The Italian's Suitable Wife

“I don’t know what you’re so worried about, Rico. My name doesn’t make it into the social columns on a regular basis. No one cares where I sleep or who I do it with for that matter.”

His expression turned feral and she found herself scooting to the back of her chair, her body posed stiffly away from him.

“You have shared your bed with a man?”

Heat scorched up her cheeks until they burned like the Chicago fire of 1908. “That’s none of your business.”

“I do not agree.” He looked ready to get up out of the bed and shake an answer out of her.

Even knowing that was not possible did not suppress the shiver of apprehension that skittered down her spine. She swung her gaze to Andre, appealing to him for help with her eyes, but he was obviously enjoying the conversation too much to step in on her behalf. She looked back at Rico.

His expression had not softened at all.

“I really don’t want to talk about this with you.”

“You will tell me the name of the man.”

Heavens. When had her silence become an affirmative answer? And what right did he have to grill her like this? If Chiara were still a virgin, Gianna would dance naked on the top floor of the Empire State Building. “Are you saying you and Chiara don’t sleep together?”

“This is not under discussion.”

“Nothing is under discussion,” she came close to shrieking.

“You are very red. You are embarrassed, no?”

Why bother denying it? He’d know she was lying. Her blush had already given her away. “Yes.”

“A woman of experience would not be so discomfited,” he said with smug assurance.

That set her over the edge. “Are you sure about that? Maybe I’ve slept with tons of men. Maybe I’m even sharing Andre’s bed now and the two room suite is only a ruse.”

She realized she’d let her temper lead her into deep, dark waters a second before he exploded. Mr. Cool Italian business magnate sent the portable table with his dinner on it careening across the room and started shouting at Andre.

Gianna spoke fluent Italian, but she didn’t recognize some of the words. From the ones she did, she guessed they were curses. Andre’s usually smiling face was stiff with shock. He tried to tell Rico it was a joke, but Rico’s fury did not abate. His hands pounded the air, punctuating his angry speech and if he had been mobile, his brother would have been flat on his back. She was sure of it.

“For Heaven’s sake.” She jumped out of her chair and crossed to the bed, standing between Rico and Andre. “Calm down. I said what if, not that I had. Rico—”

His arms snapped around her waist and she found herself sitting next to him on the bed, her chin cradled in a surprisingly gentle but firm hold. “Do you sleep with my brother?”

“No. I’ve never been with any man,” she admitted, thinking nothing but the truth could completely diffuse the situation.

Rico’s glare was sulfuric. “Yet you taunted me with the idea you had.”

She couldn’t begin to understand why it mattered so much to him. Perhaps he felt responsible for her in some way since her father had died. She wouldn’t have known it by the way he’d ignored her for the past year, but maybe the feeling was there all the same.

“I wasn’t taunting you. You embarrassed me and made me angry. Most women are not…not…” She couldn’t make herself say the word. “Well, by my age, most women have some experience.”

“But you do not.”

“I do not.” She agreed and stifled a depressed sigh. With him marrying Chiara, that wasn’t likely to change, either.

He brushed her cheek with his fingers before dropping his hand from her face. “You should not be embarrassed to speak of these things to me.”

She didn’t know where he’d got that from. How could she help but be embarrassed to talk about it? She’d never even admitted her lack of practical application when discussing the subject with her girlfriends in college. But she didn’t want to spark another outburst so she remained silent.

She went to get up, but his arm around her waist prevented her. “Rico?”

“You are very innocent.”

She grimaced. That had been well and truly established. “If you’re finished dissecting my lack of a love life, could I get up please? I want to go back to the hotel.”

His hand was warm against her waist and he was idly brushing his thumb back and forth in a manner guaranteed to drive her mad or into a lustful frenzy. She wasn’t sure there was much difference between the two.

“You will move to another room.”

“No.” Andre’s firm denial surprised her into looking at him, regardless of the fascination Rico’s small caresses held for her.

