Chapter Seven #2
Only moments later as the event kicked off, he was thoroughly disconcerted when Zia appeared in front of him and reached for his hands as if she were drowning and hissed half under her breath, ‘Dance with me. Giancarlo’s a pain.’
Zia had learned how to do all the formal dances on his yacht and she moved smoothly round the floor with him while he tried and failed to compute that most unexpected invitation.
He was hugely aware of the flashes of the photographers stealing photos of such a long-awaited shot of them and marvelled that she was willing to give them the opportunity when for weeks she had been treating him like a rather contagious disease she would prefer not to risk catching.
Zia looked up at him, beautiful violet-blue eyes gripping his. ‘I need to talk to you.’
Orazio stilled in shock at that announcement because it was arriving more than a little late in the day, as it were. ‘That will be a problem. I’m leaving in twenty minutes. I have a wedding to attend tomorrow morning back home.’
‘Oh…’ Zia said simply, her lovely face reddening and visibly wilting. ‘I waited too long—’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Raz hastened to assure her, although if he had been honest, he would’ve admitted that he had given up hope.
‘But you need to give us space to be alone. You have to tell your managers that you need a break at the country house this weekend and they’ll move any engagements on to another week.
Nobody works seven days a week, Zia. You’re entitled to time off, just like me. Haven’t you worked that out yet?’
‘I’ve always worked seven days a week,’ she muttered apologetically. ‘I didn’t get days off.’
‘You’re not a maid any more than you are still at Sandrine Beccari’s beck and call. Stand up for yourself. If you need a break now, you have to ask for it,’ he emphasised.
Zia was already getting jittery at the prospect of demanding time off from her tough schedule, but if Orazio said that that was her right, she would go for it.
Talking to him was unavoidable and she wasn’t prepared to duck the necessity a second time.
Not even if she was that gutless at heart.
‘OK. I’ll do that. I could maybe also get the chance on the Friday afternoon of going to visit Alina and see how she’s doing with her sister. ’
‘But the rest of the weekend, you’re mine.’ Glittering green eyes gripped hers and her tummy whirled as if a thousand butterflies had been let loose, heart rate increasing, mouth running dry.
‘T-to talk,’ she stammered, unwilling to commit that far even though at that moment there was nothing more in that world that she wanted to be than his. That compelling attraction was undeniable, impossible to ignore.
‘Of course…initially,’ Raz dared, reading her wonderfully expressive face that had been shuttered to him for so many weeks, grasping that he was a much more impatient male than he had ever appreciated.
He had expected instant acceptance, instant gratification, all the expectations of a pretty privileged, young, rich male.
But she didn’t work like that, on some preordained spoiled, ambitious woman timeline, and he didn’t want her to change, he acknowledged helplessly, he wanted her to go on being her unique, singular self, who kept him guessing and on the edge.
It excited him more than anything else with a woman ever had.
Zia retired to her room that night and employed her phone to insist that she needed a free weekend, surprised at how easy it was for scheduled events to be rescheduled once she actually requested it.
Ironically, she had needed Raz to contend that it was her right to behave that way.
Even though she had yet to receive a salary for her ‘work’, she had been treating her handlers as though they were her employers.
That Friday afternoon, she was taken up through the mountains to visit Alina.
It bothered her that she was accompanied by the official photographer and she made it clear that there would be no photos without her host’s permission.
She was greeted on the doorstep by Alina’s eldest nephew, Felipe, and ushered indoors to a stuffy parlour where she was served with a formal high tea.
It was utterly foreign to Zia and she looked at Alina in helpless dismay, rising from her sofa to embrace the elderly woman as she also stood up in obvious embarrassment.
Alina squeezed her shoulder. ‘This is how it must be. London was another world and everything is different. You are our Princess now,’ she muttered uncomfortably.
‘I’m still your Zia,’ Zia whispered painfully.
