Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

" O KAY, I HAVE A QUESTION."

He glanced across at where Maddie sat, all petite and bright in the beige luxury of his private jet. Her legs were folded beneath her, hands toying with a resin bangle she wore, and her eyes had been busily scanning the space for the last ten minutes or so.

"I imagined you might."

Her gaze shifted back to his face and anticipation tightened there, like a coil.

"But can you guess what it is?"

"I couldn't even attempt it."

She flashed him a grin.

"So?" he prompted, intrigued.

"You have all this," she gestured around the plane, almost knocking the air hostess who was walking towards them with a tray of refreshments. Maddie withdrew her hand quickly, offered a smile of apology, then waited until they were alone once more. A glass of ice-cold champagne had been placed in front of Maddie, and a scotch for Rocco, as well as a tray of prosciutto, cheese, nuts, and fruit.

Maddie eyed the latter and, when they were alone, continued: "You have all this, so why do you work so hard?"

Rocco's brow furrowed. "What do you mean?"

"What do you work so hard for? Isn't this enough?"

"I'm not motivated by money."

"I thought everything was about money?" she repeated back to him.

"Money is an excellent metric of success. That's what I really care about."

"Success," she repeated, studying him thoughtfully, in a way he didn't enjoy, because he had the sense she saw way too much and drew conclusions that he wouldn't like. "Then aren't you successful enough?"

"We were born into money."

"Your parents?"

"My father, and my uncle. Exceptional money. But our generation—my brothers and cousins—have always been determined to take that fortune and turn it into something else. Something all of our own."

"You work together?" She reached for her champagne and took a sip, savoring the flavor and also his words. At least she wasn't arguing with him or telling him that was selfish and indulgent.

"Yes."

Her lips tugged to the side, not in a gesture of disparagement but rather in one of deep thought.

"Do you find that strange, Maddison?"

"I—no. I have no point of reference. I'm an only child, I don't have any cousins. At least, not that I know of." She lifted one shoulder. "If I had to guess, I'd say it's probably pretty nice to work closely with family."

"Nice? Sure, that's one way of putting it," he said with a rueful laugh.

"You don't like it?"

"I didn't say that. We're a family of…big personalities," he admitted. "We will always have one another's backs, but at the same time, we can drive each other crazy."

"You butt heads."

"Sometimes literally."

She smiled at that. "But overall, you like it?"

"Yes. I do. We share a common purpose."

"Success," she repeated.

He nodded once. "A couple of years ago, we were working on a huge deal. Probably one of our biggest mergers—we were in the mix to buy Acto Corp."

She shook her head. "I think I've heard of them."

"I'm not surprised. It's a parent company to many smaller businesses, but it includes hotels, restaurants, shops, logistics. It was very valuable, but the company itself was in a bad way, after sustained mismanagement; we wanted it, for its awesome potential. We worked as a team for over a year to lock the deal away."

"And?"

"We didn't get it. At the last minute, the daughter of the owner negotiated a deal with—," his hand formed a fist. "The Valentinos."

"Friends of yours?"

He swallowed back a spluttering sound. "Not exactly."

She nodded thoughtfully. "That must have made you mad."

"It made me determined," he corrected. "We had missed something. Grown complacent, arrogant; not detail-orientated enough. We'd gotten too big, too successful. So, I pulled back to focus on smaller, blue-chip projects. Jobs I could work more or less on my own. I needed total control for a while, to know I'm not dropping the ball, and nor is anyone else."

"You can't do everything on your own, though, Rocco."

"I can try," he volleyed back, with a raise of one brow.

Maddie's sigh was so soft he almost didn't catch it. "And when is it enough?"

He reached for his drink then, taking a sip, letting the heat and spice burst in his mouth before swallowing. "I don't know," he answered, after a beat. "The truth is, I'm energized by this work. Whenever I think I might want to pursue something else, another project appears, something else to pour myself into. I thrive on the challenge—the bigger the challenge, the better."

"So, what you're saying is that I make you thrive?"

He laughed, the gruff sound filling the plane. "You are a challenge I could have lived without."

Her brow arched. "Why's that?"

