The Real Rio D'aquila

Was this her again?

No. His stalker had been fiftyish, short and rotund. This woman was young. Mid-twenties. Tall and slender, and dressed as if she were on her way to a board meeting: the stilettos, a white blouse showing under the suit jacket, dark hair pulled severely back from her face. She didn’t look like a crazy stalker or like a nosy reporter, though in Rio’s book, the two could easily be one and the same, but who gave a damn?

She had no business here and that was all that mattered.

“Hold it right there,” Rio barked, but his command didn’t stop her and he trotted down the steps, eyes narrowed. “I said—”

“Mr. D’Aquila expects me.”

Not a reporter or a crazy, at least not one looking for him if she didn’t recognize him, even shirtless, in jeans and work boots, but clearly a liar with an agenda all her own.

Rio gave a thin smile.

“I assure you, madam, that would be news to him.”

There were only a couple of feet between them now. Close up, he could see that there was a rip in her skirt, dirt on those stiletto heels and a smudge on her blouse. Her hair wasn’t quite as neatly drawn back as he’d at first thought; tendrils of it, dark and curling, were coming loose around her face.

It was an interesting face. Triangular. High cheekbones. Big green eyes. Feline, he thought.

Not that it mattered, but if she’d been in some kind of accident he supposed he could, at least, offer to—

“It is your attitude that would be news to him,” Isabella Orsini said, hoping her voice would not tremble because everything inside her was bouncing around like an unset bowl of gelatin and after all she’d gone through today, there wasn’t a way in hell she was going to permit this half-naked, good-looking-if-you-were-foolish-enough-to-like-the-type flunky of a too rich, too powerful, too full-of-himself ape to stop her now.

There was a moment’s silence. Then Mr. Half-Naked raised one dark eyebrow.

“Really.”

His tone was soft but it made Izzy’s heart thump. To hell with thumping hearts, she thought, and lifted her chin.

“Really,” she said, with all the hauteur she could muster.

Mr. Half-Naked gave another of those thin smiles and motioned toward the door.

“In that case,” he said, in a voice that was almost a purr, “you had better come in.”

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