“You are my wife because I chose you for my wife. You cannot believe I want to end our marriage before it has really begun.”

The hot sulphur of his glare tinged her tender emotions. “You want out of our marriage. You say so. You do not want to be the mother of my bambini. Fine. Non è problema. Go.”

For the second time she was being told to leave Rico’s life. Only this time if she went, would he ever let her back in?

Apparently he truly did want to remain married. Knowing that, could she leave him? Did she want to leave him? The answer was simply no.

“I don’t want out of our marriage.” She whispered the words.

“Then you sleep in my bed.”

More praise for Lucy Monroe…

“Lucy Monroe captures the very heart of the genre. She pulls the reader into the story from the first to the last page.

The Italian’s Suitable Wife is nonstop romance from the first page to the last.

You’re going to love it!”

—Debbie Macomber

Mama Mia!

Harlequin Presents®

They’re tall, dark…and ready to marry!

If you love marriage of convenience stories that ignite into marriages of passion, then look no further. We’ve got the heroes you love to read about and the women who tame them.

Watch for more exciting tales of romance, Italian-style!

Coming next month:

His Convenient Wife (#2431)

by Diana Hamilton

Available only from Harlequin Presents®

The Italian’s Suitable Wife
Lucy Monroe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my critique partners, Erin and Kati.

Your friendship is something I will always treasure.

Thank you for being in my life and being the special women that you are.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER ONE

HIS lips hovered above hers.

Would they make contact? They never had before, no matter how much she ached for it. He started to lower his head and her heart kicked up its pace. Yes. Oh, yes. This would be the time. But even as she strained toward him, he began to back away. His image dissolved completely as the discordant note of a ringing telephone tugged her toward consciousness.

Gianna Lakewood picked up the cordless handset still half immersed in dreamland, a land where Enrico DiRinaldo was not engaged to supermodel, Chiara Fabrizio.

Her voice still husky from sleep and the emotions elicited by her dream, she said, “Hello?”

“Gianna, there’s been an accident.” The sound of Andre DiRinaldo’s voice brought her eyes wide-open as tension immediately tightened her grip on the phone.

“An accident?” she asked, sitting bolt upright and flipping on the bedside light almost in the same motion.

“Porco miseria. How do I say this?” He hesitated while she waited with a premonition of dread for what was to come. “It is Enrico. He is in a coma.”

“Where is he?” she demanded, jumping out of bed and clutching the phone to her ear, her green eyes wild with the fear coursing through her. She didn’t ask what happened. She could find that out later. She needed to know where Rico was and how soon she could get there. She started shucking out of her pajamas.

“He is in a hospital in New York.”

New York? She hadn’t even known Rico was in the States, but then she’d avoided news of him since his engagement to Chiara had been announced two months ago.

She hopped over to the nightstand, one leg still encased in cotton pajama bottoms, and grabbed a notepad and pen from the drawer. “Which one?” She wrote it down. “I’ll be there as soon as I can!”

She hung up before Andre could say another word. He would understand. He had thought to call her even though it was the middle of the night whereas Rico’s parents would have waited until morning in misguided courtesy. Because Rico’s brother knew that Gianna had loved Enrico DiRinaldo since she was fifteen years old.

Eight years of unnoticed and unrequited love, even his recent engagement to another woman had not been able to dampen those feelings.

She rushed around her tiny apartment, throwing together the necessary items for her trip to New York. She considered checking into flights, but discarded the idea. It was a two-and-a-half-hour drive, but it would take longer to get to the airport, book a flight and make the plane trip to New York. She wasn’t like the DiRinaldos. She couldn’t command first class attention, or even hope to get on the next available flight unless an economy seat was vacant.

She didn’t bother to take a brush to her chestnut-brown, waist-length hair, leaving it in the braid she slept in. Nor did she take time to throw on makeup. She barely dressed, leaving off her bra and slipping into a worn pair of jeans, lightweight sweater and tennis shoes, no socks.

A scant two hours later she walked into the hospital and asked to see Rico.

The woman behind the information desk looked up and asked, “Are you family?”

“Yes.” She lied without compunction. The DiRinaldos had always said she was family. The only family she had left. The fact she could claim no blood relation was irrelevant at the moment.

The woman nodded. “I’ll call an orderly to take you up.”

Five minutes that felt like five hours later, a young man dressed in green scrubs came to lead her to ICU. “I’m glad you’re here. We called his family in Italy three hours ago,” so just before Andre had called her, “and they won’t be here for another five to six hours. In cases like this having loved ones around in the first hours can make all the difference.”

Well she wasn’t a loved one, but she loved and she supposed that had to count for something. “What do you mean, cases like this?”

“You know Mr. DiRinaldo is in a coma?”

“Yes.”

“Comas are very mysterious things, even with all the medical knowledge we have today. There’s a case to be made for the presence of important people in the patient’s life bringing him out of the coma.” The orderly said this with a certain acidic bite she didn’t understand.

They stopped at the nurse’s station and she was given instructions for her visit with Rico. She also learned why the orderly had seemed so knowledgeable about Rico’s condition. He was actually the intern working with the ICU doctor on call.

She walked into the ICU unit, her eyes not taking in the medical paraphernalia surrounding Rico. All she could see was the man in the bed. Six feet four inches of vitality as lifeless as a waxwork doll. Eyelids covered the compelling silver eyes she loved so much. His face was badly bruised and one shoulder was splotched with purple as well.

He didn’t appear to be wearing anything but the sheet and blanket, which covered most of his torso. His breathing was so shallow, her heart literally stopped in her chest at first because she thought he wasn’t breathing at all.

She moved forward until she stood beside the bed, her lower body pressed against the metal bedrail. Her hand reached out of its own volition to touch him. She desperately needed to feel the life force beating beneath his skin. Seeing no bandages, she laid her hand very lightly over the left side of his chest. Her knees almost buckled with emotion.

The steady beat of his heart under her barely touching fingers was proof that as still as he was, as pale as he looked, Rico was still alive. “I love you, Rico. You can’t die. Please. Don’t stop fighting.”

She didn’t realize she was crying until the intern handed her a tissue to wipe at the tears sliding silently down her cheeks. She took it and mopped up without once taking her focus off the man in the bed.

“What happened?” she asked.

“They didn’t tell you?”

“I hung up before his brother had the chance. Getting here seemed more important than getting details,” she admitted.

“He was shot saving a woman from a mugging.”

