The Roman's Woman (A Singular Obsession Book 4) (5 page)

“Any other family?” he asked.

“None that I see regularly. They’re kind of scattered.”

“I sometimes wish I didn’t have to see my family as often as I do. They can be quite an obligation sometimes.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You can’t fool me. You love them. It’s obvious.”

He laughed. “I didn’t say I didn’t love them. It's simply that they can be a handful. And they require a lot of time and energy. I sometimes feel like I’m constantly on call to mediate disputes and help them out of their difficulties.” He finished with a resigned shrug.

Tempted to ask what a street performer could do to mediate disputes, she blinked and bit her tongue. His family dynamics were none of her business. But his description made her wistful. It was nice to have people, even if they were troublesome at times.

“Still, it must be good to have them in your life. The closest family to where I live now would be some distant cousins in Spain. My father was Spanish, although he lived most of his life in England. My mother met him there, but we moved to the states after they broke up. I went back to England to be near him after she passed, but work kept us both so busy we didn’t see much of each other.”

That was mostly true. Her twice-monthly visits to see her father had been regular, but they’d done little to bring them closer. All he had wanted to do was talk about his latest research study, but he hadn’t reciprocated in kind and discussed hers. The best she could do was tolerate the one-sided conversations.

Under Gio’s gentle prodding, she told him about her father’s position at the University as chair of the sociology department and how she first met Kelly when the younger woman had been a teaching assistant for him.

It was also how she’d met Richard, but she didn’t tell him that. The last thing she wanted was to do was talk about her ex. But Gio didn’t have that problem. Though he didn’t go into detail, he mentioned that he was divorced.

“Just the one divorce?” she teased since he seemed pretty casual about it.

“Yes,” he laughed.

“Are you sure?”

“Pretty sure. Why do assume there would be more?”

She gestured with an open hand up and down to encompass his whole body. “Cause this whole thing, this supercharged-testosteroney-charm-overload thing you’ve got going on must work on a lot of women. I can see you with a string of ex-wives. Like at least five. And those are just the ones you put a ring on it. Then there are the baby mama’s…”

“The what?” he asked, laughing.

“The baby-mamas. You know, the mothers of all your illegitimate children.”

It was an unfortunate timing that Gio chose that moment to sip his wine, because he choked on it, spraying it over his place setting.

Pretending the wine-spray was denial, she kept going. “Come on, there has to be at least three or four of those.”

Wiping his face carefully with his napkin, he tried to stifle his laughter. “No, there aren’t any children, illegitimate or otherwise. Not yet, anyway.”

“Ooh,
not yet
. Making plans, are we?”

Looking her up and down, he smiled. A white-hot panty-melting smile. “Maybe.”

It was her turn to choke on her wine. She managed not to spit it out and put her glass down carefully on the table. Heat crept up her face. “Hmm. That stuff is very strong. Delicious, but strong.”

He kept watching her with those intense gold eyes, the corners of his lips turned up.

She tugged on her collar to move a little air under her shirt, careful not to expose any additional skin. “Hot in here, isn’t it?”

His eyes warmed, flashing gold for an unnerving second. He opened his mouth to say something else, but the waiter arrived with their meals. After they dismissed him, she spooned a forkful of pasta into her mouth and promptly rolled her eyes heavenward.

“Oh, good God,” she whispered, almost reverently.

“
Yes
,” Gio said, hissing aloud after taking a bite.

Giggling, she took another sip of wine before digging in with relish. Across from her, gold eyes watched her approvingly, which was nice. Richard would have been hiding a disapproving frown if she ordered such a rich meal in his presence. Her ex was tall and naturally whip-thin. The fact he ate like an anorexic rabbit only added insult to injury. It was refreshing to eat dinner with a man who enjoyed food for a change.

Gio launched into a history of Florence, detailing the local attractions she couldn’t miss.

“I feel like I should be writing this down,” she said, her head whirling with the list of sights she had to make time for.

He leaned forward. “How much time do you have?”

“A little over two weeks.”

“And that’s for the whole country?”

“Minus Milan. I’ve done Milan,” she informed him.

“Lucky Milan,” he murmured softly, and her cheeks flamed.

She threw her napkin at him. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

Grinning, he waved the waiter over for the check. He ushered her out of the restaurant with a hand on the small of her back. The heat of his touch became the only thing she could feel, and she was glad the streets were darker now so the blush on her cheeks wouldn’t be as apparent.

The
Carabe Gelateria
had a line out the door. After waiting their turn, they walked along the bustling streets eating their gelato.

“All the flavors you could have chosen, and you went with chocolate and vanilla,” he teased as she spooned more of her dessert into her mouth.

She shrugged. “I’m a dessert purist. But I do plan on going back there and trying those different flavors of granite tomorrow,” she said, referring to the slushy-style drink that was popular in hot weather.

Gio glanced at her from under long black lashes. “Speaking of tomorrow, why don’t you let me take you around town? I can show you Firenze from a local’s perspective.”

Sophia frowned. “Don’t you need to work? Or can you do your act here?”

“No. I would have to ask for permission. Every town has its own rules. But I could use the time off. Even performers need a vacation,” he said, looking down at his feet. “I need to meet my aunt, which I can do over breakfast, and then I’m all yours. If you want company, that is.”

It sounded like a huge mistake. She was too attracted to him. Spending more time with him could be dangerous. And she always played it safe. It was one of Kelly’s biggest criticisms about her.

Aren’t you tired of safe?

Accepting his offer as tour guide didn’t mean she had to sleep with him. She was a grown woman with a considerable amount of discipline. It would have been impossible to reach the level of her career was at without it.

