Page 10 of Bound By The Italian’s 'I Do'

Too late now. Today was the day Amelia made her bogus recommendation to Alessandro Rossi and the rest of the team. Issy needed to get Gianni out to sea and keep him there, without communication, until she had word that the contracts were signed and the deal that would destroy the Rossi cousins was done. That should take around three days but could be longer. She would have to flirt. Lead him on. Maybe allow him a kiss or two...and trust her sister and her own gut that he wouldn’t force those simple kisses or two into anything more.

Heaven help her, she’d never led a man on before.

Truth was, she’d barely been kissed either. Her one barely kiss had occurred when she’d been David’s dogsbody, by one of his caterers. Unfortunately said caterer had been handling fish and the smell oozing from him had put her off so much that she’d spent the rest of her dogsbody career avoiding him. There had been no one else. Between her real day job in the children’s ward and her night job of learning everything there was to know about Gianni, there had been no time for anyone else. Besides, it was a bit hard to look at men in a romantic way when your thoughts were consumed by someone else, even if that was someone you despised with a passion, and she hated that she’d relaxed into his company over their meal and that the hours had passed so quickly. He’d regaled her with tales of his friends’ exploits that had genuinely amused her. If she didn’t know who he was, she would be in danger of actually liking him.

But that was the power of the man. Beneath the handsome, easygoing exterior, Gianni was the devil in disguise.

Straightening her spine, she left her bedroom and made her way to the deck Gianni would enter ‘her’ yacht from. After their meal, she’d spent a couple of intense hours familiarising herself with the main areas of the yacht and felt a lot more confident about passing it off as her own than she had when David had shocked her with it.

Two crew members were already on deck, ready to greet her guest.

Issy was about to take a seat in the shaded section when a tall figure emerged dockside in the distance.

Her heart and belly did a simultaneous flip.

The closer he strolled, the harder her heart pumped.

Even though he wore shades as large as her own, he still turned heads from both sexes. Maybe it was the black polo shirt he wore, which fit snugly across his broad chest and showcased his spectacular physique. Or maybe it was the canvas khaki shorts that she knew without having to check showcased his tight butt cheeks.

He stopped a few feet from the yacht, looking as if he were reading its name to make sure he’d reached the right one, then caught sight of her. A devastating smile stretched across his face and he bounded up the right-hand steps to board.

Her heart pumped even harder and faster.

‘Bella, your yacht is as dazzling as you are,’ he said as he closed in on her and laid a hand on her hip. He kissed both her cheeks before taking her hand and bringing it to his mouth. He grazed his lips over her knuckles. ‘A stunning vessel for a stunning lady.’

To her absolute horror, Issy felt a burn crawl over her cheeks and knew she was blushing. Or was that flushing? Because she didn’t know if it was the heat of his breath on her skin causing it or the seductive appreciation in his stare.

‘I enjoy my time on it,’ she murmured, hoping her own huge shades covered enough of her face to disguise the flush.

‘I can imagine. Her name tells me you’re a lady who lives to party.’

She bestowed him with a knowing smile and slowly extracted her manically tingling fingers from his hold. ‘Today, the party is just you and me. Drink?’

He checked his thick watch and raised a neat black eyebrow. ‘Too early for champagne?’

‘It’s never too early for champagne.’ She nodded at one of the hovering crew, who bowed his head in answer and disappeared to sort the drinks for them, then turned to the other one. ‘Tell the captain we’re ready to set sail.’

Subtly bracing herself first, Issy tucked her hand into the crook of Gianni’s muscular arm. ‘That’s if you’re happy for us to set sail?’

Removing his shades, he practically stripped her naked with his hungry stare. ‘I am at the mercy of your every whim.’

The sensation of being under threat hit her so hard that she had to grind her toes into her impossibly high wedged sandals to stop her feet running and throwing herself overboard. The flesh of Gianni’s arm was warm beneath her hand. Smooth. A texture completely different to her own. The tingling in her fingers seeped through her skin and into her bloodstream, making her already frantic beating heart increase in tempo. There was nothing fake about the breathlessness of her voice when she managed to tease, ‘Oh, I do love it when a man’s at my mercy.’

Eyes alight with sensuality, he wolfishly, playfully, snapped his teeth together. The tingles in her blood seeped even lower. Deeper. Her legs had become distinctly wobbly.

They’d barely stepped inside when Danny, who’d worked for Gianni for six years, carried their champagne over, holding the tray out and not betraying by so much as a flicker that he knew him.

‘Thank you,’ the con woman said. ‘Please tell Chef we will want lunch on the pool deck in an hour.’

Gianni didn’t try to stop the swelling laughter. His head chef, whose name she’d clearly not learned, was called Christophe and had worked for him for even longer than Danny. This was all just too delicious.

Seeing Issy’s curious stare, he merely held his glass out so they could make yet another clink, tipped half the champagne he himself had paid for down his throat, then took hold of her free hand and leaned his face close to her ear. She was wearing that wonderful perfume again and, having twisted her blonde hair into a chic knot, he could smell the underlying sweetness of her skin layered in it. For perhaps the hundredth time, he allowed his imagination to run riot as to how far Isabelle Clements was prepared to go in her hustle. He could only hope she would go far enough that he got to inhale more of her scent than the delicate arch of her neck. ‘Show me around your party palace.’

The quiver of her skin was so subtle he could easily have missed it. But he didn’t miss it. He saw it. He felt it.

He smiled.

This just got better and better. His hustler genuinely desired him. Since realising she was a con woman, he’d wondered if she’d targeted him deliberately—Gianni was well-known in the media and the club she’d turned up at was one he was known to frequent—or if any man there that night who’d caught her eye would have done. He didn’t suppose it mattered. But it did make the game a lot more fun to suspect a genuine desire on her part.

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