it that way. Or maybe I want to spoil you because you don't ask for
anything and I'm not used to that with a woman.'
'I'm not used to blokes buying me stuff,' Holly shared in a sudden rush
of confidence. 'Jeff used to borrow money off me all the time. He was
always running out. I've always paid my own way...well, until recently.'
'Jeff...Timothy's absent father? He sounds a treat,' Rio breathed with
perceptible scorn. 'Where is he?'
Holly repressed a shiver and studied her tightly linked hands. 'Don't
know...don't want to know,' she admitted shakily. 'He thumped me last
time I saw him-'
'I beg your pardon?' Rio curved lean, strong fingers round her slight
shoulder to turn her back to face him.
'Me and my big mouth,' Holly muttered, for she had never intended to
tell anyone that.
Rio raked her strained face with flaring golden eyes. 'He hit you?'
'It was my own fault-'
'How could it have been?' Rio demanded.
'I came up to London with Timmie to find Jeff. It took time because he
had changed jobs and moved on from his last address,' Holly explained
heavily. 'I was stupid. After
all, he always knew how to get in touch with me, but I couldn't accept
that what we'd had had fizzled out-'
'You had a child. Naturally you didn't want to accept it. Did he know
you were pregnant when he abandoned you?'
'Abandoned', she reflected, made what Jeff had done sound dramatically
worse than it had been. All he had actually done was stop phoning, and
had she had the wit to leave it at that she might never have sunk as
low. Following Jeff up to London and searching for him had been her
second biggest mistake, she conceded. With a child in tow she had found
it impossible to make ends meet in so expensive a city, but she had had
nowhere else to go and neither friends nor family to fall back on for
support.
'No. I was a bit slow on the uptake when it came to realising that I was
pregnant myself,' she confided in some discomfiture on that subject.
'So what happened when you traced him?'
'He was living in Notting Hill in a very smart flat,' she faltered, her
mind taking her back to that ghastly day of awakening to the discovery
that the father of her child was a creep of the lowest order and, worst
of all, a weak one. 'I had Timmie with me because I had nowhere else to
leave him. Jeff opened the door...'
'And?' Rio prompted impatiently.
'He said he had a friend visiting and he sort of yanked me into the
kitchen,' Holly whispered shakily. 'I told him that he was a father and
he just went berserk. Then his girlfriend came in...that was worse than
being hit because she felt sorry for me.'
Rio expelled his breath in a slow, measured hiss.
'It was her flat and she threw him out to cool off. She was dead
sophisticated, much older than me and not at all embarrassed by the
situation,' Holly gulped. 'She even made me a cup of tea while she told
me that chasing after
50
Jeff with a baby was really dumb. She said Jeff had lost his head
because I had cornered him when she was home and he was desperate to get
rid of me without her finding out that my baby was his.'
'Charming.'
'She was right.' Holly swallowed hard and raised her sleeve, intending
to wipe her eyes. 'I was just too scared to face up to the fact that I
was on my own, so I clung to this stupid dream that it would all work
out once he saw...Timothy,' she pronounced with precision.
Releasing a groan, Rio Lombardi tilted up her chin to dry her damp eyes
with a fine lawn handkerchief. 'Jeff was no loss. You're lucky that you
and your son escaped a man so quick to use his fists in a crisis.'
Her drowning blue eyes gazed up into glittering gold and Jeff went out
of her mind so fast he might never have existed. She tried and failed to
swallow. Rio was so close that breathing was no longer an option. Lashes
lowered, she focused on that wide, sensual mouth of his and the tip of
her tongue snaked out to moisten her dry lower lip. Never in all her
life had she been so desperate, so shamelessly eager to feel a man's
mouth on hers. The craving was almost unbearably strong.
His fabulous bone-structure taut, proud cheekbones prominent beneath
smooth bronzed skin, Rio murmured with a fracturing edge to his
thickened drawl, 'It's not my fists you have to fear. I'm much more
inventive but probably more dangerous.'
Please, please, kiss me, I don't care, was running through her mind as
he set her back from him and turned to answer the car phone. She had not
even heard it buzzing and she sank back into her corner again like a
boneless doll, registering that she had just glanced into potent contact
with a male far more sexually charged than Jeff had ever been.
It had been there in the atmosphere between them, an instant, surging
awareness that shook her to her very depths.
Rio took her to an exclusive salon to get her hair done first.
