“Doesn’t your staff need to believe our little farce?”
She opened her mouth to argue with that, but she had decided before this that of course they did. She wasn’t sure she could pull one over on Pierro. He’d been the caretaker of this castle and its inhabitant since her father had been a child. He knew her too well.
But if everyone else fell for it, he would pretend he did not know it was fake. He would go along with it.
But she hadn’t thought about how that would…look. In her private life. She’d been focused on how to make the public believe they were a couple.
He was opening her car door for her now, offering his hand to help her out. She didn’t want to take it, pretend or no, but she had to. Just another curse to lay on her father’s memory, she supposed.
Luciano kept her hand in his as he closed the car door behind her. Then he walked with her. Toward the castle. His large hand enveloping hers. Warm and strangely rough, when she would have expected his hands to be as smooth as the rest of him.
They walked up the stairs to the main doorway. Her heart tripped over itself in something like nerves. She wasn’tnervous. She was just…uncomfortable. He was only walking her to her door. Like a good date would. She would turn, offer her cheek perhaps? She didn’twantto feel his mouth on her, her hand, her cheek, her…
No, she didn’t want to know what that felt like. Just the thought made her jittery and sick to her stomach. Maybe that jittery feeling was more like a free fall on a roller coaster than any kind of revulsion, but she was certain it came from not wanting to do it. Excitement wouldn’t feel like this, so untenable and shaky. Besides, anyexcitement,would be a betrayal of her own self.
So it couldn’t be that.
But some sort of physical good-bye wasnecessary, she told herself firmly as they reached her door. She turned to him, pulled her hand away, almost having to resort to tugging for it to be free. Once it was, she knew she had to give a little more. Pretend for the staff, as he’d said. She tilted her head, offering her cheek. A chaste kiss on the cheek was something she was going to have to get used to. So why not start now with only the audience of his driver and possibly someone looking on from inside?
But as he leaned forward, closer and closer, those dark eyes intense and onhersso that it felt like a touch in itself, her breath seemed to catch there in her throat. She couldn’t inhale or exhale as his mouth brushed against her cheek.
Lightly, almost friendly. Certainly notromantic. But his breath on her skin was an intimacy she hadn’t considered, and she didn’t like the way it shivered through her. How it elicited wants that clearly had not originated in herbrain.
She needed this to be over. She needed to be alone. To regroup. To… To…Somethingaway from him.
“Good night, Luciano,” she said, sounding polite and warm, she hoped, but it was hard to tell with the buzzing in her ears.
That intensified when she opened the door and he did not turn around and walk back to his car. He followed her into the warmly lit entryway.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, rounding on him as if she could protect her space from him physically.
“Coming inside,” Luciano replied breezily.
“I did not invite you inside.” She knew she sounded shrill. She couldhearit, but she couldn’t stop it.
“Quite the failure on your part. Youshouldinvite me in for a drink. And then weshouldretire to your room.”
She could only gape at him. He wasn’t actually suggesting…
“We are to make a splash, are we not?”
A splash?
He was mad. “I don’t see what that has to do with you following me inside against my wishes. With you…” She couldn’t say the rest. A drink was one thing. Herroom?
“What better splash than a tabloid photo of my car leaving your home early in the morning? The speculation will run rampant.”
The thought of him in herhomeovernight was…horrible. Absolutely terrifying. Maybe the fear she’d felt before had been heavy with claws, and this was light and fizzy. Maybe this felt more like a drink of champagne than any threat. The idea of him in her room, the idea of him…
She could not let her mind traverse down that road. It felt imperative to shut the door on any imagination there, before it…changed something.
A smart woman did not walk roads or have sleepovers—no matter how fake—with creatures who could sting. “You cannot spend the night here.”
“Admittedly your crumbling castle is not my first choice in accommodations. Perhaps next time you can spend the night at my estate. With running water.”
“I have running water. I have every amenity—” She stopped herself from continuing to defend herhome, particularly in that horrible screech that made her want to wince. He was no doubt just trying to get a rise out of her. She inhaled, put all her armor back in place and smiled sweetly at him. “And I wouldn’t stay at your estate if held at gunpoint,carissimo.”
“Then I guess you are not as serious about this endeavor as I’d thought you were.” Hetskedlightly.
