With an exaggerated sigh, she handed him her sneakers and made a show of adjusting her belt. His lips twitched as he took the sneakers, but he didn’t let the smile bloom. God, the man was a miser with facial expressions.
“In your dreams, Mr. Ricci.” Her fingers tingled at the slight contact with his hard chest as she reached for her shoes.
“You keep surprising me, Ms. Fischer,” he said, reaching for her heavy backpack. It was such a surprising—and traditional—gesture that Sam let go without thinking.
He turned, motioning for her to follow him along a long, airy corridor. “I thought I would have to wait a few hours before I could escort you to Brera. But it looks like you’ve been up for a while.”
Sam hurried to catch up to him so quickly that she smacked into his side and had the breath knocked out of her middle. His arm came around her waist with the firmness of a metal shackle, but even that couldn’t distract her. “Did you say Brera?” she said, butterflies twirling in her belly.
He nodded, his eyes doing that sweeping thing of her face. “If I can trust you to not respond to Matteo’s texts or calls just yet.”
“I already agreed,” Sam said, suddenly aware of the warm weight of his arm around her middle.
She stepped back and looked around. The contrasting quiet of the villa after the noise and crowd from the other night slowly sank in. As if everything else was secondary to her awareness of this man.
The corridor stretched long and cool beneath her flats, flanked by shuttered windows that spilled sunlight across inlaid marble floors. Through the open arches on one side, she caught glimpses of Lake Como glittering between cypress trees, so startlingly blue it looked unreal. Like everything else in this house that smelled faintly of lemon oil, old money and effortless beauty.
“And?” Mr. Ricci said, without missing the slightest cue.
She sighed, hating the feeling of betraying Matteo to this…stranger. “He texted me all day yesterday. Someone also knocked on my door the previous night, but I was in a carb coma after the early dinner and wasn’t fully awake.”
His jaw tightened at the mention of his brother. “The evening visitor must have been my aunt.”
“How do you know it wasn’t Matteo?”
“He and Angelina took off for one of those lakeside crawls—bars, boat lounges, something loud, I imagine.” His cool, even mildly detached, tone said exactly what he thought of such activities.
“Wait,” Sam sputtered, coming to a stop just as they emerged onto the expansive front lounge. “Why would your aunt visit me?”
Mr. Ricci, of course, didn’t stop.
Sam followed him down the wide stone steps of the villa, sunlight catching on the ivy-laced balustrade and the pale stucco walls that had likely witnessed centuries of extravagant splendor.
In the courtyard below, a black Mercedes waited—sleek, silent, and somehow more intimidating than flashy—and Sam tried not to gape like a tourist who’d accidentally stepped into a postcard.
“She wants to see what kind of a woman snared my interest,” he said, opening the passenger door for her.
Sam inched closer, then stilled. “Why?”
“Because she hasn’t seen me with any woman, in any capacity, in a long time.” His eyes held hers. This close, the warm bergamot scent of him filled her nostrils. “Apparently, you’re going to cause me a lot of trouble, Ms. Fischer.”
Sam poked his chest and instantly regretted the action. “You’re the one who declared to all and sundry that I was your…girlfriend—mistress, whatever your generation calls it.”
Mr. Ricci grabbed her hand, his own abrasive against her smooth flesh. A jolt went through her, pooling low in her belly. His brows twitched, as if irritated by her reaction. “I offered to put you on a first-class flight back home.”
“And I have already told you that this holiday is important to me.” And because the man got her back up so easily, she added, “If you’re worried that you’ll find me moping around the dark corners of your illustrious villa, don’t be. I’ll find alternate accommodation soon. And I intend to have fun this holiday, with or without Matteo by my side.”
He inched closer, and it was like being pulled into his gravity. “Right, I forgot how interchangeablyyourgeneration uses partners.”
Alessandro did not have experience with being proved wrong, especially when it came to his assessment of people.
His assumption that spending three days with Ms. Fischer would rid him of his juvenile fascination with her had been rendered fully and utterly false.
In three days he’d brought Ms. Fischer to three different museums. On all three occasions, they had run into acquaintances—Angelina’s cousins and even Vittorio one afternoon—and he had to play the part of a doting lover to avoid suspicion.
One morning, his aunt and father had waited on them in the courtyard, just to meet hismysterious captive girlfriend, as his aunt put it. It should have bothered him no end to play into the fake relationship he had created.
It didn’t. If anything, he had liked touching Ms. Fischer under the pretense of an attentive lover, seeing the flush rise in her cheeks, desire dance in her eyes. Her gaze holding his in challenge even as her body quivered at their fake intimacy.
