His Royal Love-Child (4 page)

“And
Scorsolini
Shipping is it?”

“Along with what tax dollars we do receive in revenue and the other enterprises of our country. My older brother,
Tomasso
, has recently supervised the discovery of lithium mines on
Rubino
. He has taken
Scorsolini
Mining and Jewels to an unprecedented level.” His voice rang with pride in his brother’s achievement.

“Funny, that’s what Angelo Gordon told me you had done with the Italian arm of
Scorsolini
Shipping.”

“My father and older brother are pleased with my efforts.”

“They should be.”
And then
she blushed at the vehemence of her words.

But
he smiled, apparently pleased by her words. “My older brother, Claudio, has recently informed me that when he ascends to the throne, he and
Tomasso
have agreed that I will take over the entire shipping company while
Tomasso
maintains his position as head of
Scorsolini
Mining and Jewels.”

“Did that surprise you?”

He nodded, coming closer, his presence filling her senses. “Normally the second son would take that position and I would either continue as I am or take
Tomasso’s
position, but because he has taken that side of our family’s holdings so far and my brothers and
father are
content with my performance here, I will be given the honor.”

“That’s wonderful! I suppose you celebrated by working a few extra twenty-hour days,” she teased, knowing from the company grapevine that was exactly what he’d been doing lately.

He came around the desk and leaned against it, not six inches from where she stood.
“Just as you have done?”

“Touché.”
She stopped in the act of reaching for the papers she’d stacked so she could file them. Doing so would require leaning into him and her senses were headed toward overload as it was. “I just don’t want my boss to regret his decision to promote me,” she said a trifle breathlessly.

“I also feel this need…in relation to the confidence my family has put in me.”

His scent was teasing at her olfactory senses and she wanted to get closer, which was insane under the circumstances. “I guess…um…that we have something in common.”

He reached out and touched her. Just a light brush against her cheek, but she felt paralyzed by it.

“Perhaps more than this single thing,” he suggested.

Her face tingled where he had brushed it. “I can’t imagine that we could have much else. Our lives are very different.”

“Perhaps, but I think you are wrong. Will you have dinner with me tonight to find out?”

“What?” She shook her head, trying to clear it. The president of
Scorsolini
Shipping had asked her out on a
date?

“I would like you to have dinner with me.”

“But…”

“I like you,
Danette
, and I hope you like me, too.”
But
his confident smile said he already knew she did, that he knew exactly the effect his nearness was having on her body.

“Of course I like you, but you asked me out on a date. I’m not your type.”

“And you base this assumption on what?”

“Everybody knows you date really gorgeous women.”

“You are beautiful.”

She snorted at that. “I have a mirror. I’m nothing like the women you normally have your picture taken with.”

“That is window dressing…a facade I present to the world to keep my private life private.” He looked so sincere, but he couldn’t be serious.

“But—”

“Come to dinner with me and see what kind of man I am when the paparazzi are not present with their insidious cameras.”

“My job…” she said uncertainly.

“I make you this promise,
Danette
. Your job will not be influenced for good or for ill regardless of what happens or does not happen between us.”

“So, if I say no to your dinner invitation?” she asked.

“I will be disappointed, but that will have no impact on your employment, advancement or type of opportunities given here at
Scorsolini
Shipping. To be fair, I must also tell you that even if you were to become my
lover, that
would not impact those same things in a positive way, either.”

“I never for a moment would have expected them to.”

“You are very naive.”

“There’s nothing naive about believing that a person should earn their job advancement.”

He smiled, but his eyes were serious. “I like that about you and I agree.”

“Good.”

“So, will you allow me to take you to dinner?”

Every logical impulse in her body screamed at her to tell him no. She didn’t want to get into a relationship, but dinner wasn’t exactly a promise for the future. Maybe he was only interested in friendship.
But
he’d mentioned being her lover. That implied a lot more than chatting over coffee.

Oddly enough, it was the prospect of the
more
that had her so horribly tempted. She’d dated so little in her life and she’d never spent so much as half an hour with a man as intriguing as
Marcello
. Not unless you counted Angelo Gordon, but he belonged to her friend and even he didn’t stir her latent sexuality the way that Marcello did.

Ray certainly never
had,
the lying sneak.

This wasn’t about love and happily ever after, she told herself, it was about experiencing feelings she’d denied herself far too long.

“Okay. I’ll have dinner with you.”

H
E TOOK
her to a small, family run restaurant outside of Palermo. It was a quarter to nine by the time they reached it. She’d learned Europeans often ate late. The owner was more than happy to give them a table.

As a dinner companion, Marcello lived up to every concept she had of him. He was charming, attentive and so sexy that her body thrummed with an awareness she’d never experienced with another man.

He poured her a second glass of the rich red wine he’d ordered with dinner. “So, Angelo said you were ready for a change and that is why you came to
Sicily
.”

She’d noticed since coming to Palermo that Sicilians made a distinction between themselves and other Italians, as if they were their own separate country. Marcello did the same thing even though technically, he was from another country altogether. She had heard that his mother was Sicilian. Perhaps that accounted for it.

“Yes, I needed a change.”

“Was there a man involved?”

Strangely she did not find his question intrusive. In an inexplicable way, she felt she could tell him almost anything. “Yes.”

“What happened?” he asked with an expression that compelled her to share her deepest secrets with him.

“How do you do that?”

“What?”

“Make me feel like I should tell you everything in my head.”

“Ah…there is a lot more to being the head of an international business than being able to count money.”

