LITMIR.BIZ

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his work boots leaving muddy prints on the Carrara marble floors.

      “Damnit,” he roared, as he flung open the front door—

      And stopped.

      A figure was coming toward him, hurrying up the long, unfinished driveway. Trying to hurry, at any rate, but how fast could a person go on that uneven, pitted, rocky surface in—in—

      Were those stiletto heels?

      His visitor was not Izzy Orsini.

      It was a woman.

      Damn the malfunctioning intercom and gate!

      He’d been this route one time before. A woman had decided he was her true love. He’d never talked to her, never heard her name, never seen her in his life but he’d turned out to be a fixture in her mental landscape. She’d sent him letters. Emails. She’d sent him gifts and cards. She’d stalked him without letup, settled in on the corner near his Manhattan condo, which was when he’d finally, if reluctantly, pressed charges.

      Was this her again?

      No. His stalker had been fiftyish, short and rotund. This woman was young. Mid-twenties. Tall and slender, and dressed as if she were on her way to a board meeting: the stilettos, a white blouse showing under the suit jacket, dark hair pulled severely back from her face. She didn’t look like a crazy stalker or like a nosy reporter, though in Rio’s book, the two could easily be one and the same, but who gave a damn?

      She had no business here and that was all that mattered.

      “Hold it right there,” Rio barked, but his command didn’t stop her and he trotted down the steps, eyes narrowed. “I said—”

      “Mr. D’Aquila expects me.”

      Not a reporter or a crazy, at least not one looking for him if she didn’t recognize him, even shirtless, in jeans and work boots, but clearly a liar with an agenda all her own.

      Rio gave a thin smile.

      “I assure you, madam, that would be news to him.”

      There were only a couple of feet between them now. Close up, he could see that there was a rip in her skirt, dirt on those stiletto heels and a smudge on her blouse. Her hair wasn’t quite as neatly drawn back as he’d at first thought; tendrils of it, dark and curling, were coming loose around her face.

      It was an interesting face. Triangular. High cheekbones. Big green eyes. Feline, he thought.

      Not that it mattered, but if she’d been in some kind of accident he supposed he could, at least, offer to—

      “It is your attitude that would be news to him,” Isabella Orsini said, hoping her voice would not tremble because everything inside her was bouncing around like an unset bowl of gelatin and after all she’d gone through today, there wasn’t a way in hell she was going to permit this half-naked, good-looking-if-you-were-foolish-enough-to-like-the-type flunky of a too rich, too powerful, too full-of-himself ape to stop her now.

      There was a moment’s silence. Then Mr. Half-Naked raised one dark eyebrow.

      “Really.”

      His tone was soft but it made Izzy’s heart thump. To hell with thumping hearts, she thought, and lifted her chin.

      “Really,” she said, with all the hauteur she could muster.

      Mr. Half-Naked gave another of those thin smiles and motioned toward the door.

      “In that case,” he said, in a voice that was almost a purr, “you had better come in.”

      CHAPTER TWO

      A NAKED man.

      A house in the middle of nowhere.

      An open door, and an invitation to step through it.

      Izzy swallowed hard.

      Did she truly want to do that? She was not into taking risks. Everyone knew that about her, even her father, who didn’t actually know anything about any of his children.

      I have heard that you are considering taking on a new client, Isabella, Cesare Orsini had said during one of the inevitable Sunday command performance dinners at the Orsini mansion. But you will not.

      “Excuse me?” Izzy had said.

      Her father had given her what she’d always thought of as one of his “I am the head of this family” glares except, of course, his glares as don of the East Coast’s most powerful famiglia had more impact on those who feared him than they did on his sons and daughters.

      To them, he was not the head of anything. He was just a shame to be borne for the sake of their mother.

      “Do I not speak English as well as you? I said, you are not to work for Rio D’Aquila.”

      “And you say this because …?”

      “I know of him and I do not like what I know. Therefore, accepting a position that will make you his servant is out of the question.”

      Isabella would have laughed had her father’s view of what she did for a living not been such an old argument.

      “I am not a servant, Father, I am a horticulturist with a degree from the University of Connecticut.”

      “You are a gardener.”

      “I certainly am. And what if I were what you call a servant? There’s nothing dishonorable in being a maid or a cook.”

      “Orsinis do not bow their heads or bend their knees to anyone, Isabella. Is that clear?”

      Nothing had been clear, starting with how her father had learned she’d been invited to bid on a job for a billionaire she’d never even heard of until a couple of weeks ago, going straight through to how Cesare could have imagined she would take orders from him.

      If anything, his certainty that she would click her heels and obey him was what had convinced her to give serious consideration to the offer, something she really had not intended until then.

      Now here she was, in Southampton, a place that might as well have been Mars for all she knew about it, hours late for an important interview, her car in a ditch, her suit and her shoes absolute disasters.

      No. She was not going to think about that now. It would be self-defeating … and hadn’t she had enough of that?

      It was enough to wonder at the crazed logic of moving past an all-but-naked man, a gorgeous all-but-naked man, to step inside a house that was, conservatively speaking, the size of an airplane hangar.

      “Well? Are you coming inside, or have you changed your mind about Mr. D’Aquila expecting you?”

      Izzy blinked. The caretaker, or whatever he was, was watching her with amusement. Forget amusement. That expression on his face was a smirk.

      How lovely to be the day’s entertainment, Isabella thought, and drew herself to her full five foot seven.

      “I am not in the habit of changing my mind about anything,” she said, and almost winced.

      Such a stupid thing to say.

      Too late.

      She’d said it and now her feet, which seemingly had only a tenuous connection to her brain, propelled her past him, up a set of wide steps, through a massive door and into the house. She jumped as the door slammed shut behind her.

      She wanted to think it was with the sound of doom but the truth was, it was the sound of a door slamming, nothing more, nothing less …

      And ohmygod, the entry foyer was so big! It was huge!

      “Yes. It is, isn’t it?”

      She spun around. Mr. Half-Naked was standing right in back of her, arms folded across his chest. A very impressive chest, all muscle and golden skin and dark curls.

      Her

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