Bought With The Italian's Ring

And yet, as he questioned one of the staff members about Pia, Raphael was suddenly aware that this was unlike any other responsibility he shouldered.

For no bickering ex-wife of Gio’s or grasping cousin of his mother had ever caused his blood to pound like this.

No woman had ever called to his baser instincts like this supposedly innocent granddaughter of his godfather.

CHAPTER TWO

COOL WATER SLUICED off her back and limbs as Pia swam lap after lap in the indoor pool on Gio’s estate as if the very devil were after her.

Raphael Mastrantino was very much the devil.

The man’s arrogance!

She worked off her fury in the water.

Of all the men to be attracted to.

She groaned and dunked her head in the water. He’d been so warm and solid around her. She could still feel the languorous weight of his hands on her waist. The length of his hard thigh rubbing against hers...

The only satisfaction left to her was that she’d surprised him even as he had mocked and taunted her.

She and Raphael Mastrantino lived in different orbits of life. He wouldn’t have even looked at her, much less danced with her, if she hadn’t been dressed up to the nines and if she wasn’t Gio’s granddaughter. What she didn’t understand though was why. Why had he pounced on her like that?

Her arms lagged on her strokes as her thoughts whirled. Just as she decided to get out of the pool, she saw Raphael standing at the edge.

The floodlights cast an outline along his broad frame.

His white shirt was unbuttoned to the middle of his chest giving a glimpse of ridges of tight muscle with sparse black hair. Her belly swooped. The raven’s wing of his hair had a distinctly rumpled look.

What would it take to shatter that arrogant cynicism, to bring a man like Raphael to his knees?

She shivered at the direction of her thoughts.

A bottle of Pinot Grigio and two wine flutes hung from his fingers. “I had to bribe one of the staff members for your location.”

“I don’t like you, Mr. Mastrantino.”

“I think you like me a little too much. Which is why you’re hiding.”

The gall of the man! Pia had never met a more annoying man in her life. “Just because my body thinks you’re a prime male specimen and is attracted to you—which, by the way, is based on millions of years of evolution and a chemical reaction that drives a woman to choose the strongest man as her mate—it doesn’t mean my mind agrees.”

His black eyes gleamed. The thin line of his lower lip curved with mocking amusement. “So you’ve dropped the act of trembling mouth and soft gasps then?”

He almost sounded disappointed. Pia sighed. “Distance helped me remember the hormones part of it. It’s when you’re close that I...” She shrugged, trying to go for casual, which her stutter totally ruined. “That I’m unable to handle my reaction.”

Just looking at the darkly sensual face stretched her skin tight over her body. And other parts. Parts that had never clenched and tightened with such wanton awareness.

“You should call me Raphael.”

“Not necessary.”

He placed the bottle and glasses on a table then settled on a lounger, propped his elbows on his knees and returned to his intense scrutiny of her. “Because you’ll run away every time I’m around?”

“I’ve been suitably and repeatedly impressed with what an important, powerful and wealthy man you are. You run a multinational automobile company in the city, apparently control and manage not only Gio’s finances but your mother’s family’ finances and your father’s and all the numerous cousins thereof.

I, on the other hand, mean to spend the summer getting to know Gio. I let him railroad me into this ball because it meant a lot to him. So the chance of you and me spending time in each other’s company is pretty low.”

“When the summer is over?” he shot back instantly, picking the one thing Pia didn’t want to discuss.

“This summer is just holiday. I wasn’t even sure if Gio would believe me. But I do have a life elsewhere.” A life without her grandmother, a life without any close friends. A life where no one really cared about her.

Which was why she’d been such an easy mark for Frank.

“Is Gio aware of your supposed intentions?”

“No, and they’re not supposed,” she said, losing her temper. Would nothing please the man?

The water lapped around her silently. “You’re staring,” she said softly.

“You look like a different woman.”

“I was terrified all evening that I’d spill something on that gorgeous, expensive gown. I have a habit of getting into worse messes than my students. I’m not used to wearing contacts. Now there is no war paint on my face. And my hair is back in its natural, uncontrollable state.” She pulled a coiled curl that was already dry.

