To her surprise he did as she asked and let her go. Ava grabbed at the sheet, hauling it into place and sitting down heavily on the bed, feeling very much at a disadvantage. She couldn’t fight her corner like this. Where was her dignity?
She pulled clumsily at the bedsheet toga, making sure everything was securely in place.
‘I’m not a member of your family,’ she reiterated. ‘You can’t force me to go anywhere.’
She glanced warily at him and discovered he was watching her broodingly. For a moment she thought he was actually considering that she might be right. Instead of feeling triumphant, Ava experienced a trickle of uneasiness as she realised after this morning she would probably never see him again.
‘Besides,’ she said, trying to ignore that feeling, ‘how will you explain kissing a member of your sainted family, Mr Spin Doctor?’
‘It was a friendly peck, blown up as something else by the nature of photography,’ he said with amazing cool, his golden eyes screened by dense black lashes. ‘We had both dined with friends and I was escorting you back to the palazzo.’
Her mouth fell open slightly. Damn, he was good. It must be practice. Her eyes narrowed like a cat’s.
‘You are, naturally, staying with me, and today we travel south and join the rest of the family for my mother’s birthday celebration at the weekend.’
Ava swallowed. Another Benedetti clan gathering. Another opportunity for her to feel like a spare wheel. She really, really didn’t want to go.
‘Is your fiancée going to be there?’
He actually looked discomfited. ‘There is no fiancée,’ he said, with the air of a man being made to suffer.
To Ava’s amazement colour scored those ridiculously high cheekbones.
‘There will be a lot of people at Ragusa next weekend. Those photographs will be discussed. Nobody who knows me is going to believe the story. We will be the object of some speculation.’
‘That bothers you, does it?’ she said stiffly, thinking of the blonde with almost no clothes on last night. He might as well have said, I don’t want my friends and family to meet you and think we’re a couple.
He pushed his fingers restlessly through his thick hair. ‘Dio, it is the custom in my family for the eldest son to marry and produce the next generation. It is the reason I never—never—bring a woman with me to Ragusa. This—’ he indicated her and the rumpled bed ‘—and me arriving with you in tow is going to cause trouble.’
‘Don’t worry,’ she said stonily, staring past him, her heart pounding, because she’d thought she was long past being the girl who didn’t make the grade, ‘your mother hates me. She’ll probably put strychnine in my water and then all the speculation will stop.’
There was a loaded silence.
‘Besides, I’m not coming. If I don’t turn up there won’t be a problem, will there?’
Ava told herself the petulance in her voice was merely the end effect of a week in which she’d been on the wrong end of the stick with not one man but two. Two men who were clearly happy to put their own comfort before her own. As if her feelings weren’t worth even a little consideration. As if she didn’t have feelings at all.
Was that why Bernard had thought it fine to break up with her over the phone?
As for Italy’s Natural Wonder here—she’d seen him in action last night and was under no illusions as to the kind of women he dated or how he treated them. She should be glad she knew how he saw her—a mistake from the past, one he’d been lumbered with and was now doing the best he could to limit damage to his reputation, to his comfort. She knew all about that. Her father had given her early lessons in just how disposable she could be, always putting his needs first, constantly cancelling access visits, until eventually he didn’t bother to show up at all.
She needed to keep that in mind. That way she wouldn’t be doing anything silly—as she had last night, when she’d kissed him, or this morning, when she’d kissed him again... Really, she had to stop the kissing!
But none of it explained why this man putting himself first should actually hurt her, when Bernard’s actions had done nothing more than upset her travel plans. It was baffling.
He was nothing to her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
GIANLUCA STOOD AT THE open window, watching as Ava climbed into a taxi. She was sneaking out again—after he’d given her specific instructions to get herself dressed and join him downstairs.
Very few people defied him, and despite the trouble she had caused he couldn’t help admiring her determination.
She’d pinched his coat, which was far too big for her, and with her hair standing up on end and without her shoes she looked like a woman fleeing a morning-after gone awry. It briefly crossed his mind that this was how it must have been all those years ago, when he’d been oblivious upstairs in his bed. His smile deserted him.