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so you can meet Bella and complete your survey.”
    Without another word he rose and walked to the rear of the plan, the soft snick of a door the only indication this inquisition was over. That he’d finally left her alone.
    She crumbled in the chair and rubbed her forehead, emotionally spent. Despite his resentment of her, or perhaps because of it, he’d given her a golden opportunity to reclaim Elite Affair.
    He was following her contract so far, so she couldn’t very well complain on that quarter either. Still she wasn’t about to let down her guard around him.
    This was business. Nothing more. For that reason alone she had to keep her guard up. Had to see this event through to the end. Had to watch that he didn’t double-cross her—that once the job was completed, Elite Affair reverted solely to her one hundred percent.
    Only then would she be able to start over. To make a life for herself. To be independent for once in her life.
    All she had to do was get through the next two weeks.
    Moments after the plane smoothly landed at the San Francesco d’Assisi airport on the less hilly outskirts of Perugia, Marco escorted Delanie to a waiting sedan and they were off. He rarely used a driver unless he was entertaining a fellow businessman, preferring to handle the wheel himself down the
autostrada
as well as on the roads that bypassed walled towns and sliced through the patchwork of medieval fields of produce.
    But the combination of too little sleep and the emotional upheaval of being near Delanie again curtailed that urge. He tapped a fist on his thigh, still vexed by the latter.
    He should not find her attractive. He sure as hell shouldn’tbegin to believe her lies about her troubled childhood, not when he’d learned the truth. If David Tate had been the beast Delanie swore him to be, her mother would have broken free when she’d had the chance.
    He needed his thoughts on the present. His relationship with Delanie was just business, pure and simple. That fact alone called for space between them. Though once they were in the backseat of the car she took that to the extreme and scrunched against the door as if waiting for the chance to jump free.
    “I repeat, I am not going to pounce on you,” he said.
    Her gaze swung to him, a bit wild and overly wide. “I know it’s just … You’re so intense. So angry still.”
    He scowled, disliking that he was letting his emotions reign. She was so nervous he literally felt every quick breath she sucked in until his own equilibrium was spinning.
    “My apologies then,” he said. “It has been a very long day without sleep.”
    “For both of us.” She heaved a sigh and directed her attention beyond the auto again. “It’s beautiful here.”
    “
Il cuore verde d’Italia
. The green heart of Italy.” He loved it. Respected it. Nurtured the land to the best of his ability and it rewarded him with kingly yields.
    “You’ve always lived here?”
    “For some time now,” he said, not inclined to share more of the details of his life with her.
    There was no point in it.
    She faced him, her perfectly shaped head lifted, pale brows pulled over the proud tilt of her nose. “Your vineyards. Are they near here?”
    “The vineyards I inherited or the land your father destroyed?” he asked when he knew damned good and well that the latter was what she meant.
    Two swaths of red streaked across her cheekbones. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?”
    “It is not something one forgets.”
    “Or forgives,” she said, frowning. “I’m so sorry Father did that—”
    “Save it,” he snapped. “I’m in no mood to hear your apology or excuses.”
    She shut her mouth, hurt he had jumped to conclusions when what she’d been about to say was “to us.” Yes, it was horrific that her father had spitefully ruined the business that had been in Marco’s family for generations. That he’d added another emotional scar to the ones Marco already suffered.
    But the