‘Not ill.’ He turned to face her, the strength in his gaze sending a pulse radiating through her. ‘She is dying.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Olivia’s voice was gentle, sincere. ‘Are you close?’
A grimace tightened his lips. ‘Yes.’ He paused, seeming to weigh his words. ‘She has been my biggest support. I owe her a lot.’
‘I’m sure she supported you out of love. Seeing you make such a success of yourself is undoubtedly all she wants from you.’
His smile showed a hint of affection. ‘She is still an Italian nonna, and cannot help meddling. She has expressed, on many occasions, a desire for me to marry.’ The words wrapped around Olivia, steadier than steel. ‘She worries about me.’
‘Worries about you?’ Olivia couldn’t help remarking, the very idea of this man being the object of anyone’s concern almost laughable.
He didn’t look at her, nor did he respond.
‘If we were to create the impression of a passionate, whirlwind love affair, it might go some of the way to easing her concerns.’
Olivia’s eyes flared wide. ‘You want to lie to her?’
‘We would be legally married,’ he pointed out. ‘That is not a lie.’
‘But a love affair,’ she said with a soft shake of her head. ‘No one would believe it.’
His eyes narrowed as he stared at her. ‘They must. This marriage must convince your cousin, your father’s probate solicitors and my grandmother. It must convince the world.’
Something twisted inside her. Surprise. Hope. It wasn’t exactly an agreement, but, for a moment, he sounded as though he was seriously contemplating this. She might actually be getting somewhere—and that knowledge both excited and terrified her.
‘If your grandmother wants you to get married, why haven’t you done so before now?’
‘Marriage is not a mistake I intend to make twice. Even for her.’
‘But we’re discussing marriage now.’
‘A very different kind of marriage,’ he pointed out. ‘One with clear-cut rules and boundaries. One that precludes, by design, any emotion whatsoever.’
‘Are you saying you’ll agree to this?’
He stared at her long and hard, so long, so hard, that any pretence she might have liked to maintain that she felt nothing for him flew out of her soul and swam away on the crest of the Tiber. It was all physical—surely she could control that?
‘I would have conditions of my own.’
Her heart skipped a beat. ‘I see. Such as?’
He turned to face her now, looking just as he had the first moment they’d met, but with a hint of grief still stirring in the depths of his eyes, so Olivia was forced to re-evaluate her appraisal of him as a cold, ruthless tycoon. He clearly had a heart, and a large part of it, she suspected, belonged to his nonna. ‘My grandmother would need to believe this is real.’ He pressed a thumb to his middle finger on the opposing hand, counting off a list. ‘There would need to be discretion and respect. No affairs for either of us.’
‘Easier for me than you, I suspect,’ she said, before she could stop herself. After all, the man’s prowess as a bachelor was a well-established fact.
He let the barb sail by.
‘This would be a marriage of practicality,’ he continued with firm indifference, tapping another finger, not taking his eyes off her face. ‘You’d get what you want, and I’d get what I want.’ For a moment, his gaze dropped to her lips. ‘This would not be a genuine relationship. We would not become friends. We would not have sex.’
A shiver ran down her spine as images of that sprang to mind before she could stop them, and, for the first time in her life, Olivia experienced a headlong rush of desire.
She kept her expression neutral with great effort. ‘I’m not interested in your friendship. Or in having sex with you.’
He didn’t smile. He didn’t nod. He simply stared at her as though she were a mathematical equation he could understand, if only he looked long and hard enough.
‘And what about love?’
It jolted her straight. She shook her head fiercely. ‘No.’