“He was shot?” The only bandages she saw were on his head.

“It was just a crease—” the orderly pointed at the white gauze strips “—along his cranium, but he fell into oncoming traffic and was hit by a car.”

“The bruises?”

“Were from the car.”

“Is there any lasting damage?”

“The doctors don’t think so, but we won’t know until he wakes up.”

There was something in his voice and her head snapped around. “Tell me.”

“The nature of some of his injuries could result in temporary or permanent paralysis, but there’s no way of knowing for sure until he comes out of the coma.”

“Where is the doctor?” She wanted more information, more than the opinion of an intern, no matter how knowledgeable he might be.

“He’s making rounds. He’ll be in to see Mr. DiRinaldo in a little while. You can talk to him then.”

She nodded and turned her eyes back on Rico, immediately forgetting the intern was in the small cubicle. There was only Rico. He’d filled her world for so long, the prospect of a life without him in it made the pain she’d felt upon his engagement pale into insignificance.

“You have to wake up, Rico. You have to live. I can’t live without you. None of us can. Your mother, your father, your brother…we all need you. Please don’t leave us. Don’t leave me.” She even forced herself to mention Chiara and his upcoming wedding. “You’ll be married and on your way to being a papa soon, Rico. I know that is what you want. You always said you were going to have a houseful of children.”

She’d hoped with the naïve dreams of a girl that those babies would be hers, but she didn’t care if Chiara was the mother, Gianna just wanted Rico to live. She kept talking, pleading with him to wake up, not to give up and she told him over and over again how much she loved him.

She was holding Rico’s hand and willing him to come out of the coma when the doctor came by later.

He examined Rico’s chart and checked the electronic monitors by the bed. “All his vital signs look good.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do to wake him up?” she asked, her throat raw from swallowing tears.

The doctor shook his head. “I’m sorry. We’ve already tried stimulants to no effect.”

Her hand tightened on Rico’s unmoving one. “I guess he’ll just have to wake up on his own then. He will, you know. Rico’s got more stubborn genes than a Missouri mule.”

The doctor smiled, his tired blue eyes warming a little. “I’m sure you’re right. It’s my opinion, having family around does its part, too.” His tone was censorious, but she didn’t feel it was directed at her.

“His parents and brother will be here as soon as humanly possible. It’s a long flight from Milan, even on the fastest private jet in the world.”

“I’m sure you are right. It’s too bad his fiancée couldn’t see her way to staying.”

“Chiara is here, in New York?”

“Miss Fabrizio was contacted at her hotel. She came in and became hysterical at the sight of him, furious he’d risked his life for a woman too stupid to know not to walk alone at night.” This time the censure was blatant.

“But why isn’t she here?” Perhaps Chiara had stepped out to use the facilities or something.

“She stayed for about an hour, but when we informed her he was in a coma and we didn’t know how soon he’d come out of it, she decided to leave. She left a number to call when he wakes up.” There was a wealth of disgust in his words.

“She must be really upset.” Gianna looked again at Rico’s motionless countenance and had no trouble understanding his fiancée going to pieces over it. She couldn’t imagine leaving his side, but then everyone dealt with fear in their own way.

“She’ll sleep fine tonight. She insisted we prescribe her an oral sedative,” the doctor added.

Gianna nodded absently, once again focused almost entirely on Rico. She rubbed the skin of his hand with her thumb. “He’s so warm. It’s hard to believe he isn’t sleeping normally.”

The doctor made some comments about physiological differences between coma and normal sleep that she only half listened to.

“Is it all right if I stay?” she asked, knowing it would take an orderly for each arm and one for her legs to get her to move from Rico’s bedside.

Laughter rumbled in the doctor’s throat. “If I said no?”

“I’d sneak back in wearing scrubs and a mask and hide under the bed,” she admitted, amazed she could find any humor in a hospital room with Rico lying broken in the bed.

“As I thought. Are you his sister?” the doctor asked.

She felt the blood rush into her cheeks. Should she lie again? Looking at the understanding light in the doctor’s eyes, she didn’t think she would have to. “No, I’m a family friend.”

Speculation flickered briefly in his expression before he nodded. “I won’t tell if you won’t. It’s obvious you care. Your presence can’t hurt and may very well help enormously.”

Relief swirled through her bloodstream. “Thank you.”

“It’s all about what’s best for the patient.” The doctor exited the cubicle thinking it was a pity his patient wasn’t engaged to the tiny woman who obviously cared so much instead of the gorgeous Amazon with a heart like a rock.

Gianna was only vaguely aware of the doctor’s departure as memories of Rico assailed her. She picked up his hand. It was heavy and she kissed his palm before laying it back on the bed, her own covering it.

“Do you remember the year Mama died? I was five and you were thirteen. You should have hated having me tag after you. Andre called me a pest often enough, but you didn’t. You held my hand and talked to me about Mama. You took me to Duomo Cathedral, such a beautiful place, and told me I could be close to Mama there. It hurt so much and I was scared, but you comforted me.”

She suppressed the memory of how different it had been a year ago when her dad died. Rico had been dating Chiara then and the other woman had no time for Gianna and had made sure Rico didn’t, either.

“Rico, I don’t want comforting now. Do you hear me? I want you to get better. I thought nothing could hurt more than when you announced your engagement…but I was wrong. If you die, I don’t want to go on living. Do you hear me, Rico?” She leaned forward, her head resting against the strong muscles of his forearm. “Please, don’t die,” she pleaded as tears once again bathed her skin and his.

She was dozing when a familiar voice repeating her name woke her up.

“Gianna? Wake up, piccola mia.”

She lifted her head from its resting place by Rico’s thigh. Sometime in the last five hours, she had lowered the bedrail and settled her head beside him. She needed the physical contact as a reminder that Rico was still alive.

Her eyes slowly focused as she blinked in the subdued lighting of the ICU cubicle. “Andre, where are your parents?”

He grimaced. “They left only two days ago on a cruise aboard a friend’s yacht to celebrate their anniversary. Papa insisted on complete privacy and secrecy. They won’t be back for another month and I know of no way to contact them. Rico was the only one with that information.”

He left unsaid the obvious. Rico was in no condition to share his knowledge with them. Her insides twisted when she thought of the reaction Rico’s parents would have to the news of their son’s accident and Andre’s inability to reach them.

“If he dies…” Andre’s emotion-filled voice trailed off.

She glared at the younger version of Rico. “He won’t die. I won’t let him,” she said fiercely.

