‘I’ve been let down.’
‘Oh. I’m sorry.’ Had she let him down? Was her dream job here about to shatter into a shower of tiny pieces?
‘Not you,’ he snapped impatiently.
Coming around to the front of his desk, he leaned back against it and folded his arms.
Narrowing his eyes, he looked down at her as if she were a cup cake amongst many in a cake shop window and he was trying to decide if she would do.
She didn’t like that look in his eyes one bit, so she decided to seize the initiative. ‘What can I do for you?’
Marco took his time replying, which gave her the chance to study him. Did he ever shave while he was in Tuscany? He really relaxed here. As she did.
She quivered with awareness, realising that his stare had dropped to her lips. She now realised that she had pursed them in an unintentionally sexy way. Quickly chewing the pout out of them, she straightened up and adopted a more businesslike manner.
‘I need you in Rome.’
‘In Rome?’ She was jolted out of her trance in an instant. Rome—bustling, glittering, sophisticated. She couldn’t go to Rome! But then another, far more calming thought came to her. ‘You have a garden there?’ Her heart soared at the thought of tending a city garden. It would be very different from here. She could imagine it would be enclosed and quiet, and an entirely different challenge from Tuscany. But a garden...that was something she could handle for him.
‘It’s nothing to do with gardens,’ he rapped impatiently. ‘I have a charity event I host each year.’
‘I see,’ she murmured, frowning. She didn’t see at all. In fact, her mind was a blank canvas on which he could paint pretty much anything.
‘It’s a dinner,’ he explained, as if she should know all about it. ‘And I need a plus one, or there will be an empty space next to me.’
And that would be unthinkable, she silently supplied.
‘The organiser of the charity was supposed to be my dinner partner,’ he elaborated with an impatient gesture, ‘but a family emergency has prevented that.’
‘So, you’ll have an empty seat next to you,’ she said, frowning as if such things were a mystery to her.
‘No. I won’t,’ Marco assured her, ‘because you will be sitting in it.’
‘Me?’ Horror filled her. This was everything she had spent her adult life avoiding, and she had no intention of going to some glitzy party.
‘I don’t know why you sound so shocked,’ Marco countered. ‘I’m only inviting you to join me at a party.’
What the hell was wrong with her? Other women would be falling over themselves to accept this invitation, but not Cassandra. Oh, no. She was looking at him as if he had suggested some extreme and arcane form of torture—that, or a Roman orgy.
‘A charity event in Rome? A dinner?’ she confirmed, paling as she continued to frown.
‘I don’t know what’s so hard for you to understand. Just say yes. I’ll provide the clothes, the hairdresser, the manicurist. You’ll have beauticians and stylists on tap—whatever you need.’
Her eyes widened, and then, to his astonishment, she said, ‘You are joking?’
‘I’m being perfectly serious.’ Her reaction baffled him. ‘I have just invited you to join me at the event of the year.’
‘Well, I can’t,’ she insisted. ‘I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t pull it off,’ she insisted, when he stared at her with incredulity. ‘I’d be falling over the hem of my gown, knocking into people—’
‘Hopefully not,’ he said wearily.
‘You are serious,’ she added quietly, as if he had been speaking in a foreign language and she had only just worked it out. ‘You want me at your side, at the top table at a charity event in Rome?’
‘Yes. I do,’ he confirmed. How many more times did he have to say it?
She shook her head. ‘I’m really sorry, Marco, but the idea of me all tricked out in a gown and on my best behaviour is about as likely as you getting down and dirty in the garden.’
‘But I do get down and dirty in the garden,’ he reminded her, all out of patience now. ‘Of course, if you’re not up to this...’
Her heart was hammering in her chest. Marco had to be crazy—or desperate, asking her to do this. ‘Thing is, I function best in a garden,’ she explained firmly. ‘I don’t function at all at a...function.’