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She met handsome men a lot. Her work took her into their homes; she accepted invitations to parties, even though she hated parties where you stood around nibbling on awful little canapés and gagging down overly sweet drinks with umbrellas stuck in them, because networking was the best way to find new clients.
Plus her brothers, gorgeous guys themselves, had recently taken to trying to find, with what they surely thought was subtlety, The Right Man for her.
“Hey,” Dante or Rafe, Falco or Nick would say in the falsely cheerful giveaway tone she’d learned to recognize, “how about coming over for supper Friday evening?” Or Sunday brunch, or whatever was the latest excuse for introducing her to the latest candidate in the Orsini Brothers’ “Let’s Find a Guy for Izzy” plan.
To Isabella’s chagrin, even Anna was getting into it, asking her to stop by and, surprise, surprise, a friend of Anna’s handsome husband would just happen to stop by, too.
Hadn’t any of them figured it out yet?
Put an attractive man in front of her and she either became tongue-tied or just the opposite, a woman whose mouth ran a hundred times faster than her brain.
Hi, a guy would say.
Her response? Silence, and a deer-in-the headlights stare.
Or she’d babble. He’d end up the bewildered recipient of whatever came into her head. Did you know that shrimp you’re tucking into probably came from an uninspected shrimp farm in some godforsaken place in the Far East? Or, How do you feel about the destruction of wetlands?
The result, either way?
Disaster.
It had been the pattern of her life, ever since she’d first noticed that boys were not girls.
The thing was, she wasn’t pretty, or clever, or the kind of woman men lusted after. Not that she wanted to be lusted after …
Okay.
A little lust would be nice.
Anna was the pretty one.
She was a great sister and Izzy adored her, but she had long ago faced facts.
Anna was the Orsini sister boys had always noticed.
She was the one with the blond hair, the one who knew, instinctively, what to say and what to wear, who knew how to charm and flirt and turn the most gorgeous guys to putty.
Izzy had long ago accepted the fact that she didn’t have those attributes, and she could live with that. What she couldn’t live with was turning into a jerk each and every time she found a man attractive.
Speechless or babbling. Those were her choices.
Today’s winner was Izzy the Babbler.
She’d already said more to this guy than she should have about his employer. For all she knew, Mr. Heartbreaker might think Rio D’Aquila walked on water.
And now, this—this outburst about him not wearing a shirt …
She swallowed drily and risked a glance at him.
He’d stopped laughing. More or less. Actually, she was pretty sure he was choking back another guffaw.
“I’m sorry,” she said miserably. “Honestly, I didn’t mean—”
“No, you’re right.” He cleared his throat, rearranged his face until he looked as if he were the one who should do the apologizing. “I was working out back, see, and then I heard the security buzzer go off, and—”
“Really, you don’t owe me an explanation. I don’t know what I was thinking.”
“It’s the heat. It makes it hard to think straight.”
He flashed a smile that sent her pulse into overdrive. Had she ever seen blue eyes so dark, lashes so long? A woman could hate a man for having lashes like those.
“And you proved it.”
Isabella blinked. “Proved what?”
“That it’s too hot to think straight. So here’s what I suggest. Instead of standing in the foyer, why don’t we head for the kitchen? On the way, I’ll take a quick detour, grab a clean shirt, and then I’ll get us a couple of cold drinks, and—”
“Really, that’s not necessary,” she said quickly. “You go on. I mean, get yourself something cold. And a shirt.” She blushed. “I mean—I mean, I’ll just wait here while you tell Mr. D’Aquila that I’m …” Her eyebrows rose, even as her heart sank. “What?”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
“Can’t do what?”
“I can’t pass on your message.” He paused. “Mr. D’Aquila isn’t here.”
“He isn’t?”
“No,” Rio said, and Isabella Orsini’s face fell.
Well, so what?
He’d been cooling his heels for hours, waiting for her to turn up. Now she was upset that the man she’d come to see wasn’t available.
Tough.
He wasn’t in the mood to conduct an interview now. Besides, only a fool would contract with a workman—a workwoman—Cristo, maybe the sun really was getting to him. The point was, even if she had the necessary credentials—and it was an excellent bet that she didn’t—he would never deal with a contractor who could not adhere to a schedule.
“He left about an hour ago,” he said, and watched as she sank what looked like perfect white teeth into the soft fullness of her bottom lip.
Rio’s gut tightened.
And that was a second excellent reason for not even considering hiring her.
The last thing he needed was to be attracted to a woman who worked for him, although what there was for him to be attracted to was beyond him to comprehend. There were things to like about her he had to admit. She spoke her mind. Those comments about his boss …
Well, no.
Not about his boss. About him. About the powerful, king-of-the-mountain Rio D’Aquila.
And then there was the shirt thing.
He couldn’t think of a woman he’d ever known who’d have been embarrassed by his standing around without a shirt. And she had, indeed, been embarrassed. Stripes of crimson had risen along her sculpted cheeks.
Not that her cheeks, sculpted or otherwise, mattered.