Andre reached out and squeezed her shoulder, but said nothing. He didn’t need to. They both knew she could not will Rico to live, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying.

“The doctor said there has been no change in his condition since it stabilized after he was brought in.”

“Yes.” She’d been there for every blood pressure check, every time a nurse came in and read his monitors, marking the stats down on his chart.

“When did you arrive?” he asked.

She shrugged. “A couple of hours after you called.”

“The drive is longer than that.”

She just looked at him and he sighed. “It’s a good thing you didn’t get a ticket. Rico would have blasted you for it.”

“When he comes out of his coma he can lecture me all he likes about my driving.”

Andre nodded. “I know.” Then his gaze skirted the room as if looking for something. “Where’s Chiara? I thought she was supposed to be with him on this trip. She’s modeling in some show while Rico attends the banking conference.”

She told him what the doctor had said and Andre cursed eloquently in Italian, then switched to Arabic when he saw the way her face turned red. “I’m sorry. She’s just such a bitch and my brother’s too smitten to see it.”

The image of a love-struck Rico was both painful and funny. “I can’t quite imagine Rico’s judgment completely obliterated by a pretty face, Andre. I’m sure there are things about Chiara that he genuinely admires. He’s marrying her after all. He must love her.” Even saying the words hurt, but she gritted her teeth against the pain of acknowledging Rico’s desire for another woman.

Andre snorted. “More likely he’s sexually obsessed with her. She knows how to use her body to its best advantage.”

If her face had been red before, now it was flaming. “I…”

Andre sighed. “You are so innocent, piccola.”

She didn’t want to dwell on her twenty-three-year-old virginal status. She’d never wanted any man but Rico and he’d never seen her as anything other than a younger sister.

“How was your flight?”

Andre shook his head. “I don’t know. I spent the entire time praying and worrying.”

She reached out and gripped his hand, never letting go of her connection with the man in the bed. “He’ll be all right, Andre. He has to.”

“Have you eaten since you got here?”

“I haven’t been hungry.”

“It’s hours past breakfast,” he admonished her.

And that was how the next four days went. Rico was moved to a private room, per Andre’s instructions. Gianna took the opportunity to shower. Other than that, she refused to leave Rico’s room. She spent every moment, waking and dozing, by Rico’s bedside. Andre bullied her into eating and drinking only by bringing the food and beverages into Rico’s room.

Chiara came to see Rico once a day and stayed for five minutes each time. She looked at Gianna with a mixture of scorn and pity. “Do you really think this incessant vigil will make the least difference? He’ll wake up when he wakes up and then he will want me by his side.”

Gianna didn’t bother to argue. No doubt Chiara was right, but it didn’t matter.

It was three in the morning on the fifth day. The hospital halls were quiet, the nurse had taken Rico’s vitals at midnight and no staff had come to disturb the silence of his room since. Andre was asleep on a reclining chair in the corner. Gianna couldn’t doze, so she was talking again and touching Rico.

She brushed his arm and looked lovingly into his still face. “I love you, Rico. More than my own life. Please wake up. I don’t care if it’s to marry Chiara and give her all the babies I want to have. I don’t care if you kick me out of your life after hearing what a besotted fool I’ve been the last five days. Just wake up.”

She said the last on a note of desperation and was hoping so fiercely for him to make some sign he’d heard that when he moved, she thought she’d imagined it. The muscles of his arms spasmed and his head jerked from side to side.

She pressed the call button while shouting to Andre. “He’s coming out of it! Andre, wake up!”

Andre came out of the chair fully alert. After that, everything was a blur. The nurse came running in. Soon she was followed by a doctor and then another nurse. Andre and Gianna were shooed out of the room. Then came the waiting. Gianna paced while Andre first sat and then stood, then paced, then sat again. Finally, the doctor came into the waiting room.

It was the same one who’d been on call the night Rico had been brought in. He smiled at Andre and Gianna. “He’s awake, but he’s a little disoriented. You can see him for five minutes one at a time.”

Andre went first. He came back to the waiting room, his expression troubled.

She was desperate to see Rico and would have brushed by Andre without a word, but his hand snaked out and grabbed her. “Wait, cara. There is something I must tell you.”

“What is it?”

Andre swallowed convulsively and then met her gaze head-on. The look of anguish in his eyes terrified her.

“What’s wrong? He hasn’t gone back into a coma, has he?”

“No. He…” Andre took a deep breath and let it out. “He can’t move his legs.”

CHAPTER TWO

RICO’S eyes were fixed on the doorway when Gianna walked in. She couldn’t miss the expression of disappointment that clouded his expression briefly before he masked it.

“Hello, piccola mia. Did Andre ask you to come and keep him company waiting for me to wake up?”

The endearment did things to her heart when Rico said it that didn’t happen when Andre called her his little one. She smiled, her relief that he was talking so acute, she couldn’t get a word past the blockage in her throat for several seconds. She stopped beside the bed, noticing someone had raised the guardrail.

“I couldn’t have been kept away,” she said with more honesty than was probably wise.

One corner of his mouth tipped up. “Always the nurturer. I still remember the cat…”

His words trailed off. He looked tired. Exhausted, really. “He turned out to be a lovely pet.”

“So Mama thought. She gave him the run of the place until he died,” he replied, speaking of a tabby cat she had rescued from the road after it had been injured when she was ten.

“Pamela was furious with me and wanted to call the animal people to come take it away,” she said, speaking of her stepmother. Gianna smiled. “You wouldn’t let her.”

“What kind of cat do you have now?”

She’d always had pets, usually strays picked up from somewhere, but once there had been a puppy her parents had given her when she was four. He’d been a wonderful friend and she’d cried buckets when he died. “I don’t have any animals.”

His face registered surprise. “That’s not like you.”

It wasn’t by choice. She lived in campus housing and pets weren’t allowed. She had no intention of burdening Rico with her problems, however. So she just smiled again and shrugged.

“You haven’t asked how I’m feeling.”

She gripped the bedrail to stop herself from touching him. She’d gotten so used to the freedom over the past five days. “You look like you’ve been pummeled on the playground by the school bully. I don’t imagine you feel much better.”

That made him chuckle and she rejoiced in the sound. Then he sobered. “My legs don’t move.” His expression and voice had gone blank.

She couldn’t resist the urge to take his hand. “They will. You’ve got to be patient. You’ve had a terrible experience. Your body is still in shock.”

