Page 7 of The Virgin’s Dance with the Devil (The Martinelli Wedding #3)
Chapter Four
It was with perhaps the deepest reluctance Rico had ever experienced that he loosened his hold on Marisa, unwrapped his limbs from her, and stretched over for his phone.
This was one of only two numbers he’d set to override his phone’s silent setting, the caller under instructions to only make contact with definitive news.
He answered it with a curt, “I’ll call you back shortly. ”
This was a call he needed to take in privacy.
He caught Marisa’s stunning eyes. She’d twisted around and drawn her knees to her chest, and was looking at him with so many emotions flittering over her face that he wondered how one person could feel so many different things in one go.
Rico was very much a man who lived in the moment.
Sure, he was strategic and always made sure to be ten steps ahead of anyone else, but that was business.
Outside of business, life was for having fun.
He worked too hard to waste his playtime on things that stopped play.
As soon as a lover stopped being fun, he ended it and moved onto the next one.
One day he’d marry, if only to produce some grandkids to make his mother and grandmothers happy, and when he did, it would be to a woman who knew the score and knew not to make demands on his time or ask too many questions about his business dealings; a woman prepared to turn a blind eye to infidelities and who knew not to take them personally.
In short, a woman built from the same hardened mould as his mother.
As soon as Rico’s baby sister had been born and his parents had the girl they’d wanted, his mother had turned two of the adjoining guest rooms into an opulent bedroom and ensuite for herself.
As far as he knew, his father had never been invited to spend the night in it.
Considering his father always had at least two permanent mistresses on the go at any one time and God knew how many transient lovers, he didn’t imagine this bothered him much.
His parents sat down together for dinner most evenings and put on a united front when needed, but other than that, they lived separate lives, a state of affairs that suited them both.
A woman like Marisa would never put up with a marriage like that.
A woman like Marisa wanted love and fidelity forever, and why he was even thinking about what Marisa wanted in a husband was a mystery.
He should be planning his next move with her, not imagining her walking up an aisle towards him wearing a white dress.
“Who was that?” she asked with a soft wariness.
“Business.”
Her lips pulled into a small grimace.
By unspoken agreement, they didn’t discuss his work.
Marisa was the only woman he’d met whose eyes didn’t start flashing dollar signs at the mention of the Esposito casino chain he ran.
Marisa didn’t think his life was glamorous.
She thought it was dangerous and unconscionable.
She had strong morals, but he had strong morals too.
It was just that his morals were different to hers.
As far as Rico was concerned, people had personal autonomy and could make their own choices in life.
Sure, his father had built the family fortune off the back of a successful drugs and arms dealing trade, but those sides to the business had been eclipsed by the media empire they’d built legitimately…
well, as legitimately as could be built with dirty money…
and all their other mostly-legitimate businesses.
Rico believed in family first. You took care of your own, and you protected your own, and that included those who worked for you in whatever capacity that work took.
That’s where his morals lay, unlike those snobby bastards the Martinellis who’d chucked Marisa’s family out of their social circle like they were squatting bugs and dumped Pietro as their lawyer when his Parkinson’s disease started incapacitating him.
If Pietro Rossellini had been Rico’s lawyer, Rico would have got him first-class medical help and set him up with a nice lump sum as a mark of respect for decades of dedicated service and friendship, not allowed him to come within a breath of bankruptcy.
Marisa didn’t know Rico knew her sister’s marriage to Gennaro Martinelli was fake; built on an agreement where Gennaro paid off the Rossellini’s debts because he’d needed a wife to do business in a Middle Eastern country that forbade unmarried foreigners trading there.
Gennaro Martinelli was a multi-millionaire in his own right.
He hadn’t needed the deal, could have paid the Rossellinis’ debts off without breaking a sweat, but no, he’d done it to enrich himself.
And everyone in Italian society thought Rico and his family were the bad guys? Screw them all. Come Saturday, the Espositos and Martinelli families would unite in marriage, and the Martinellis and all their snobby friends would have no choice but to accept them in their snobby little world. Ha.