He followed the action as if he was transfixed. “Your students?”

“I teach Science to fifth graders.”

Surprise dawned in his gaze. It tracked her wet face, lingering far too long than was proper over her mouth, and then the slope of her shoulders, visible over the water’s surface. A shiver snaked down her spine.

“An elementary teacher? I find I’m overwhelmed by curiosity about you. A rare occurrence.”

Pia stared, wishing she’d misheard him. But the world was quiet around them. Only a slight breeze and the whispers of the trees all around the pool. It wasn’t just curiosity that made his voice deepen, that made his mouth tighten.

“What do you have against me?”

Moonlight caressed the dark column of his throat, the smooth velvety skin pulled taut over a lean chest. He tilted his head down, a devilish twist to his mouth. “Other than the fact that you’re manipulating an old man’s misguided affection for you?”

His words shocked Pia so much that she dropped her hold on the tiles, sank in, and then came up sputtering water out of her nose and mouth.

He thought she was after Gio’s fortune?

He frowned at her chattering teeth. “Get out of there before you freeze.”

“No,” Pia said stubbornly, a rush of anger heating up her still muscles. “You leave.”

His hands went to the buttons on his shirt. Taut skin stretched over lean muscles appeared as he unbuttoned. “Either you come out or...”

Glaring at him, Pia walked up the steps.

The moment she was out, he wrapped the huge towel around her. Heart thundering in her chest, Pia pushed her wet hair off her face with trembling hands.

As if she were a child, he gave her a brisk rubdown, up and down her arms. Throat dry, Pia stared at his chest. Her cheeks burned when he repeated the movements over her chest, hips and back. Those large hands didn’t linger anywhere and yet warmth began to pool in her belly.

“You stayed too long in there.” His voice had gone husky, deep.

She shivered again.

“Sit,” he commanded, and Pia obediently sat on the lounger. He handed her a glass of wine and it was exactly what she wanted.

Silently, she took a sip.

For a few minutes, they sat like that, side by side on loungers, not talking. Not even looking at each other. But that awareness that had consumed her in the ballroom thickened the air around them. His touch, impersonal, still lingered.

Her attraction to him was natural.

He was the most strikingly handsome man she’d ever met.

She refused to be ashamed by it. But neither did she want to keep confronting it, to keep thinking that she was somehow less than him because she wasn’t sophisticated or beautiful or polished enough. She’d had enough of Frank manipulating her insecurities. “All I want is to spend the summer with my grandfather. I really don’t see why that should be any of your business,” she said softly.

“I am Giovanni’s friend. I am more friend than all of his useless, bickering, social climbing family put together. I would do anything to protect Giovanni and his interests. It is my business if you put one step wrong with him.”

“What have I done that offends you so much?”

“You seem to have no scruples about cheating an old man who has done nothing but welcome you into his life with open arms without even checking if you truly are who you claim to be.”

“So now I’m not only a gold digger of the worst kind but also an impostor?”

“All evidence points to it, si.”

Pia fisted her hands, the urge to strike that smug condescension from his face burning through her. “Gio’s lover, Lucia, was my nonna. She left him after they had a huge row and settled in the States. My parents died when I was three and she raised me.” She stood up, her pulse skittering all over. “I found Lucia’s letters to him after she died and called him. That’s the truth.”

“It’s also true that he’s given you thousands of dollars in the one month you’ve been here.”

If only the ground could open up and swallow her whole! Mortification filled her cheeks.

She couldn’t even be mad at Raphael, because from his point of view it looked like she was a grasping, greedy woman. But to be so cynical as to question her whole motive for visiting Italy...? “Gio wouldn’t have told you,” she mumbled half to herself.

“I keep an eye over Gio’s finances. His three ex-wives learned it was better to live with what he provides them than to take me on.”

She forced herself to meet his eyes. “You’re making assumptions based on one transaction and out of context.”

“I assume based on facts and not feelings. I learned to do so a long time ago.”