'Cut it short?' Rio repeated on a rising note of disbelief when the
retro-clad stylist made that laconic suggestion after poking through
Holly's hair much as though it was beyond all human intervention.
Closing one hand over hers, Rio dragged her back out of the leather
chair and headed for the exit.
'What are you doing?' Holly gasped in embarrassment, horribly aware of
every head in the place turning in their direction.
'I'm not leaving you at the mercy of a scissor-happy lunatic, cara-'
'Rio!' A female voice intervened.
Rio halted, his lean, strong features tensing.
A stunning brunette with cat-like eyes and vampish burgundy lips surged
up to them, but, for all her elegant cool, she was exuding a definable
air of panic. 'That stupid lump on the desk didn't recognise you, did
she? You walking out of my salon with a big frown is very bad for
business, Rio.'
'Your top stylist wants to chop off her crowning glory!' Rio delivered.
Cheeks burning, Holly stood there while the brunette's shrewd gaze
flicked from Holly's cascading ringlets back to Rio. 'Obviously a guy
with no imagination. I'll do it. She just needs some shaping round her
face. One of your tribe of little cousins over from Italy?' she asked,
as if Holly were mute.
'She speaks hardly any English,' Holly heard Rio stated at that
startling announcement, she shot him a wide-eyed glance of incredulity,
barely able to credit her hearing.
52
'But I presume she has a name. I'm Sly.' The brunette extended a
manicured hand to Holly. 'And you're-'
'Fiammetta,' Rio slotted in with a perfectly straight face. 'She's
unbelievably shy. I'd like her made up as well-'
'What age is she?' Sly enquired of him with a cloying smile, both of
them now talking over the top of Holly's head as if she were a very
small child.
'Old enough to look like a woman,' Rio quipped huskily.
'Then I presume you're planning to do something about the clothes she's
wearing as well,' the salon owner remarked with a sp
eaking little giggle.
Fifteen minutes later, Holly was seated in front of a mirror while Sly
cut her hair with exaggerated care. 'What Rio wants, Rio always gets...'
Since Holly had not one Italian word at her disposal and did not trust
herself to emulate an accent, she compressed her lips and concealed her
discomfiture. When she got her hands on Rio in private, she was going to
scream at him for doing this to her. Why, though? Why deprive her of the
ability to talk?
'I do wish I spoke Italian,' Sly sighed. 'I bet you have the inside
track on the whole story, and I would give my right arm to hear every
dirty detail on the fall of Christabel. The rumours are just so intriguing.'
Who was Christabel? Some ex-girlfriend of Rio's? Or possibly just a not
very popular mutual acquaintance, Holly allowed, someone who had
suffered some kind of disappointment. Gritting her teeth, she sat
through the styling session and then through the incredibly tickly and
painstaking experience of having cosmetics professionally applied. She
wasn't able to see herself until the very last moment and then she
simply stared in disbelief at her own transformed appearance.
'I'm the best in my field even though I say it myself,' Sly drawled with
amusement.
Smoky shadow had been smoothed round Holly's eyes, giving them dramatic
depth and enhancing their colour. She had cheekbones now like a model in
a magazine and a mouth as ripe and pink and lush as a peach.
Rio was pacing the waiting area, talking in staccato Italian on his
mobile phone, the cynosure of interest for every female in the vicinity.
He lowered his phone, tawny eyes welding to her with gleaming intensity,
a faint and wicked smile curling at the corners of his beautiful mouth.
'Bella, Fiammetta...' he drawled with lazy amusement.
And in that same moment, Holly knew beyond all doubt that she had fallen
passionately in love. Riveted to the spot by his unashamed appreciation,
she could feel herself glowing inside like a megawatt light bulb
suddenly connected to an electric current. He was the source of the
current. He was redefining her in her own eyes, making her feel good
about herself for the first time in almost two years.
Resting a casual hand on her spine, he urged her back out to the limo.
'Why did you tell Sly that crazy story about me being Italian?' Holly
prompted, trying to muster her former fury but finding it strangely absent.
'She's the biggest gossip in town and not nicknamed ' 'Sly'' for
nothing. She could have bared your soul for you in the first five
minutes,' Rio mocked.
'I couldn't open my mouth! I don't know a single word of Italian!'
'I know. Class act, aren't I?' Rio teased. 'It was as good as gagging
the two of you. Sly was seething with frustration.'
