Page 11 of Fiancée for the Cameras

He jumped off the bed as though he was the one scalded, as though it was his back that was on fire.

Cristo, she was twenty-three and naive and not for him.In any way.Not even for a single night, he told himself, crushing the wicked whisper of desire.

“Andrea?” she whispered when he was almost at the door.

He turned to find her watching him, a sudden alertness to her drowsy gaze.“Si?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Si.”

“Are you angry with me?”

“Yes,” he said, letting his irritation flare. “You know how much I don’t like unnecessary headaches in my life. I know way too much about you that I didn’t need to.”

“I won’t fight the transfer but you...you won’t let this change—”

“Si, Monica. Now, sleep.”

She giggled then and it made him still. When he looked back,one more time, her eyes were closed, the thick, long lashes casting crescents onto her cheeks in the shadows as he closed the automatic blinds. Her nostrils flared, and a small secretive little smile split her mouth. “You also said yes three times. A girl could get used to that. A girl could feel heady with the power of hearing so many yeses fromAndrea Valentini.Any girl. Even silly, stupid, pathetic me.”

Then she snored and drifted off to sleep and Andrea knew he had to stay away from her. Completely.

Before the little good sense that was left in him was consumed by raw want. Before he gave in and did something his father would have been appalled by. Before this inappropriate lust for a woman under his protection turned into something more dangerous that would only end in hurting her.

CHAPTER FOUR

INTHEFIRSTtwo weeks that Monica was at Flora Valentini’s house—their family home in a postcard-like village near Lake Como—Andrea hadn’t come to see her once.

No, not to see her, but to visit with his mother, Monica modified in her head. The fact that in two weeks, Andrea hadn’t visited Flora and Romeo oncewaskind of alarming.

If there was one thing she knew about him for sure, it was that he was devoted to his mother and brother.

Was it because she was here? Because after all the drama she’d inadvertently started, he couldn’t stand to see her pathetic face?

Monica had resisted the idea of staying at his home—his high-handed order—for the first two days. But under Flora’s gentle care and with Romeo’s cheerful company, she had decided not to fight one of the few favors life had handed her. It wasn’t like she caused an imposition to either of them.

Flora was exactly the kind of mother she’d have chosen in any universe, if she was given the chance. And learning that the older woman thought of her as a daughter was a gift Andrea had given her. The one gift she didn’t resent, when she was already buried under obligation for all the favors he’d done her.

Monica had cried a lot the first two weeks. Some of it had been tears of pain and relief because the doctor had told her that Andrea’s immediate intervention and having seen her the very day she had collapsed had staved off infection and scarring. Some of her tears had been for this new consuming awareness of a man who was so out of her sphere. To think she’d nearlymarried a man she didn’t even love just to escape the pain of being thrown out of his life...

But she also reminded herself that, if not for Flora, Mr. Valentini would have no interest in her personal life. He wouldn’t have noticed if she had dropped dead that day at those steps. Until she was absent from his life and it fell apart without her brisk efficiency, Andrea Valentini wouldn’t have taken note of her absence any more than he’d taken note of her presence over four years.

So yes, while she’d recovered and screwed her head on straight under Flora’s gentle care, she wasn’t going to read anything into the sudden flare of heat that had arced between them that afternoon. Any woman would feel discombobulated when seeing a man like him—gorgeous and smoldering—attend to her personally. And she had already been under such shock and in pain, had been vulnerable and desperate for a small kindness.

The little hope she’d nurtured the beginning of the third week that she could slowly transition out of his life and into her new role with the CFO was blown to bits when Romeo shared the little clip of her and Andrea that had gone viral. Of him cutting through the dress and then carrying her to his car, while she was half-naked and delirious and the accompanying narrative the press had spun around it. If he’d thought her a nuisance before, he probably actively hated her now. When she’d called Mr. Valentini yesterday, she’d been unable to reach him.

Then he arrived suddenly the next evening, like the storm clouds that had suddenly gathered, threatening a downpour. Romeo and she had just finished an invigorating chess game that she had lost, yet again, sitting in the small garden that separated the manicured lawns from the thick orange groves and dense woods beyond.

A prickling at her nape was the thing that intimated Monica of her boss’s arrival, as if there was now a chip sewn under her skin, programmed to detect his proximity. She looked up to find him standing on a wide balcony off the second floor, kissing Flora’s cheek while the older woman animatedly greeted him. His gray gaze was, however, intensely focused on Monica.

Even across the field separating them, she could see the pinch of his eyebrows because he didn’t want his mother to know of his thunderous mood. Unable to hold his gaze any longer, Monica swallowed and looked away. Butterflies took flight in her belly, making it impossible to sit still. Her muscles called for action, either to run toward him or far away, into the woods maybe.

“What was that?” Romeo asked from across the small table, his gaze switching between her and his brother.

“What was what?” Monica asked, trying a fake casualness with all her might.

“That look in your eyes. Monica, are you scared of my brother?” he asked, reaching for her hand across the table.

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