"Your grandfather is still holding out on me." Rocco leaned forward, elbows braced on his knees. They were sitting in opposing armchairs, a small table between them, but by moving one foot to the side of the coffee table, his longer legs were able to get close enough that his knee almost brushed hers. Suddenly, he was desperate to touch her. Anticipation coiled tighter. "At first, I thought he was just being ornery. He stonewalled me, right off the bat. So, I met with him. Talked. Spent time getting to know him. I like a challenge, remember."

"You'd be just about the only person in his life to call him that. He's generally regarded as a stand-up guy."

"I got that sense. And the sense he was blocking me for another reason. For someone else." He sipped his drink once more, eyes closely linked to hers. "You, as it turns out."

Her own gaze dropped to the champagne flute. "Did he—ever tell you why?"

"No. I asked, eventually. He just said it was a private matter, and that he had to leave it up to you."

Her lips twisted. "He's a good guy."

Rocco sat back in his seat. "Why is he so protective of you, Maddie?"

She glanced at him, an emotion in her eyes he couldn't interpret and didn't much like. It made him feel uncomfortably protective of her.

"You strike me as someone who can look after herself," he continued, when she didn't answer, affecting an expression of nonchalance. As though he wasn't sweating on her response, awaiting it with far too much interest.

"I can." She wrinkled up her nose. "Most of the time."

"Which means what?"

She sighed. "Grandpa's right. It's personal, and you really don't need to know." She fixed him with a straight stare. "Or maybe I don't want you to know. Maybe I like the version of me you've met."

"Prickly and obstinate?"

She grinned a smile that was so genuine it pulled at something in the very middle of his being. "That's me."

"But not always?"

Her smile slipped. "No, I guess not." She plucked at a fibre on her pants. "The house, and my grandparents, have been my safe haven for almost as long as I can remember. I came to live with them when I was only nine years old."

"Your parents," he prompted, unusually uncertain when it came to broaching something so personal. "Are they dead?"

Her throat shifted visibly as she swallowed, and her fingers trembled a little when she reached for her champagne flute. "I never knew my father," she said after a beat. "I don't know if my mother even knew who he was." There was defiance in her tone, though, challenging him to pity her. Challenging him to say anything that might imply she was weakened by that. So, he didn't. He was quiet, careful to keep his face blanked of whatever emotions he might be feeling, on her behalf.

"And your mother?"

Her eyes flexed to his, tension in the lines surrounding them. This was hard for her. She was in pain.

Let's have fun. That was what they'd agreed to, what he'd promised, but at the same time, there was a mystery bound up in Maddie, and Rocco wanted to understand it. He wanted to understand her. Then he'd find it easier to let her go, to put this obsession in his rear vision mirror.

"She's not in my life."

He hated not knowing anything; he hated mysteries. Rocco was a problem solver from way back, and clearly, something had happened to Maddie as a child that had resulted in her coming to live with her grandparents. He remembered, then, her reaction, when he'd pointed out how similar she was to her mother. Their hair, their complexions, their eyes…

"What about your grandfather," he asked gently. "Does he still see her?"

"My mother has a new life now," Maddie said, the words tight with finality. "Neither of us sees her."

But by their choice, or hers?

"How long until we arrive?" She changed the subject with a resolute smile, which sculpted her lips but didn't go near her eyes. He understood what she meant: conversation closed.

And for now, he'd allow that to be the case.

"A few hours," he said.

Maddie's fingers tapped the armrest of her chair. "Great. I'm halfway through a book," she said, reaching for her bag. But anticipation was coiling tighter and harder, making his whole body thrum, and out of nowhere, he found it intolerable. Whether it was seeing the tight anxiety in her face, and knowing he could obliterate it, or simply sitting at this distance from her, Rocco was standing suddenly, extending a hand towards her. "I have a much better suggestion for how we can pass the time."

Her eyes lifted to his and the breath caught at the very bottom of his throat, held there by a powerful leveraging of suspense.

"Do you, really?" She asked, but her voice was husky, and her hands were trembling a little. He watched as she reached for the champagne and finished it, replacing the glass on the table with just as much finality as the words she'd employed earlier. "Let's go, then, cowboy."