‘Not any more, mi pequena mascota,’ Alina sighed. ‘My sister and I believe you will be the next Queen of Mandovia—’
‘Are you crazy?’ Zia exclaimed in disbelief.
Alina held the younger woman back from her and scanned her lovely face with deep affection and understanding.
‘No. I think you are blind to what is happening in front of you. Right at this minute, you have a king hanging around you like a second skin and us older people understand that that means more than the show in public. A man such as he is doesn’t make a show in front of others… he’s too private.’
Zia’s pulses kicked up at the thought that her former nurse could be right.
It was true, Orazio wasn’t anyone who would ever make an open demonstration of feelings.
Unlike her, he was guarded, reserved. And all of a sudden, encouraged by Alina’s romantic expectations, she hoped that Alina was right and that, after all, she hadn’t made the wrong move in admitting that she needed to talk to him.
‘We’ll see,’ she breathed, struggling to act non-committal, returning to her seat, switching into public mode as Alina’s older sister and her family appeared to join them.
And when the meeting was over and, at the photographer’s request, she asked Alina if she or her family would object to a photo being taken, she was, much to her surprise, informed that that was fine with them.
They all clumped up around her outside their cottage and beamed and Zia was utterly disconcerted by their cooperation.
Alina gave her a comforting hug as she departed, saying quietly, ‘Zia…you’re making history. ’
They arrived at the country house a couple of hours later for her weekend off duty.
Her staff, such as they were, her maid, her PR person, disappeared as soon as she put her foot on the gravel in front of the old house.
She was feeling insanely nervous at the prospect of Orazio’s descent.
She had invited him, built anticipation and, really, how was she supposed to deal with that?
She had no magical justification for him, had no idea whatsoever how to meet his expectations. Did he even have expectations?
And did she even know what her own expectations were? She just wanted, needed to be with him again without the chill of misunderstanding and distance that made her feel so alone.
Early evening moved slowly for Zia because her nerves were riding her hard.
She showered and changed into a summer dress, refreshed her make-up, in fact did everything the average woman did when expecting a spectacular male to arrive.
She stared out of windows, drank too much coffee, paced the floor until she heard a helicopter.
She raced out onto the front lawn—no, not cool, at all—watched the heavy craft land in the meadow just past the garden boundary, swiftly followed by a second helicopter, men disembarking, spreading out, talking into ear buds.
Yes, Orazio had arrived, complete with his usual security ring.
From there, she watched him vault out of the first helicopter, sheathed in a sleek navy suit teamed with a dark shirt and, for once, no tie.
Almost immediately, his light gaze settled on her, eyes narrowing to focus on her, and he smiled, stalking towards her with sure strides, long, powerful legs negotiating the low fence that lay between the meadow and the garden with ease.
Her heart bounced inside her chest so hard that she was breathless.
‘I brought my chef with food for us,’ he announced before he even reached her.
Her expressive face fell. ‘I didn’t even think of food,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘But I could’ve cooked for us.’
‘Our personal agenda is more important,’ Raz informed her, closing an arm round her tense shoulders to herd her back indoors and straight into the old-fashioned drawing room to one side of the hall. ‘So, let’s talk.’
Not surprisingly that invitation silenced Zia, because she had never before met an actual male who was that eager to ‘talk’.
Fingers sliding tautly together, she suggested he sit down, but Orazio was too focused on her to listen, his shrewd green eyes running down her slight figure and back up again with a measured intensity that set every nerve cell in her body twanging with awareness.
‘I want to feel your mouth under mine again, piccola mia,’ he told her frankly. ‘I can barely wait.’
A little quiver shimmied through her entire body, lighting up places that hadn’t awakened since their stay in the house a month earlier.
Her breasts swelled and the peaks tightened into almost painful tingling buds and a sliding liquid sensation invaded between her thighs.
‘Er…’ she mumbled, totally out of her depth with this forceful sexual male.
Orazio hitched a black brow. ‘OK?’