Elizabeth Power - Italian Mavericks - A Deal With The Italian - The Italian's Deal for I Do / A Pawn in the Playboy's Game / A Clash with Cannavaro

Her gaze connected with his and read what lay there. Confusion darkened her vibrant blue orbs.

“Rocco...”

Her husky, hesitant tone prompted the return of his sanity. She had never been, nor would she ever be, his. Impossible.

He stood up with an abrupt movement. “Drink the brandy,” he muttered roughly. “I will order us dinner.”

When he’d finally sent an exhausted Olivia to bed and sat on the terrace with a final brandy in his hand, he was glad for the city that never slept. The honking horns and peeling ambulances kept him company, floodlit Central Park a feast for the senses as he tipped his head back and drank it in.

The silence, the solitude, grounded him as it always did. Made his present situation crystallize like the stars emerging from the silvery haze in the cloudy night sky above.

The more distance he kept from the woman inside who was driving him mad, the better. It had taken him hours last night to wrestle his body into an acceptable enough state to get into bed, after which the scent of her had driven him half-crazy. He’d been out of bed at 5:00 a.m. out of the pure need, not to look at his sultry fiancée splayed across his bed, glorious hair everywhere.

But it was more than that. This restlessness in him came from a place he was loath to face. He was bitterly afraid he had been wrong about Olivia. Very wrong.

She had clearly been lying just now, as she had during the press conference. The shut-down, blank look on her face had said it all. Which pointed out an uncomfortable fact. He’d never seen that look on her face before. Not when she’d denied Giovanni was her lover that night in Milan after he’d seduced her. Not through this past trying week when he’d plied her with a million questions to get their stories and backstory straight. She had always told him the truth, however painful, or she hadn’t said anything at all.

Until tonight. Until today at the press conference. He could tell the difference. He could read her now.

Do you really know your grandfather so little you think he would have been having an affair with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter?

He ran his palm over the stubble on his jaw, a jolt of unease slicing through him. Giovanni not giving him sole control of Mondelli had shaken him, made him question how well he knew the man who had raised him, who had been his heart and soul. But Giovanni was also a complex man with many layers. Perhaps there were facets of him he hadn’t known. Perhaps he had had an affair with Tatum Fitzgerald.

Tonight when he’d had that chat with Frederic Beaumont, the wily old Frenchman had congratulated him on capturing the “most enchanting creature he’d ever worked with” in Olivia, and made a veiled comment about Mondelli men having a thing for Fitzgerald women. When Rocco had lifted a brow at the comment, Frederic had only said sagely that Tatum Fitzgerald had been one of Giovanni’s great muses, but his eyes had said much more.

He took a swig of the brandy, closing his eyes as its warmth heated his insides. If his grandfather had engaged in an out-of-character affair with Tatum Fitzgerald, that was one thing. But to have an affair with her daughter, as well? It didn’t sit right in his chest. Maybe it never had. He’d been so angry at his grandfather’s death when he’d confronted Olivia, he’d wanted to lash out, and she had been the most convenient target. Brand her a gold digger and make himself feel better by solving the problem.

The uneasy feeling inside him intensified. Propelled him out of his chair and to the railing, Manhattan glistening below in all its finery. What if he’d been wrong? What if he’d branded the woman sleeping in his bed an opportunist when she had really been Giovanni’s inspiration in the most innocent sense? When perhaps she had been the one to reinvigorate a creativity that had begun to fail the aging genius? He had seen it in those designs...

He took another sip of the brandy. The spirit blazed an undeniable path of self-awareness through him. Had he wanted to think the worst of Olivia because of just how very much she got to him? How she’d managed to penetrate the ironclad exterior he’d adopted the day he’d realized his father as he’d known him was never coming back? When he’d decided no one would ever get to him emotionally again?

Sandro had only been twenty-seven when his wife of the same age had died giving birth to Alessandra. Suffering from severe preeclampsia, Letizia had delivered him a healthy baby girl, but stolen his one true love in the process. His father had fallen apart, descended into a grief so raw it had scared his two children witless and left them with no one but each other.

At first, Giovanni had been patient with his son. Had turned a blind eye to Sandro’s drinking, to his gambling, but after a time, when he’d decided enough was enough, that Sandro’s children needed a father and he needed his son back at Mondelli, Sandro had said he’d needed more time. Then more. Until it became clear he couldn’t mentally handle a return to the family business, until he’d gambled Rocco’s family home away and it had become apparent he wasn’t capable of taking care of his children, either. Of himself.

Rocco could remember the day vividly when Giovanni had arrived at their house, soon to be taken by creditors, and ordered him and Alessandra to gather their things. He’d only been seven and a half at the time, but he would never forget the anguish in his father’s eyes as his grandfather had scooped them up and took them home to Villa Mondelli, his disappointment in his son palpable in the older man’s demeanor.

Rocco had absorbed his father’s anguish, the hint of madness that losing his mother had instilled in him, and although he had been too young to understand it all, he had known one thing—love meant making yourself vulnerable. Love meant pain. And he would never do that to himself willingly.

He tipped his head back and took a long swallow of the brandy. The lights from the park cast an otherworldly glow over the high rises that soared behind it. It was as mystifying a view of New York as his behavior had been tonight. Because even if he had been wrong about Olivia, even if Giovanni had been mentoring her as a way to pay back what he owed to her mother, even if she was that vulnerable, frightened creature he’d witnessed tonight that his grandfather had elected to shelter and protect, it didn’t change anything. What he and Olivia had was a business deal. He was no white knight to ride in on a steed and save the day.

He finished off the brandy and set the glass down. Whatever crazy thing drew him to Olivia, whatever it had been between them from the start, was precisely what he needed to avoid. His only interest should be preserving his family legacy. In doing what had always been paramount for him. Allowing himself to care for anything beyond that had never been in the cards.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A WEEK INTO his and Olivia’s return to Milan, every aspect of Rocco’s plan seemed to be falling into perfect strategic place. The announcement of his fiancée as the new face of Mondelli was making waves across fashion circles, her sudden return to modeling an angle it seemed no media outlet could resist. And although some media chose to speculate on the reason behind Olivia’s disappearance from modeling, most were universally positive about the union, choosing, as Savanna had predicted, to focus on the glamorous engagement of two high-profile personalities and brands rather than speculate on a story for which they had no answers.

He glanced down at the front page of the weekly gossip magazine that typically featured royalty on the cover, but instead this week featured the kiss , as the press had dubbed it. The one he and Olivia had shared at the press conference.