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Their tongues slid along each other’s in an erotic duel that rendered her knees useless. She dug her fingertips harder into his chest, breathing him in, registering how delicious he smelled. He was a potent combination of heady male and tangy lime, and she was completely and irrevocably lost.
He pulled back, his gaze scouring her face. “Your key,” he prompted harshly.
Her brain struggled to process the command. Blood pumping, head full, she rummaged through her purse, found her keys and handed them to him.
* * *
The sane part of Rocco told him he didn’t need to carry the charade any further. It was obvious Olivia Fitzgerald was not above falling into the arms of a man with a beautiful watch and a nice car if it meant rescuing her from her precarious position. Whether she displayed an irresistible vulnerability along with it was inconsequential. It was likely a well-rehearsed act.
The less-than-rational part of his brain wanted to see how far she’d let him take it. How desperate she was.
He tossed her keys on the entryway table. Watched her sink her small white teeth into her perfectly shaped bottom lip.
“I’m not so interested in coffee,” he admitted harshly, watching her pupils dilate. “Do you mind if we skip it?”
She shook her head, eyes wide. Worried her lip with those perfect teeth. He closed the distance between them, the heat they created together rising up to tighten his chest. He swallowed hard at the swift kick of lust that rocketed through him as he brought his palms to rest on either side of her where she stood, back against the door. It was inconceivable to him that he could feel such desire for her given who she was, what she had been to his grandfather, even if this was a deliberate experiment to extract the truth. But she was undeniably exquisite.
Her cheeks, tanned to a light golden brown from the hot Milanese summer sun, were flushed with desire. Her chest under the worn purple T-shirt was rising and falling fast, her nipples erect against the soft fabric. Her hands lay limp at her sides, as if she had no idea what to do with them.
He did. He wanted them on him, sliding over every inch of his hot skin until he rolled her under him and made her his. Dio. This was insanity.
He dipped his hands under the frayed edge of her T-shirt and sought out the silky-soft bare skin beneath. She was enough to tempt a levelheaded man to mad acts, even his rigidly correct grandfather who had never looked at another woman after his Rosa had died. Her swift intake of breath echoed in the silent apartment as he trailed his fingers over the bare skin of her flat stomach, her midriff, the muscles of her abdomen tensing beneath his touch. Her head dropped back against the door, eyes almost purple as she waited for his kiss.
“You could bring the strongest man to his knees,” he muttered roughly, almost angrily, as he brought his mouth down to hers. “But then you know that, don’t you, Liv?”
Her brows came together in a frown, her lips parting to answer him. He didn’t let her get that far, his mouth taking hers in an insistent kiss that allowed no hesitation. She was rigid under his hands for a moment, as if teetering in indecision. He took her tongue inside his mouth, drawing her back into the heat. She was soft and perfect and he could not resist the lure of her flesh, bare beneath the T-shirt.
He pushed her jacket off her shoulders, letting it drop to the floor. “Lift your arms.”
She did, her gaze on his as he pulled the threadbare T-shirt over her head, tossed it to the floor and drank her in. She was slim, perfect, with high, firm breasts and rose-colored nipples that were tautly aroused.
It was like being in the Garden of Eden and told not to touch. He just couldn’t do it.
Bending his head, he palmed her breast, taking the rosy tip into his mouth. Her swift intake of breath made his blood heat. He sucked on her, laved her, until she was moaning, moving restlessly against him, then he transferred his attention to the other rounded peak. The feel, the taste of her underneath his mouth, was like forbidden fruit. Irresistible. The sound of their connection filled the hot Milanese night, breathy, seeking. He slid his thigh between hers and filled his hands with the rounded, toned curves of her bottom, seeking relief for his aching flesh.
Her gasp filled his ear. “Tony.”
One word, one softly uttered admission of surrender, was all it took to bring him crashing back to earth. To know he had proved what he had come here to do.
He lifted his head, sank his hands into her waist and pushed her away.
“The name is Rocco.”
