Bought With The Italian's Ring

“I think you like me a little too much. Which is why you’re hiding.”

The gall of the man! Pia had never met a more annoying man in her life. “Just because my body thinks you’re a prime male specimen and is attracted to you—which, by the way, is based on millions of years of evolution and a chemical reaction that drives a woman to choose the strongest man as her mate—it doesn’t mean my mind agrees.”

His black eyes gleamed. The thin line of his lower lip curved with mocking amusement. “So you’ve dropped the act of trembling mouth and soft gasps then?”

He almost sounded disappointed. Pia sighed. “Distance helped me remember the hormones part of it. It’s when you’re close that I...” She shrugged, trying to go for casual, which her stutter totally ruined. “That I’m unable to handle my reaction.”

Just looking at the darkly sensual face stretched her skin tight over her body. And other parts. Parts that had never clenched and tightened with such wanton awareness.

“You should call me Raphael.”

“Not necessary.”

He placed the bottle and glasses on a table then settled on a lounger, propped his elbows on his knees and returned to his intense scrutiny of her. “Because you’ll run away every time I’m around?”

“I’ve been suitably and repeatedly impressed with what an important, powerful and wealthy man you are. You run a multinational automobile company in the city, apparently control and manage not only Gio’s finances but your mother’s family’ finances and your father’s and all the numerous cousins thereof.

I, on the other hand, mean to spend the summer getting to know Gio. I let him railroad me into this ball because it meant a lot to him. So the chance of you and me spending time in each other’s company is pretty low.”

“When the summer is over?” he shot back instantly, picking the one thing Pia didn’t want to discuss.

“This summer is just holiday. I wasn’t even sure if Gio would believe me. But I do have a life elsewhere.” A life without her grandmother, a life without any close friends. A life where no one really cared about her.

Which was why she’d been such an easy mark for Frank.

“Is Gio aware of your supposed intentions?”

“No, and they’re not supposed,” she said, losing her temper. Would nothing please the man?

The water lapped around her silently. “You’re staring,” she said softly.

“You look like a different woman.”

“I was terrified all evening that I’d spill something on that gorgeous, expensive gown. I have a habit of getting into worse messes than my students. I’m not used to wearing contacts. Now there is no war paint on my face. And my hair is back in its natural, uncontrollable state.” She pulled a coiled curl that was already dry.

He followed the action as if he was transfixed. “Your students?”

“I teach Science to fifth graders.”

Surprise dawned in his gaze. It tracked her wet face, lingering far too long than was proper over her mouth, and then the slope of her shoulders, visible over the water’s surface. A shiver snaked down her spine.

“An elementary teacher? I find I’m overwhelmed by curiosity about you. A rare occurrence.”

Pia stared, wishing she’d misheard him. But the world was quiet around them. Only a slight breeze and the whispers of the trees all around the pool. It wasn’t just curiosity that made his voice deepen, that made his mouth tighten.

“What do you have against me?”

Moonlight caressed the dark column of his throat, the smooth velvety skin pulled taut over a lean chest. He tilted his head down, a devilish twist to his mouth. “Other than the fact that you’re manipulating an old man’s misguided affection for you?”

His words shocked Pia so much that she dropped her hold on the tiles, sank in, and then came up sputtering water out of her nose and mouth.

He thought she was after Gio’s fortune?

He frowned at her chattering teeth. “Get out of there before you freeze.”

“No,” Pia said stubbornly, a rush of anger heating up her still muscles. “You leave.”

His hands went to the buttons on his shirt. Taut skin stretched over lean muscles appeared as he unbuttoned. “Either you come out or...”

Glaring at him, Pia walked up the steps.

The moment she was out, he wrapped the huge towel around her. Heart thundering in her chest, Pia pushed her wet hair off her face with trembling hands.

As if she were a child, he gave her a brisk rubdown, up and down her arms. Throat dry, Pia stared at his chest. Her cheeks burned when he repeated the movements over her chest, hips and back. Those large hands didn’t linger anywhere and yet warmth began to pool in her belly.

“You stayed too long in there.” His voice had gone husky, deep.

She shivered again.

“Sit,” he commanded, and Pia obediently sat on the lounger. He handed her a glass of wine and it was exactly what she wanted.

Silently, she took a sip.

For a few minutes, they sat like that, side by side on loungers, not talking. Not even looking at each other. But that awareness that had consumed her in the ballroom thickened the air around them. His touch, impersonal, still lingered.

Her attraction to him was natural.

He was the most strikingly handsome man she’d ever met.

She refused to be ashamed by it. But neither did she want to keep confronting it, to keep thinking that she was somehow less than him because she wasn’t sophisticated or beautiful or polished enough. She’d had enough of Frank manipulating her insecurities. “All I want is to spend the summer with my grandfather. I really don’t see why that should be any of your business,” she said softly.

“I am Giovanni’s friend. I am more friend than all of his useless, bickering, social climbing family put together. I would do anything to protect Giovanni and his interests. It is my business if you put one step wrong with him.”

“What have I done that offends you so much?”

“You seem to have no scruples about cheating an old man who has done nothing but welcome you into his life with open arms without even checking if you truly are who you claim to be.”

“So now I’m not only a gold digger of the worst kind but also an impostor?”

“All evidence points to it, si.”

Pia fisted her hands, the urge to strike that smug condescension from his face burning through her. “Gio’s lover, Lucia, was my nonna. She left him after they had a huge row and settled in the States. My parents died when I was three and she raised me.” She stood up, her pulse skittering all over. “I found Lucia’s letters to him after she died and called him. That’s the truth.”

“It’s also true that he’s given you thousands of dollars in the one month you’ve been here.”

If only the ground could open up and swallow her whole! Mortification filled her cheeks.

She couldn’t even be mad at Raphael, because from his point of view it looked like she was a grasping, greedy woman. But to be so cynical as to question her whole motive for visiting Italy...? “Gio wouldn’t have told you,” she mumbled half to herself.