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. Elizabeth Power
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I mean, living apart doesn’t preclude...”
“A wild night in bed?” He shook his head. “Sorry to disappoint you, bella, but I’m not sleeping on your sofa to make this look real. You will move into Villa Mondelli when we get back.”
She gave him an agitated look. “The apartment...”
He shrugged. “It’s a good investment. If you can manage not to blow your money this time, maybe I’ll allow you to buy it back.”
Her mouth tightened. He plunged on relentlessly, “We have a lot of work to do before New York. Alessandra will be all about the big eyes for each other, but my Sicilian friend Stefan, who will undoubtedly want to toast us in New York, will be tougher. We’ll need to know each other inside out.”
She scrunched her face up. “What do you mean by tough?”
A wry smile twisted his mouth. “I went to Columbia with three other men I became very close with. We are all confirmed bachelors. For me to announce my engagement, to make such a quick, one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, we’re going to have to make our feelings for each other convincing.”
She slid a perfectly manicured nail in her mouth. “What will our story be, then?”
“I think we should say we met in a café and it was love at first sight.”
She arched a brow at him, the humor of it all lost on her apparently. “And this was when?”
“A month ago. We’ve been staying out of the limelight, but now with your return to the modeling world, we’re making our engagement public.”
She chewed on the fingernail. That would have to stop, but he wasn’t about to antagonize her further tonight. “Is there anyone you need to tell about the engagement?”
“My parents, eventually. I can do that in New York.”
“You don’t want to give them a heads-up?”
“We’re not close,” she said flatly. “It can wait.”
“Siblings? Close friends? Anyone we should invite out the night we see Stefan?”
A shadow made its way across her face, intensifying the dark bags under her eyes. “No siblings,” she said quietly. “And there are just the friends I’ve made here in Milan.”
He nodded. “Any other details I should know?”
“No.” She took a sip of her wine and lifted her gaze to his. “What else should I know about my fiancé other than the fact he is cynical and arrogant?”
“I work. A lot. Christian Markos and Zayed Al Afzal are my other two close friends I went to Columbia with. Christian is a financial genius based in Athens. Zayed has recently gone home to take the throne in his home country of Gazbiyaa.”
“He’s a king?”
“A sheikh. Gazbiyaa is in the heart of the Arabian desert.”
“Okaaay.” She rubbed a palm against her temple. “And Stefan? What does he do?”
“He’s in high-end real estate. As in the deals that make the Wall Street Journal... He doesn’t touch anything under ten million.”
She shook her head. “Quite the group of underachievers.”
He lifted a shoulder. “We are all driven. But very different. More like brothers than friends. We even argue that way.”
She smiled, and, Dio, when she did, it made the night sky light up. He’d have to make sure she didn’t do that often. “You should know we run a charity together. It’s a big thing for us. The Knights of Columbia was created to help disadvantaged youth overcome their backgrounds and succeed in business. It’s based in New York, but we all do work in our home countries and funnel the kids through to various business programs in Manhattan.” He took a sip of his wine. “We also personally mentor some of the kids.”
Her eyes brightened. “It sounds amazing. Whose idea was it?”
“It arose out of work Christian was doing. He grew up on the streets of Athens, the child of a single mother. He never knew his father, had to fight his way out of poverty to take care of himself and his mother. It has defined him as a man, and he wanted to give back. We all loved what he was doing and wanted to be a part of it. Thus, the Knights of Columbia was born.”
“I did charity work when I worked for Le Ciel,” she murmured. “I miss it.”
“We have a charity for young female designers who have suffered at the hands of men and have been forced to resort to shelters. It would be a great thing for you to get involved with if you have time.”
“I would love to.” She pressed her fingers against her mouth, her gaze uncertain. “You are so close to these men. How ever are we going to convince them this is real?”
An image of her plastered against the door of her apartment begging for more of him flashed through his head. His lip curled. “Act like you did that night in Navigli—act as if you want to devour me, as if you can’t wait to get your hands on me. It doesn’t get any more convincing than that.”
A flush filled her cheeks. “That might be difficult,” she drawled in response, “now that I know what kind of a man you are.”
The insult bounced off him like the most ineffective of feints. “Fortunately, cara, pheromones aren’t ruled by the brain. I’m sure you’ll do just fine.”
Her fingers tightened around the glass. He could tell she wanted to slap them across his face and tell him what to do with his deal. But she restrained herself because they both knew how important this was. For him, it was his chance to solidify control of House of Mondelli. For Olivia, her chance to take hold of her dream.
He only hoped he hadn’t taken too big a risk on an asset that was a complete unknown. Because Olivia Fitzgerald was undoubtedly a wild card. She would either be the most brilliant play he’d ever orchestrated, or the one that would bring him down.
IT WAS A New York press frenzy at its finest, camera people crawling over one another to get a better position, journalists jockeying their way to the front of the room, extralarge coffee cups clutched in their hands. The buzz of a big story was in the air.
“No doubt way over the fire code,” Savanna Piers, Mondelli’s chic head of public relations, commented wryly, “but no one’s going anywhere.”
Olivia stood alongside Savanna and Rocco in the atrium of the hotel where the annual meeting of fashion designers was being held, the opening press conference about to begin. Standing beside them were spokespeople from the other represented manufacturers, but it was clear from the tone of the overheard conversations nobody wanted to talk to them. They all wanted to talk to her: Olivia Fitzgerald, the supermodel who had abandoned her career at its peak, defected on a three-million-dollar contract with a major French cosmetics company and disappeared from the face of the earth.
A sheen of perspiration blanketed her body. She felt a pool of it trickle down her back. Felt her breathing quicken as the oxygen in the room seemed to drain with every second...
The colors and movement around her faded into a detail-less swirling gray. It reached out for her then, the panic, beckoning her, dark and familiar. She pulled in a desperate breath and fought it. Tried to hold it at bay, but the room grew darker around her.
“I need some air.” She backed away and headed toward the hallway. Standing with her back against the wall in the corridor as catering staff bustled by her, she closed her eyes and made herself breathe in and out, deep long breaths like her therapist had taught her.
Eleven years she’d been having these panic attacks. Since she was fifteen. And they never