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‘I’m serious,’ she said, the words stiffened by disapproval. ‘What if there’s a fire, or you break your leg or something?’
‘I have a satellite phone.’ He shrugged.
‘But what about emails?’
‘I can connect to it for internet access,’ he said. ‘It’s slow as hell, but it gets the job done.’
‘Electricity? Water?’
‘Generator. Tank.’
Her mind was busy processing that. ‘Whoever built this really wanted to be off the grid.’
‘Not a lot of options on a deserted island,’ he pointed out, with a pragmatism that annoyed her.
‘I don’t know... It seems like a post-apocalyptic bolthole.’
Or the perfect love-nest for a cheat and liar, Rio amended silently. How many women had Piero brought here over the years? Whispering sweet nothings about Prim’amore, promising a future he had no intention of providing.
‘Do you need to use the phone?’ he asked belatedly, drawing his attention back to her original query.
Fantasies of calling Cressida and unloading on her were clouds Tilly would never catch. Of course she could do no such thing. Besides, Cressida had said she was ‘going to ground’ until the wedding—that she didn’t want to be seen or heard by anyone for the week, and that included turning her cell phone off.
Tilly shook her head, a distracted smile flickering across her lips. ‘I thought I’d go exploring.’
He stood, and ran a hand through his hair. His shirt lifted, revealing an inch of tanned flat abdomen. She looked away as though she’d been burned.
‘You know I only have a week, and Art is... Daddy is,’ she corrected quickly, ‘keen to hear what I think of the place.’
‘Your wish is my command.’ His voice was low and husky and her body reacted instantly, her nipples straining against the fabric of her dress, her eyes widening. And he saw. She just knew he was aware of the effect he was having.
‘I’m fine.’ She shook her head with an attempt at professional detachment. ‘I can find my own way.’
His face wore a slow, sardonic grin. ‘Just like you were fine to get off the boat?’
She huffed. ‘That’s not very gentlemanly of you.’
‘What gave you the impression I’m a gentleman?’ he queried softly, moving closer so that she found thoughts difficult to string together.
‘Nothing,’ she muttered. ‘But I really will be fine. I’m just going to walk along the beach today. If I get lost, I’ll turn back. Even I should be able to navigate my way around an island without coming to grief.’
‘Still,’ he said, wondering in the back of his mind why he was arguing with her. ‘I’m here to show you around.’
She nodded, lifting her gaze to his face thoughtfully. She caught a flicker of emotion in his eyes that she didn’t understand. ‘Why?’
He shrugged. ‘Because it’s a big island and you could get lost.’
‘No, I mean why you? You must have people who could sell an island for you.’
‘Yes.’ His mouth was a grim slash in his face.
‘So? Aren’t you too busy to act as tour guide?’
Rio thought of the paperwork cluttering his desk in Rome and shook his head. Contracts for the high-rise in Manhattan. The lease for the Canadian mall. The purchase offer he’d made on a mine in Australia.
It could wait. Keeping the invasive tabloid press away from his private life was priority number one. He’d spent the last five years making sure his parentage wasn’t revealed, and he wasn’t going to let the truth come out now. Involving more people than necessary in this deal was a sure-fire way to invite public attention.
‘Yes.’
Why had he decided that distraction was the best way to get her off the scent and stop her questions? He couldn’t have said, but he moved closer, noting with interest the way her pupils darkened.
‘But I don’t really like the idea of you drowning in my ocean. Or tumbling off a cliff on my land.’
‘Your ocean? Your land? Someone’s got a bit of a God complex, haven’t they?’
His laugh was deep; it resonated right through her.
‘Until your father signs on the dotted line, that is the truth of the matter.’
She tilted her head to one side, lost in thought. ‘I don’t know if I believe anyone truly owns an island like this.’
‘I have a piece of paper that would beg to differ.’
She waved her hand through the air distractedly. ‘Yes, yes—legally. But don’t you think...?’ She left the sentence unfinished as she realised what she’d been about to say. Discussing her personal philosophies wasn’t part of the job. And, essentially, she was on Prim’amore to work.
She’d been paid—and paid a small fortune. Now she had to uphold her end of the bargain.
‘Yes?’ he prompted, but Tilly had zipped away from their conversation.
‘Well,’ she said, injecting her voice with the same sense of entitlement she’d personally been on the receiving end of any time Cressida had called and asked for a favour, ‘if you really want to waste your time playing sales agent, then let’s go.’
He arched a brow, but if he was surprised by her pronouncement he didn’t otherwise show it.
Tilly did a pretty good Cressida huff as she strode down the corridor and pushed the door to the cottage open. But the moment she stepped on to the small deck she froze, a gasp escaping her mouth.
He followed, almost bumping into her. ‘Problem?’
She shook her head, her eyes wide as they took in the sheer beauty of the spot. He watched her, and understood the wonderment in her face. Hadn’t he felt a similar sense of incredulity when he’d first arrived?
‘It is heaven on earth, mi amore.’
His mother had been confused at the end. She’d slipped in and out of her past just as a dolphin rippled over the surface of the ocean, and most of her memories had revolved around him. Piero. The bastard who’d broken her heart and left her pregnant and destitute.
‘It is as if God left a small piece of heaven just for us to find and enjoy.’