His eyes remained unreadable, but his hand returned her grip with betraying fierceness. “Where is Chiara?”

Oh, Heavens. Gianna had forgotten to call the other woman. She felt guilty color stain her cheeks. “I was so excited you’d come out of coma, I forgot to call.” She reluctantly pulled her hand from his. “I’ll do it right away.”

“Tell her to come round in the morning.” His eyes closed. “I’ll be more myself then.”

“All right.” She moved toward the door. “Sleep well, caro,” she whispered. The endearment was so common it was like saying hey you, but she said it with a surfeit of emotion she prayed he could not hear.

He didn’t reply.

Rico waited impatiently for Chiara to come. Andre and Gianna had both been in to see him again this morning and stayed until he had tired. Gianna looked exhausted and thinner than he remembered. He wondered if her job as an assistant professor was taking too much out of her. He’d have to talk to his mother about it.

But even exhausted, Gianna exuded an innocent sensuality that he’d never been completely able to ignore. At times it had made him feel guilty because his body reacted even though his mind saw her as more sister than woman. Regardless of his body’s baffling response, he’d never once considered pursuing it. He didn’t bed virgins and until recently, marriage had held no appeal.

His damn legs still wouldn’t move and the doctors could not tell him if the paralysis was permanent or not. Gianna was convinced it was temporary and had said so again that morning. She was such a sweet little thing. He was surprised she wasn’t married yet. She’d be twenty-four next year, but then American women married later, he thought. It was too bad Andre didn’t see her as marriage material. Rico wouldn’t mind having her in the family.

A surge of something dark and inexplicable stabbed him at the image of Andre walking down the aisle with Gianna. He tried to convince himself it was because Rico didn’t know if he would be able to walk down the aisle with Chiara when the time came. He could very well still be in a wheelchair. But something ugly had shifted in him at the thought of Gianna married.

Was he such an egoist he couldn’t stand the thought of losing her innocent adoration? The thought did not sit well.

“Caro! You mustn’t glare like that. You’ll scare the nurses off and then who will bring you your lunch?” A trill of laughter accompanied Chiara into the room.

He watched his beautiful fiancée’s entrance. Any man would be proud to claim Chiara for his own, but she belonged to Rico. “Give me a kiss and I won’t feel like frowning any more.”

She made a moue with her mouth. “Naughty man. You’re sick.”

“So kiss me and make it better,” he taunted.

Something flickered in her eyes but she came forward and offered her lips for a brief salute. He wanted to demand more, but he allowed her to step back from the bed.

“You weren’t here last night,” he said.

Her eyes filled with tears and her expression was wounded. “That brother of yours and the little paragon,” she must have meant Gianna, “they kept me out of it. They didn’t call me for hours after you woke up.”

Why hadn’t his brother called Chiara right away? “They were here. You were not.”

The tears spilled over. “That horrible girl! She’s infatuated with you. She wouldn’t leave your side. There wasn’t even room for me next to the bed. Half the staff are convinced she’s your fiancée.”

He couldn’t imagine Gianna doing something so cruel. “You’re exaggerating.”

Chiara spun away and her shoulders shook with misery. “I’m not.”

“Come here, bella.”

She turned around and returned to stand by the bed, her face wet with tears. “She lied to get into your room the first night. She told them she was related to you. And she never left, just like some pathetic clinging vine.”

“Everyone was upset.”

“But I’m your fiancée. I want you to tell her to stop acting like she is and not to spend so much time here at the hospital. I don’t want to be tripping over her.”

“Are you jealous?” he asked, the thought not unpleasant considering the state of his body.

She pouted with expert effect. “Maybe, a little.”

“I’ll talk to her,” he promised.

Gianna walked into Rico’s room an hour after she’d woken from the first unbroken stretch of sleep she’d had in six nights. Andre had insisted she take the other bedroom in his suite, saying it was just going to waste until his parents could arrive. She’d been grateful as her budget did not stretch to Manhattan hotel prices or taxi fares from a less expensive part of the city. She hadn’t relished the thought of sleeping in her car or depleting her small savings account to nothing.

Rico looked up, his smile of greeting conspicuous in its shortness.

She stopped a few feet from the bed. “You look better.” And he did. His skin wasn’t so pale under the tan and his eyes were clearer.

“Gianna, we need to talk.”

He’d found out how she had refused to leave his side. He knew she loved him and he pitied her.

She swallowed the knot of pain her pride had lodged in her throat. “Yes?”

“You are like a sister to me.”

She hid the pain those words caused, but remained silent.

“You care about my health and this is understandable, but cara, you must not push Chiara aside in your concern for me.”

He thought she’d pushed his fiancée to the side? Gianna wanted to defend herself, but to do so would require telling him Chiara hadn’t wanted to be with Rico when he was so sick. She couldn’t do it. It would hurt him too much when he was vulnerable from his injuries.

“I didn’t mean to push her aside,” she said instead.

“I did not think you did. You are too tender-hearted to deliberately hurt someone like that, but you must be more considerate in future, no?”

She nodded, choking on the words she wanted to say. “I’ll try,” she promised.

“Chiara does not want you visiting so often,” Rico went on.

“What do you want, Rico?” she asked helplessly.

“I want my fiancée to be happy. This is a trying time for her. I do not want her upset further.”

It was a trying time for him too, but Rico never considered his own needs. He thought only of protecting those he loved. “Andre said you refuse to contact your parents.”

“There is no need for them to cut short their holiday.”

“Your mother would want to be here.”

“I do not want to be fussed over.” The impatience in his voice made her smile.

“I’m surprised you’re not working.”

“San celio. Andre refused to bring in the laptop and the doctor ordered the phone removed when he found me talking to our office in Milan last night.”

“What time last night?” she asked, pretty sure she knew the answer.

“What time do you think? When the office opened.”

Which would have been roughly 3:00 a.m. No wonder the doctor had the phone removed. She shook her head. “You are supposed to be resting. How can you get better if you won’t let your body recuperate?”

“What choice have I?” he demanded, indicating his still legs below the blanket.

She took several involuntary steps forward until she was next to the bed. She laid her small hand across his large one. “You don’t have any choice right now, but you will get better.”

His silver gaze caught hers and his hand turned until their fingers were entwined. “Cara, you always believe the best, no?”

She nodded, unable to speak. The feel of his hand holding hers was such a sweet torment she didn’t want words to intrude.

“I believe the best also. I will walk again.” He said it with such arrogance, how could she help believing him?

