Rocco nodded. “That’s a very apt description.”
Mario smiled broadly. “We are going to make her a star of the design world.”
Olivia’s heart swelled. Instead of accepting her warily into the fold, Mario had seemed incredibly enthusiastic over her designs, as if he, too, welcomed the infusion of creativity as Giovanni had.
She couldn’t help the smile that stretched her lips. It was happening. Her dream was actually happening.
Rocco flicked a look at her. “Do what you need to do. I’ll answer some emails.”
But he didn’t. She tried to concentrate on her conversation with Mario, but with Rocco roaming the room, pulling her pieces off the rack, flicking sketches apart and staring at them with that trademark intensity of his, she was hopelessly distracted. A few minutes later, Mario made an amused comment about her attention span and “young lovers” and announced they were done for the day.
Rocco waited until the older man had left the studio before his gaze slid over her face. “Either your acting skills have kicked in, or my presence is making you nervous.”
She lifted her chin. “You’re looking at my designs properly for the first time. My future rests in your hands... Wouldn’t you expect me to be heart in mouth?”
His mouth twisted. “I thought that was just the general effect I had on you, bella.”
She rested her hands on her hips. “I’m not the one working until 1:00 a.m. to avoid being in a bedroom together. Are your control-freak tendencies on red alert?”
His ebony gaze darkened. “As a matter of fact, they are. Your little stunt in New York wasn’t exactly a cure for a man practicing abstinence. Nor is the provocative way you sleep splayed across my bed.” He shrugged an elegant shoulder. “I keep thinking maybe it’s just easier to get it over with. How simple it would be to slide a hand under the small of your back, tempt you with what I know you’ve been dying to have, then take you long and hard until all you’d be doing is begging me to come to bed. Then maybe we could snuff this out.”
Her insides dissolved into a river of fire, his taunt sending the intimate flesh at the heart of her into an excited, heated pull. She could not believe he’d just said that.
A hard glitter entered his eyes. “But of course, that will never happen.”
She sank her teeth into her bottom lip as her brain crashed rapidly back to earth. Turning, she stacked the designs on the table into neat piles, anger pulsing through her. “Oh, I get it, Rocco. You won’t put a hand on me because you think I was your grandfather’s lover, that I am soiled goods. But you want to, so you use your shock value to send me running.” She straightened the last pile, leaned back against the table and looked up at him. “Have I got it right?”
The in-your-face arrogance faded from his face. “I owe you an apology.”
That caught her off guard. “For what?”
“For assuming things that were not true. I was angry and I made accusations I shouldn’t have about your and Giovanni’s relationship. But the facts were staring me in the face.”
Antagonism replaced her confusion. “What facts? The fact he’d loaned me an apartment?”
“Bought it for you. The fact that he was writing you checks for large sums of money. That he never mentioned you at all. It was not normal behavior for Giovanni. Even your neighbors thought you were lovers.”
“Because he would come visit me at night to work?” She sank her hands deeper into her hips and glared at him. “You assumed a great deal of things, Rocco, and you were dead wrong on all of them.”
He inclined his head. “I was angry. Grieving. To accept that the Giovanni I knew would have cheated on Rosa, that he could be anything but the intensely loyal man I knew him to be, was exceedingly difficult.”
Undoubtedly. Her mouth flattened. “It still didn’t give you the right to treat me like you did.”
His face tightened. “I am apologizing.”
She’d bet he rarely, if ever, did it. It probably made him want to choke. But the relief flaring through her was undeniable. That finally he believed her. It had been like a palpable force between them, stirring mistrust on every level.
She eyed the conflicting emotions shimmering in his eyes. He needed to understand.
She crossed her arms over her chest and held his gaze. “Giovanni told me Rosa was his first love. That he couldn’t imagine ever being with anyone else. Then he met my mother and he was blindsided. She did one of his breakthrough shows in New York. He was on a high from his success, higher than he’d ever been, and my mother was the glittering jewel he couldn’t resist.”