An Innocent To Tame The Italian. Tara Pammi

noble residence. It’s been in the family’s possession ever since. Greta will cram a history lesson down your throat if she catches you staring at it like that.”

      Even his mockery couldn’t fracture the awe in her chest. Fountains with water glittering out like liquid gold because of strategically placed lights, a gazebo with creepers enveloping it, two statues of majestic lions at the sides of the carriage entrance... How could he sound so dismissive and unaffected by his family’s legacy? “I’ve never seen such beautiful gardens.”

      “You’d love it in spring when they’re a riot of color. They’re Leonardo’s pride. He personally tends to them along with a team of gardeners. He can make the most reluctant plant blossom. He...loves the land and the villa and the...legacy of it all.”

      She was out of breath as they walked up the small, steep path while he simply marched on. “You don’t?” she asked, something in his tone snagging her attention.

      “I like being the one who saved it, the one who held it for the Brunettis so that they could show it off for another century,” he added mysteriously.

      She frowned, wondering at the contradictions of the man.

      Finally, they came around the bend to a square plot that housed the villa itself. A grand entrance portico with wide stairs that sloped toward the lake straddled the villa, which would offer three-sixty-degree views of the lake and the mountains from the grand terrace even now overflowing with guests.

      The white stucco facade gleamed under the light thrown from the lake. Nat sucked in a breath as the sounds of music and people chatting in Italian flowed over her skin. A line of luxury cars stood like gatekeepers, tasked with keeping riffraff, like her, out.

      She shivered even though the wind coming off the lake was more balmy than cold. Cicadas whispered all around them, the scents from the orangery they’d walked by thick and pungent in the air.

      It was a world away from Brooklyn and her cheap studio apartment, a world away from everything she’d ever known.

      Through the high arched front entrance, she could see suave men dressed in black suits and refined women dressed in cocktail finery with diamonds glittering at their throats and wrists. Uniformed waiters passing around champagne flutes so fine that Nat wondered if they’d break at the slightest pressure.

      She rubbed her sweating palms on her hips, which only brought her attention to her own outfit. A thread of shame filled her chest and she chased it away with much needed anger. God, she’d worked hard for every small thing she owned. To make an honest living for herself and for Frankie.

      She felt the heat of Massimo’s body next to her, before she heard the curse from his mouth. Frowning, she craned her neck to see him. Flashes of light revealed the tension in his brow, that perfectly carved jaw so tight that it almost seemed fragile. If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought he was no more inclined to go in than she was.

      The suavely sophisticated man who’d taunted her was nowhere to be seen. In his place was a stranger with tension thrumming tightly through his lean frame.

      “Massimo?” she whispered, unable to stem the concern she heard in her voice. “Is something wrong?”

      “My father is here,” he answered softly, before he blew out another soft curse and shook his head. “He is a bully of the worst kind.”

      “Must run in the family, then,” she quipped.

      “No.” His soft denial was emphatic enough that her head jerked to him. Glittering gray eyes held hers. “I’m nothing like my father.” He rubbed his jaw, a tell she was beginning to recognize he did when stressed. “Dios mio, I forgot it’s his birthday week. That means Greta checks him out of the rehabilitation clinic and parades him in front of our family and friends in an annual tradition. That means—” his gaze swung to the luxury vehicles “—everyone is here.”

      “Your father lives at a clinic?” She’d gotten the sense from him that family was important to him. Yet, he stared at his family’s villa like it was a nest of vipers.

      “He’s a recovering alcoholic. The recovery, if we can call it that, has been in progress for a decade now. Leonardo put him there years ago. My brother...he’s the best at eliminating anything that could damage our name, our business. Our legacy.”

      The bitterness in his words was unmistakable. “What do you mean your grandmother parades him?”

      “You didn’t get the sordid Brunetti history online before you attacked BCS?”

      The man changed skins as easily as a chameleon—one minute a charming rogue, the next a cunning businessman determined to make her spill her secrets against her own best interests. “I told you, I knew nothing about who and what you are.”

      Hesitation flickered in his eyes, before he cast another glance toward the villa. “If you’re to be exposed to them... My father, for most of my childhood, went on alcohol-fueled rampages. He embezzled funds from the company account for his personal use. Affairs with numerous women—both willing and unwilling—lavish parties at the villa... Think of it as a decades-long, out-of-control party that Greta turned away from.

      “By the time his misuse of company funds and resources came to Leonardo’s notice, Brunetti Finances, which had once been the leading finance giant in all of Italy, had been on the verge of bankruptcy. A dynasty reduced to nothing but a deck of cards standing on quicksand.

      “Leo had to use every inch of his business acumen to stop it from crumbling around our ears. He slogged night and day to get us out from under debt, took control of the board. I designed an e-commerce tool at the same time. He brought in millions in investors, persuaded me to build and release it myself instead of selling the design like I had planned to. I created Brunetti Cyber Securities under the family company’s umbrella and launched the tool. With the revenue from it, we stopped Brunetti Finances from going under.