She had a forlorn expression on her face now. Her mouth had taken a downward curve.
That made-for-sin mouth.
That silken-looking mouth.
What would she do if he bent his head and put his lips on hers? If he tasted that rosy-pink softness? If he tasted her.
Rio’s anatomy responded with alarming speed. He swung away from her, feigned bending to pluck a bit of nonexistent dirt from the gleaming marble floor.
The sun had, indeed, fried his brain.
Why else react to her? She was not his type at all. He’d already admitted that once you got past the shapeless suit and pulled back hair she was pretty, he had to give her that, but a pretty face was not enough.
He liked his women sophisticated. Urbane. Sure of themselves. He liked them in silk and satin. He liked them capable of keeping up a conversation, okay, not about anything weighty but a conversation, nevertheless.
Isabella Orsini flunked all those categories. Plus, she’d wasted his afternoon and was well on the way to wasting his evening—but he wasn’t going to let that happen.
He wanted a shower and a cold beer, not necessarily in that order. Then he’d head for Easthampton, fly back to the city and never mind staying overnight here or wanting a break in the endless routine of dinner—theater—clubbing. He’d phone a woman, maybe the blonde he’d met last week at that charity thing, ask her if she was busy tonight even though he knew damned well she wouldn’t be, women never were when it came to interrupting their lives to accommodate him.
As for the lie he’d told Isabella Orsini about himself—it had been childish nonsense. Why had he done it? To get even with her? Whatever, it had been stupid.
Enough, Rio thought, and he turned and looked straight at her.
The woebegone look had been replaced by one of cool determination. Now what? he thought, and decided to not wait for the answer but, instead, to go straight to the truth.
“Ms. Orsini—”
“Izzy.”
“Ms. Orsini,” he said, with cool deliberation, “I haven’t been entirely straightforward with you.” An understatement, but what the hell? “What I said about Rio D’Aquila—”
“I know. You already said he isn’t here.”
“Right. But—”
“When will he be back?”
Aha. That explained the determined expression on her face. She was going to settle in and wait. Well, that wasn’t about to happen.
“I’m going to level with you, Ms. Orsini.”
“Izzy.”
“Izzy. The truth is—”
“He’s not coming back.”
“No. Well, that isn’t exactly what I—”
“He gave up waiting. And I can’t blame him.”
Her voice had fallen to a husky whisper. Damnit, was she going to cry? He couldn’t stand it when women cried. It was always a maneuver to try and get their own way and he was impervious to that time-worn trick.
“I can’t blame him at all.”
Dio, better tears than this low, sad tone.
“Look, Ms. Orsini. I mean, Isabella—”
“It’s Izzy. Nobody ever calls me ‘Isabella.’”
Impossible. She wasn’t an “Izzy.” “Isabella” suited her better. Maybe she wasn’t beautiful but she had a sweet voice, a pretty-enough face …
Rio acted on instinct. He reached out, cupped her chin, raised her face to his.
“Hey,” he said, and suddenly he knew he’d been all wrong, thinking her pretty.
She wasn’t. She wasn’t even beautiful.
She was something more.
How had he missed it? Had he been put off by the game? By his own anger? By her silly outfit?
For the first time, he saw her as she was. The thick, dark lashes. The high cheekbones. That lush mouth. A nose that wasn’t perfect; it had a tiny bump in the middle and, somehow, that made it perfect for her.
And, Cristo, her eyes.
Green. No, blue. Or brown. Or gold. The truth was, they were an amalgam of colors, and suddenly he was eight years old again, a half-starved kid pawing through a Dumpster behind a restaurant, coming across a chunk of strangely shaped glass.
He’d almost tossed it away. He’d had no need for useless things then. He still didn’t, all these years later.
But a ray of sun had hit the glass and the prism—he’d later learned that that was what it was—had flamed to life. The sheer brilliance of the colors had stolen his breath.
The same thing happened now.
Rio looked into Isabella Orsini’s eyes and what he saw made his heartbeat stumble.
He wanted to kiss her.
Hell, he was going to kiss her.
He was going to do something incredibly stupid and illogical and he was not a man who did things that were either stupid or illogical and, damnit, yes, he thought, dropping his hand to his side and taking a step back, he’d had too much sun.
“What you need to know,” he said briskly, “is that Rio D’Aquila and I are—”
“Trust me. I understand. He got tired of waiting and left you to deliver the message. I lost the job. Well, I never had the job but I lost my chance at it, right?”
“Right,” Rio said, “except—”
“I can’t blame him. I’m, what, two hours late?”
“Three, but—”
“What happened was that I got a late start. A client phoned. We had lots of rain overnight and I’d just planted pansies on his terrace.”
“Pansies,” Rio said.
“And the rain soaked them, so I had to head into Manhattan to take a quick look. See, my place is in Brooklyn and the traffic … Anyway, I started a little bit late, and then the traffic on the L.I.E. was a nightmare, even worse than in the city, so—”
“The Long Island Expressway is always crowded,” Rio said, and wondered why in hell he was letting this conversation continue. Maybe it was her eyes, the way they were fixed on his.
