Innocent In The Billionaire's Bed. Clare Connelly
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shook her head, her eyes wide as they took in the sheer beauty of the spot. He watched her, and understood the wonderment in her face. Hadn’t he felt a similar sense of incredulity when he’d first arrived?
‘It is heaven on earth, mi amore.’
His mother had been confused at the end. She’d slipped in and out of her past just as a dolphin rippled over the surface of the ocean, and most of her memories had revolved around him. Piero. The bastard who’d broken her heart and left her pregnant and destitute.
‘It is as if God left a small piece of heaven just for us to find and enjoy.’
His expression was grim as he studied the horizon, seeing it as Cressida was. The ocean was immaculate. A deep turquoise colour disturbed only by the gentle cresting of waves. The sky was a blanket of deep blue, the sun an orb of white, high in the sky.
‘I feel like we’re the only ones on earth,’ she said with a shake of her head. ‘I hadn’t expected the island to be so...’
He waited, curious as to how she would choose to describe it.
‘It’s not just beautiful,’ she said, searching for words. ‘It’s...magical.’
‘Magical?’ he repeated derisively, ignoring how close the description was to his mother’s first impression.
The amusement in his tone was enough to drag her back to the present. ‘Yes.’ She forced a cynical smile to her face. ‘At least that’s what Daddy will be hoping hordes of tourists think.’
He nodded, dismissing the sense that she was hiding something from him. ‘The island’s perfect for a holiday resort. Close enough to Capri to provide entertainment, but totally isolated at the same time. It’s easy to imagine how special any resort would be here.’
She nodded, but there was sadness in her heart. Having been on the island less than an hour, she already knew she hated the idea of buildings and roads cutting across it. Of people bobbing in the ocean, boats churning across its smooth surface, voices shouting through the serenity.
‘Yes,’ she said, her frown carrying into the simple word.
‘What would you like to see, Cressida?’ he asked, and the use of the socialite’s name reminded Tilly forcefully of just what her duties were.
‘I was just going to walk along the beach,’ she murmured, nodding in one direction.
‘Fine. We’ll walk.’
He moved towards the stairs and she followed, though his presence was knotting her tummy again.
‘You really don’t have to come with me,’ she said softly, pressing her teeth into her lower lip as she tried to calm the butterflies that were having a party inside her.
‘I really do have to come with you,’ he corrected quietly. ‘For as long as you are on Prim’amore you are my responsibility.’
A frisson of anticipation danced along her spine. She moved quickly down the stairs, her feet sinking into the sand once she reached the level shore.
‘Prim’amore... First love.’ She glanced at him. ‘It’s a romantic name. Any idea of the history of it?’
‘No,’ he lied.
Secrets, secrets. So many secrets. Hell. He’d been a secret most of his life. Only in recent years had his father lifted the ban on his identity being known, and by then the exposure had outlived any usefulness or appeal.
‘Why are you selling it?’
She was at least a foot shorter than he was. He adjusted his stride to match hers, shoving his hands in his pockets as they moved towards the water.
‘I do not want it.’
She frowned. ‘You don’t want a pristine, untouched island off the coast of Italy?’
‘No.’
Her laugh was carried by the breeze. He turned to chase it, wishing it was louder.
‘Why ever not?’
He met her eyes, his smile feeling heavy somehow. ‘I already have an island. A bigger one.’ He thought of Arketà, with its state-of-the-art home and pier, the helicopter pad and three swimming pools. ‘Two seems excessive.’
‘And here I was thinking you to be a man who thrived on the excessive,’ she heard herself tease.
At the edge of the water she paused, kicking her shoes off and bending to retrieve them. She moved closer to the ocean, flexing her toes as she reached the water’s line, then stepping beyond it so that the waves caressed her ankles.
‘So why buy it if only to sell? Or was it an investment?’
He looked at her for a moment, wondering at the instinct throbbing through him to speak honestly to her. To admit that he hadn’t bought the island so much as inherited it. That in the month he’d possessed Prim’amore it had sat heavily on his shoulders like a weight he didn’t wish to bear. That the gift was unwelcome and that selling it was his primary desire.
‘Not exactly.’ His smile gave little away. ‘I do not need it. Your father has been shopping for a resort site in the Mediterranean for years. The match is too good to ignore.’
She nodded, but he could practically see the cogs turning. ‘You said your island is called Arketà?’
‘Yes.’
‘I like the sound of that.’
He nodded. ‘It means pretty in Greek.’
She arched a brow, her grin contagious.
‘I inherited the name when I purchased it. The previous owner christened it so for his daughter.’
‘I see.’ Tilly nodded, but her smile didn’t drop.
‘That and I’m a hopeless romantic,’ he responded with an attempt at sarcasm.
Tilly shook her head. ‘Nope. I would bet my life that “romantic” is not a word ever associated with you.’
‘Oh? And how would you describe me?’ He prompted, curiosity leading him down a conversational path that his brain was urging him to reconsider.
She slowed for a moment, her eyes skimming across his face as her full lips pouted. She was a study in concentration and it almost made him laugh.
‘I think it’s better that I don’t say,’ she said finally, turning her gaze back to the beach. ‘Do you spend much time there?’
It took him a few seconds to realise she was back on the subject of Arketà. He shook his head. ‘I thought I would when I bought it.’
‘But?’ she prompted.
His shrug lifted his broad shoulders. She tried not to notice the strength in those shoulders, but she was only human.
‘Work.’
‘Ah. Yes.’ She knew the demands of Art Wyndham’s schedule intimately, and could only imagine how much more hectic Rio’s was. ‘So you’re in Rome most of the time?’
‘Si.’
Tilly could imagine that. He had an effortless chicness about him that was completely ingrained. It wasn’t an affectation. He didn’t have to try. He was both masculine, wild, untamed and...handsome. Nothing about him screamed ostentation, yet he exuded power and wealth.
‘And you?’ he surprised her by asking.
Tilly almost lost her footing, but she righted herself before he felt the need to intervene. ‘What about me?’
Out of nowhere she thought of Cressida. Cressida who was so visibly similar to her that Tilly had thought she was looking into a mirror the first time they’d met. Their red hair was long, their eyes green, their skin a similar colour—though Tilly’s tanned more