Page 35 of Fiancée for the Cameras

“She’s going to a pizza-and gelato-making class.”

“With whom?” he prompted, coming unerringly to the point.

Monica considered evading for one moment, and then sighed. “Romeo. We made the date weeks ago. I can’t cancel it because you’ve decided you want to...stay in bed. The chef is like a genius and his classes take months to get in and the gelato is to die for. After the last few weeks...it’s the one fun thing I’ve been looking forward to.”

“I would never want to stand in the way of your fun, Monica,” he said, taking a step in her direction. “Only, you will go with me instead of my brother. He hogs too much of your time anyway.”

“I like spending time with him. And I’m not ditching him just so...” Her words fell away as he began stalking her across the open layout, a wicked twinkle in his eyes.

“Just so I can indulge us both, so I can taste you again? Just so I can give you a bullet-pointed agenda for the day’s activities and see how fast we can get through them all? Your efficiency does drive me wild,bella.”

She blushed and he was laughing and Monica thought she might burst apart at the seams. Desire and anticipation, yes, but this easy joy... God, it was like magic, vibrating through her every cell. “You really want to take the Saturday off and make gelato with me?” she asked, disbelief punctuating her words.

“With you, yes,” he said, catching her. And then his mouth was on hers and Monica forgot about mergers and charity funds and gelato, and maybe even the reason for breathing.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

LIFEMOVEDATan insane pace for Monica over the next two months as Andrea’s novelty fiancée. And she definitely was a novelty, she realized with increasing wariness.

For his family, because Andrea seemed to play the role of a possessive, protective fiancé with an easy aplomb they hadn’t expected. More than once, she’d seen a shadow pass across Flora’s eyes but the older woman, sweet as ever, never gave voice to whatever doubts she had. Thankfully, neither did she ask Monica much about their “fake relationship,” treating her with the same kindness as always, and that was enough for her.

For his friends, colleagues and extended family, all of whom orbited Andrea for some sort of help, she was the “poor orphaned American woman” who had caught Andrea’s fancy.Temporarilywas implied but not said. Most of them, though, were smart enough to play nice with her since she did have his ear. The smart ones even understood that she not only knew every big business matter that passed his desk but that he also trusted her.

More than once, their casual attitude toward using his wealth and reach for their own benefit, as if he owed them that due to his meteoric success, rankled Monica. There were one or two people who wanted his friendship for no other reason than that he was a dynamic, witty person to be around. But Andrea did not allow that closeness.

One of them was her earlier boss, the CFO for Valentini Luxury Goods. While he trusted Maria, Andrea kept it purely professional with her, even though Maria had known him for years.

For the rest of the world and the media, she was a novelty because, once they had decided to believe Andrea’s version, their affair was nothing short of a fairy tale coming true.

Having never spent a moment as the center of attention at any stage of her life, Monica struggled with it at every party and gala and public event, where she was cast as the beautiful American upstart of unknown origins, the woman who had stolen the gorgeous, powerful bachelor that all of Milan adored. Wherever she went, on Andrea’s arm or with Flora and Romeo, she was besieged with questions about their relationship, as if they wanted to decipher how she had landed the uncatchable Andrea Valentini.

But for every second that she cringed at the invasive questions, flinched at camera flashes going off in their faces and tried to hide behind Andrea’s broad frame like a scared rabbit, she enjoyed the glimpse she was getting into how fun and charming and utterly seductive he could be.

Romeo kept reminding her that the fake engagement suited his brother, that she was good for him, that he hadn’t seen Andrea this lively and fun in a long time. Monica tried not to let it go to her head, though there was more than a grain of truth to Romeo’s assessment. Hijacking her gelato-making date had been only the start.

She blushed profusely even now, remembering how Andrea had surprised her that evening when they had arrived at the world-class restaurant kitchen. It had been only them and the chef. All the other participants had been highly compensated to attend a different session, because Andrea Valentini wanted to learn how to make gelato with his media-shy fiancée in private, and the world had better arrange itself accordingly. For once, his high-handedness and his refusal to parade them in front of an audience had worked out for her.

It had been one of the best evenings of her life. From the sheer pleasure of spending hours in Andrea’s company—his lips and hands constantly touching her in a hundred little ways, as if he couldn’t help himself—to how he’d distracted her with whispered promises that her tiny batch of gelato had turned out awful while his had been mouthwateringly perfect, and the end of the night where they had barely made it back to his penthouse, full of delicious pizza and gelato and wine, and he had taken her against the wall just barely inside the elevator.

Even then, he’d first made sure she wasn’t still sore, with his fingers. When it had been clear she was just as eager as him, he had picked her up, held her against the wall, pulled her sundress up and thrust into her with one hard stroke that had had her banging her head against the wall.

It had been fervent, frantic, near-frenzied, how they’d clawed at each other.

And in the weeks since that night, their frenzy had nowhere near calmed. Not hers, and definitely not his.

Monica almost wished their fake relationship only centered around the very real passion and chemistry that seemed to imbue every touch and caress. Then she could have firmly told her increasingly invested heart to stay out of the whole matter. She wanted to believe that at some point in her life, she would have met a man who would have disabused her of her hang-ups and fears about her body and her sexuality. Because she’d weaved them all into place to protect herself against a harsh world. She wanted to convince herself that that man just happened to be her boss, whom she’d trusted beyond any other man she’d ever met.

Andrea, at every turn, proved all the things she tried to tell herself to be lies.

It wasn’t just the phenomenal sex or the incendiary chemistry between them that made Monica feel as if her life wassimultaneously rushing fast like a river rapid and grounding to a halt like the rich earth under.

Because there were moments where it seemed, impossibly, marvelously, that he cared about her, that he enjoyed her company as much as her body and her kisses and her wild, deep need for him that drove him to his own edge.

That, however, was a slippery slope of wishful thinking because she wanted to truly live her life this time, take each day as it came with Andrea, however many she got, instead of making it fit into some childhood template of a dream life.

What she really wanted was to take initiative in their personal life. Not that she had a problem with following whatever Andrea decided—in the two months of their roller-coaster, fake and yet somehow real relationship, she had done more fun, adventurous things, had laughed more, had explored her own sexuality at his patient hands, had understood her own needs and wishes better than ever before.

She had lived in these two months more than she had her entire life. And she wanted to believe that it was the same for him, too.

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