‘A billionaire who’s famous the world over for his sophisticated conquests, that’s who! A man who dates supermodels and heiresses! Care to tell me where you fit into that kind of world, Lily?’ Running a speculative palm over a short skirt which made the very best of her undeniably good legs, Suzy adopted a look of sudden coyness. ‘Why, he’s closer to my age than yours.’
Lily opened the front door. Was he? She guessed he must be. What was he—mid-thirties? While Suzy was only just forty herself. A faint shiver ran through her as she looked at her beautiful stepmother and a disturbingly graphic image came to mind. Of Suzy coming on to Ciro and running those glossy red nails through the ebony gleam of his hair. Suddenly, she felt sick. ‘What are you trying to say?’
‘That he’s out of your league!’ With an effort, Suzy forced a smile. ‘I’m only telling you for your own protection, Lily. I just don’t want to see you get hurt.’
‘Of course you don’t,’ said Lily quietly, closing the door behind her.
On suddenly shaky legs, she crunched her way over the gravel to where Ciro was just getting out of the car. And despite her reservations about her stepmother’s motives, suddenly she could see exactly what Suzy had meant. Out of her league? Why, in his expensive suit, with his skin burnished gold by the evening sun, he looked like someone who’d fallen to earth from a different planet.
Yet he didn’t resemble the seasoned seducer Suzy had just described. In fact, he was looking at her with a heart-stopping smile curving the edges of his incredible mouth.
‘Dio, quanto sei incantevole,’ he murmured as he held open the car door for her.
Lily slid onto the low seat. ‘You do realise that not speaking Italian means I’m at a disadvantage, and I don’t have a clue what that means?’
He hesitated for only a moment. ‘It means that you look very… nice.’
Lily suspected that the word ‘nice’ wasn’t one which featured in Ciro D’Angelo’s vocabulary. And the look he was slanting at her certainly didn’t make her feel ‘nice’. In fact, it was making her feel deliciously and dangerously sexy. Demurely, she smoothed her dress down over her knees as he closed the door. ‘Thanks.’
He got in beside her. ‘I’ve left the roof down—you don’t mind? Women sometimes fuss about their hair.’
Quashing down her faint feeling of hysteria that already he was talking about other women, Lily shook her head. ‘I’ve got so many pins in it that it would take a
wind-tunnel to dislodge it.’
He shot her a curious glance. ‘Do you never wear it down?’
‘Not very often. It’s so thick that it just gets in the way.’
‘I’ll bet it does.’ Suddenly, he imagined what it might look like cascading over her bare breasts and an almost unbearable wave of desire washed over him. With an effort, he tried to think of something other than what kind of nipples she had. ‘Have you decided where you’re going to live?’
Lily gave a mirthless smile. He made it sound as if she had hundreds of choices at her fingertips. ‘I’m going to be moving to the apartment above the teashop where I work.’
‘And what’s it like?’
She wondered how he would react if she answered ‘like a shoebox’. ‘Oh, it’s very convenient for work,’ she said stoically. ‘It hasn’t been lived in for a couple of years and it needs a little decorating. I want to make it look like home by the time Jonny arrives next week.’
Ciro’s fingers tightened around the steering wheel as something unfamiliar exploded inside him. ‘Jonny?’
‘My brother.’
Her brother. If he’d suddenly heard that his share prices had just quadrupled in value, Ciro could not have felt more pleasure than he did at that moment. ‘Your brother?’
‘Yes. He’s away at boarding school, but he’ll be home next weekend. He hasn’t seen the new place yet and I wanted to brighten it up for him.’
‘How old is he?’
‘Sixteen.’
‘And you don’t have any—’
‘No, we don’t have any parents.’ Lily’s words quickly cut through his as she anticipated the next question, because she’d heard it asked a million times before and always in that same slightly tentative tone which came pretty close to pity. ‘They’re both dead.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘That’s life.’ She stared very hard at the road ahead. ‘How about you?’
‘My mother is still alive. She lives in Naples. My father… well, he died a long time ago.’