The towel slipped from her shoulders so her hair was dripping onto her back. And the one-piece she wore was not the most convenient costume when wet. But Pia was determined to make him see. Even if it meant admitting the most humiliatingly painful episode of her life. Even if it meant giving voice to her foolishness. “Giovanni gave me that money to pay off...credit card debt.”

“So you did your research before you contacted him,” he said in a silky, almost bored voice.

Her grip far too tight on the stem of the wineglass Pia stared at him. “This is pointless if you won’t even give me a chance.

“You have to protect Giovanni, true, but one would think you’d at least give me a chance when his happiness is involved.” She wouldn’t beg him to believe her. Shaking with hurt and humiliation, she stood up.

He reached out and caught her wrist. A jolt of fiery sensation raced from her wrist to her breasts, to the spot between her thighs. Pia jerked her hand away, breath coming in hard and fast.

“Stay.” Tension radiated from him, confusing her. “I will listen, si? Whether I will believe...”

She sat down and looked at her hands. Words came and fell away again. Taking a deep breath, she blurted it out. “I racked up that debt because I was foolish enough to fall for a con man.”

His expression instantly turned thunderous. “Fall for a con man? What do you mean?”

“I believed a colleague when he said he loved me. I went back to work after nursing Nonni for two years and he was the new gym teacher at the school where I worked. He...cultivated a friendship with me for weeks, then asked me out. After a few months, he...told me he’d fallen in love with me.

“I trusted him and loaned him money when he said he was in trouble. Again and again. I gave him the little Nonni had left me, and then when that was done, I...” The words stuck like glass in her throat. “I emptied my savings, and took a loan on my card when he said he desperately needed money to avoid a loan shark.”

His expletive punctured the silence around them. Did that mean he believed her? Pia found she didn’t give a damn. Frank had deceived her in the worst possible way. Nothing Raphael said or believed could be any worse.

There was a strange strength in the fact that she’d already been through the worst.

“So you’re as naive and meek as you look? How could you trust any man so much that you risk everything you have?”

She flinched as if he’d slapped her. Tight lines emerged around her mouth and she blinked rapidly. Moonlight flickered on her delicate jawline that was clenched taut.

Raphael killed the thread of regret that hit him. He wasn’t going to coddle her.

She looked down at her hands and then around her. When she spoke, her voice had lost that husky timbre. It was as if she was forcing herself to say the words. Just for his benefit.

“I was lost, lonely after Nonni passed away. I hardly had any friends after being her full-time caregiver for two years. He was charming, attractive. He singled me out almost immediately after I went back to work. He even did me the favor of explaining to me that he had done his research and picked me as the prime target. The other teachers had unwittingly given him enough ammunition.”

Even as he’d cruelly called her weak, she was anything but in that moment. He knew that it took guts to pull yourself up when everything was lost. And yet, she’d not only done it, but she was facing him down too. “How?”

“They told him that I was...shy, and inexperienced. That they thought I needed to start living now that Nonni had passed away. They told him I’d never had a boyfriend and would probably be grateful for his attention.” When he growled, she hurried on. “I think they meant well. They couldn’t have known he would prey on all my insecurities.”

“This man? Is he following you here?”

“No.” Conviction resonated in her tone. “When he realized I didn’t have any more money, he couldn’t dump me fast enough. Making it very clear that the only reason he’d been with me was because I was such a pushover.”

“So you didn’t tell him about how your new grandfather was wealthy beyond imagination? No surprise visit from this lover of yours to play upon Gio’s heartstrings a little more? Have you already figured out that Gio’s an old fool who would love to see a little romance?”

“Stop, please. He’s not coming here. Frank’s out of my life,” Pia replied, a sick feeling in her stomach. She could see what Raphael was getting at. And that his suspicions had basis only increased her shame. “For one thing, I didn’t know until I got here that Gio was wealthy. I don’t care whether you believe that or not,” she pushed on, when she sensed he would interrupt again. Blasted man! “I was just happy to know that I had family. That I wasn’t alone...”

How could she make him understand how lonely she had been after Nonni’s death? How much Frank had played on that loneliness?