His expression was grim as he studied the horizon, seeing it as Cressida was. The ocean was immaculate. A deep turquoise colour disturbed only by the gentle cresting of waves. The sky was a blanket of deep blue, the sun an orb of white, high in the sky.
‘I feel like we’re the only ones on earth,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘I hadn’t expected the island to be so...’
He waited, curious as to how she would choose to describe it.
‘It’s not just beautiful,’ she said, searching for words. ‘It’s...magical.’
‘Magical?’ he repeated derisively, ignoring how close the description was to his mother’s first impression.
The amusement in his tone was enough to drag her back to the present. ‘Yes.’ She forced a cynical smile to her face. ‘At least that’s what Daddy will be hoping hordes of tourists think.’
He nodded, dismissing the sense that she was hiding something from him. ‘The island’s perfect for a holiday resort. Close enough to Capri to provide entertainment, but totally isolated at the same time. It’s easy to imagine how special any resort would be here.’
She nodded, but there was sadness in her heart. Having been on the island less than an hour, she already knew she hated the idea of buildings and roads cutting across it. Of people bobbing in the ocean, boats churning across its smooth surface, voices shouting through the serenity.
‘Yes,’ she said, her frown carrying into the simple word.
‘What would you like to see, Cressida?’ he asked, and the use of the socialite’s name reminded Tilly forcefully of just what her duties were.
‘I was just going to walk along the beach,’ she murmured, nodding in one direction.
‘Fine. We’ll walk.’
He moved towards the stairs and she followed, though his presence was knotting her tummy again.
‘You really don’t have to come with me,’ she said softly, pressing her teeth into her lower lip as she tried to calm the butterflies that were having a party inside her.
‘I really do have to come with you,’ he corrected quietly. ‘For as long as you are on Prim’amore you are my responsibility.’
A frisson of anticipation danced along her spine. She moved quickly down the stairs, her feet sinking into the sand once she reached the level shore.
‘Prim’amore... First love.’ She glanced at him. ‘It’s a romantic name. Any idea of the history of it?’
‘No,’ he lied.
Secrets, secrets. So many secrets. Hell. He’d been a secret most of his life. Only in recent years had his father lifted the ban on his identity being known, and by then the exposure had outlived any usefulness or appeal.
‘Why are you selling it?’
She was at least a foot shorter than he was. He adjusted his stride to match hers, shoving his hands in his pockets as they moved towards the water.
‘I do not want it.’
She frowned. ‘You don’t want a pristine, untouched island off the coast of Italy?’
‘No.’
Her laugh was carried by the breeze. He turned to chase it, wishing it was louder.
‘Why ever not?’
He met her eyes, his smile feeling heavy somehow. ‘I already have an island. A bigger one.’ He thought of Arketà, with its state-of-the-art home and pier, the helicopter pad and three swimming pools. ‘Two seems excessive.’
‘And here I was thinking you to be a man who thrived on the excessive,’ she heard herself tease.
At the edge of the water she paused, kicking her shoes off and bending to retrieve them. She moved closer to the ocean, flexing her toes as she reached the water’s line, then stepping beyond it so that the waves caressed her ankles.
‘So why buy it if only to sell? Or was it an investment?’
He looked at her for a moment, wondering at the instinct throbbing through him to speak honestly to her. To admit that he hadn’t bought the island so much as inherited it. That in the month he’d possessed Prim’amore it had sat heavily on his shoulders like a weight he didn’t wish to bear. That the gift was unwelcome and that selling it was his primary desire.
‘Not exactly.’ His smile gave little away. ‘I do not need it. Your father has been shopping for a resort site in the Mediterranean for years. The match is too good to ignore.’
She nodded, but he could practically see the cogs turning. ‘You said your island is called Arketà?’
‘Yes.’
‘I like the sound of that.’
He nodded. ‘It means pretty in Greek.’
She arched a brow, her grin contagious.
‘I inherited the name when I purchased it. The previous owner christened it so for his daughter.’
‘I see.’ Tilly nodded, but her smile didn’t drop.
‘That and I’m a hopeless romantic,’ he responded with an attempt at sarcasm.
Tilly shook her head. ‘Nope. I would bet my life that “romantic” is not a word ever associated with you.’
‘Oh? And how would you describe me?’ He prompted, curiosity leading him down a conversational path that his brain was urging him to reconsider.
She slowed for a moment, her eyes skimming across his face as her full lips pouted. She was a study in concentration and it almost made him laugh.
‘I think it’s better that I don’t say,’ she said finally, turning her gaze back to the beach. ‘Do you spend much time there?’
It took him a few seconds to realise she was back on the subject of Arketà. He shook his head. ‘I thought I would when I bought it.’
‘But?’ she prompted.
His shrug lifted his broad shoulders. She tried not to notice the strength in those shoulders, but she was only human.
‘Work.’
‘Ah. Yes.’ She knew the demands of Art Wyndham’s schedule intimately, and could only imagine how much more hectic Rio’s was. ‘So you’re in Rome most of the time?’
‘Si.’
Tilly could imagine that. He had an effortless chicness about him that was completely ingrained. It wasn’t an affectation. He didn’t have to try. He was both masculine, wild, untamed and...handsome. Nothing about him screamed ostentation, yet he exuded power and wealth.
‘And you?’ he surprised her by asking.