“When have you merely walked, Rico?” she asked with a husky voice she did not recognize.

His free hand came up and cupped her cheek and a look she did not understand passed across his face. She went completely still, allowing every fiber of her being to absorb the delicious feeling produced by his touch. It would be gone all too soon and she didn’t want to waste a moment of it.

His eyes narrowed. “Chiara believes you are infatuated with me, cara.”

“I…” She swallowed.

“I told her you are like my sorello piccola.”

Like his little sister? Yes, she knew he saw her that way, but she did not look on him as a big brother and her senses were running riot with his hand on her cheek and his fingers entwined with hers. “Right.”

He brushed his thumb across her lips and she shivered.

Silver eyes turned gunmetal gray. “You are cold?”

“No,” she whispered. Why was he touching her like this?

“What is going on in here?” Chiara’s voice raised in furious censure, broke the spell of Rico’s touch and Gianna jumped back.

She forgot her hand linked with his and was pulled up like a dog at the end of its leash as his hold on her did not lessen.

She tugged against her hand, but Rico didn’t let go. He was looking at Chiara, his expression unreadable. “I am visiting with Gianna. She is not too busy to spend more than five minutes in my company.”

Two things became apparent to Gianna at once. Chiara was jealous and Rico knew it.

“I’ve spoken to Gianna about letting you take your rightful place at my side, but you must be here to do so, bella.”

Chiara’s beautiful face turned red with temper and she glared at their entwined hands. “I am on assignment. You know I cannot spend every waking moment at the hospital like your pet limpet.”

“She has her own job. Yet she finds the time.”

He hadn’t even bothered to protest the pet limpet remark, so she did it. She yanked on her hand. Hard. He let go. “I’m no one’s pet, Chiara. I’m a friend and I didn’t realize my visiting Rico would upset you so much.”

Chiara’s glare did not lessen. “You expect me to believe that, the way you’ve carried on for the last week. Andre treats me with contempt and you, he insists on keeping in his own suite at the hotel.”

“You are staying with Andre?” Rico demanded, a tone in his voice that sounded very much like disapproval.

“There are two bedrooms in the suite. I’m using one until your parents arrive.”

“They aren’t coming.”

“Because you won’t call them,” she said with some exasperation.

He ignored that. “It is not seemly for you to stay with an unmarried man alone in his hotel suite.”

“It would be even less seemly for me to sleep in my car.”

“Per favore, spare us the dramatics,” Chiara jeered.

Gianna wanted to smack the beautifully painted red lips, but she wasn’t a violent person…at least she never had been. She supposed there was a first time for everything. “Where I stay is neither of your business,” she said firmly.

Chiara’s eyes shot disdain at Gianna. “It is when you take advantage of the generosity of my fiancé’s family to keep yourself underfoot and in the way.”

“Stop playing the shrew and come here. I want my kiss of greeting,” Rico demanded of Chiara.

He hadn’t bothered to deny she was in the way and for all Gianna knew, he felt the same as his fiancée. He’d told her not to visit him as much. But he had taken Chiara to task for being rude. That was something at least.

Still, perhaps it was time for Gianna to go back to Massachusetts. She hadn’t had her position long enough to accrue significant vacation time and since she wasn’t related to Rico by blood, the university administration did not see her absence as a family emergency. The department head had already made one not very veiled threat regarding her job if she wasn’t in class teaching the following Monday.

Chiara was obeying Rico with an overkill of enthusiasm. Gianna turned to give the couple some privacy, but the kiss lasted minutes. Finally, the pain of being in the room with the man she loved while he kissed another woman got to her and she walked out, sure they wouldn’t notice.

“I told you she had a crush on you.” Chiara’s voice floated out the open door and down the hallway to where Gianna waited for the elevator.

Gianna felt waves of mortified color sweep up her skin. She’d spent eight years nursing a secret love and to have it laid bare for that witch to mock was more than she could bear. She was furious with Rico too. He’d used her to make his barracuda of a fiancée jealous. All that touching that had meant so much to her had been nothing more than a ploy to keep Chiara in line.

Evidently Rico didn’t approve of his fiancée’s flying visits any more than Gianna and Andre did.

“Gianna’s feelings for me are of no concern to you.” Rico could hear the bite in his voice and did nothing to mitigate it.

Chiara’s kiss had not blinded him to her vicious attitude toward Gianna, an attitude he would not tolerate. “And you will not speak to her again as you did when you arrived. Her genuine concern for me is not something to mock.”

Chiara’s eyes widened in shock. “How can you say these things? Another woman’s feelings toward you are definitely my concern.”

“Gianna is no threat to you.” But even as he said the words, he wondered at their truth. Would he have kissed the younger woman if Chiara had not arrived when she did? He didn’t like to believe he was capable of such a dishonorable act. His affections were committed to Chiara, but he hadn’t wanted to let go of Gianna’s hand and the feel of her soft lips under his fingertips had caught at his emotions in a way Chiara’s extended kiss had not.

“She’s a little schemer and it devastates me that you can’t see that.” The tears welling in his fiancée’s eyes did not move him as they once would have done.

She’d spent too little time at his bedside and her complaints about Gianna simply did not ring true. He wondered just who the schemer in this situation really was.

Gianna waited until the following evening to visit Rico again.

He was talking on a hospital phone and typing on a laptop set up on a desk across his legs when she came in. She smiled wryly to herself. Nothing and no one could keep Rico out of business circulation for long. He looked up and spotted her. He motioned to a chair near the bed and she sat down, waiting patiently for him to finish his call.

Lines around his eyes made him look tired, but he had more color and his jet black hair had been washed and styled in its usual neat fashion. He wore a navy-blue silk pajama jacket that looked brand new. It probably was. She didn’t imagine Rico was the type of man to wear pajamas to bed.

He rang off and moved the desk with the portable computer aside. “Been busy sightseeing?” he asked with an edge to his voice.

“Sightseeing?” she asked incredulously.

“You have not been in to see me since yesterday morning.”

He needn’t sound so accusing. “You said Chiara didn’t like me visiting so much.”

“I did not mean for you to stop coming all together.” Silver eyes snapped their disapproval at her. “For all you knew I had slipped back into a coma.”

He was being totally unreasonable and for some reason she found that terribly endearing. It was almost as if he’d missed her. “I’m here now,” she said soothingly, “and Andre would have told me if you’d taken a turn for the worse.”

“Si. Andre, whom you share your hotel room with.”