Andre’s face was set in hard lines. “This is New York, Enrico. It would be inadvisable to allow Gianna to stay in a room by herself, even in a hotel with security.”

“Then I will assign one of my security people to watch her room.”

This conversation was growing more bizarre by the minute.

Andre shook his head in a short, decisive negative. “How can it be better for her to stay in a hotel room with a stranger than with me?”

Her attention swiveled back to Rico. He was scowling thoughtfully. “Perhaps we should get Chiara to stay in the suite as well.”

“No!” Andre and Gianna chorused at once.

Rico’s brows rose. “What bothers you about this?”

How did you tell a man you could not stand his fiancée for dirt? Gianna cleared her throat, trying to think of a tactful way of putting her absolute refusal to share living space with the selfish witch.

“Gianna told me what Chiara said about her,” Andre said, disapproval clear in his voice. “Your fiancée’s unfounded jealousy was the reason Gianna considered going back to Massachusetts in the first place.”

“Now you seek to protect her from my fiancée?” Rico asked with silky vitriol. “Are you sure there is nothing you two wish to share with me?”

She’d had about enough of Rico’s overdeveloped sense of responsibility toward her. She was not some helpless female in need of his protection. She’d been on her own, if not physically then emotionally since long before her father had died. Or maybe Rico really thought she’d set her sights on marriage to the younger DiRinaldo brother.

“This is ridiculous. I’m not about to trip Andre and try to beat him to the floor.”

Andre smiled, all Italian male. “Which is not to say, cara, that I will not be so inclined.”

The hand on her waist tightened and Rico glared retribution at his brother. “Your humor is misplaced.”

“So is your hand, considering you are engaged to marry someone else,” Andre taunted.

Rico’s hold did not loosen one bit. “She is practically family.”

“Is she?” Andre asked. “I wonder.”

“What I am is tired of this conversation.” She yanked on Rico’s hand at her waist. He let go and she stood up.

Setting both fists on her hips, she directed her next words to Rico. “If you want me to stay in New York, it will be in Andre’s suite and Chiara’s services as chaperone will not be required. Even virginal spinsters have their standards and mine don’t run to primitive, arrogant males who talk about me as if I’m not even in the room.”

Rico winced at the word spinster and Andre’s expression turned calculating. “It is true, Enrico is almost medieval in his outlook, but I am a modern man. I do not see anything wrong with a twenty-three-year-old woman remaining unmarried.”

“Fine, modern man, take me back to the hotel. I’m ready for some of my own company.”

Rico grumbled some more about her staying in Andre’s suite, but in the end he acquiesced. He didn’t have any choice. Gianna loved him enough to risk her job, but that didn’t make her a doormat.

Doormat was the last thing Rico would have called Gianna over the next two weeks. She harangued him about working too much and not participating in his physical therapy sessions enough. She argued when he had the fast modem line installed in his room at the private hospital he’d moved to. That same day he had caught her unplugging the phone beside his bed and giving it to an orderly to take away. She’d been unrepentant.

Whereas Chiara spent very little time at the hospital and refused to attend his sessions at all. She’d left for Paris two days before to model in a Fall fashion show. Which was fine by him. No man wanted his woman around to see him helpless and that’s how he felt with his damned useless legs refusing to do what he wanted them to.

If a part of him was relieved to see the back of his fiancée and her nagging comments about Gianna, who could blame him. He’d made her angry more than once defending the younger woman and was sure to do so again. He would not allow anyone to denigrate the girl he’d spent a good portion of his life protecting…even from himself. Chiara’s attitude regarding his health had also worn thin. She said she believed he would walk again, but her eyes said not.

Gianna was not so reticent. She continued in her unwavering belief that feeling would return to his lower body in due course. She reminded him repeatedly that spinal shock injuries often resulted in complete recovery given enough time, something one of the doctors had asserted the first week. She also not only attended the physical therapy sessions, she participated in them. Which he did not thank her for. He needed her belief in him, not her interference.