Or what Gio’s affection, his kindness meant to her. “And, yes, I’ll even admit that if Frank had learned that Giovanni Vito is Vito Automobiles, he probably would’ve—” she forced herself to say the horrible words “—married me and sealed off the deal so that he could suck the blood and marrow out of Gio.”

She shivered violently. Raphael silently draped another plush towel around her shoulders.

Pia thanked him, the words tasting like ash in her mouth. She didn’t want his kindness. She didn’t want anything from this man.

“I need details about this Frank person.”

She nodded. “Will you leave me alone then?”

“What Giovanni did—”

“The money he gave me, it’s a loan. I didn’t take a dollar more than the debt. And I intend to pay off every single cent.” She pulled her towel snug around her chest. “Your relationship with Gio, his affection for you, that’s the only reason I told you. You and I have nothing to do with each other, Mr. Mastrantino.”

* * *

She was wrong.

Whether she was Gio’s granddaughter or not, whether she was disconcertingly naive or a cunning con woman, Pia was going to be his problem.

Lashes spiked with small water drops, her damp hair curling wispily against her face, she looked incredibly young. And even with her declaration that she’d learned her lesson, there was still something very naive about her.

It was disconcerting how much he wanted to believe her.

There was grief in those big luminous eyes of hers, an earnestness that beguiled him.

But more than that, he wanted to taste that trembling mouth. He wanted to wrap her tiny waist with his hands and bring her closer until he was wet along with her; until her soft curves brushed up against him.

Until he could kiss away the trouble caused by another man.

He wanted to wrap her in some sort of protective cocoon so that nothing deceitful could touch her.

Dio mio, he had met her five hours ago and even he was already lured in by that innocence. Giovanni would do anything for this creature.

But the fact that she could be telling the truth only made the problem worse.

Not only had Gio had her decked up in diamonds and couture, he had released her into a hungry horde of Milanese social climbers.

At least if she’d been a con woman, she would have been able to handle herself.

He reached for her when she walked by him to leave. Feeling the calluses in her palm, he pulled up her hand.

Her fingers were long and bare, with calluses at the tips of most. He had a sudden flash of Allegra’s perfectly manicured nails with baby-soft skin.

“Why do you have calluses?” All this was just to know her, he reminded himself. To create a picture of her life for himself. To see if there were any holes in it. To see if a lie would crack through her elaborate pretense.

Or it’s because, for the first time in years, you can’t stop yourself from touching a woman. Because the need to touch her, to taste her, is pounding in your blood.

Fingers tracing his palm, sending pulses of heat through him, she frowned. He felt as if he had been earthed. “I could ask you the same. I thought CEOs had pampered, manicured hands and wore tacky, gold bracelets.”

A strange, masculine satisfaction whirled through him.

“I’m an automobile engineer first, a CEO second. I restore vintage cars when I find time.” He was already stretched superthin as it is and now this—her. “Which is very little. Now tell me, why do you have calluses?”

“I carve wooden toys in my free time. A hobby really. Frank—” a stiffness thinned her mouth “—set up an online shop for me. The cash always came in handy and my students’ parents provided good word of mouth.”

The man’s name on her lips pulled Raphael back to the matter.

She blinked owlishly, as if trying to keep him in focus. He clenched his jaw tight. More pieces were falling into place.

If she was conning all of them, he would see her in jail. But Raphael was forced to rethink his misgivings, to consider Gio’s trust might not be misplaced. She knew things about Lucia and Gio that no one did, at least, that was what Gio had told him.

Also, he was a good judge of character.

He’d been forced to be after his father’s suicide. He’d had to learn on his feet which creditor could be counted on to wait, which creditor was loyal to his father’s tarnished memory and which one would revel in humiliating his mother and sisters if Raphael came up short.

If she was innocent... He could hardly bear thinking about the hordes of hungry, young, single Milanese men that would descend on her... Just tonight, it had taken every ounce of the force of his ruthless reputation to beat off the men who had wanted to follow her.