“We don’t share a room.” She examined his face for a clue to the source of his irritability. “Are you in pain?”

He glared at her. “I have been shot and hit by a car driven by a man who could not see his hand in front of his face in a brightly lit room. Of course I have some pain.”

He sounded so outraged, she had to stifle a grin. “I don’t think the driver was expecting a man to fall in the street in front of him.”

Rico dismissed that with a flick of his hand. “Blind fool,” he muttered.

“Andre said you saved the woman’s life. They caught the mugger and he had a list of prior offenses as long as your arm, most of them were violent assault and he’d already killed two women.” Andre had also told her that the woman had come by the hospital to thank Rico, but he had told his security to keep out all visitors except her, his brother and Chiara. “You wouldn’t let her thank you.”

“I do not need this thanks. I am a man. I could not drive by and do nothing.”

“If you ask me, you’re more than an average man.” She smiled at him, letting him see her approval. “You’re a hero.”

His eyes warmed slightly. “Chiara believes all this,” he indicated his unmoving legs, “is my fault.”

Gianna jumped up and laid her hand protectively on his arm. “No. You mustn’t think that. You were being the best kind of man. You paid a price, but you wouldn’t let that stop you from doing it again.”

His hand came up to hold hers and she was reminded of the day before, both of the wonderful feelings his touch invoked and the way she’d felt used when she realized he’d touched her only to make Chiara jealous.

She pulled her hand away and stepped back. “I don’t plan to stay long,” she said quickly, lest he think she was clinging like the limpet Chiara had accused her of being.

“Why? Do you have a hot date with Andre?” he asked scathingly, his unreasonable anger back in full force.

“He’s taking me to dinner, but I’d hardly call it a hot date.”

“Do not pin your spinsterish hopes on my brother. He is not ready to settle down.”

She clenched her teeth. “I’m not pinning anything on him, much less a desire to marry. We’re going to dinner because he doesn’t mind my company.”

“I do not mind your company.” He pointed at his chest with an arrogant finger. “You could have dinner here, with me.”

“What’s the matter, can’t Chiara get away from her busy modeling schedule to share a meal with you?” Gianna asked with uncharacteristic bite, still stinging from the way he had used her to make the other woman jealous the day before.

His remark about spinsterish hopes had done nothing to make her feel more charitable toward him, either.

His look could have stripped paint. “My fiancée is none of your business.”

Gianna’s heart melted. It had been a rotten thing to say and she just knew all that anger was hiding pain. Chiara was a totally selfish person who wouldn’t know how to put herself out for another human being if her life depended on it. Worse, here was Rico, tired, in pain, not sure if he’d walk again and Gianna doing her best to act like a witch as well.

“I could call Andre and ask him to pick up dinner and bring it here,” she offered by way of a peace offering.

“I will call him.” And he did just that. He made arrangements with Andre in a burst of staccato Italian before hanging up the phone.

“I told him to get you your own room.”

“I heard you, but it won’t be necessary. I’ll only be staying one more night. Surely my reputation and his virtue will be able to survive such a short test.”

Rico looked disgruntled. “I did not say you would attack him.”

“How else would a spinster like me expect to get a macho Italian male like your brother to the altar?”

“Why do you say you will only be staying one more night?” he asked, sidestepping her taunting words.

“I’m going home tomorrow.”

“Why would you do this? I am not well. Do you see me ready to leave this place?” He sounded like a man ready to explode.

She couldn’t imagine why. “You don’t need me to stay and hold your hand. You’ve got Andre and Chiara. And your fiancée doesn’t like having me underfoot.” The words still rankled.

“You did not remain by my bedside for five solid days for Chiara’s sake.”

So, he knew about her vigil. Probably realized how much she loved him, too, which was all the more reason for her to leave. Her pride had already been dented but good by Chiara’s nasty comments.

“You’re better now.”

He reached out and grabbed her wrist, pulling her close to the bed. His expression was intense, the hold on her wrist almost bruising. “I am not well. I am not walking.”

“But you will walk.”

Frustration was apparent in the set of his firm lips. “Yes. You believe this. I believe this, but my brother, my fiancée, they have their doubts.”

“You’ll just have to prove them wrong.”

He nodded, heartwarming in his arrogant confidence of his return to full health. “I do not wish to do this alone.”

Such an admission from Rico was astonishing and she couldn’t gather her wits enough to respond.

“I need you here, believing in me, cara.”

She almost fainted, she was so shocked at his words. “You need me?” she asked in a choked whisper.

“Stay.” It sounded more like an arrogant command than a plea for her support, but Gianna knew what it had cost him to say it and she could not refuse.

“Okay.”

He smiled and pulled her close for a kiss of gratitude.

At least that’s what she assumed it was supposed to be, but Rico kissed her lips, not her cheek and the moment their mouths connected, their surroundings ceased to exist for her.

CHAPTER THREE

COLORS in every hue swirled around her as Gianna’s lips tasted Rico’s for the first time. His mouth was firm, warm and tasted faintly spicy. She inhaled and was engulfed in his masculine scent. Rico. She ached to run her fingers through his hair, to explore the contours of his chest under the pajama jacket. She probably would have, if he didn’t have such a firm hold on her wrist.

Her other hand was gripping the bedrail with white-knuckle intensity.

He broke the kiss and she hung there, suspended in a world of sensation she was not ready to leave. Her eyes opened slowly to see him smiling at her.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you?” For what? For kissing him?

“For staying,” he replied, not without some amusement.

And it hit her. It had been a kiss of gratitude. Here she was, poised to reconnect with his lips and he was smiling at her like an indulgent older brother, pleased he’d gotten his own way. She straightened and spun away so quickly the long braid down her back arced over her shoulder to land against her left breast. “N-no problem. I’ll call the college and let them know I won’t be returning right away.”

She had a feeling that phone call wouldn’t go over very well, but even if it meant losing her job, she wouldn’t leave Rico. Not as long as he needed her.

Andre arrived with dinner and Rico ate the beautifully prepared pasta dishes and steamed vegetables with fervor. “This is a great improvement over the food served here.”

“You could have your meals delivered,” Andre replied.

Rico shrugged. “It has not been my main concern.”

No, Gianna thought, that would be reserved for business and walking again. Maybe even in that order.

“Something that does concern me is Gianna staying in your hotel room. I do not like this.”

Andre gave his brother an interested appraisal. “Why not?”

“It is not good for her reputation.”

