LITMIR.BIZ

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with someone else when she was no longer around, but the idea of some slender-hipped brunette lying amid his tumbled sheets was failing to excite him. Instinctively he flattened his palm over her bare thigh.

      ‘And was it the perfect welcome?’ he questioned at last.

      ‘You know it was.’ Her voice was sleepy. ‘Though I should go and pick my dress up. It’s the first time I’ve worn it.’

      ‘Don’t worry about it.’ He smiled. ‘I’ll have Gisella launder it for you.’

      ‘There’s no need for that.’ Her voice was suddenly sharp as her eyes snapped open. ‘I can do my own washing. I can easily rinse it out in the sink and hang it out to dry in that glorious sunshine.’

      ‘And if I told you I’d rather you didn’t?’

      ‘Too bad.’

      ‘Why are you so damned stubborn, Darcy?’

      ‘I thought you liked my stubbornness.’

      ‘When appropriate, I do.’

      ‘You mean, when it suits you?’

      ‘Esattamente.’

      She lay back and looked up at the ceiling. How could she explain that she’d felt his housekeeper looking at her and seeing exactly who she was—a servant, just as Gisella was. Like Gisella, she waited tables and cleared up around people who had far more money than she had. That was who she was. She didn’t want to look as if she’d suddenly acquired airs and graces by asking to have her clothes laundered. She wasn’t going to try to be someone she wasn’t—someone who would find it impossible to settle back into her humble world when she got back to England and her billionaire lover was nothing but a distant memory.

      But she shouldn’t take it out on Renzo, because he was just being Renzo. She’d never objected to his high-handedness before. If the truth were known, she’d always found it a turn-on—and in a way, his arrogance had provided a natural barrier. It had stopped her falling completely under his spell, forcing her to be realistic rather than dreamy. She leaned over and brushed her mouth against his. ‘So tell me what you’ve got planned for us.’

      His fingers slid between the tops of her thighs. ‘Plans? What plans? The sight of your body seems to have completely short-circuited my brain.’

      Halting his hand before it got any further, Darcy enjoyed her brief feeling of power. ‘Tell me something about Vallombrosa—and I’m not talking olive or wine production this time. Did you live here when you were a little boy?’

      His shuttered features grew wary. ‘Why the sudden interest?’

      ‘Because you told me we’d be having dinner with the man who’s buying the place. It’s going to look a bit odd if I don’t know anything about your connection with it. Did you grow up here?’

      ‘No, I grew up in Rome. Vallombrosa was our holiday home.’

      ‘And?’ she prompted.

      ‘And it had been in my mother’s family for generations. We used it to escape the summer heat of the city. She and I used to come here for the entire vacation and my father would travel down at weekends.’

      Darcy nodded because she knew that, like her, he was an only child and that both his parents were dead. And that was pretty much all she knew.

      She circled a finger over the hardness of his flat belly. ‘So what did you do when you were here?’

      He pushed her hand in the direction of his groin. ‘My father taught me to hunt and to fish, while my mother socialised and entertained. Sometimes friends came to visit and my mother’s school friend Mariella always seemed to be a constant fixture. We were happy, or so I thought.’

      Darcy held her breath as something dark and steely entered his voice. ‘But you weren’t?’

      ‘No. We weren’t.’ He turned his head to look at her, a hard expression suddenly distorting his features. ‘Haven’t you realised by now that so few people are?’

      ‘I guess,’ she said stiffly. But she’d thought...

      What? That other people were strangers to the pain she’d suffered? That someone as successful and as powerful as Renzo had never known emotional deprivation? Was that why he was so distant sometimes—so shuttered and cold? ‘Did something happen?’

      ‘You could say that. They got divorced when I was seven.’

      ‘And was it...acrimonious?’

      He shot her an unfathomable look. ‘Aren’t all divorces acrimonious?’

      She shrugged. ‘I guess.’

      ‘Especially when you discover that your mother’s best “friend” has been having an affair with your father for years,’ he added, his voice bitter. ‘It makes you realise that when the chips are down, women can never be trusted.’

      Darcy chewed on her lip. ‘So what happened?’

      ‘After the divorce, my father married his mistress but my mother never really recovered. It was a double betrayal and her only weapon was me.’

      ‘Weapon?’ she echoed.

      He nodded. ‘She did everything in her power to keep my father out of my life. She was depressed.’ His jaw tightened. ‘And believe me, there isn’t much a child can do if his mother is depressed. He is—quite literally—helpless. I used to sit in the corner of the room, quietly making houses out of little plastic bricks while she sobbed her heart out and raged against the world. By the end of that first summer, I’d constructed an entire city.’

      She nodded in sudden understanding. Had his need to control been born out of that helplessness? Had the tiny plastic city he’d made been the beginnings of his brilliant architectural career? ‘Oh, Renzo—that’s...terrible,’ she said.

      He curled his fingers over one breast. ‘What an innocent you are, Darcy,’ he observed softly.

      Darcy felt guilt wash over her. He thought she was a goody-goody because she suspected he was one of those men who divided women into two types—Madonna or whore. Her virginity had guaranteed her Madonna status but it wasn’t that simple and if he knew why she had kept herself pure he would be shocked. Married men having affairs was hardly ground-breaking stuff, even if they chose to do it with their wife’s best friend—but she could tell him things about her life which would make his own story sound like something you could read to a child at bedtime.

      And he wasn’t asking about her past, was he? He wasn’t interested—and maybe she ought to be grateful for that. There was no point in dragging out her dark secrets at this late stage in their relationship and ruining their last few days together. ‘So what made you decide to sell the estate?’

      There was a pause. ‘My stepmother died last year,’ he said flatly. ‘She’d always wanted this house and I suppose I was making sure she never got her hands on it. But now she’s gone—they’ve all gone—and somehow my desire to hang on to it died with her. The estate is too big for a single man to maintain. It needs a family.’

      ‘And you don’t want one?’

      ‘I thought we’d already established that,’ he said and now his voice had grown cool. ‘I saw enough lying and deceit to put me off marriage for a lifetime. Surely you can understand that?’

      Darcy nodded. Oh, yes, she understood all right. Just as she recognised that his words were a warning. A warning not to get too close. That just because she was here with him in the unfamiliar role of girlfriend, nothing had really changed. The smile she produced wasn’t as bright as usual, but it was good enough to convince him she didn’t care. ‘Shouldn’t we think about getting ready for lunch?’ she questioned, her voice growing a little unsteady as his hand moved from her breast to the dip of her belly. ‘Didn’t...didn’t Donato say it would be ready in an hour?’

      The

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