I’ve always been a sucker for redheads and when I’d spotted her at Maxim’s party—an event I’d been attending in my father’s place while he was away in Rome on important family business—I’d been intrigued by her air of sweetness. I could tell by the way she held herself that she wasn’t confident and worldly like the majority of the women there and it had made me want to take her away somewhere safe to protect her. And perhaps do other things too, if she’d been willing. She’s an attractive woman, after all. I’d particularly enjoyed the way her porcelain-pale cheeks had flamed with colour when I’d smiled at her.
I love making women blush. It gives me a real kick of pleasure. In fact, any instinctive physical reaction I can tease out of them gets me hot: accelerated breathing, a damp sheen of sweat on an upper lip, dilated pupils, a coquettish eyelash flutter. I love it all. Because I love women.
All women.
They’re such fascinating, exotic creatures.
And they usually love me right back.
So when she’d made it clear she thought I was just some man whore, it had really pissed me off. It had been obvious she wasn’t interested in me as a person when she’d asked me to take her virginity. I was just a throwaway cock she’d be using to fix a problem and I hadn’t been prepared to be treated like that. Her disrespectful approach had actually made me fucking furious, though I’d tried not to show it. I never show my real feelings to a woman, not any more—not when I know how it can strip you of your power and control—which is probably why, after I’d left her in that room, I’d gone downstairs, drunk half a bottle of whisky and ended up getting into a pointless fist fight with one of Harry’s friends over some stupid fucking comment he’d made about a woman I’d been talking to. I can’t even remember what it was now.
Normally I’d laugh off any kind of provocation, putting it down to jealousy or crossing someone’s path at the wrong moment, but added to Juno’s suggestion that I wasn’t the brightest spark in the fire, it had blown something inside me and I’d lashed out.
The moment I woke up this morning with a thumping head and a horrible sense that I’d overstepped a mark, I regretted the whole thing.
I regretted it even more when my father summoned me to his Knightsbridge house later that day and showed me just how far the consequences of my actions had reached.
‘This,’ he said, gesturing angrily towards his open laptop, ‘is unacceptable.’
The screen had a gossip article from one of the popular society pages on it. There was a picture of me with an ugly sneer on my face caught right after I’d punched Harry’s friend in the face. It made the whole incident look much more brutal than it had actually been—I’d been too drunk to do more than glance my knuckles off his chin—but the look on the guy’s face told another story. He looked afraid of me.
Shame sunk through my chest to nestle heavily in my gut. That wasn’t me. I’m not a violent person—quite the opposite, in fact. I’m a lover, not a fighter. But this picture said differently.
‘Well? What have you got to say for yourself? I thought you’d stopped fighting when you were a teenager,’ my father barked. ‘Your mother is distraught and the last thing she needs right now is more stress when she’s so busy helping to organise your brother’s wedding. The press has been calling me for a comment about it. I told them in no uncertain terms that that wasn’t going to happen.’
The good reputation of the family name is everything to my father. He lives and breathes it. And he expects me and my brothers to do the same. My oldest brother took this so seriously he’s now on the path to marrying into the highest echelons of Italian nobility—of which we are currently only lowly-ranking members—and my father is adamant that none of us does anything to jeopardise it. Our inclusion in his close family circle and all that comes with it depends on it.
‘It wasn’t as bad as it looks...’ I began to argue, but my father clearly wasn’t in the mood to hear excuses.
‘I want you to go back to Italy until this blows over. And I don’t want to see anything about you in the papers there either. Unless it’s a positive article. In fact—’ He moved to his laptop and scrolled down the page until he came to another photo. This one also had me in it, but this time I was smiling and brushing hair out of the eyes of a pretty redhead who was gazing up at me as if totally entranced by the intimate moment we’re sharing.
Juno.
My heart sank.
‘This one’s suggesting you’re having a relationship with the youngest Darlington-Hume girl,’ my father said, flashing me a questioning look.
My whole world started to tumble past my ears. She was one of Maxim’s daughters. I hadn’t realised. She’d looked so different from her sisters and she certainly hadn’t acted like a Darlington-Hume—a family my father holds in very high regard indeed. In his estimation, they’re the fucking essence of English high society.
And I’d basically told her to take a running jump when she’d asked me for help.
‘I wouldn’t call it a relationship,’ I replied carefully. I wasn’t entirely sure where he was going with this so I was treading carefully. I really didn’t want to be banished to Italy for long. I have important plans here in England and I need to be around to put them in motion. Plus, this is where all my friends live now. Italy will be a social desert.
‘You could do a lot worse than having a Darlington-Hume in your bed. The family has an excellent if mercenary reputation, but you can’t get more inner-circle than Maxim.’ He nodded, seeming to make up his mind about something, and my gut knotted as I predicted what he was about to demand of me.
‘Take her to Florence. Stay in Maria’s apartment. She’s going to be in Sweden for the next few weeks, and she’s worried it might be broken into again, so it would be good to have you there looking after the place. Let the press know you’re there and make sure you’re seen out and about in the right places. Get your reputation publicly back on even ground. Then you can come back.’
‘I’m not sure she’ll want to go to Florence with me.’
‘I don’t give a shit what she wants. Just make it happen. Prove to me, for once, that you’re worthy of the Ricci family name, like your brothers.’
There was no point in arguing with him. I knew from experience that, when my father demands something, there’s no way of getting out of it. He’s hard-hearted enough to cut me out of the family if I don’t play ball, and won’t hesitate to stop me from seeing my nephews and my mother. That’s the last thing I want. It would devastate her. I’ve disappointed her enough for a lifetime.
So a trip to Florence it was.
With Juno Darlington-Hume.
Assuming I could convince her I’ve changed my mind about helping her out after the contemptuous rejection I threw down at her feet the night before. I suspected it was going to take a monumental amount of charm and a shit-ton of good fucking grace to talk her round. Luckily, those are qualities I have in abundance.
So when I got home I swallowed my pride, sourced her number from a friend of a friend and called her, leaving a message on her voicemail, inviting her out for a drink.
* * *
‘So in your message you said you had something you wanted to talk to me about,’ Juno says warily, once we’re seated in a booth in a chi-chi little cocktail bar in a backstreet of Soho that I’d chosen for its seclusion from the bustle of central London, and hopefully prying eyes. I don’t want word going round about us until Juno’s agreed to the proposal I’m about to lay out for her.
She’s pointedly ordered a virgin cocktail and I’ve had to bite my lip so as not to make a joke about the car-crash conversation