Gianna couldn’t help laughing at this. “Rico, you’re a total throwback. No one cares if I stay in Andre’s suite.”

“I care,” Rico informed her with an attitude that said that was all that should matter.

“Well, you are not my keeper. I haven’t got the money for a prolonged stay in a hotel room.” Particularly if she lost her job.

“I will pay for it.”

She glared at him. “No, you will not.”

“Besides, there is no need,” Andre inserted. “My suite has two bedrooms and since you won’t call Papa and Mama back from their cruise, the second one will go empty if Gianna does not stay in it.”

She thought Andre’s argument had merit. From the angry tilt to Rico’s chin, he did not agree.

He pinned her with a look that sent shivers to places she had yet to discover. “You will allow Andre to care for your needs, but you refuse my help?”

She barely suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. “It’s not the same thing. It doesn’t cost Andre anything more to give me the extra room in the suite.”

“You think I begrudge you this trifling amount?” Rico demanded.

Why was he being so obtuse? “No. Of course, not. It’s simply that I’m already there.” She laid aside her fork and allowed herself to make direct visual contact for the first time in an hour. She’d perfected the art of talking to his shoulder since almost making a complete fool of herself over that kiss.

“I don’t know what you’re so worried about, Rico. My name doesn’t make it into the social columns on a regular basis. No one cares where I sleep or who I do it with for that matter.”

His expression turned feral and she found herself scooting to the back of her chair, her body posed stiffly away from him.

“You have shared your bed with a man?”

Heat scorched up her cheeks until they burned like the Chicago fire of 1908. “That’s none of your business.”

“I do not agree.” He looked ready to get up out of the bed and shake an answer out of her.

Even knowing that was not possible did not suppress the shiver of apprehension that skittered down her spine. She swung her gaze to Andre, appealing to him for help with her eyes, but he was obviously enjoying the conversation too much to step in on her behalf. She looked back at Rico.

His expression had not softened at all.

“I really don’t want to talk about this with you.”

“You will tell me the name of the man.”

Heavens. When had her silence become an affirmative answer? And what right did he have to grill her like this? If Chiara were still a virgin, Gianna would dance naked on the top floor of the Empire State Building. “Are you saying you and Chiara don’t sleep together?”

“This is not under discussion.”

“Nothing is under discussion,” she came close to shrieking.

“You are very red. You are embarrassed, no?”

Why bother denying it? He’d know she was lying. Her blush had already given her away. “Yes.”

“A woman of experience would not be so discomfited,” he said with smug assurance.

That set her over the edge. “Are you sure about that? Maybe I’ve slept with tons of men. Maybe I’m even sharing Andre’s bed now and the two room suite is only a ruse.”

She realized she’d let her temper lead her into deep, dark waters a second before he exploded. Mr. Cool Italian business magnate sent the portable table with his dinner on it careening across the room and started shouting at Andre.

Gianna spoke fluent Italian, but she didn’t recognize some of the words. From the ones she did, she guessed they were curses. Andre’s usually smiling face was stiff with shock. He tried to tell Rico it was a joke, but Rico’s fury did not abate. His hands pounded the air, punctuating his angry speech and if he had been mobile, his brother would have been flat on his back. She was sure of it.

“For Heaven’s sake.” She jumped out of her chair and crossed to the bed, standing between Rico and Andre. “Calm down. I said what if, not that I had. Rico—”

His arms snapped around her waist and she found herself sitting next to him on the bed, her chin cradled in a surprisingly gentle but firm hold. “Do you sleep with my brother?”

“No. I’ve never been with any man,” she admitted, thinking nothing but the truth could completely diffuse the situation.

Rico’s glare was sulfuric. “Yet you taunted me with the idea you had.”

She couldn’t begin to understand why it mattered so much to him. Perhaps he felt responsible for her in some way since her father had died. She wouldn’t have known it by the way he’d ignored her for the past year, but maybe the feeling was there all the same.

“I wasn’t taunting you. You embarrassed me and made me angry. Most women are not…not…” She couldn’t make herself say the word. “Well, by my age, most women have some experience.”

“But you do not.”

“I do not.” She agreed and stifled a depressed sigh. With him marrying Chiara, that wasn’t likely to change, either.

He brushed her cheek with his fingers before dropping his hand from her face. “You should not be embarrassed to speak of these things to me.”

She didn’t know where he’d got that from. How could she help but be embarrassed to talk about it? She’d never even admitted her lack of practical application when discussing the subject with her girlfriends in college. But she didn’t want to spark another outburst so she remained silent.

She went to get up, but his arm around her waist prevented her. “Rico?”

“You are very innocent.”

She grimaced. That had been well and truly established. “If you’re finished dissecting my lack of a love life, could I get up please? I want to go back to the hotel.”

His hand was warm against her waist and he was idly brushing his thumb back and forth in a manner guaranteed to drive her mad or into a lustful frenzy. She wasn’t sure there was much difference between the two.

“You will move to another room.”

“No.” Andre’s firm denial surprised her into looking at him, regardless of the fascination Rico’s small caresses held for her.

Andre’s face was set in hard lines. “This is New York, Enrico. It would be inadvisable to allow Gianna to stay in a room by herself, even in a hotel with security.”

“Then I will assign one of my security people to watch her room.”

This conversation was growing more bizarre by the minute.

Andre shook his head in a short, decisive negative. “How can it be better for her to stay in a hotel room with a stranger than with me?”

Her attention swiveled back to Rico. He was scowling thoughtfully. “Perhaps we should get Chiara to stay in the suite as well.”

“No!” Andre and Gianna chorused at once.

Rico’s brows rose. “What bothers you about this?”

How did you tell a man you could not stand his fiancée for dirt? Gianna cleared her throat, trying to think of a tactful way of putting her absolute refusal to share living space with the selfish witch.

“Gianna told me what Chiara said about her,” Andre said, disapproval clear in his voice. “Your fiancée’s unfounded jealousy was the reason Gianna considered going back to Massachusetts in the first place.”

“Now you seek to protect her from my fiancée?” Rico asked with silky vitriol. “Are you sure there is nothing you two wish to share with me?”

She’d had about enough of Rico’s overdeveloped sense of responsibility toward her. She was not some helpless female in need of his protection. She’d been on her own, if not physically then emotionally since long before her father had died. Or maybe Rico really thought she’d set her sights on marriage to the younger DiRinaldo brother.

“This is ridiculous. I’m not about to trip Andre and try to beat him to the floor.”

