‘And yet, it is said he refused to allow you to speak Italian as a boy, after your mother died. That must have been extremely hard, as according to my sources you spoke very little English. But now you will have to speak English again when you wish to converse with your wife?’
Dario sat upright, the relaxed demeanour history, and said something to the woman in rapid Italian. Tali only caught a few words, one of which was the Italian for ‘stop’—fermare. But she didn’t need to fully understand what he was saying to know he was no longer disguising his anger at the line of questioning, especially when the woman’s face went red. And she looked visibly shaken.
‘Mi scuso, Signor Lorenti,’ she said, the obsequious tone not doing much to reduce the tension snapping in the air. ‘I am sorry, Signora Whittaker,’ she added, sending Tali a strained smile, the smug look gone. ‘Please accept my apologies.’
‘Of course,’ Tali replied, trying to smooth over the incident, and figure out what exactly the journalist was apologising for.
‘We can continue,’ Dario said, but the steel in his voice sounded anything but accommodating when he added, ‘But questions about my father are not permitted.’
The rest of the interview was conducted in both Italian and English, the woman’s fawning questions making it easy for Tali to stick to the story of their whirlwind romance without having to give the details she didn’t have. But Dario’s answers remained short, his tone curt, until Gianna mentioned Dario’s sister, Mia, and the man she was due to marry—Sante Trovato—during a question in Italian. Tali thought it was an innocuous enquiry about Dario’s intention to attend the wedding. At that point, though, his patience evaporated, and he cut the interview short.
The name Trovato sounded vaguely familiar to Tali. Was he one of Lorenti Corp’s business rivals? Because Dario seemed almost as unhappy talking about his sister’s groom as he had been discussing Lord Westwick.
As the journalist was shown out by Aldo, the woman looked a lot less confident than she had when Tali had first arrived. But as soon as the door to the salon closed behind her, Tali’s shoulders sagged with relief. At least showtime was over.
Not that it had been a particularly successful showtime.
Dario strode to the apartment’s elaborate terrazzo, his limp more pronounced than usual. Tali stood alone in the salon and watched him. Tension still bristled in the air. She could sense his displeasure in the stiff, unyielding stance, the silence which seemed to throb with anger. Whatever the interview was supposed to have achieved, it hadn’t. She hoped she wasn’t responsible for that…
She forced herself to swallow the questions she wanted to ask about Dario’s impatient replies to the journalist’s questions. His difficult relationship with Lord Westwick was none of her business, and neither was his apparent displeasure about the man his sister had chosen to marry. Although perhaps she’d misunderstood that. Because they were going to be attending the wedding. Surely, he would not have agreed to go to Sicily if he had some beef with Trovato?
‘Well, that went well,’ she murmured.
She turned to leave, feeling like an interloper, but as her heels clicked on the salon’s polished wood flooring, a harsh demand echoed across the cavernous space.
‘Aspetta, wait,’ he said, his tone tight with frustration.
He walked towards her, his uneven gait doing nothing to slow his stride. But as his gaze locked on her face, her heartbeat throbbed into her throat.
Had she screwed up again? Because he did not look pleased. When he spoke, though, he said the last thing she had expected. ‘There is no need for you to learn Italian, it is not part of our agreement.’
‘I—I know,’ she said. Why was he looking at her like that, as if she was a puzzle he could not solve?
His brows furrowed. ‘Nor will ingratiating yourself with me increase my desire to invest in Westwick Hall.’
She flinched, the cutting remark like a physical blow.
While they had hardly become friends in the past week and a half—because he was even more unknowable now than he had been in Wiltshire—and the tormenting chemistry only added another layer of tension when they were together, which made it even harder to break down the barriers between them, she had believed he at least respected her.
Apparently, she’d been wrong.
The temper she’d been holding on to—during the hours she spent being dressed up like a mannequin, or whenever Aldo delivered another of Dario’s demands without an explanation, or every time the hot pulse of awareness became unbearable while he toyed with her in public—exploded in her chest.
‘Well, thanks, that’s good to know!’ she replied, each word dripping with sarcasm. ‘You know, this gig would be a whole lot easier if you deigned to tell me what the hell youactuallywant, instead of treating me like an inconvenient accessory you have to pet in public but who you can’t stand to even look at in private.’
That damned eyebrow rose, his expression still cynical, still unmoved.
‘You know perfectly well why I will not touch you again in private,’ he growled. ‘Because it is torturous enough having to touch you in public. I have not had a good night’s sleep for over a week.’
The edge in his voice, and the suggestion this was all her fault—again—had the last thin thread she had on her temper snapping in two.
‘Oh, just shut up.’ She took a breath, more than ready to let him have it with both barrels. ‘You think you’re the only one who can’t sleep without imagining us together naked? News flash, you’re not. Andyouwere the one who started it,’ she all but howled—not caring anymore if she sounded like a five-year-old having a temper tantrum. ‘And FYI, it’s not my fault that interview was a disaster, when you wouldn’t even tell me what you wanted me to say to that woman. Or why you agreed to an interview in the first place when it’s clearly not your happy place to be quizzed about your private life.’
‘This marriage must appear real—so speaking to the press was necessary…’ he replied, his jaw so tight now she was surprised he didn’t crack a tooth. ‘And FYI,youagreed to do this job. If you no longer want it, perhaps you should say so.’
‘Uh-huh.’ So, they were back to one of his bloody ultimatums, were they? She threw up her hands, having had enough of those, too. ‘Well, FYanotherI, perhaps if you stopped behaving like an entitled arse and told me why youneedthis marriage, I wouldn’t feel so out of my depth.’
She swung round, intending to storm out of the apartment, not caring anymore if he called a halt to the whole arrangement. She couldn’t live under his constant disapproval any longer. Because it was not only driving her insane—it reminded her of that time in her life when she had felt rudderless and confused, desperate to understand why her father didn’t love her the way he loved his other children, while being terrified of the possible answer to that question… That there was something intrinsically wrong with her, which made her less loveable, less worthy than them.