“I should have known. Anna warned me.”
“Anna?”
“So did Joey.”
“Joey,” he repeated, in the tones of a man trying desperately to hang on to his sanity.
“The boy who does my deliveries.” Isabella took a breath. “Then I got to Southampton—and I got lost.”
“Surely my—my boss’s people sent you directions.”
“Well, yes. But I forgot to take them with me. The emergency call about those pansies—and then, of course, I was edgy about this interview.”
“Edgy about this interview,” Rio echoed. Dio, he really was turning into a parrot!
“I kept telling myself that I wasn’t excited about it. That’s even what I told Dante.”
At last, a name he recognized.
“And it’s what I told Anna.”
So much for names he recognized.
“And then there was this rabbit in the road—”
Rabbits in the road, Rio thought. Had he stumbled into Wonderland?
“But the truth is, I really, really, really would have loved this commission.” Isabella—he could not possibly think of her as “Izzy”—flung her arms wide, the gesture taking in everything that had drawn him to this place: the sea, the fields, the dunes, the privacy, the clarity of the sky that was rapidly giving up the day with the onset of dusk. “I thought it was worth going after for the money. Well, and the status of doing a job for a hotshot like Rio D’Aquila. I mean, I’m not much for status, but …”
“No,” Rio said with a little smile, “I bet you’re not.”
“But now that I’ve seen the house, the setting …” A smile lit her face. “It would have been a wonderful challenge! So beautiful! So big! I’ll bet the terrace is enormous, too, and I wouldn’t have to think about size constraints, or whether or not rain would drain properly. It would be like—like a painter getting the chance to go from miniatures to—to murals!”
Her face glowed. So did her smile. Neither would win her the job or even an interview. Still—
“Would you like to see the terrace?” he heard himself say.
Her teeth sank into her bottom lip again.
“I shouldn’t—”
Rio had started the day wearing a blue chambray shirt over the T he’d discarded. Now, he grabbed it from the table where he’d left it, slipped it on and started walking. A couple of seconds went by. Then he heard the sound of her heels tap-tapping after him.
“Maybe just a peek,” she said. “I have the dimensions, of course, your employer’s people sent them to me, but to see it, really see it—”
They reached the open terrace doors. Rio motioned her through. She moved past him—and tripped in those ridiculously sexy shoes. His hand shot out automatically; he caught her wrist.
Time stood still.
It was a terrible cliché, but it was precisely what happened.
He heard the catch of her breath. Saw her eyes widen as she looked up at him. The air seemed to shimmer between them.
“It’s—it’s the shoes,” she said unsteadily, “Anna’s shoes …”
Anna’s shoes, he thought, but mostly he thought, to hell with it. He was going to kiss her, just once, and damn the consequences …
Damnit, he thought, and he let go of her, moved past her and stepped outside.
“Here we are,” he said briskly.
“Oh,” Isabella Orsini whispered, “oh, my.”
He swung around. She stood just behind him, hands clasped at her breast.
“Look at the colors,” she whispered reverently. “All those endless shades of gold and green and blue.”
Rio nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “It’s—it’s nice.”
“Nice?” She gave a soft laugh. “It’s perfect. I can see Russian olive all around here, and some rhododendron. And azalea, here and here and here.”
Her face was as bright as the sun, her smile wide and honest.
“Mistral azalea,” she said, and he nodded again as if he knew what she was talking about.
“And some weigela. For the deeper color of the blossoms.”
Slowly, speaking the names of plants and trees and flowers as easily as he’d have dropped the names of cargo ships and stocks, Isabella filled his terrace with plants and trees and flowers made so real by her voice, her words, her smile that he could almost see them.
He couldn’t take his eyes from her.
All that eagerness, that joy, that animation …
She reached the area where he’d been digging, didn’t hesitate, kicked off those dirt-spattered stilettos and stepped, barefoot, into the rich, dark earth.
Or maybe it was nylon-foot, he thought numbly. Not that it mattered. Whatever you called seeing a beautiful woman in an ugly outfit dig her toes into the soil, it finished him.
Rio was lost.
He took a step toward her. She was still talking, the names of plants and shrubs and God-only-knew what tumbling from that sweet-looking mouth.
“Isabella,” he said.
Everything he was thinking was in the way he said her name. He knew she sensed it, too, because she fell silent and swung toward him.
Was she as lost as he?
“Mr. Rossi,” she whispered, and the parting of her lips, the breath she took as he reached for her, was all the answer he needed.
“Don’t call me that,” he said gruffly.
“No,” she said, her voice as husky as his, “you’re right.” They stood an inch apart, her face lifted to his. A little smile curved her lips. “Hello, Matteo.”
“Isabella. You don’t underst—”
She put a finger against his mouth.
“I don’t want to understand,” she said, and Rio gave up the battle, gathered Isabella Orsini into his arms, bent his head and kissed her.
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