Andre smiled, all Italian male. “Which is not to say, cara, that I will not be so inclined.”

The hand on her waist tightened and Rico glared retribution at his brother. “Your humor is misplaced.”

“So is your hand, considering you are engaged to marry someone else,” Andre taunted.

Rico’s hold did not loosen one bit. “She is practically family.”

“Is she?” Andre asked. “I wonder.”

“What I am is tired of this conversation.” She yanked on Rico’s hand at her waist. He let go and she stood up.

Setting both fists on her hips, she directed her next words to Rico. “If you want me to stay in New York, it will be in Andre’s suite and Chiara’s services as chaperone will not be required. Even virginal spinsters have their standards and mine don’t run to primitive, arrogant males who talk about me as if I’m not even in the room.”

Rico winced at the word spinster and Andre’s expression turned calculating. “It is true, Enrico is almost medieval in his outlook, but I am a modern man. I do not see anything wrong with a twenty-three-year-old woman remaining unmarried.”

“Fine, modern man, take me back to the hotel. I’m ready for some of my own company.”

Rico grumbled some more about her staying in Andre’s suite, but in the end he acquiesced. He didn’t have any choice. Gianna loved him enough to risk her job, but that didn’t make her a doormat.

Doormat was the last thing Rico would have called Gianna over the next two weeks. She harangued him about working too much and not participating in his physical therapy sessions enough. She argued when he had the fast modem line installed in his room at the private hospital he’d moved to. That same day he had caught her unplugging the phone beside his bed and giving it to an orderly to take away. She’d been unrepentant.

Whereas Chiara spent very little time at the hospital and refused to attend his sessions at all. She’d left for Paris two days before to model in a Fall fashion show. Which was fine by him. No man wanted his woman around to see him helpless and that’s how he felt with his damned useless legs refusing to do what he wanted them to.

If a part of him was relieved to see the back of his fiancée and her nagging comments about Gianna, who could blame him. He’d made her angry more than once defending the younger woman and was sure to do so again. He would not allow anyone to denigrate the girl he’d spent a good portion of his life protecting…even from himself. Chiara’s attitude regarding his health had also worn thin. She said she believed he would walk again, but her eyes said not.

Gianna was not so reticent. She continued in her unwavering belief that feeling would return to his lower body in due course. She reminded him repeatedly that spinal shock injuries often resulted in complete recovery given enough time, something one of the doctors had asserted the first week. She also not only attended the physical therapy sessions, she participated in them. Which he did not thank her for. He needed her belief in him, not her interference.

“Get me back my phone,” he gritted at her.

She shook her head, her long chestnut braid swinging gently from side to side catching the light and his attention. What would the richly colored hair look like unbraided? It was easily long enough to fall past her waist. Did she ever let it down? It would be beautiful.

“That was the third call in fifteen minutes.” Gianna frowned at him like a diminutive school-teacher lecturing a student caught passing notes in class. “You aren’t going to walk again talking on the phone.”

The physical therapist had the gall to nod his agreement. “Gianna is right, Mr. DiRinaldo. You need to concentrate on your therapy.”

The therapist smiled conspiratorially with Gianna and Rico’s blood pressure climbed several notches. The overmuscled, blond Adonis was supposed to be the best physical therapist in New York, but Rico would gladly have flattened him.

“You wouldn’t take a phone call in the middle of negotiating an important deal, would you?” Gianna asked.

“I am not negotiating. I am sitting here bored out of my skull while he,” Rico pointed to the therapist with one hand, “moves my legs as if that will magically make them start working on their own.”

“It’s not magic. It’s work and I wouldn’t have thought you were afraid of hard work,” she jeered.

“Porco miseria! I, Rico DiRinaldo, afraid to work? You are out of your mind.”

“Good. I’m glad you said so.” Her pixie chin set at a stubborn angle. “Then you understand why the phone is not allowed for the rest of the session.”

“At least let me forward it to my answering service.” Once she got back the phone, he could finish his call and then he would unplug it if she was so insistent.

She crossed her arms, pressing surprisingly feminine curves for such a small woman into prominence. “I already did it. You’re not getting the phone back, you might as well accept it.”

He gave her the look that sent bank presidents running for cover, but she just stood there, arms crossed and did not budge.

He turned to the therapist. “Give me something to do.”

The other man jumped at the tone of his voice and Rico felt a small measure of satisfaction that unlike Gianna, the therapist found him intimidating.

Gianna knocked lightly on Rico’s door, but heard no answering voice within.

She’d made it her habit to arrive after breakfast and stay through the morning’s physical therapy. Perhaps Rico had already been taken down to the treatment room. She was running a bit late. She had overslept. The day before had been exhausting and ended in a late night.

She’d driven to Massachusetts and back all in one day so she could retrieve her belongings from the furnished university apartment that was no longer hers. Her prediction the department head would not see her staying in New York in an understanding light had been right on. But she’d finally found something to be grateful for in the debacle following her father’s death.

When her stepmother had sold the house, Pamela had tossed everything she did not want to keep personally. Which meant that Gianna’s belongings fit in her car and she would not have to go to the expense of renting a storage facility.

When there was no answer to Gianna’s second knock, she pushed the door open. She wouldn’t mind missing his session. They were getting more and more difficult for her to handle. The therapist insisted on Rico dressing in sports shorts and a body hugging T-shirt for his physical therapy. Every ripple of Rico’s muscles was visible to her obsessive scrutiny.

She felt like a voyeur watching him exercise his incredibly gorgeous body.

It would be fine if she could encourage him and be the unaffected “cheerleader” on the inside she portrayed on the outside, but she wasn’t. She had loved Rico since she was fifteen years old and wanted him almost as long. Apparently temporary paralysis and a foul temper were no deterrent to those feelings. She felt like some kind of depraved sex fiend.

The sight that met her eyes when she came into the room stopped her like a clanging train crossing. Rico sat on the side of his bed, wearing nothing but the sexiest pair of briefs she’d ever seen. Not that her untried eyes had seen all that many, but it wouldn’t have mattered if she’d seen a thousand men in their skivvies. This was Rico.

He was the only man that mattered.

She practically swallowed her tongue trying to speak. “I… You… The door…”

His head swiveled round and the look on his face was a revelation. He looked elated.

“Rico? What…”

“You are having a difficult time with your sentences, cara.”

She nodded mutely.

His mouth curved in a wide grin and his eyes glittered silver triumph. “I can feel my toes.”

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