He laughed, a gruff sound that came easily to him. She made him laugh, he realized, more than anyone had in a long time. But then she stood, and her body brushed his, and laughter was the very last thing on his mind. Despite the fact that she had two perfectly good, beautifully shaped legs, he reached down and lifted her, cradling her against his chest as he walked towards the back of the plane, where a couple of deluxe bedrooms were always ready for use.

They were still in bed when the pilot announced that the flight would begin descending to Florence, and Maddie sat bolt upright with a start. "Already?"

Rocco's smile was pure sardonic ease. "Time flies when you're having fun."

She grimaced. "It didn't just fly, it ceased to exist."

"I'll take that as a compliment."

She rolled her eyes. "Like you need any more compliments."

He grinned, laying back and watching as Maddie stepped out of bed and reached for her clothes. She felt his eyes on her, felt warmth buzz her skin, and a sharp sense of longing to be back in bed took hold of her.

Somewhere along the way, she'd forgotten that she was sleeping with the enemy. She'd forgotten he was the enemy at all and started to see him as just a man. A really seriously, sexy man. Someone she wanted, and needed, with a frequency that shook her.

It hadn't been like this with Brock—she hadn't even known it could be like this! — though she suspected it was normal for Rocco to be pulled into a sensual haze. This was how he lived his life, after all. For Maddie, with Brock, it had been a slow progression. A sensible path, from meeting to dating, to telling herself she felt a spark for him, to thinking he might be the other piece of her puzzle, the stability she'd been waiting for, the other half who might help her build a family and put down roots of her own, to create the life she'd always desperately craved.

And she'd wanted that. She wanted it so badly that she'd focused on their potential future to the exclusion of the present—a present in which the initial spark had long since faded, conversation had died down to the point it was hard to get through a meal together without long stretches of silence. She'd started to notice their differences in many ways—he wanted to travel and settle on the West Coast eventually, whereas Maddie could never imagine leaving New York. He liked staying up late and watching horror movies, whereas she preferred to go to bed early and wake with the sun, to go running. Most importantly, he came from a big family and had only negative things to say about them. In fact, he went out of his way to avoid seeing them, despite admitting they'd never done anything but love and support him. It was a key values difference that Maddie couldn't look beyond, even when he'd promised her the kind of future she'd always thought she wanted. In the end, it hadn't been enough.

She'd broken up with him gently—after all, they'd been dating eighteen months—and Brock had seemed to take it well. He'd argued a little, fought for their relationship. She would have been offended if he hadn't! But he'd seemed to accept that her mind was made up, and that had been the end of it.

Until it hadn't been, and she'd woken up to a threatening message from him, complete with a nude photo of Maddie. He'd said that she needed to think carefully about leaving him, that he had what he needed to ruin her life—a database of her contacts and a heap of nude pictures.

The blood had drained from Maddie's face; the life had almost seemed to leave her body.

How had she let that happen? How had she been so careless? So trusting, just like her mother!

It wasn't like they'd planned it. She'd swum topless in a private spa with him one time when they were holidaying in Mexico, and on one other occasion, she'd been getting changed, having had a few champagnes, and had been laughingly pretending to do a provocative little dance. He'd filmed it, also laughing. In the morning, she'd asked him to delete the footage and he'd promised her he had.

But he'd lied. He'd lied, and he'd proven himself to be the lowest of the low.

Before Brock, she'd sworn she'd be careful. Way more careful than her mother. She'd never looked for ‘spark', or anything like it, because it could—from what she'd observed as a child—rob a woman of all her sense. All her loyalty and responsibility.

So, she'd gone carefully with him, getting to know him for a long time before sleeping with him, before starting to imagine a real, solid future. He'd said all the right things, he'd played the part of the perfect boyfriend in all the ways that mattered, and she'd believed him.

But she'd been wrong. Which only served to prove that men couldn't be trusted. No man, no matter how he seemed.

Rocco wasn't any different. At least she knew that from the start. She was under no illusions about him, and his character. It should be easy to protect herself, given the circumstances. Besides, this was about work. Sure, Rocco might have been responsible for getting her this job, but it was up to Maddie to do the work, and to do it so brilliantly, she couldn't help but secure more work as a result. The budget at her disposal was truly eye-watering; she couldn't wait to dive into it, scouring local markets for flowers, and working with the wedding planner on whatever the couple chose.