Her eyes widened, darkened. A frown furrowed her brow as her hands came up to cover herself. “Rocco? Why did you tell me your...” Her voice trailed off as the color drained from her face.
“That’s right, Liv,” he said harshly, taking great pleasure in her look of horror. “Antonio is my middle name. How does it feel to sink your hooks into two generations of Mondellis?”
Her look of complete confusion was award worthy. She shook her head, gaze fixed on his. “What are you talking about? Giovanni and I were not like that.”
“What were you, then?” His tone was savage. “You expect me to believe a man buys you a three-million-euro luxury apartment out of the goodness of his heart? Because you’re friends? My grandfather has not talked about you once, has never even mentioned you in passing conversation. And yet you were together?”
“Because I didn’t want anyone to know I was here.” She snatched her T-shirt up from the floor and pulled it over her head. “Giovanni was protecting my privacy. He was my mentor. My friend. He was not my lover. How could you even think that? It’s preposterous.”
Fury lanced through him. He stepped forward until they were nose to nose. “No more than a seventy-year-old man thinking you could be interested in him.” He waved a hand at her. “You must be good, I’ll hand you that. What man could resist you servicing him? Moaning his name as if you can’t wait to get into bed?”
She was in front of him so fast, her palm arcing through the air, she almost got it to his face before he snatched it away and yanked it down to her side.
“You bastard,” she snarled at him, her catlike eyes spitting fire as he held her hand captive. “How dare you make accusations about something you know nothing about?”
“Because I know him,” he raged. “Giovanni was hopelessly, irrevocably in love with my grandmother. There is no way he would take a twentysomething lover unless he was completely taken in. Brainwashed with lust.”
She glared at him. “He didn’t. I keep trying to tell you that.”
He kept his fingers manacled around her wrist as she tried to tug her hand free. “Why are you hiding out from the world here? Why not use your name to build your line, if that was the truth—if that is your dream?”
“It was the truth.” She wrenched her arm free, her show of strength taking him off guard. “Everything I said tonight was the truth. I needed to get away from modeling, from everything, so I came here.”
“To escape your creditors?”
“To escape my life.” She pointed to the door. “Get the hell out of my apartment. Now.”
“My apartment, you mean.” He gave her a searching look. “Why Giovanni, Olivia? Why choose a seventy-year-old man as your lover when you could have anyone? Any rich man on this planet would welcome you into his bed. Pleasure you with the youth of a much younger man. All you would have to do is snap your fingers.”
Her hands curled into fists by her sides. “You are so unbelievably wrong.”
“Then why the checks? Why was Giovanni doling out cash to you on a regular basis? Was that also friendship?”
Her mouth flattened into a defiant line. She closed her eyes, a long silence stretching between them. When she opened them, her eyes glimmered with a wealth of emotion he couldn’t read.
“We were building a line together. The money was for fabrics. For suppliers.”
He gave her an incredulous look. “I am the CEO of House of Mondelli, Olivia. I know every project Giovanni was working on because he was a creative and he tended to go off half-cocked with new ideas without exploring their viability. There was no line.”
She stalked around him and headed down the hallway. He followed her into the bright, large room at the back of the apartment. Dozens of designs hung from a rack along the back wall. A sewing machine sat on a table. Stacks of illustrations lay scattered across a table.
He walked over and fingered some of the designs. They were beautiful, ethereal creations that even the noncreative in him could see were sensational, different, stamped with a unique sense of freedom of fabric and color that was distinct from anything he’d seen before. But they also featured a Giovanni-like sense of symmetry.
An odd emotion stirred to life inside of him. Riled him. “This doesn’t prove anything. All it proves is that you were using my grandfather to further your ambition. What did you say in the café? You do what it takes to make your dreams come true?”
Some of her newly found color drained from her face. “You’re taking that way out of context.”
“I think I’ve got it just right. You have a drink with a complete stranger, a man with an expensive watch who clearly does well, you see your opportunity for another rich benefactor and you make your move.” He tossed his head in disgust. “I could have had you against that door. You were ready to replace Giovanni seven days after his death.”
