‘I want to know what you’re doing here in Tuscany,’ Rio informed her flatly without answering her questions.
‘I’m on holiday,’ Ellie told him with a roll of her fine eyes.
‘I don’t think that is the complete truth, Ellie,’ Rio scoffed with a sardonic smile.
‘Well, it’s the only truth you’re likely to get out of me,’ Ellie responded as she stood up, her fine-boned features stiff with restraint and annoyance. ‘It’s not as though we’re friends.’
Rio sprang upright with fluid grace. At her sister’s wedding, his grace of movement had been one of the first things she’d noticed about him: he stalked like an animal on the hunt, all power and strength and purpose. ‘Would you like to be friends?’ he asked lethally.
Ellie stiffened where she stood, quick to pick up on the husky erotic note edging his enquiry. ‘No. I’m very choosy about the men I call friends,’ she declared with deliberate cool, not caring whether Rio assumed that she meant friends with benefits or not.
Heat flared like a storm warning in Rio’s dark golden eyes. ‘You chose me in Dharia,’ he reminded her with satisfaction.
Ellie’s hand tingled as she remembered slapping him hard that night. It occurred to her that a fist would have been better and less forgettable on his terms. She was outraged that he could remind her of that night when in her opinion, had he had any morals at all, he should’ve been thoroughly ashamed of how their short-lived flirtation had ended. But then Rio Benedetti was a shameless sort of guy, arrogant and selfish and promiscuous. That he should also be as hot as hellfire enraged her sense of justice.
‘But I wouldn’t touch you even with gloves on now,’ Ellie traded without skipping a beat and, turning on her heel, she walked back into the hotel.
‘Ellie... We will have this conversation whether you like it or not,’ Rio ground out with a low-pitched derision that nonetheless cut through the sunlit silence like a knife. ‘Walking away won’t save you from it.’
‘And you coming over all caveman and beating your chest won’t get you anywhere,’ Ellie murmured cuttingly over a slim shoulder. ‘I’ve never been one of those women whose heart beats a little faster when a man turns domineering.’
‘But then you hadn’t met me,’ Rio imparted in a raw undertone.
‘And once met, never forgotten,’ Ellie traded, saccharine sweet laced with acid. ‘I live and learn, Rio... Don’t you?’
With that final scornful comment, Ellie vanished into the cool gloom of the hotel. Rio wanted to smash something, break something, shout. It reminded him that that was yet another trait he loathed in his quarry. She got under his skin, set his teeth on edge, made him feel violent. And that wasn’t him, had never been him around women, where he was usually the essence of complete cool and sophistication in his approach. At the same time Ellie sent disturbing cascades of sexual imagery tumbling through his brain. He would picture Ellie in his bed, all spread out and satisfied, Ellie on her knees, Ellie across the bonnet of his favourite sports car. Troppa fantasia...too much imagination, again a trait that only she awakened, and annoying. After all, he wasn’t sex-starved, anything but. Possibly he had become a little bored with easily available women, who clung and flattered and pawed him like a trophy to be shown off, he reasoned impatiently.
But he didn’t want Ellie Dixon except in the most basic male way and he had no intention of doing anything about the effect she had on him. And she might live and learn but she had still to learn that he didn’t let anyone walk away from him before he had finished speaking. Without further hesitation, Rio strode indoors.
Ellie closed the door of her room behind her and leant back against it in a panic that nobody who knew her would ever have credited. Her heart was racing and she was sweating. She straightened her slim shoulders and stomped into the en-suite to wash her hands and put herself back into her usual calm, collected state of mind. She did not allow men to rattle her. She had never allowed men to rattle her.
But two years back, Rio Benedetti had pierced her shell and hurt her, she acknowledged grudgingly. He had contrived what no man before him had contrived and she had almost made a fool of herself over him. Wouldn’t he just love to know that? Ellie grimaced. A man she had known for only a few hours had deprived her of her wits and defences and come close to ridding her of her virginity with her full collusion. And then he had unlocked his bedroom door and she had seen that his hotel bed was already occupied by not one, no, not one but two giggling naked women, twin sisters she had noticed at the wedding. Appalled, she had stepped back.
