Jessica Gilmore - Summer Romance With The Italian Tycoon

He had four days to work out a plan.

Maybe he could say his girlfriend had had to return to England?

Only he had not only named her and described her, but he had also given the name and description of someone here in the castello .

Maybe he could send Maddie back to the UK for a few weeks—or to his Rome office or Milan?

Only she had a summer’s worth of weddings lined up and ready to go.

He could admit the truth. Break his sister’s heart in the process—and find himself dating half of her friends in order to make it up to her.

He was in trouble whatever he did.

Unless...

Maybe, just maybe, he could salvage this situation after all.

* * *

Maddie hadn’t felt like taking her usual lunchtime walks around the lake over the last few days. Her whole body still flushed when she thought about the moment she realised that her mystery bather and the Conte Falcone were one and the same—and when she remembered the peculiarly charged feeling permeating the air when he’d turned his whole focus onto her.

Instead Maddie had been exploring the vast gardens at the back of the castle. The formal walled gardens and flower gardens gave way to woodland and there were plenty of paths to wander through, plenty of interesting sights to discover, from little stone summer houses to statues, all relics of a nineteenth-century Falcone with a taste for whimsy. She had a similar ancestor; he had installed a gothic folly by the Capability Brown designed lake. It was a popular wedding spot now, which probably made her Byron-idolising ancestor turn in his equally gothic grave.

Maddie stopped when she reached the carved stone bench she’d discovered yesterday, sitting down in the pretty flower-strewn glade to eat the small picnic lunch she carried with her. She’d soon learned that if she didn’t leave her desk she wouldn’t get a chance to eat. There was always some crisis. At least this current crop of wedding guests seemed sensible; they were, in the main, a cheerful outdoorsy lot and today most of the party had headed into the mountains for a trek, some of the younger contingent taking kayaks onto the lake instead.

Unwrapping her sandwich, Maddie stretched her legs out, tilting her head to the sun. Bliss.

Only...she had the sense that someone was watching her. She gave the glade a quick glance around. Nothing. But Maddie couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was definitely not alone. Had one of the castle dogs followed her out, looking for a bite of her sandwich? ‘Ciao,’ she called out and waited, feeling a little foolish as she was answered with nothing but silence, until a branch rustled and a small, slim girl stepped into the clearing.

Maddie had had very little to do with children, and to her eyes the child could have been any age between five and ten. Her long, dark hair was in two messy braids, wisps escaping at every turn, and there were smears of dirt across her face, but Maddie noticed the cut of her torn shorts and the quality of her T-shirt. This urchin was expensively dressed—and didn’t care about keeping her clothes neat.

‘You look like you’ve been through the wars,’ Maddie said in Italian.

The girl gave her a tentative smile. ‘I’ve escaped.’

‘Where from?’

‘From the castello. My au pair wanted me to take a siesta. Sleep! On a day like this.’ The girl looked scornfully up at the sky and Maddie had a moment’s sneaking sympathy for the hapless au pair tasked with taming this wild child.

‘It does seem a shame,’ she agreed, breaking her sandwich in two and holding half out to the fugitive. ‘Here, you must be hungry. I know adventuring always gave me an appetite when I was your age. I’m Maddie.’

‘Arianna Falcone.’

Of course she was. Now Maddie could see the Conte in the proud tilt of the girl’s chin, in the blue of her eyes. ‘Nice to meet you, Arianna.’

‘So this is where you’re hiding?’

They both jumped guiltily as a stern voice echoed through the glade and Maddie felt her treacherous body jump to attention as the Conte strode into view. He looked cool despite the heat of the day, in well-cut linen trousers and a short-sleeved white shirt.

He took in the situation with one cool glance. ‘Aiding and abetting my daughter, signorina ?’

‘Only with half a sandwich.’ Maddie smiled at the unrepentant child.

‘That’s half a sandwich more than she deserves. Piccola , poor Isabella is looking everywhere for you. Go, find her and make your apologies.’

‘But it’s too lovely a day, Papa. I don’t want a siesta.’

‘Then, my child, you shouldn’t have got caught. But, as you were, go and take your chastisement like a Falcone. Then, if you’re good, we can go sailing this afternoon.’

The mutinous expression lightened and Arianna threw her arms around her father before taking off and running back in the direction of the castle, her half of Maddie’s sandwich still clasped in her hand. To Maddie’s surprise, and no little apprehension, the Conte made no move to follow his daughter, remaining in the glade and fixing Maddie with an inscrutable look.

With an inward sigh she put her own half-sandwich back in its bag. The cook had stuffed it full of mozzarella, rocket and sun-dried tomatoes; there was no way of eating it in any kind of dignified way, and Maddie needed all the dignity she could muster in front of this man.

‘It’s a lovely day.’

Small talk? Seriously. ‘Yes.’ Not the most articulate of responses, but all that expensive education teaching Maddie etiquette hadn’t prepared her for how to answer when a man said one thing, but his body language said something quite different. Dante Falcone was ramrod-straight, gaze fixed firmly on her, looking more as if he was about to deliver a lecture rather than discuss the weather.

Deliver a lecture or devour her whole. Maddie curled her hands into fists, refusing to give in to the urge to smooth her red skirt down, but she couldn’t help recalling what happened to girls in red who talked to wolf-eyed strangers in the woods.

Oh, what big eyes you have...

‘Would you be kind enough to accompany me on a short walk? There is something I would like to discuss with you.’

Maddie tried not to give her half-sandwich a longing look. She wanted to sit, eat and just be, not go for what was bound to be an excruciatingly uncomfortable walk. She had spent less than two hours in Dante Falcone’s company and in those two hours he had deliberately embarrassed her, she had embarrassed herself, she’d been borderline rude several times. Why would she put herself through a second dose of that?

‘Please,’ he added. And then he smiled. And that changed everything.

The smile transformed Dante Falcone’s face, softening the sharp, lean edges, transforming the saturnine look into something warmer, something Maddie wanted to get close to, his good looks no longer remote, statue-like, but flesh and blood and all the more attractive for that. Desire, new, hot and heavy, flooded through her, drying her throat and taking all capacity to think and reason away.

She reached for words, any words, but found none. Instead she nodded as he turned away towards a path she hadn’t yet explored, supremely confident that she’d follow him. And she did, her feet powerless to disobey.

‘You speak Italian very well.’

That was ironic; right now she could barely manage English. ‘I went to a finishing school near Geneva. We spoke mostly French and Italian there.’

Maddie sensed rather than saw the rise of his elegant brows. ‘And what brought you into event management?’

‘I kind of fell into it,’ she said carefully, but the Conte didn’t react, merely waited for her to carry on and reluctantly she did. ‘I grew up in a house a little like the Castello Falcone.’