Page 37 of Redemption of the Untamed Italian

He needed her all to himself, and not just at night. They had four nights left of their agreed fortnight, and spending his days at the office no longer felt like a good use of that time. All his life, Cesare had been a person who did things properly, and he saw now that getting Jemima out of his system was going to involve more than sex. The things he didn’t know about her made her all the more compelling, and the questions he had about her life filled him in a way only answers could relieve.

Without making a conscious decision, he turned around, moving back to the hotel. And as he went a plan firmed in his mind, a plan that would achieve his goals, a way to make it easier to walk away from Jemima at the end of this fortnight without a backward glance.

Relief flooded him, along with the certainty that this was the right decision, the sensible decision—the way to free himself of her magic once and for all.

CHAPTER TEN

ISOLA GIADA ROSE from the ocean like something from the prehistoric ages. Green all over, except for the strip of white sand that ran as a band around the island, and the turquoise water that lapped at its edges, it was breathtakingly beautiful.

‘Just in case the airline, the hotel, the Alaskan hut and the hedge fund weren’t enough?’ she murmured, her eyes on his as he held a hand out to guide her from the speed boat that had brought them off the eastern coast of Italy.

‘I wouldn’t have thought someone like you would find that asset list surprising.’

‘I think anyone would,’ she corrected, his assumption about her wealth and background jarring. She dropped his hand as she surveyed the island some more. ‘It’s all yours?’

‘Yes.’

‘What else is there, beside this?’

She pointed a little way along the beach where a stunning building seemed to lift from the sand itself, all white walls and glass. It was architectural and compelling while somehow also being organic and respectful of the environment.

‘There are some small houses across the island—for staff, when I need them. On occasion, I have come here for weeks at a time, and generally have a housekeeper and the like to run things.’

‘Naturally,’ she murmured, his financial situation something she couldn’t comprehend. She knew he was self-made, but it was almost impossible to fathom how anyone could build that kind of empire from nothing. ‘Have you owned it long?’

Something shifted in his expression. ‘Eleven years.’

Curiosity moved inside her. ‘Did you build the house?’

‘No.’

She gnawed on her lower lip thoughtfully. ‘Why do I get the feeling there’s a history here you’re not sharing?’

He eyed her slowly, raking his gaze from the tip of her head to her toes, and at the same time a light breeze lifted off the ocean, so her loose dress pulled against her flesh, and she shivered for no reason she could think of.

‘Because there is.’ He held out his hand, and she put hers in it, just as she had the night before when he’d seen the disaster in the kitchen and drawn her from the midst of the mayhem.

‘And you’re not going to tell me?’

‘That depends.’ He lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her inner wrist. A frisson of anticipation trembled across her spine.

‘On what?’

‘On what you’re prepared to offer in exchange.’

Her heart skipped a beat. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘Nothing is free, uccellina.’

He called her that often—little bird—but hearing it here, liberated in the Mediterranean, kissed by the sea air and the sunshine, did something strange to it, so that the moniker pierced the fabric of her being and became a part of her, as much as her eyes and her lips, her heart and her lungs. Uccellina.

He dropped his head closer, so his lips were just an inch from hers. ‘I will answer any of your questions, if you answer all of mine.’ His eyes were asking a billion questions of her and she felt stripped naked, raw beneath his scrutiny. And though it sparked a sort of anxiety inside her, there was also relief—a heady sense of calm that could only come with letting go.

Letting go of her barriers, letting go of their boundaries. Just for a moment, here in this slice of paradise far from the real world.

‘Deal.’ Her smile turned her eyes from emerald green to a sort of turquoise as vibrant as the ocean. They began to walk towards the house.

‘Do you come here often?’

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