And Rio had smirked and laughed as if it was of no consequence that two other women were already waiting to entertain him. Even in retrospect she marvelled that she had slapped him instead of kicking him somewhere unforgivable because she had been devastated by that revealing glimpse of his lifestyle, his habits, his lack of scruple when it came to sex. The rose-tinted glasses had been cruelly wrenched off when she was least able to cope and vulnerable, forced to see with her own eyes how sleazy her chosen partner was. Awash with disgust, she had called him a man whore and stalked away with her head held high, concealing her agonised hurt. And it had been agonised, she conceded painfully. Rio Benedetti had knocked her for six and unravelled her emotionally for months after that night.
It had been too sordid a story to share with Polly, who would have been even more shocked to the extent that her sister might have discussed Ellie’s experience with Rashad, and Ellie had not been able to bear the prospect of her humiliation being more widely known. At least what had happened had happened more or less in private.
Someone rapped on her bedroom door and she opened it, expecting it to be the maid because she had said she was going out after breakfast and the room would be free. She didn’t use the peephole and was sharply disconcerted when she realised that Rio had followed her upstairs to her room.
Fixing her attention doggedly on his red silk tie, she said curtly, ‘I don’t want to speak to you... Leave me alone—’
‘No can do, principessa. If only this living and learning life were so simple,’ Rio intoned mockingly.
‘Don’t call me that!’ she snapped. ‘And you’re not coming in—’
A brown lean-fingered hand curved round the door in silent threat and he moved forward but Ellie stood her ground. She had faced drunks in A & E, dealt with drug addicts and violent people, and she wasn’t about to be intimidated by Rio Benedetti.
‘I don’t think you want me to say what I have to say out here where I could be overheard,’ Rio murmured sibilantly. ‘It won’t embarrass me—’
‘Nothing embarrasses you!’ Ellie snapped with very real loathing.
‘It’s about Beppe...Beppe Sorrentino,’ Rio extended, watching her face like a hawk.
And Ellie surprised herself by stepping back to let him into the room because she absolutely had to know what he had to say on that subject. She knew he didn’t know the mission she was on in Italy and that she wanted to try to establish her father’s identity. She was convinced that Rashad was far too reserved and protective of his own wife’s privacy to have shared anything but the sketchiest details about Ellie and Polly’s background. But that Rio should even know Beppe’s name disturbed her.
‘You can come in for five minutes...five minutes only,’ Ellie negotiated thinly. ‘And then I want you to go away and forget you ever knew me.’
Rio’s beautiful mouth curled, his whole carriage screaming that he wasn’t convinced by that claim.
‘And I warn you... If you smirk, I will slap you again.’
CHAPTER TWO
‘I DO NOT SMIRK,’ Rio retorted very drily.
‘Oh, yes, you do... You always look awfully pleased with yourself!’ Ellie snapped back, her nerves all of a quiver and her brain no longer in control of her tongue because Rio in a confined space was too much for her.
It wasn’t a large room. She had gone for cheap and cheerful in the accommodation stakes because she was planning to stay for an entire month in Italy and a classier room would have swallowed her budget within two weeks. But in a room already crowded with a double bed and a big wardrobe, Rio stole all the available space because he was very tall, at least six foot three and large from his broad shoulders to his lean hips and long, powerful legs. Her momentarily distracted gaze ran over the entirety of his sculpted physique, outlined as it was by a wickedly tailored suit that was sufficiently sophisticated to strike a formal note, but which also sensually delineated his muscular strength with fidelity. Colour flared in her pale face as she suddenly realised what she was doing and glanced away, her mouth running dry, her breathing disrupted and her thoughts overpowered by the stricken fear that he could somehow guess what she felt by the way she looked at him. Guess that she hated him but still thought he was gorgeous and incredibly tempting and incredibly bad for her like too much ice cream...