Men who’d have stood in his place right now and watched moonlight sparkle in her eyes, seen the wet swimsuit cling to her toned, lithe body, seen the artless display of grief and joy that came into her eyes when she spoke of Lucia and Giovanni.

“If I have to carve a million toys to pay Giovanni back, I will,” she said with a fierce pride shining in her eyes.

He hardened his tone. “Even if you’re telling the truth, I can’t just let you walk away without making sure that you’ve not crushed his heart,” he added for good measure.

Her soft sigh pinged over his nerves. Did she know how arousing that was? Did she even realize that the sight of her big, searching gaze, the way she stared at a man as if she meant to see through to his soul, could do things to a man she might not want?

“Why do you think I agreed to that—” she pointed to the house now cloaked in dark shadows “—ridiculous show? Telling Gio about Frank probably wasn’t a good idea. All those men he invited, the way they were crowding around me... I didn’t realize his intentions until you pointed out how much attention I was getting. Clearly, he thinks I can’t take care of myself.”

He’d been cruel to taunt her like that. Not that he was off the mark. But there was also an attraction to her that was rare. It was disturbing to think of her coming up against the men who only saw her as a ticket to their life’s fortune. “Can you?”

“Even if I can’t, the last thing I want is help from a man like you,” she bit out, stepping back from him.

He raised a brow. “A man like me?”

“My experience with Frank taught me a valuable lesson. My so-called boyfriend that couldn’t dump me fast enough when the money dried up. You’re just like him—gorgeous, confident, arrogant—except a million times more. The women—they couldn’t get enough of you even when you barely glanced in their direction. And the men were so eager to please you, wanting to be like you.

“You...exert your power or charm, or whatever the hell it is, over everyone you meet. You wield it to bend people to your will. Someone like me, you’ll use my attraction to you to put me in my place, to prove that you’re right no matter what the truth is. To prove that I’m somehow less because I’m not everything you are. Accusations that have no basis in truth, I can handle. But you mock who I am and that I won’t forgive.”

He felt as if she’d punched him, because it was exactly what he had thought of her. “Someone like you?” He repeated her words to hide his reaction.

Pain streaked through her eyes. The depth of her emotions, the sheer transparency of them was like nothing he’d ever seen before.

“A shy, plain, boring elementary teacher who knows nothing about men.” She repeated the words as if by rote, and suddenly he knew in his bones who had said them to her. “First you’ll use it to dig into me to figure out if I’m telling the truth.

“Then you’ll use my lack of sophistication to persuade Gio that he’s right and that I need to be wrapped up in bubble wrap because I’m too naive, too foolish. That I’ll somehow bring someone like Frank into this...kingdom of yours.

“I don’t care whether you believe me or not. Just stay away from me. We don’t have to see each other for you to make sure that I’m not fleecing Gio, do we?”

Her slender shoulders straight, the line of her spine a graceful curve, she looked like a water nymph. Leaving Raphael spellbound in more than one way.

If she was a con woman, he’d see her in jail. But if she was indeed Gio’s granddaughter, she was absolutely forbidden to him.

Even if it was the most real conversation he’d had with a woman. Ever.

CHAPTER THREE

STAY AWAY FROM ME.

Pia’s words followed him as Raphael walked around the estate and made sure the staff put every last inebriated or otherwise high-flying guest into their vehicles. He bid the tired staff to their beds after they put the ballroom to rights.

He didn’t know if Gio thought the ball successful but Raphael thought it had been sensational.

Whoever Pia was, she’d meant those words. His accusations had hurt her, but it was the other thing she’d said that pricked him even now.

You mock who I am.

Had he mocked her because with her naive views and long sighs she’d seemed like an impossibility? Or had he mocked her because he resented that innocence, those stars in her eyes?

Because he’d never had a chance to be like that.

He was about to call it a night and settle into one of the spare bedrooms, as he sometimes did, when he spied the master of puppets.

Scowling, he followed Giovanni into his study and closed the door behind him with a loud thud.

Giovanni handed Raphael a glass of red. As if he’d known that his godson wouldn’t leave without this talk.