‘Pity,’ he said silkily. ‘Next time.’
An immediate wave of heat consumed Lara at the mere thought of such a decadent thing, and she pulled her arm free and muttered a caustic, ‘As if...’
All she could hear as she walked back up the plane was the dark sound of Ciro’s chuckle.
* * *
Lara was very aware of the ring on her finger. She turned it absent-mindedly as she looked out of the window at the view of Rome.
She was glad they were here and not in Florence. Florence held too many memories...and nightmares.
It was where she’d met Ciro on a street one day and her world had changed for ever. He’d been in Florence to close a major deal which would convert one of the city’s oldest palazzos into an exclusive hotel. Something the Sant’Angelo name was famous for.
Not that she’d had any clue who he was at first.
She’d been pushed into the road by another tourist, blind to everything but the beauty of Florence, when someone had grabbed her and pulled her back from the oncoming cars.
She’d looked up to see who was holding her arm with such a firm grip and laid eyes on Ciro Sant’Angelo for the first time. He’d fulfilled every possible cliché of tall, dark and handsome and then some. And, even though Lara had seen plenty of tall, dark, handsome Italian men by then, it had been this one who had stopped her heart for a long second. When it had started beating again it had been to a different rhythm. Faster.
Lara had been excited and terrified in equal measure. Because no one had affected her heart in a long time. She’d locked it away after losing her family. Closed it up tight to protect herself. And yet, in that split second, on that sunny day in Florence, she’d felt it start to crack open again. Totally irrational and crazy. But it had opened and she’d never managed to close it up again.
She’d looked him up on the internet a couple of days after meeting him and absorbed the full extent of his fame and notoriety as a playboy who came from a family steeped in Sicilian Mafia history.
She’d told him that she’d looked him up. His expression had shuttered immediately, and she’d seen him drawing back into himself.
He’d said to her, ‘Find anything interesting?’
She’d known instinctively that the moment was huge, and that she trusted him. So she’d said, ‘I’m sorry. I just wanted to know more about you, and it was hard to resist, but I should have asked you about yourself face-to-face.’
After a long moment he’d extended a hand and said, ‘Ask me now.’
She’d taken his hand and asked him about Sicily, about his business. His deep voice had washed over her and through her, binding her even tighter into the illusion that there was something real, palpable, between them.
Lara turned away from the bird’s eye view of the iconic Colosseum, visible in the distance, and looked around the bedroom. When they’d arrived yesterday evening every bone in her body had been aching with fatigue. They’d eaten a light meal of pasta, prepared by Ciro’s unsmiling housekeeper, and Lara had been glad that conversation had been kept to a minimum.
It had been an ironic reminder of other meals with Ciro, when they’d been happy just to be near each other. Not speaking.
That had always surprised her about him—that he didn’t feel intimidated by silence. It had reminded her of when her brother would tug playfully on her hair and say, ‘Earth to Lara—where are you in the world?’ because she’d used to get so lost in her daydreams.
She diverted her mind away from the painful memory of her brother. And from daydreams. They were a thing of the past. A vulnerability she couldn’t indulge in. She didn’t believe in dreams any more. Not after losing her entire family in one fell swoop. Not after being betrayed by her uncle. And certainly not after having her heart broken into a million pieces by Ciro Sant’Angelo.
The bedroom was spacious and luxurious without being ostentatious—much like the rest of the apartment. A pang gripped her. She knew how hard Ciro had worked for this—to show the world that he was different from the Sant’Angelos who’d used to rule and succeed through crime and brute force.
Lara sighed. She hated it that she still cared enough to notice that kind of thing.
She caught her reflection in a full-length mirror and considered herself critically, noting the puffiness under her eyes. She’d had a shower in the en suite bathroom and was dressed in slim-fitting capri pants and a T-shirt. No make-up. Totally boring. Not designed to attract the attention of a playboy like Ciro.
Surely when he saw her in the cold light of morning he’d wonder what on earth he’d done?
After pulling her hair back in a low ponytail and slipping on flat shoes, she went in search of Ciro, vaguely wondering if it had all been a dream and she’d find herself back in London.
Liar, whispered an inner voice, you don’t want it to be a dream.
She ignored it.
But when she walked into the big living and dining area reality was like a punch to the gut. This was no dream.
Ciro was sitting at the top of a huge table with breakfast laid out before him, reading a newspaper. His legs were stretched out and crossed at the ankle and he was looking as relaxed as if it was totally normal to have whisked your ex-fiancée off to another city straight after the funeral of her husband because you were bent on retribution.
He looked up when she approached the table and Lara immediately felt self-conscious. She wished she had some kind of armour to protect herself from that laser-like brown gaze.
He stood up and pulled out a chair to the right of his. Ever the gentleman. Lara murmured her thanks and sat down. The housekeeper appeared and poured her some coffee. Lara forced a smile and said her thanks in Italian, but the housekeeper barely acknowledged her.
‘She’s deaf.’
It took a second for Lara to realise that Ciro had spoken. She looked at him. ‘What?’
‘Sophia...my housekeeper. She’s deaf. Which is why it can sometimes feel like she’s being rude when she doesn’t acknowledge you.’
‘Oh.’
‘I’m telling you because I don’t want you to upset her.’
Affronted, Lara said, ‘Why would I upset her?’
‘Just don’t.’
It struck at Lara somewhere very vulnerable to hear Ciro defend his housekeeper. It struck her even deeper that he would think her capable of being rude to someone with a disability. But then, she’d given him that impression, hadn’t she? When she’d convinced him she’d been with him purely for her own entertainment.
‘You didn’t have much luggage.’
Lara felt a flush working its way up her body. A burn of shame and humiliation. ‘I brought what I needed.’
Ciro inclined his head. ‘And I guess you’re counting on me buying you an entirely new wardrobe of all the latest fashions.’
She hated the smug cynicism in his voice, but she wasn’t about to explain that once her husband had become incapacitated, and blamed her, she’d been reduced to being little more than unpaid help. With very little money of her own, and none from her husband, Lara had had to resort to selling her clothes and jewellery online to try and make money when she needed it.
At one point when she’d needed money for something she’d had to sell her mother’s wedding dress—a beloved heirloom that she’d always hoped to wear when she married for love, and not because she was being forced into it. The fact that it was gone for ever seemed darkly apt.
Ciro took a sip of coffee. ‘You’ll need to look the part as my wife. I have standards