She laughed. “I know that, but I wasn’t aware that playing the role of father confessor was part of it.”

“You would be surprised. Now tell me about the boyfriend.”

“I thought he loved me, but he used me to get pictures of Tara and Angelo so he could break into tabloid journalism.”

“He was the one responsible for those stories about them in the scandal rags last year?”

“Yes. They hurt Tara, a lot. She’d been savaged by the press once before and Ray’s antics got her fired before Angelo found out what had happened.”

“I hate the tabloids.”

“But you’re in them so often.”

“Like I told you, I create a facade for them to latch on to so they leave my real life alone.”

She’d done the very same thing as a small child. She’d created an image of an outgoing, confident girl that hid her private thoughts and feelings. No matter how intrusively doctors, or even her own parents, played their roles in her life, there was an interior
Danette
who remained sacrosanct to her alone.

Knowing they shared such a coping mechanism made her feel close to him in a way she would not have thought possible.

“Tell me more about Ray,” Marcello said.

“There isn’t much to tell.
He was looking for the main chance and took it, not caring who he hurt or how much he hurt them.
I think that’s what devastated me the most. He couldn’t have known my best friend was going to get involved with a media interest like Angelo Gordon, or that her notoriety would be so easily revived.”

At least that’s what she’d thought. “Our relationship started out for the usual reasons…I think. My family is wealthy and maybe he figured all along that I might take him into circles he could use to advance his career goals, but I really think that he saw the main chance and just went for it.”

“And this hurt you?”

“Very much, but I’m over him now.”
And
she was. It had happened faster than she’d thought it could.

The move to Italy had been the right choice.

“The betrayal by a lover is the most devastating.”

“He wasn’t my lover, thank goodness.”

“So, the relationship wasn’t very old?”

“That depends on how you define old. We were together for a few months.”

“And he did not take you to bed?”

“It wasn’t for lack of trying on his part,” she said, stung that Marcello should think that she wasn’t
fanciable
.

“No doubt.
Why did you hold back from him?”

“It never felt right. It made him angry, but I didn’t realize how much. He said some very cutting things when we broke up.”

“I see.”

“Do you? What do you see, Signor
Scorsolini
?”

“First that you must call me Marcello when we are away from the company.”

She smiled despite the heavy feelings in her heart from her trip down memory lane.
“All right.”

“Second, that the man was a fool and obviously not very good in the seduction stakes.”

“Or I’m not easily seduced.”

“Be assured, I love a challenge.”

She gasped at his blatant claim and the implication of it. “I’m not looking for that right now.”

“But you have found it, as I will delight in showing you. I want you and I intend to have you.”

But
he didn’t push for even a good-night kiss when he took her home that night.
And
it was the same on the three dates they had after that over the next two weeks. No matter what he had said, he seemed perfectly happy with a platonic friendship, while her physical awareness of him grew with every moment spent in his company.

She even started having sexy dreams about him. She would wake up feeling embarrassed by her obvious desire and disturbed by the strength of it…not to mention how easily he’d infiltrated her subconscious as well as her conscious life.

He’d asked her to maintain their status quo at work and to keep their time together strictly confidential. She’d agreed without pause. No one was going to accuse her of trading on a relationship with a man to get ahead in her career. Besides, there was something really alluring about clandestine meetings with the super sexy Marcello.

She loved talking to him on the phone and knowing that they were carrying on a conversation on a whole level that the people around them knew nothing about. Then he had to go away on a business trip and she missed him like crazy. He only called once and it was a short conversation. It had to be…she’d been at work.

They had plans to eat out the night after he got back, but when he came to pick her up, she had made dinner. She wanted time with him, to be completely natural together and the only way for that to happen was behind closed doors.

He sniffed appreciatively when she ushered him inside. “It smells so good, I almost want to beg to stay in and have leftovers.”

“We are staying in, only they aren’t leftovers. I made dinner.”

“Is it a special occasion?”

“I thought I could teach you how to play Golf.”

His brow drew together in puzzlement as he looked around the cottage’s small living room. “I am already a competent golfer.”

She laughed at his incomprehension. “It’s a card game and one of the few that is as much fun with two people as four.”

“Oh.
Cards
?”

“I thought you might be happier eating in and relaxing than going out to a restaurant, but if you’d rather…I can just wrap dinner up and get my coat.”

“Not at all.
I have never had a woman cook for me.”

“Not even your wife?”

He rarely mentioned Bianca, but she knew he’d married young and his wife had died in a tragic accident.

“To my knowledge, Bianca did not know how to cook.”

“Was she a princess?”

“To me?
Yes, but she was not born to royalty. She was from a very wealthy Sicilian family. Her mother was my mother’s best friend.”

“It sounds like a match made in heaven.”

“It was, but I lived in hell on earth when she died.”

Why that should hurt so much to hear, she didn’t know, but she did realize it wasn’t all pain on his behalf. “I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. They say time heals all wounds.”

“I don’t know about healing, but it does dull the pain…or makes it easier to cope with.”

“Are you talking about Ray here?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

Funny, how she’d told him so much about herself, but never about her corrected spinal deformity. It was too painful to talk about even now. The wounds it had visited on her life were too deep to expose to him or anyone else, for that matter.

She’d never told anyone about her decision not to have children because of it, or how alienated she’d felt from the world around her and even from her own body. Her brace had acted as a barrier between her and the sensation of touch for thirteen years. It had also distorted her view of her body. How could she explain what it was like to look into the mirror and see a figure that was defined by an expensive plastic encasement? She could not even be sure whether the curves were hers, or the result of the brace.