Her pallor took on a grayish tinge. “You set that all up tonight to see if I was a gold digger?”
“And wasn’t it telling?” He gave her a mirthless, half smile. “The idea actually didn’t come into my head until I sat there watching you and your fidanzate laughing and giggling as if your lover hadn’t just passed away. I wanted to see what kind of a woman you were before I tossed your beautiful little behind out on the street and now I know.”
Her head reared back. “I was out tonight to try to take my mind off Giovanni. I can’t expect to understand how much you must be grieving him. I know you were close. But I am grieving him, too. I cared for him. And I will not permit you to sully what we had with your wild accusations.”
“It’s the truth,” he gritted.
“It’s far from it.”
“Then spit it out. I am craving a little honesty here.”
She took a deep breath. Pushed stray strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail out of her face. “Your grandfather was in love with two women. Madly, fully in love with two people. One of those women was my mother, Tatum.”
He stared at her. “What the hell are you talking about?”
She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth. “When my mother modeled for Mondelli in the eighties, she had an affair with Giovanni. Giovanni was torn between her and Rosa, agonized over the decision, he said. In the end, he chose Rosa and severed all ties with my mother. Rosa knew about the affair, but neither she nor Giovanni spoke of it afterward.”
He gave her a look of disbelief. Giovanni in love with Tatum Fitzgerald? While he’d been married to his grandmother? He may not have much of a belief in the concept of true love, but the one person he’d seen have it was his grandfather with Rosa. They’d conceived Sandro when his grandmother was just eighteen, had been each other’s first loves and had remained deeply enamored until Rosa had passed away.
An affair? It was inconceivable.
He leveled a gaze at her. “How do you know all this?”
A nerve pulsed in her cheek. “I was going through a rough time in my modeling career. Giovanni approached me at an industry function in New York. I think he felt guilty about what happened to my mother’s career after he ended things. She fell apart after he left her. She went on to marry my father, but she never got over Giovanni and they divorced. Giovanni told me the whole story that night.”
He attempted to absorb the far-fetched tale. “So he decided to befriend you? Put you up in a luxury apartment in Milan and mentor you because he felt guilty over a relationship that ended decades ago?”
She lifted her chin. “He knew I needed a friend. Someone I could count on. He was there for me.”
“What about your own family and friends?”
“They aren’t something I can turn to.” Her gaze dropped away from his. “I left my whole life behind when I came to Milan.”
Because she’d known she had a free ride. He smothered a frustrated growl and paced to the window. “So Giovanni is just your friend, you were out tonight missing him, and that thing with me just now was what? The way you treat all men who chat you up in a café?”
“You deliberately tried to seduce me.”
He swung around. “And how seducible you were, bella. You made it easy.”
Her expression hardened. “If you choose not to believe a word I say, you can leave. I’ll be out within the week.”
“Tell me the truth about you and Giovanni and I’ll give you a month. I’m not an unreasonable man.”
Her eyes flashed. “Get out.”
He thought that might be a good idea before he lost what was left of his head. Putting his hands on Olivia Fitzgerald, coming here, had been a mistake driven by his grief and his desire to know what had been in Giovanni’s head these past months. And now it was time to rectify it by getting the hell out.
He swept his gaze over the racks of clothes. She was going to have an issue finding a place she could afford that could accommodate all of this without Giovanni bankrolling it. And even he wasn’t without a heart.
“I’ll give you a month. Then I expect the keys delivered to me.”
She followed him to the door, looking every bit the angelic blonde damsel in distress that she was not. He walked through the door and didn’t look back.
Giovanni had always been a bit of a romantic. Good thing Rocco was nothing like him.
CHAPTER THREE
ROCCO STOOD ON the tarmac of Milan’s Linate Airport, Christian Markos at his side. The last of the Columbia Four to depart following Giovanni’s funeral, Christian was headed to Hong Kong and a deal that couldn’t wait. As always, when Rocco parted from his closest friends, there was an empty feeling in his heart. They had become so tight during those four years at Columbia. Watched one another grow into manhood and cemented their friendships as they took on the world.