“I can show you where to find the best
zepoli
,” Gio said enticingly.

She laughed. “All right. Meet me outside of my hotel after your breakfast with your aunt.”

Those gold eyes gleamed in the night. “I’ll be there at ten.”

Gio’s body was alternating between flashing hot and cold as he made his way to the penthouse suite he kept in Firenze. Why didn’t he tell her the truth? What the hell was wrong with him?

He’d kept going over it in his head—the perfect words to explain. But he chickened out each time. He let her keep thinking he was this other Gio, the street performer. It had felt so good to be out from under the cloud of suspicion following him that he hadn’t been able to go through with his confession.

That, and she thought he was poor. That had been obvious when she tried to treat him at dinner and offered to buy his train ticket. It was the first time in his life that he had the opportunity to get to know a woman without her being aware of his wealth and status. Even as a student abroad, he’d never considered hiding the fact he came from money.

Things were different now. Since his divorce, he was suspicious of women and their motives. But this was a novel situation. Sophia thought he was poor and she liked him, anyway. Or, at least she seemed to. She had even downplayed her efforts to pay his way in an effort to spare his masculinity.

The fact he insisted on paying had been suspicious. He had no idea what a street performer earned, but it couldn't be much. However, he couldn't let her spend her money on him. Thanks to his intimate knowledge of her lab’s finances, he knew what her salary was. In fact, in the near future, her salary was going to be paid by the Morgese Foundation grant. For someone in research it was above average, but nothing near what he earned. Her annual salary couldn’t touch what he made in a week. Maybe even a day, if he was being honest about the numbers.

He glanced down at the manila envelope she’d given him as he stepped in the elevator of his building. It had to be at least thirty pages of questions. No wonder the real Giovanni hadn’t touched it when it had been mailed to him. Whatever else this Kelly person was, she was too damn thorough. Enough to be shooting herself in the foot by making the survey so long.

He was going to have to track down this Giovanni and make sure the questionnaire was completed. It was the least he could do for his small deception.

Not small. Huge.

Releasing a pent up breath, he entered the luxury apartment his family kept in the city. He would tell Sophia the truth as soon as he saw her tomorrow morning. In the meantime, he had a few calls to make.

****

Breakfast with his aunt Perla had been a serious test of his endurance. His mother’s younger sister was sweet, but essentially a weak-willed person. She had been fortunate to marry a man of an equally amiable character, one who didn’t run roughshod over her. Unfortunately her good karma ended there. Her son, his cousin Lucca, had grown up to be a self-indulgent and selfish young man.

In her efforts to make up for the loss of his father, his aunt had spoiled Lucca, giving him anything he wanted and covering for him whenever he was into trouble. She was always there to bail him out and would continue to do so, even now as the youthful transgressions were escalating into actual crimes. The fight at the club would have landed a less connected man in jail.

Gio had explained the true circumstances of the bar brawl to Perla, but she would hear none of it. She bought Lucca’s story of being an innocent bystander who was dragged into a fight by circumstance. And she was unaware of Lucca’s damning contribution to his tabloid woes.

Determined to put a stop to his cousin’s downward slide, Gio was using the only weapon in his arsenal: money.

When his uncle Cosimo had died, he’d left his family deeply in debt. There had been nothing left, and his aunt was in danger of losing her townhouse and everything in it. Even her car had been repossessed.

Though he’d been a young man at the time, Gio had just been appointed CEO of the Morgese bank, replacing his father Salvatore. His father had been a decent, if somewhat middling manager, but the recession had hit all the financial institutions hard. The situation had been pretty grim until Salvatore had made the controversial decision to step aside and let his son take the helm.

Unlike his father, Gio was gifted at making money. His shrewd investment savvy, combined with a thorough restructuring of the bank’s assets, had put it back on sound financial footing. Since then it had thrived, and Gio had become renowned in financial circles. Not long after, he established a family trust for all his relatives, his aunt Perla and Lucca included. They had all profited from his hard work, but the life of leisure he enabled for them had some drawbacks.

That was why he’d decided to act. From now on, Gio was taking over the management of Perla’s expenses, from rent to food shopping. She would have a small line of credit that would let her shop for herself or eat out whenever she wanted. The older woman normally lived frugally anyway, more than any of his other relatives. Lucca was the one serious drain on her finances.

Knowing his aunt, she would still give her wastrel son what cash she had. But it wouldn’t be enough for Lucca to run wild in the fast lane anymore. Gio could only hope losing his trust fund would be enough to shock some sense into his young cousin once and for all.

His head was full of these troubling thoughts, but they fell away when he reached Sophia’s hotel and saw her waiting for him outside. She was wearing yet another boxy t-shirt and shorts that fell above the knee. There was no hint of the outrageously curvy body underneath.

So the outfit from yesterday was not a fluke.
His hot doctor was surprisingly modest. Or perhaps it was something more…

It seemed strange that someone as accomplished as Sophia Márquez might be self-conscious about her body, but that was what he was seeing signs of. All throughout dinner and on their walk yesterday, she had kept fiddling with her clothes, tugging her shorts down and adjusting the neckline of her t-shirt.

However, he didn’t mind the conservative clothing. If she wore something like the white dress out in the streets, she might cause a riot. His countrymen weren’t subtle when it came to beautiful women. And he didn’t want to spend the rest of the day fending off other men. As it was, Sophia was like a carefully concealed present, a gift just waiting to be unwrapped.

While he watched, she pulled out her phone. A flicker of annoyance crossed her lovely face before she pushed a button and shoved it back in her purse.