Chapter Two
AS MIRA SHIVERED and wilted against his chest, Rocco DeStefano drew his hand from between them, closed his arms around her thinking, What the hell am I doing?
This interlude had started innocently enough.
Well, that wasn’t completely true. He’d caught a glimpse of bare skin and long limbs while he’d been swimming laps and he’d been turned on by the fact she was watching him.
By the time he’d stood up in the shallow end, his thoughts hadn’t been innocent at all.
He’d been planning to blow off his afternoon by letting off steam with some feminine company.
Recognition had coldcocked him into sitting on the ledge of the pool. Remembering who she was cooled his ardor now.
Her open curiosity had told him she didn’t know he was her father’s chief competitor. Did she know who she was?
He had seen her image online, linked to Otto Braun, the man who had been the bane of his existence for years. But she was also the daughter of Rocco’s biggest investor and closest friend.
Leave, he had told himself while he’d sat there on the ledge of the pool, back burning under the rays of the sun and the trace of her gaze down his spine. Don’t get involved.
His own curiosity had got the better of him. He’d rationalized that Silvio would want to know she was well. Silvio was a devoted father to the children he’d made with his wife. His regret over his affair did not mean he regretted conceiving Mira, only that he couldn’t have a relationship with her.
Rocco had had the sense to knock the ball into her court, asking if she’d rather be left alone. He liked women, loved sex and never played silly games to get either.
Maybe there’d been a part of him that had thought he could learn something about Otto and find a way to neutralize the man’s antagonism toward him, but he’d really only meant to buy her a glass of wine and talk.
She was charming. Shy yet animated, earnest and wry. She was pretty in an understated way, shoulders and breasts delicate, hips wide, bottom and thighs lush.
When he had invited her to dinner, he had only wanted to spend more time with her.
Instead, he’d kissed her.
Now, his heartbeat was throbbing in the tip of the erection crushed by the molten heat of her center. Her soft body was spilling across him like warm honey, her lips brushing his Adam’s apple.
“I don’t have a room here,” she said in a velvety voice that made him want to groan. “Do you?”
“I do.” He needed to tell her who he was, though. Not the part about Silvio. He could never betray his friend’s secret, but he needed to be frank about the fact that Otto hated him and would see this interlude as an attack or retaliation.
Damn it, he shouldn’t have let this get this far.
“Mira—”
The door lock hummed and a pair of excited children’s voices sounded across the pool area, along with a woman who insisted, “Wait.”
Mira sat up, eyes popping wide with horror.
“It’s fine,” Rocco murmured, helping her rise before her scrambling limbs unmanned him.
While she hurried to rearrange and retie her robe, he did the only thing he could do to hide the state he was in. He took three strides and leaped into the water. The plunge of cold hit his groin like a kick. His abdomen contracted in protest, but it did the trick.
He levered out of the pool a moment later, brain clear enough to think, body acceptable for family viewing.
He felt the woman with the children eyeing him as he snapped a towel around his waist, but he only pulled the dripping bottle of wine from the bucket and asked Mira, “Ready?”
She nodded, gaze on her sandals.
Was she upset by their nearly getting caught in a compromising position? By what they’d done?
He kicked into his own slides, where he’d left them with his phone, and tried to work out how to tell her that Otto was his worst enemy.
As the door to the pool area clunked closed behind them, she covered her mouth and sputtered with laughter.
“I can’t believe you had to jump in the pool like that.” Her hazel eyes were dancing with amusement.
He couldn’t help chuckling along with her. “It was worth it.”
The elevator was waiting for them. Inside, he pressed the button for the VIP level, then let himself admire the flush on her cheeks and the play of possibilities behind her eyes. She had a fleck of brown in one iris. Where else did she have beauty marks he could discover?
“I’d kiss you again, but we might get arrested,” he teased.
“It could be worth it,” she retorted with the most sensually inviting smile he’d ever seen in his life.
The world stopped moving and a ping sounded. He reluctantly pushed off the wall, but snagged her fingers as he drew her out. His mind seesawed with the knowledge that he had to clarify things as soon as they were alone, but Dio. He wanted her so badly.
“Mira?” The male voice was a bucket of ice water, especially when Rocco turned and recognized the man walking up the corridor toward them.
“Axel.” Shock rooted Mira’s feet to the floor.
