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‘What, sexy...?’
‘No, I... I’m not interested in what you think is sexy.’ She already knew it involved endless legs and curves.
The erotic images that flickered through Ezio’s head effectively nailed him to the spot for several humiliating, painful heart beats, so until his control reasserted itself he cloaked his eyes with half-lowered lids.
Ezio had spent years enjoying sex without commitment and, now this situation was about to be reversed, commitment without sex did not sound nearly so pleasurable to him at that moment.
They said you could get used to anything.
‘I’m light-sensitive,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how it works, but these—’ she tapped the frame ‘—don’t affect my colour perception. It’s more, I can see you but you can’t see me.’
‘Convenient.’
Looking panicked, she gave a little shrug as their glances locked. The air was suddenly filled with a painful, nerve-scraping tension.
‘Sorry!’ she blurted out, breaking it.
He lifted a dark brow. ‘Sorry for...?’
‘Oh, well, sorry you missed out on your film premiere. Speaking of which, I know six months is a long time for you to...’ She broke off, blushing wildly as she dodged his eyes. ‘But I’m realistic. I’m fine with...you know... But because of Sam can you please be discreet if you understand what I’m saying?’
‘Actually not saying.’ She was skirting around the subject like some sort of Victorian virgin. But he understood all right and he had no idea why it made him so angry. ‘Shall I save you the bother? You’re giving me permission to screw around.’
Her head jerked back at the crudity and she glanced back anxiously towards the closed sitting room door. ‘I know you don’t need my permission,’ she admitted. ‘And I’m not trying to, I’m just asking you... Look, Sam seems to like you, and I don’t want him thinking of women, relationships, as... I want him to respect women.’
‘I didn’t ask to be a role model,’ Ezio rebutted, his sardonic smile forced as he thought of the role model in life—his father. His father who had never needed permission to screw around, or seen any need not to flaunt his numerous affairs.
‘No,’ she conceded. ‘But you asked me to marry you and Sam and I...we are a package deal,’ she reminded him with stressed, forced calm. ‘I’m not asking you to take a vow of celibacy, not with your...er...appetites.’ He could see her cheeks flaming again and she stopped and closed her eyes, clearly wishing that she had not started this conversation.
‘Where are you going?’ she called after him as he abruptly walked through the door.
He turned back and produced a fixed feral smile. ‘Well, I thought I might live down to your opinion of me and slake my animal urges with a woman I don’t respect while I still don’t have to ask for permission.’
The retort brought an angry glitter to her eyes. ‘She has my sympathy,’ she snapped as she slammed the door.
Tilda took a few sense-cooling moments before she returned to her brother and the million questions he felt the need to ask. The one she found most difficult to answer being the gruffly delivered,‘I can see why you want to marry him, but why so quickly? Shouldn’t you live together or something first? If this goes wrong you could get hurt, Tilda.’
Tilda had done her best to counter his concerns, pointing out that they might not have been dating very long—luckily Sam didn’t askhowlong—but they were not exactly strangers.
She was actually very touched by the brotherly concern which brought into focus the elephant in the room that Ezio seemed determined to ignore—nobody on the planet would believe that the most gorgeous man on earth would choose her over the glorious Athena Baros, she of the endless legs and much-copied pout.
This ‘married to the PA’ scheme, it simply wasn’tbelievable. Tilda couldn’t understand for the life of her whyshewas the only one who could see that.
It wasn’t about self-confidence; Tilda wasn’t intimidated by the Athena Baroses of this world. She didn’t feel envious...exceptpossiblywhen it came to leg length.
She had a lot to offer a relationship when she found the right man, who would hopefully be looking for those qualities. The point was the things she had to offer were not the things that Ezio was looking for outside the work environment.
He was out there looking for that right now—superficially sexy. It was a deeply depressing thought.
CHAPTER FOUR
TILDAKNEWBECAUSEshe kept his diary, or had, that Ezio had a crammed, wall-to-wall schedule in the month running up to the wedding, so it wasn’t very surprising that she saw him only twice. On both occasions he had spent the majority of the visits focusing on Sam, playing chess, discovering a shared interest in philosophy and generally making her feel intellectually inadequate.
But her brother was happy so she was prepared to forgive Ezio a lot... Not that he was ignoring her,exactly, but he did seem to be keeping her at a distance. Maybe it was a subliminal message and he was just signalling the way he meant things to go on.
Oh, God, was she over-thinking this? He was just treating her the way he always had. Actually, no, he wasn’t; she had never felt excluded before.
The time would have gone quicker if she had just gone back to the office and resumed her previous role until the wedding, but Ezio had been adamant that it wouldn’t be appropriate for her to continue working for him under the circumstances. And she had to admit she couldn’t quite imagine how that would have worked either.
