‘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.’
‘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