“Get me back my phone,” he gritted at her.

She shook her head, her long chestnut braid swinging gently from side to side catching the light and his attention. What would the richly colored hair look like unbraided? It was easily long enough to fall past her waist. Did she ever let it down? It would be beautiful.

“That was the third call in fifteen minutes.” Gianna frowned at him like a diminutive school-teacher lecturing a student caught passing notes in class. “You aren’t going to walk again talking on the phone.”

The physical therapist had the gall to nod his agreement. “Gianna is right, Mr. DiRinaldo. You need to concentrate on your therapy.”

The therapist smiled conspiratorially with Gianna and Rico’s blood pressure climbed several notches. The overmuscled, blond Adonis was supposed to be the best physical therapist in New York, but Rico would gladly have flattened him.

“You wouldn’t take a phone call in the middle of negotiating an important deal, would you?” Gianna asked.

“I am not negotiating. I am sitting here bored out of my skull while he,” Rico pointed to the therapist with one hand, “moves my legs as if that will magically make them start working on their own.”

“It’s not magic. It’s work and I wouldn’t have thought you were afraid of hard work,” she jeered.

“Porco miseria! I, Rico DiRinaldo, afraid to work? You are out of your mind.”

“Good. I’m glad you said so.” Her pixie chin set at a stubborn angle. “Then you understand why the phone is not allowed for the rest of the session.”

“At least let me forward it to my answering service.” Once she got back the phone, he could finish his call and then he would unplug it if she was so insistent.

She crossed her arms, pressing surprisingly feminine curves for such a small woman into prominence. “I already did it. You’re not getting the phone back, you might as well accept it.”

He gave her the look that sent bank presidents running for cover, but she just stood there, arms crossed and did not budge.

He turned to the therapist. “Give me something to do.”

The other man jumped at the tone of his voice and Rico felt a small measure of satisfaction that unlike Gianna, the therapist found him intimidating.

Gianna knocked lightly on Rico’s door, but heard no answering voice within.

She’d made it her habit to arrive after breakfast and stay through the morning’s physical therapy. Perhaps Rico had already been taken down to the treatment room. She was running a bit late. She had overslept. The day before had been exhausting and ended in a late night.

She’d driven to Massachusetts and back all in one day so she could retrieve her belongings from the furnished university apartment that was no longer hers. Her prediction the department head would not see her staying in New York in an understanding light had been right on. But she’d finally found something to be grateful for in the debacle following her father’s death.

When her stepmother had sold the house, Pamela had tossed everything she did not want to keep personally. Which meant that Gianna’s belongings fit in her car and she would not have to go to the expense of renting a storage facility.

When there was no answer to Gianna’s second knock, she pushed the door open. She wouldn’t mind missing his session. They were getting more and more difficult for her to handle. The therapist insisted on Rico dressing in sports shorts and a body hugging T-shirt for his physical therapy. Every ripple of Rico’s muscles was visible to her obsessive scrutiny.

She felt like a voyeur watching him exercise his incredibly gorgeous body.

It would be fine if she could encourage him and be the unaffected “cheerleader” on the inside she portrayed on the outside, but she wasn’t. She had loved Rico since she was fifteen years old and wanted him almost as long. Apparently temporary paralysis and a foul temper were no deterrent to those feelings. She felt like some kind of depraved sex fiend.

The sight that met her eyes when she came into the room stopped her like a clanging train crossing. Rico sat on the side of his bed, wearing nothing but the sexiest pair of briefs she’d ever seen. Not that her untried eyes had seen all that many, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d seen a thousand men in their skivvies. This was Rico.

He was the only man that mattered.

She practically swallowed her tongue trying to speak. “I… You… The door…”

His head swiveled round and the look on his face was a revelation. He looked elated.

“Rico? What…”

“You are having a difficult time with your sentences, cara.”

She nodded mutely.

His mouth curved in a wide grin and his eyes glittered silver triumph. “I can feel my toes.”

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