Together they were an impenetrable force, greater than the sum of their parts. It was always difficult to return to their respective corners of the world, but they did so with the knowledge they would see one another soon—their four-times-a-year meet-ups a ritual none of them missed.
Christian wrapped an arm around him. “I may have a weekend off midmonth. Why don’t we take your boat out? Catch up properly?”
Rocco smiled. “I’ll believe it when we’re drinking Peroni on the deck, fratello. Some big deal will come up and you’ll be gone again.”
Christian gave him an indignant look. “That last one was a megamerger. Out of my hands.”
“And the brunette that came along with it?”
“Opposing pain in my behind,” Christian grumbled. “Who was the blonde today by the way? Looked like a heated conversation.”
It had been. Olivia Fitzgerald showing up at his grandfather’s funeral had been an event he hadn’t anticipated. Despite his objections, she’d insisted on staying. Not something he’d been willing to risk a scene over, particularly when his father had just made his own notable appearance, reeking of alcohol.
He looked at Christian. “Olivia Fitzgerald. She was not invited. I had an issue with it.”
His friend lifted a brow. “Olivia Fitzgerald the model? I thought she was in hiding.”
“She is, here in Milan. She knew Giovanni and wanted to pay her respects.”
Christian looked curious. “What is your issue with her?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Everything is complicated with you.” His friend shrugged. “You should sign her. The board would be kissing your feet.”
“She doesn’t want to be in the limelight.” Why, he still didn’t know.
An amused smile twisted the Greek’s lips. “One of my senior deal makers had that photo of her nude on the beach in his office. I had to make him take it down. It’s a little distracting when you’re trying to crunch numbers.”
“No doubt.” Rocco knew exactly the shot his friend was talking about. The beach scene of Olivia kneeling in the surf, hands strategically covering herself, had graced the cover of an annual swimsuit magazine, then made the rounds as a wildly popular screensaver.
The engines of Christian’s jet started to whir. “I’m so sorry about Giovanni,” he said to Rocco. “I know how much he meant to you. And I’m sorry you had to deal with your father today. That can’t have been easy.”
“It was inevitable.” The fact that Christian and Zayed had had to remove his father from the proceedings—not so much.
He frowned. “I’m sorry you had to bear witness to that.”
“It’s not your cross to bear,” his friend said quietly. “You take the weight of the world on your shoulders sometimes, Rocco. There’s only so much of a burden a man can carry.”
Rocco nodded. Except he’d been carrying the burden of his family for so long he didn’t know how it could be any different.
“Go,” he told Christian, clapping him on the back. “My boat and a case of Peroni are waiting when you come back.”
His friend nodded and strode toward the plane. Rocco watched while he boarded the jet, the crew closed up the doors and the pilot taxied off to join the lineup of planes waiting to take off.
Even with everything he had on his plate, he couldn’t get that night with Olivia out of his head. What she’d told him about Giovanni. Whether there was the slightest bit of truth in any of it. It sat in his brain and festered. Added to his confusion over his grandfather’s decisions, the changes he’d seen in Giovanni of late. Had he been capable of cheating on his beloved Rosa? Sure, Giovanni had admired women for the pure aesthetic of them. He was a designer. But unfaithful?
He’d thought it had just been age softening his grandfather lately, the mellowing of his acerbic, grandiose personality. Had it instead been the influence of a woman? Olivia Fitzgerald?
Had he been in love with her? Did Olivia possess many of the same attributes as her mother, thus replacing the one woman he’d never been able to have? His stomach rearranged itself with a strange emotion he didn’t want to identify. After witnessing the genius Giovanni and Olivia had created together in those designs, it was clear they had a connection.
And why did he care? What was it to him if his grandfather had fallen for a woman a third of his age? If he’d allowed himself to be made a fool of? He had done his job ensuring Olivia Fitzgerald would no longer take advantage of his family.
Because you almost lost your head. Over a beautiful blonde who’d had more of a master plan in her head than he’d ever had.