"Hello? Earth to Maddie?"

She blinked at Rocco, who was looking at her with a quizzical expression. And no wonder. She was standing like a statue, partially dressed. Her cheeks flamed. "Hi."

"You were miles away, cara."

"Yeah." She bit into her lip, her brows knitting together.

"Something wrong?"

"No, no. Nothing's wrong. Only, about this," she gestured from her chest to his, swallowing hard at the sight of his toned, tanned abdomen, her thoughts momentarily derailed.

"This?"

"Us," she clarified with a nod. "And the fact we're sleeping together." In light of her recent musings, it felt good to underscore the purely physical nature of their relationship. "Even though I know you had your own motives, I'm…grateful for the chance to work on this wedding."

He arched a brow. "You have a funny way of saying ‘thank you'."

She pulled a face. "That's a bridge too far, given the whole house situation."

His face sobered and he nodded slowly, a hint of sympathy in his gaze; but she didn't want that, either. She wasn't an object of pity. She wasn't her mother. She was strong, and in charge, able to make the decisions in her life that were best for her. She had failed with Brock, but everything was different now. She was different.

"I'm looking forward to this job," she went on, continuing to pull clothes on, as the plane palpably lowered in the sky. "But I would hate for your family to think I'm only there because of…guilt."

He looked at her without responding.

"I'm confident I can do this, or I would never have accepted," she rushed on. "I will go above and beyond to give your brother and his bride the most amazing floral arrangements anyone's ever floralled. So, I just wonder if we can keep this," she gestured from her chest towards his again. "Between us."

Rocco's nod was slow. "I wasn't planning on shouting it from the rooftops."

Her heart lurched. "Good." That was what she wanted, so why did his words cause an arrow of pain to dart through her, landing with a thud in the center of her chest? "Great," she tried again, with more enthusiasm.

"It's not exactly the most professional thing I've ever done."

Maddie tilted her head to the side in silent enquiry.

"We're at loggerheads over the house. The development means a lot to me—it's worth a lot, financially," he corrected. "I doubt my family would be particularly thrilled with how I've complicated things."

"You haven't," she said quickly, surprised by the immediate rebuttal. "Or if you have, so have I. But we both know this," for the third time, she gestured between them, earning a sardonic half-smile from Rocco. "Doesn't change anything about the house."

"Or the flowers."

She bit into her lip as she nodded. "Okay, then. I'm glad we're in agreement."

"Indeed." He stood, striding to her, gloriously naked and uncaring, like some of kind of ancient, Greek God. Her heart stammered and her stomach clenched. "But make no mistake about it, Maddie." It was Rocco's turn to gesture between them, but when he did it, he physically touched his own chest first, and then hers, pressing his fingers to the soft flesh just above her breasts, where her heart was hammering. "When you are not working, you will be mine." His fingers lifted, catching her chin and raising her face to his. "All mine, anytime I want you." He dropped his mouth to her jaw, kissing her there, flicking her with his tongue, breathing warmth against her sensitive flesh, until she was trembling all over. Was it his kiss, though, or the intoxicating dominance in his words? The demands, that spoke of a deep, hungry need for her?

"What about what I want?" she moaned into his mouth, because she felt a need to assert something , a challenge to his control, to his possessive tone.

He pulled back, just long enough to pin her eyes with his own, to stare almost through her, and then he grinned. "Isn't it the same thing?"

He kissed her before she could answer, kissing her as the plane continued to descend, kissing her and holding her steady as the plane lurched a little when it hit the runway; but Maddie didn't notice anything quite so earthly and pragmatic. She was well beyond the point of being able to think, to do anything other than this. To feel and be felt; to be made to feel.

Despite everything, she couldn't lie to herself about one aspect of their relationship. When they touched, she was in heaven—and she wasn't sure she ever wanted that to end. It was a chilling, sobering thought, and only her certainty that she'd never be stupid enough to let a man into her heart again stopped her from worrying. Rocco was as addictive as he was temporary—a conundrum she'd solve when all this was over, and she could think clearly once more. For now, she surrendered to the pleasure he could invoke and reminded herself that she deserved this.