“I need to go back,” he told Marisa softly, not adding that there was every chance the call he needed to return might well confirm the endangerment of the wedding.
He would cross that bridge if and when he came to it.
She lifted her chin and nodded .
“Walk back with me?”
Her eyes clouded with uncertainty.
“Only to the top of the path. You walked here with me on it,” he reminded her.
Finally, she gave him a small smile. “Okay.”
He waited until they were on the path and away from any prying eyes before reaching for her hand. There was only a moment of resistance before she relaxed and threaded her fingers through his.
Rico wasn’t a man who usually held a woman’s hand, but this felt nice.
Not as nice as how kissing her had felt – although nice didn’t do what had to be the most intense and yet sweetest kiss he’d ever experienced the slightest bit of justice – but in its own way just as intimate.
Probably because it was forbidden. Forbidden fruit always tasted the sweetest, something else he wouldn’t mention to Marisa.
No doubt she’d think of Adam and Eve and remind herself that Rico was akin to the snake in that story.
It didn’t matter what she thought of him.
That she wanted him was all he cared about.
He was a step closer to his brother’s Swiss chalet and a step further away from giving up his most prized possession and having to spend the rest of his life listening to his arsehole brothers laugh at his failure.
They reached the sign forbidding under-eighteens to pass. He stopped walking. She stopped too with a barely audible sigh.
Facing her, he cupped her cheeks and gazed into what he thought might be the most beautiful eyes in the world. “Can I see you later?”
“I don’t know…” Her shoulders lifted in a helpless gesture. “I don’t know where we could meet.”
Knowing better than to suggest either of their suites, he said, “The seating area at the front of the spa. The spa will be closed by the time everyone’s finished dinner. If anyone’s there, it’ll be because they don’t want anyone else to see them.”
She fisted his t-shirt. “I don’t know… I’ll try.”
“Please come.” He brought his face closer to hers. “I don’t know how I can stand spending hours apart from you knowing you’re right here but too far away to touch.” And then he placed a cynically designed, sweet, lingering kiss on her plump lips.
The same glaze he’d seen in her eyes when he’d kissed her on the Bali bed had returned. He rubbed his thumb over her mouth and then kissed her again. “You walk away first,” he whispered over her lips. “I’ll give you a minute and then follow you out.”
She walked away on legs that his critical eye was thrilled to see were decidedly unsteady.
His legs felt a little unsteady too. Strange.
Wincing at the ache that had reformed in his loins, he pulled his phone out of his pocket. He took a few more steps to make sure she was out of earshot and then made the call.
Minutes later, he ended it with a vicious curse.
Marisa stayed close to her parents as they entered The Bianchi’s bustling main restaurant. She’d taken only two steps when she saw Rico. Her heart, already weighty with sick anticipation, burst into a canter.
All tall, dark and gorgeous in a black shirt open at the throat and trousers, his dark hair quiffed back, he was talking to one of his brothers and a group of other men she recognised from the engagement party.
A beat after she’d spotted him, his gaze locked onto hers. Barely another beat passed before Marisa looked away, but it was a beat enough for them to exchange the glimmer of a smile.
God help her, her feelings for him had mushroomed.
The few hours she’d spent apart from him had been spent in a form of suspended animation, their time together on the beach replaying itself over and over in her head.
Especially their kiss, and she had to fight not to think about it now because every time she recalled it, heat flushed through her body.
She could still feel the movement of his lips against hers as he’d coaxed her lips apart.
If her first kiss had been the most disgusting experience of her life, her second had been the most heavenly.
She hadn’t wanted it to end.
So caught up was she in not looking back at him as every fibre of her being longed to do that she didn’t register that they’d been placed on a table with Giuseppe and Carmella Martinelli until she caught her mother’s muttered curse.
“Chill,” Marisa whispered, selfishly glad of the distraction. “Save the stabbing until there’s no witnesses.”
Her mother squeezed her hand.