In the end it had been crucifying.
Her gaze slid up to his face. He was watching her, the bottle in his hands, his dark eyes seeming to reach inside of her and read her every emotion. She shifted her weight to the other foot and stood her ground. Six-foot-four and broad-shouldered, he made the room seem stiflingly small.
He’d always been vastly intimidating. Except when he’d been naked beneath her. Those times she had been in control—her thighs straddling all that golden muscular flesh, his taut, powerful body beneath her tense, begging her for the release that had always bordered on the spiritual with them.
A glint entered his dark eyes. Her lashes swept down over hers. What in God’s name was she doing?
“Rule number two, cara,” he murmured. “No looking at me like that unless you intend to follow through with it.”
Wildfire raced to her cheeks. Dammit. She walked jerkily across to him and took the glass of wine he’d poured.
Magda came in with their salads, her round face beaming. “How nice to see the two of you sitting down to a meal together.”
“Yes, what a novelty,” Lilly agreed. “I hardly remember how to converse.”
Magda gave her a wary look, told them the casserole was in the oven and left.
“You will curb your tongue when others are around,” Riccardo said curtly when the housekeeper was safely out of earshot. “Our deal depends on us being discreet.”
“You liked it in the bedroom,” she taunted.
“Right on the money, tesoro,” he agreed, showing his teeth. “Knock yourself out.”
She shrugged. “Since we won’t be sharing a bedroom, I’ll pass.”
He took a sip of his wine, then lowered the glass with a slow, deliberate movement. “Here I am, speaking your native language, and still you don’t get it.”
“Get what?”
“We need to make this authentic, Lilly. We will be sharing a bedroom.”
Her stomach dissolved into a ball of nerves. There was absolutely no way, with all the rooms in this house, that she was sharing that bedroom with him.
“Magda is completely trustworthy. There is no need to—”
“This isn’t up for debate.” He leaned back against the sideboard and crossed his arms over his chest. “Eyes are everywhere. People traipse through this house on a daily basis.”
Lilly gave him a desperate look. “But I—”
“Rule number three.” He kept going like a train, steamrollering right over her. “You will accompany me to all the social engagements I’m committed to over the next six months, and if I need to travel you’ll do that too.”
“I have patients who count on me, Riccardo. I can’t just pick up and travel at will.”
He shrugged. “Then you work around it. Our first engagement, by the way, is Saturday. It’s a charitable thing for breast cancer.”
She bit back the primal urge to scream that was surging against the back of her throat. She had a career, for God’s sake. Responsibilities. And no wardrobe for a charity event. She was at least ten pounds heavier than she’d been when she’d been with Riccardo. None of her gowns upstairs would fit, and nothing she’d been wearing in her low-key life since then would be appropriate.
“Oh,” he added, almost as an afterthought. “It’s a fashion thing. They called today to ask if you’d model a gown when they heard our news.”
She felt the blood drain from her face. “On a stage?”
“That’s usually how they would do it, isn’t it?”
The thought of modeling a gown in front of all those people with her new, curvier figure sent a sharp response tumbling out of her. “No.”
He frowned. “What do you mean, no? It’s for a good cause.”
“Then you get up there and do it.”
His gaze darkened. “Are you going to fight me on everything?”
“When you ask me to get up on a stage and parade myself around in front of a bunch of people when you know I hate that stuff, yes.”
He tipped his head to one side. “You’re a beautiful woman, Lilly. I never understood why you were so insecure.”
And he never would. He had no clue how deep her insecurities ran. The demons she’d finally put to rest. And that was the way she preferred to keep it. Weakness left you vulnerable. Exposed. Open for people to pick at and slowly destroy you.
“I won’t do it.”
“You will,” he returned grimly. “Ground rule number four. You will have no further contact with Harry Taylor.”
The man she still hadn’t had the guts to call back yet. “I have to talk to him. He’s been trying to call me and he sounds—”
“Trying?” He lifted a brow. “I see your old patterns of avoidance haven’t changed.”
“Go to hell,” she muttered. “You sandbagged me with this last night. I need a chance to explain it to him.”
“One conversation, Lilly. And if I find out you’ve seen him after that—if I find out you’ve even chatted with him in the hallway—our agreement will be null and void.”
It was fine for him to cheat in the public eye but when it came to her the same rules didn’t apply!
He flicked a hand at her. “It’s not like it should be a tough call, ending things. Or have you become such a tease you can kiss a man like you did me last night and still go back for more?”
She shook her head. “You’re such a bastard sometimes.”
A savage smile curled his lips. “You like it when I’m a son-of-a-bitch, amore mio. It excites you.”
She turned her back on him before she said something she’d regret. She’d loved that about him in the beginning. That he’d called the shots and all she’d had to do was sit back and enjoy the ride. For a girl who’d been taking care of herself most of her life it had been a relief. An escape from the hand-to-mouth existence that had seen her work two jobs to put herself through college and graduate school to supplement the scholarship she’d won.
What she hadn’t been prepared for was the flashy, no-end-to-the-riches lifestyle he’d dropped her into with no preparation, no defences for a girl from Iowa who’d never really grown into the hard-edged, sink-or-swim Manhattan way of life.
It had been her downfall. Her inability to cope.
“Ground rule number five,” he continued softly. “You and I are going to be the old Riccardo and Lilly. The perfect couple. We’re going to act madly in love, there will be no other men, and when you get weak and can’t stand it anymore you’ll come to me.” He paused and flashed a superior smile. “I give you a week, max.”
She spun around to face him, her gaze clashing with his. “I’m not the same person I was, Riccardo. You won’t find me groveling at your feet for attention. And you won’t walk all over me like you did before. You treat me as an equal or I’ll leave and blow this deal to smithereens.”
He lifted his elegant shoulders, as if he found her little outburst amusing. “But you want this house. Badly... I saw it in your eyes last night.”
For a reason entirely other than what you think.
“Are you finished?” she asked quietly. “Because I suddenly seem to have lost my appetite. I’m