Chapter Six
IVY WAS HAUNTED by that kiss.
However overwhelming she had found those pictures he’d taken of them and the scenes she’d imagined around them even though she knew none of that had occurred—well.
That was nothing next to the reality of the way he’d kissed her in that alleyway.
She’d been teasing him a little when she’d talked about his romance writing, because the truth was, she found the itinerary depressing.
It wasn’t that she didn’t realize that a campaign like theirs had to be planned, it was the extent of the planning.
It was dispiriting to have a script and to know at all times that they were following it.
That those little glimpses that she got of him were probably not real.
They were likely all part and parcel of the intimacy code that was on every entry in that itinerary on a scale from one to ten.
The itinerary mapped out an emotional, intimate progression.
Every time they were seen by the public, they should seem more connected, more into each other, more real.
And the more real they appeared, the more fake it all felt to Ivy.
Or it had, anyway. Until that kiss.
A kiss she had then seen hundreds of photographs of, splattered across every tabloid. A kiss that she’d relived again and again and again, every time she saw it.
A kiss that she couldn’t help but think should have been only theirs—even though she knew that made no sense.
There was no only theirs. There was only the performance they were putting on and the kiss was a major step forward with that—no matter how many snide reporters dismissed Ivy as but one more affair for a man who’d had legions of them before her.
No one believed they would last.
Ivy herself would not have believed it, except she knew exactly where they were headed and how long they’d stay there.
She had been surprised that he wanted to talk about her work with orphans at dinner that night.
She had been even more surprised when he’d actually told her things about his mother.
Much less what she was fairly certain was a huge secret, because she knew she’d never heard anything to suggest that the wife before Alana was anything but deeply unwell.
No one had ever indicated that her death was anything but a tragedy brought on by mental instability, and certainly not a clear-eyed, coolheaded, deliberate decision.
It had been weeks now and Ivy still found herself going over and over it in her head.
The dinner. The way Giaco had actually shared with her.
Then after. Back in London, she sat in the usual meetings and tried to look as if she was paying the kind of attention that she should have been. But she wasn’t.
She kept going through that night. She felt like the silly sort of schoolgirl she’d never been, because she’d never had the experience of overwhelming crushes and packs of friends to giggle about those crushes with.
Her mother had not liked to be left alone and so Ivy had been taught by a succession of tutors, none of whom had ever given her much of an education.
They’d been too busy wandering around starry-eyed in the castle, whether because they were bowled over by Alana’s magic or sent into quivering joy at the sight of Umberto’s riches.
Ivy had never thought that she was worse off for it.
When she talked about her childhood and her schooling, she called it eclectic.
And because she was lucky enough to not have to try to find the sort of employment that cared deeply about things like schools, she got away with it.
It was seen as charming. It was never held against her.
So she had to hold it against herself as she found herself drifting off in the middle of a board meeting, paying absolutely no attention to the details of her own charity because all she could think about was the way their hands had fit together.
As if they’d been separated cruelly from each other at birth and had only found each other again now.
As if their hands had been made to clasp each other like that.
The way he tugged her with him into that alley and backed her up against the wall, so that all she could see of Rome, of the world, was the serious dark jade of his gaze.
Even thinking about that, about his eyes, made her whole body shiver into awareness. A rich, wild heat that seemed to consume her from deep between her legs, only to roll out so that there were flames everywhere.
And that was before she even got to the carnal magic of his mouth on hers.
In case she thought she was imagining all that, there were the pictures to prove it. Did she love them? Did she hate them? She could never decide.
The truth was he wasn’t only affecting her job. He was affecting her sleep. Her breath. He was with her everywhere.
Just as the pictures of that kiss were everywhere. All over the papers. Impossible to miss online.
And she could admit—when she tried to turn off how she felt so that she could look at the pictures analytically, and with some kind of distance—that they were unquestionably romantic photographs.
That must have been why they were getting attention even in places where she would have thought neither one of them was known enough to matter.
But it was hard to be analytical when she woke up on the nights she slept at all with her entire body on fire, his taste in her mouth, and the feel of his perfect, rock-hard chest beneath her hands.
Ivy just counted herself lucky that since no one believed that she and Giaco would last, she didn’t have to worry about being hounded by packs of paparazzi the way he was. He and Gabriele had both assured her that wouldn’t last.
She told herself to enjoy it while she could.
They continued to meet after the kiss, because that was what was in the bloody itinerary and the itinerary was the boss of them all.
They attended a charity event in Luxembourg, a lovely opportunity to glitter and be seen while obviously head-over-heels.
Intimacy code at six. They took a weekend away with each other, or so it seemed to the breathless public, in Venice to see an opera with much hand holding and leaning, intimacy still at six because it was public.
More pictures. More black-tie functions and society photographs. More indications that they were becoming a part of each other’s worlds.
He didn’t kiss her again. It wasn’t on the itinerary.
And he only touched her when necessary, she thought. While dancing, for example. Or when ushering her with great solicitousness to a banquet table. Only in places where others could see them and marvel at the taming of Giaco Tavian.
Only when it benefited their little performance, that was.
One night she made a great show of scrolling through her mobile in the car, until he asked her what she was doing.
“Oh,” she said, brightly. “I couldn’t decide whether or not to put on lip gloss, so I was checking the itinerary to see if there might be more kissing. I wouldn’t want to get that stickiness all over you, you understand. So tacky.”
It was worth it, she thought, because of the dark look he threw her way. Then and when she spent the rest of the evening theatrically reapplying that sticky lip gloss.
Reminding them both about that kiss.
As if she was likely to forget it.
But their whirlwind romance was picking up speed and better yet, according to the excitable Gabriele, inevitability.
Soon enough it was time to head off to a private island in the Mediterranean that was owned by one of Giaco’s old friends.
Or possibly Giaco himself—he had been offhandedly opaque about its provenance.
Ivy supposed it didn’t matter, really. They weren’t going to interact with anyone.
They were going to sell the big upgrade to their story—the impossible engagement of the world’s most untamable lover to his personal saint—and deliver Umberto what he wanted.
So that once they did, it would get them what they wanted.
Win/win all around, or so she kept telling herself.
They took a private jet boat from Athens and were delivered to an unspoiled beach in the Ionian Sea.
They were met there by staff who ushered them up steps carved into a rugged cliffside and into a gleaming villa that sat on top.
A number of the staff members Ivy was used to from Rome came with them, and Gabriele was there too, because he would be directing this particular production.
While Ivy wandered around the villa, gazing out at the spectacular views of shining sea and white-sand beaches, rolling fields and lush olive trees, she could hear Gabriele in the background. He was barking out his orders, making sure that everything matched the vision.
When she heard a particularly frenzied bit of carrying on, she found her way outside to one of the terraces that looked out over the rest of the small island, making it clear that there was no one here but them. She found Giaco out there, standing at the railing much the way he had in Cap Ferrat.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to intrude.”
“I find it better to let Gabriele do his thing,” Giaco said, without turning to look at her. “He will anyway, so it’s better that he has the space to bring his various ideas to life. Otherwise we’ll pay.”
“It sounds as if some people are already paying,” Ivy murmured. She moved to stand next to him at the rail, but not too close. They were both so careful in these unscripted, uncoded, unplanned moments. If anything, it made her more aware of him, not less.
“He is invaluable,” Giaco told. “I’ve never met another person who can so perfectly capture the public’s imagination. Gabriele is always on point. He always knows exactly how the scenes he stages will be received. It’s quite a talent.”