An image of Olivia’s face when she’d walked into the church today flicked through his head. Fear she would be discovered even though she’d had a scarf over her head. Fear of him as she’d seen him. Stubborn defiance blazing in those amazing blue eyes as she’d stood her ground.
She’d also, he conceded, looked heartsick. Sad. And in his gut, he knew it was true emotion. He hadn’t had the heart to toss her out. She had left as quickly as she’d appeared, not staying for the reception. He knew she was still in the apartment; he’d had the building supervisor keep him advised of her presence. He suspected she was having difficulty finding another place, but it wasn’t his problem she’d lost her paycheck in Giovanni.
Christian’s jet disappeared into the clouds. Rocco turned and headed toward the terminal, but his friend’s words followed him. You should sign her. The board would be kissing your feet...
They would kiss his feet if he signed Olivia Fitzgerald. The worldwide press had been in a furor ever since her disappearance from modeling. She’d left on top, one of the most highly paid faces in the world. Everyone wanted her. Her disappearance had only added to the mystique.
He pushed his way through the terminal doors, strode through the tiny building and exited into the car park. There was only one problem with Christian’s rather brilliant plan. Olivia didn’t want to be found. Had wanted to escape her former life. And if it wasn’t because she’d been bankrupt, as he’d suggested, then why? Why abandon a three-million-dollar contract when she could have just worked her way out of it, then gone into the career she’d desired?
She’d looked so miserable, so dejected, as she’d left the church today. She had no hope of launching that line without Giovanni. Her dream was done. Unless she found herself another benefactor.
He paused, his hand on the handle of the Aventador’s door. Suddenly the path forward became clear. He had what Olivia needed as head of one of the most powerful design houses in the world. Olivia had what he needed if he could persuade her to come back to modeling for a year as the exclusive face of Mondelli. Her star power would turn Mondelli into a superstar brand, the couture house of the moment, the board would fall to its knees at such an acquisition and he would have control of his company again.
Adrenaline fueled his movements as he stepped into his car and brought it purring to life. Making Olivia an offer she couldn’t refuse was an undeniably alluring play. But there was something else his mind was manufacturing that would be the icing on the cake. The pièce de résistance. Olivia Fitzgerald as the face of Mondelli and the brand-new fiancée of the CEO of House of Mondelli. A perfect union from all angles. And the perfect way to convince the board he had House of Mondelli as his top priority.
All his problems solved in one tidy little package.
A smile curved his mouth. Renzo Rialto would wet himself. How much more could he want? Now all he had to do was persuade Olivia Fitzgerald his plan was in both their interests.
* * *
Olivia was packing a box of design materials when the knocking sounded hard and insistent on her front door. Thinking it might be Violetta coming to help, and frowning at her exuberance, she got to her feet, dusted off her hands and went to answer it. Any distraction to take her mind off her rather desperate situation was welcome at this point.
When she saw who was standing in the hallway, she amended that thought. Any distraction other than a fully resplendent Rocco Mondelli clad in the dark suit he’d worn to the funeral that morning. Despite her vow to hate him, her heart pitter-pattered in her chest as she took him in leaning against the doorjamb, impatience written across his olive-skinned face.
“You said I had a month.”
“You do.” He walked past her into the apartment. “You’ll find I’m a man of my word, Olivia. Have you had any luck yet finding another apartment?”
A man of his word? He’d deliberately seduced and misled her in this very apartment. She gave him a cool look and shut the door. “As a matter of fact, no, but I thought I’d better start getting packed up before you send in the goons.”
“I won’t have to.” He waved a hand toward the kitchen. “This time I would like an espresso.”
She stared at him in amazement. “You were ready to toss me out of that funeral this morning and now I’m supposed to make you coffee?”
He returned her stare, nonplussed. “I have an offer I think you’d like to hear.”
Not in this decade.
His mouth curved. “Get me that coffee, Olivia.”
Deciding she wasn’t really in a position to argue because he could toss her out on her butt at this very moment, she walked past him to the kitchen, emptied the grinds from the espresso machine and did his bidding. He stood there, hands in his pockets, watching her.