‘Let’s cut to the chase. What are you doing in Tuscany?’ Rio demanded and it was a demand as only Rio could make it, every accented vowel laced with command and hostility.
‘That’s none of your business,’ Ellie told him flatly.
‘Beppe’s my business... He’s my godfather.’ Lustrous dark eyes landed on her like laser beams, watching her face, keen to construe her expression.
Ellie froze in receipt of the very bad news he had just dropped on her from a height and in a defensive move she lowered her eyes. Rio actually knew Beppe Sorrentino and, even worse, had a familial relationship with the older man.
‘You wrote to him looking for information about some woman he met well over twenty years ago,’ he prompted doggedly, his dismissal of the likelihood of such a request clear in every word.
‘Not some woman, my mother,’ Ellie corrected, seeing no harm in confirming a truth he was already acquainted with. It was quite probable that Rio had already read her very carefully constructed letter to his godfather. Naturally she had mentioned nothing about boyfriends, pregnancies or putative fathers in it. She had been discreet, fearful of ruffling feathers and causing offence, but she did plan to question the older man to establish whether or not he knew anything about her paternity. It might be a long shot but it was the only shot she had. Beppe’s friendly response to her letter had encouraged her and lightened her heart but the discovery that Rio Benedetti could be involved in any way in her very private quest for information infuriated her. Was she never to escape the shadow of that misguided night in Dharia?
‘A mother whom you somehow know nothing about?’ Rio pressed in a disbelieving tone.
‘I was a newborn when my mother placed me in my grandmother’s care. I never knew her,’ Ellie admitted grudgingly, throwing him a look of hatred because she deeply resented being forced to tell him anything personal.
‘Don’t look at me like that when it’s a lie,’ Rio urged with staggering abruptness, fiery sparks illuminating his stunning eyes to smouldering gold.
The sudden apparent change of subject disconcerted Ellie. ‘What’s a lie?’
‘You looking at me with dislike when you would really much prefer to rip my clothes off me!’ Rio contended without an ounce of doubt in his dark deep drawl.
‘Is that how you get women?’ Ellie asked drily even while the betraying colour of mortification was creeping up her throat in a hot, seething tide. ‘You tell them that they want you?’
‘No, I only need to see you blush like a tomato to know I’ve hit pay dirt,’ Rio countered with satisfaction. ‘I don’t do pretences, principessa.’
Even while betraying red climbed her face, the absolute curse of her fair colouring, Ellie stared back at him in genuine fascination. ‘You honestly think I’m here for you and that my letter to your godfather is just some silly excuse to see you again? Oh, my word, Rio, how did you get through the door with an ego that big?’
‘I hate the way you beat all around the bush instead of just coming to the point. It is a very simple point, after all,’ Rio told her impatiently, wondering how the hell his dialogue with her had suddenly turned personal but somehow unable to stop it in its tracks.
‘We’re not having this conversation,’ Ellie responded icily.
‘You’re not my teacher or my doctor, so you can drop the haughty chilling tone,’ Rio advised, lounging back against the bedroom door, his sudden slumberous relaxation screaming sex and the kind of bad-boy attitude that set Ellie on fire with fury and curled her fingers into claws.
‘We were talking about Beppe,’ she reminded him in desperation.
‘No. I was talking about us having angry sex—’
Ellie reddened again, her green eyes luminous with disbelief. ‘You did not just say that to me—’
Rio laughed with unholy amusement. ‘I did. Why wrap it up like a dirty secret? We may not like each other but, per meraviglia, with the chemistry we’ve got we would set the bed on fire—’
Ellie focussed on him because she refused to let her gaze drop, lest he take it as a coy invitation. But it was a mistake to meet those stunning dark golden eyes of his, a mistake to be close enough to note the luxuriant curling length of his black lashes and the hint of stubble accentuating the shape of his full-modelled mouth. Rio Benedetti made her think of sex. It was instinctual, utterly brazen and when she collided with his eyes it was as if he were operating a gravitational pull on her. Ellie’s 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.’