Holly mock-punched him in the ribs and then jerked her hand back, afraid
that she had been too familiar. But he
54
gave her a slanting grin of answering amusement that turned her heart
inside-out. Nobody was ever going to accuse Rio Lombardi of being a
charisma-free zone, Holly thought dizzily in receipt of that smile while
she struggled to get mental feet back safely on the ground again. Only
the ground had vanished. Every time he looked at her she felt as if she
was flying.
The next stop on the shopping trip was a high-fashion outlet of such
size and style that the deeper they got into it the more Holly tried to
hide behind him, cringing at her own shabbiness.
'Who would you like to be here? Daughter of an eccentric billionaire?'
Rio murmured, inclining his dark head down to hers, making her tremble
at his proximity. 'Minor European royalty, travelling incognito?'
'I think I'll just be me, but you get to do all the talking,' Holly said
apprehensively as a smiling, terrifyingly svelte female began to move in
their direction.
'All these people care about is the colour of my money,' Rio breathed,
his dark drawl hard-edged with what sounded remarkably like bitterness.
'And the richer you are, the more they grovel.'
'I wouldn't know a lot about that but I hope you're not going to be
rude,' Holly whispered back worriedly.
Unexpectedly, he laughed.
He sent her off alone to the lingerie department. Ignoring the bountiful
advice of a saleswoman keen to flog her a hundred of every item, not to
mention undergarments that Holly had not until then known even existed,
Holly settled for several sets of bras and briefs. No, she did not need
nightwear. There had been a nightie in Ezio's sack that had done her
wrong, her conscience warned her. Letting Rio Lombardi spend his money
on her could not
be right. But it was making him smile, it was making him tease her. He
could buy her a series of numbered fertiliser sacks if he liked.
'Now I get in on the act,' Rio announced when she was led back to him to
find him seated on a tall stool at a mini-bar in a spacious room that
contained a small stage and catwalk. 'Champagne?'
With difficulty, she made it up onto the stool beside him and accepted a
moisture-beaded glass. 'What happens in here?'
'The models parade the product. We pick what we like. Then you try it on.'
'You've done this before.' The champagne bubbles tickled her nose but
she didn't laugh. She did not like the idea that he had sat in that
exact same spot with other women but he knew the form too well for her
to doubt it.
'But never before without being asked or set up or cajoled,' Rio
confided darkly.
'If you felt like that, you should just have said no,' Holly muttered
uncomfortably, quite at a loss on how to comment on the behaviour of
women capable of being that bold about their greed. 'I mean...this
wasn't my idea and it doesn't seem to be amusing you any more, so let's
just leave it here...please-'
Lean fingers tugged at a ringlet of her bronze hair, curving her
heart-shaped face round to his. 'But I don't want to leave it. I want to
see you look beautiful...'
Her breath feathered in her throat, her clear blue eyes betraying her
confusion. 'I can't be what I'm not-'
'You can be whatever you want to be, cara.'
She gazed into lustrous eyes shaded with burning gold and her heart was
racing. The sense of caution taught by the hard lessons of recent
experience strove to keep her grounded, though. What he was doing for
her was like a
56
fairy tale but she knew fairy tales didn't happen in real life: there
was always a catch. As she parted her lips to snatch in much needed
oxygen to sustain her, Rio bent his head lower and let his tongue delve
in a subtle flicker into the moist interior of her mouth. It lasted only
a second, but in that second she was electrified by the instantaneous,
stormy response of her own body, the surge of enervating heat that
inflamed her every sense. Indeed, so great was the erotic hit of that
sudden sexual foray she jerked, and if he hadn't shot a steadying
arm
round her she would have fallen off the stool.
'Relax,' Rio urged with husky clarity.
He lounged back from her again in perfect balance, the easy, indolent
grace of his lean, muscular length in striking contrast to her trembling
state of near-devastation.
Holly was in shock, mental shock, sensual, bodily shock. Maybe that had
been a trifling bit of flirtation on his terms, but her quivering body
was on fire with sensations it had never known before and she wanted to
emulate his cool but found it impossible. What did he want from her?
Surely not the obvious? Was he out trawling for a cut-price mistress or
something? What did they have in common? Yes, what did they have in
common? Well, they were both human.
'Sorry...I couldn't resist it,' Rio admitted in his smooth accented drawl.
'I bet you can resist me just fine,' Holly heard herself snap in her
unease at not knowing what was likely to happen next. 'Don't play games
with me!'
'Then stop giving me the green light,' Rio traded quick as a flash,
plunging her into such mortified discomfiture that she went weak with
relief when an older woman took up position at a speaker's stand. The