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bedroom and its huge canopied bed. The beautiful, rich fabrics covering the room cast everything in a golden, luxurious hue that might have been a royal princess’s bedroom.
    It evoked a strange feeling in Quinn. She’d spent much of her life feeling like the imposter princess. Her birth father, a factory worker in Mississippi, even now worked two jobs to make ends meet for his family. She knew because she’d hired a private detective to find them and learned the real truth about her adoption. Unlike the story she’d been fed by a well-meaning Warren and Sile, it hadn’t been as simple as her mother having an affair with a married man and giving her up because of the complications of their relationship. Her mother had gone on to marry her father and they’d had another girl. Her sister.
    To replace the girl they’d given away.
    “Quinn?” Matteo was looking at her with a raised brow. “Everything okay?”
    She blinked. “It’s stunning, thank you. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to grow up in a castle.”
    “I have stories.” A wry smile tipped his mouth. “You can imagine the hiding spots three industrious boys found.”
    She smiled. “Some impossible to find ones, I’ll bet. Will I get to meet your parents tonight?”
    He shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. Antonio serves on the boards of a couple of major corporations. He’s in London right now for meetings and my mother is in Florence where she prefers to stay.”
    Interesting arrangement . While her mother was alive, Warren would fly all night to get home to her. They hadn’t spent a night apart that wasn’t business. Her stomach twisted. In many ways, Sile’s tragic death at a far-too-early age had turned her father into a different man. Taken the small amount of softness Warren possessed with her, his anger at her death so raw and all-consuming.
    “Does seven suit for dinner?” Matteo asked. “If you sleep after that you should be able to get into the time.”
    “That’s perfect, thank you.”
    “ Fino a stasera . Until tonight...”
    And why did even that sound sexy? She closed the door behind him and blamed it on the accent. Accents were always sexy on a man. His, particularly so.
    She looked longingly at the bed. Just a couple more hours, she told herself, intending on showering first and catching up on email. But her eyelids burned from fatigue and she felt as if her body had been pummeled in a boxing match. Maybe a few minutes with her eyes closed on the high canopy bed in the beautiful, fairy-tale-ish room would refresh her enough to make it through dinner.
    Help her figure out exactly how she was going to avoid the inescapable attraction she felt toward her host. Her reaction to him, she decided, curling up on the satin comforter, was probably due to the fact she hadn’t looked at a man since Julian had left. Had buried herself in work lest the humiliation of it all become simply too much to bear. She hugged the pillow to her. Quinn never intended to feel that kind of humiliation ever again. From any man. So she was missing the gene that allowed her to be truly intimate with another person.... The way she’d survived in this world, the way she’d survived as a Davis was to shield her heart. To not let herself feel.
    It was easier that way. To not need anyone. And she wasn’t changing her strategy now.
    * * *
    Matteo knocked on the heavy wooden door of Quinn’s suite just after seven, his game plan firmly in place. Ply her with an incomparable Brunello, impress her with the history and atmosphere of De Campo over dinner in the cellar and, most importantly, find out why she’d ranked them fourth on her list.
    A piece of cake, as the Americans would say.
    When there was no response to his knock, he rapped again, harder. Nothing. Strange. Quinn seemed like the overly punctual type. He was knocking on the two-inch-thick door a third time when it flew open and she stood before him, bleary-eyed, dark hair flowing over her