Rocco’s hand tightened on hers. He held Axel’s stare, jaw tight, as the other man approached.
Axel Severin was her father’s protégé. He was thirtyish, smart, capable and highly ambitious.
Mira didn’t resent him for having a closer relationship with Otto than she had, but she felt vaguely threatened by him.
Whenever their paths crossed, she focused on keeping things civil, aware she would have to work with him once she joined Vorstoben.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, referring to London more than this hotel. Her father stayed here when he came to town. Sometimes she joined him for dinner. That’s how she knew of the spa.
“Meetings. You?” Axel swung his narrowed gaze from her to Rocco, making her wonder which one of them he was asking.
“I was at the spa. Axel works for my father,” she explained to Rocco as she self-consciously extricated her fingers from his.
“I know,” he said.
“You’ve met?”
“Not formally.” Neither man made an effort to shake hands, only held that cold, challenging stare.
The uneasiness that accosted her was worse than social anxiety. Mira felt transparent. She was in a robe and Rocco still held the open wine bottle while wearing only a towel.
“Do you know he owns GPS? His company competes with Vorstoben,” Axel said in German.
“No.” She swung a shocked look to Rocco, beginning to wither with embarrassment as she realized she had not only hooked up with a stranger, but it was also her father’s business rival.
She bit back what she wanted to say to Axel. Don’t tell him. Otto never seemed to approve of her and she belatedly realized this could make it worse. Her heart lurched as she realized Axel would have this to hold over her.
Another dark thought began to form in her head, one that answered her puzzlement over what Rocco saw in her. Not her at all, but who she was: Otto’s daughter.
Oh, God. Her stomach beginning to churn with horrified anguish.
“I genuinely don’t care what you do in your private life,” Axel said in German.
“But Otto has had a grudge against him for years. I don’t know what it’s about, but it’s very personal.
This would not make him happy. And he knows it.
” Axel nodded toward Rocco. “Do whatever you want, but do it with your eyes open.”
That’s not what this is, she wanted to protest.
It was, though. She had told Rocco that she would be working for her father. She had told him the company name.
He was as still as a marble statue, his mouth a flat, grim line.
“You knew my father would disapprove?” she now said in English.
“Jawohl,” he said, letting her know he’d understood every word Axel had said.
An unbelievable depth of hurt, of exposure, expanded within her. Rocco had disarmed her and she had lost all inhibition under his touch.
“Do you completely lack a conscience?” she asked with outrage, very afraid she would start to cry if she didn’t cling to fury. If she didn’t fling contempt at him.
His only answer was a hacked-off laugh that held no humor. “It’s complicated.”
“Oh, shut up.” How dare he throw that word at her? “Never speak to me again.” She stabbed at the elevator button. “And if you tell—”
She strangled on her own voice, never so humiliated in her life.
The elevator hadn’t moved. The doors opened.
She stepped in and tagged the reader with the card from her robe’s pocket. Her hand shook as she hit the button for the spa. She would run home to pack for Berlin.
Axel stepped in beside her, but she couldn’t look at him. She tried very hard not to look at Rocco, but glanced up at the last second.
He was staring at her, mouth a tense line.
The doors closed.
You knew my father would disapprove? Do you completely lack a conscience?
That whole afternoon in London had gone completely off the rails and it was still eating at Rocco weeks later. Especially when Silvio called him to invite him to his wife’s gala.
“I want to introduce you to some Italian-American hoteliers. They’re actively expanding and refuse to work with Vorstoben. You can’t miss this opportunity,” Silvio said.
“I wouldn’t miss it regardless.” Rocco owed Silvio too much and always enjoyed seeing his friend’s wife and family.
The words I met your secret daughter sat on Rocco’s tongue, but he couldn’t make himself say them before Silvio ended the call, and said cheerfully, “Ciao.”
Rocco fell back in his chair, pressed there by the weight on his chest.
Eight years ago, Silvio had discovered Rocco was the son of his childhood friend and took an interest in him.
Rocco had been a weedy, hungry twenty-one, working construction labor, living in a squalid room in a shared house, hoarding every euro in hopes of starting his own renovation company.
After being forced into the foster system at a young age, Rocco had longed for independence and self-sufficiency.
He’d been so inured to the cruelty of life, he’d been suspicious of Silvio’s kindness and generosity.
In his experience, everyone had an ulterior motive.