So why did it bother her?
She’d come to the island expecting to meet with a dull estate agent. She’d brought books and bathing costumes, anticipating a delicious week on her own, soaking in the sunshine and relaxing.
But now her nerves were stretched on tenterhooks.
She flicked the page of her book, even though she had no concept of what she’d read, and briefly lifted her eyes to where he sat. There was only one living space in the house and he’d taken up position on the small table. It held his laptop, and thick files spread in each direction. His head was bent, he had a pen in his hand, and as he read one of the files he occasionally scratched a note angrily in the margin.
Unexpectedly he flashed his eyes in her direction and she looked away, stumbling her focus back to reading. His eyes continued to burn her skin, though.
He stood abruptly, scraping his chair noisily against the tiles. She kept her head bent as he moved into the kitchen and she heard the fridge open and shut.
She turned the page—again with no concept of where she was in the story.
The sound of butter simmering in a frying pan finally captured her interest, and she risked a glance towards him.
Her heart stuttered. Rio Mastrangelo was a seriously gorgeous man at any time. But with his shirtsleeves pushed up to the elbows, his head bent as he chopped tomato and fennel...he was the poster boy for sexiest man alive.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked, wishing she hadn’t when his eyes lanced her and she felt her stomach swoop.
‘Stringing a fishing line,’ he replied, with a sarcasm that he softened by smiling.
He had a dimple in one cheek. Deep enough to dip her finger into. She looked back at her book.
‘I presume you eat normal food?’ he asked, with a challenge she didn’t understand in his question.
‘It depends what you call “normal.”’ She gave up on the book, folding down the corner at the top of a page and placing it on the sofa.
She stood and padded towards the kitchen, curious as he added basil leaves to the chopping board. He reached for the fridge once more and returned with fish, adding each fillet one by one to the sizzling frying pan. He sliced a lemon down the middle and squeezed it over the top, then ground salt.
‘That smells delicious,’ she said seriously. ‘You like to cook?’
; He shrugged. ‘I like to eat, so...’
Her smile was involuntary, and her attention was momentarily distracted by the sizzling fish, so she didn’t realise that his eyes had dropped to her mouth and were staring at it with an intensity that would have boiled her blood.
‘I would have thought you’d have a chef. No—a team of chefs. All ready to obey your every whim.’ She lifted her brows as she turned her attention back to his face.
‘No.’
More of the stonewalling she’d faced that afternoon.
‘No? Why not?’
‘Because, Principessa, not everyone grew up in the hyper-indulged, rarefied way you did. I learned to cook almost as soon as I could walk. Just because I can afford to employ chefs it doesn’t mean it’s necessary.’
The hostility of his statement hurt far more than it should have. He was judging her—no, he was judging Cressida, she reminded herself forcibly—and she didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Her throat ached. With mortification, Tilly realised his harsh rebuke had brought her to the brink of tears. She took a steadying breath and looked away.
He expelled an angry breath and reached for the fish, flicking it deftly. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a moment. ‘That was rude of me.’
If his judgemental bitterness had surprised her, the apology had even more so.
She lifted her eyes to him slowly. ‘You think I’m spoiled.’
His smile was brief. A flicker across his face that she thought she must have imagined. He reached for two plates and scooped the tomato and fennel mixture into the middle, then added several fish fillets and half a lemon. It had the kind of presentation a five-year-old would have been proud of, but it smelled incredible. Her stomach groaned in agreement with that thought and she cleared her throat in an attempt to cover it.