Page 31 of Tempted to the Billionaire's Bed

“I’m sure you are.” After all, he’d been completely transparent with her. She was reassured by that honesty. And yet there was a part of her that felt it now sticking uncomfortably beneath her ribs.

Maybe this conversation hadn’t been such a great idea. She’d wanted to know though, why someone like Marco—handsome, interesting, intelligent, sexy and rich—could be so consistently single, and she had her answer. But it was an answer that was somehow displeasing.

Because he was a great guy, and he had the power to make someone really happy. To be happy with someone.

Just because her experience with relationships had been a total bust didn’t mean all relationships would be so useless. Jack was a cheater. Things between them would never have worked out. And maybe it wasn’t that he was inherently bad, so much that they were never a good fit. Though how she could make her family understand that was another matter.

“Do you miss him?”

The question caught Portia off guard. She blinked, wondering if he’d been reading her mind.

“No. I miss…the simplicity of it all.”

“Simplicity?”

“Predictability.” She wrinkled her nose and when she caught the disapproving look on his face, she couldn’t help but laugh. “You don’t like predictability?”

“No.”

“There’s something to be said for it. Until there wasn’t. And it felt as though the rug had been pulled out from under my feet. Maybe that’s the hardest part. Like, one minute I knew exactly where my life was heading and with whom, and all the details were planned out perfectly and Ilikedthe security of that. And then the next minute, it was just gone, like a cloud, an illusion. Bam, I’m single and he’s had an affair, or maybe many affairs, and I’m left having to explain to everyone that we’re not getting married and why, and feeling as though people are looking at me sympathetically but not because…it’s not sympathy that he turned out to be a bastard and cheated. It’s sympathy that I wasn’t enough somehow.” She shook her head in frustration. “Or maybe that’s just my insecurities talking. I don’t know. It’s been a really hard time.”

Marco came around the kitchen bench, stood in front of Portia, then moved deeper, parting her legs so he could stand completely between them, close enough that when he tilted her chin and angled her eyes to his, she was in danger of losing herself deep in his gaze.

“Come away with me this weekend.”

She blinked, surprised. “Away? With you?”

His smile was slightly mocking, but in a way that made her tummy soar.

“Where?”

“Italy. I wanted to be with you in Florence, but I understand why that couldn’t happen. But a trip just of our own? No Dante. Let me show you my life there. And how fun it can be to live…unpredictably.”

She bit down into her lower lip. Her first instinct was to say no, even when something was pulling at her, tempting her, making her ache to just throw caution to the wind, as she had in sleeping with him that first morning.

“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Can I think about it?”

“Of course,” he said. “But you think too much. What is your heart telling you?” He asked, and at the sheer mention of her heart, that same organ began to squeeze and tighten and make her unstable. She wasn’t sure either of them wanted to know what it was thinking! He pressed a hand there and she hoped he couldn’t feel how hard it was beating.

“It is a trip,” he said with a shrug. “We will fly over, stay at my place, walk about the city, eat food, drink coffee, discover your favourite flavour of gelati, swim…”

“It’s winter,” she pointed out with a soft laugh.

“I have a spa.”

“Of course you do.” But jealousy barbed her words, because she’d found him in the spa with women, she knew this was just how he entertained. Shouldn’t that reassure her? She wasn’t special to him, this wasn’t special, there was nothing meaningful about this, except for the way it was helping her to heal and move on.

“It’s your decision,” he said quietly, kissing her lips as if to close the conversation. “Just let me know by the end of the week. The offer’s there.”

By Friday,Portia was no clearer in knowing what she wanted, but in the end, it was a call from her mother Stephanie that helped her make up her mind.

“Darling, it’s been too long. How are you?”

Guilt flooded Portia. She’d been completely neglecting her family these past few weeks, courtesy of the way she’d been sucked into a sudden, whirlwind fling with Marco Santoro.

“Sorry, it’s been hectic at work,” she murmured. “And I’m fine.” She reached for her coffee, tasted it, remembered sharing coffee with Marco that evening earlier in the week, when he’d invited her to Italy, and her heart gave a strange little burst.

They hadn’t spoken since then.

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