Queen for a Day (BBW Billionaire Romance) (2 page)

"Excellent," Parisi said, his long legs quickly taking him over to his desk where he jabbed an intercom button and barked out an order for Anders to bring my other luggage to the office.

An objection gnawed at my lips but I kept it locked within me. Aside from the possibility that Parisi was devoutly religious and would object to my birth control pills, there wasn't anything inside the bag Anders was fetching that was inherently embarrassing. But the lack of objects that might make me blush didn't give Parisi the right to so blithely order the retrieval of my travel bag -- neither did his money grant him that power.

"Here," he said, returning to the trunk and pulling out the cosmetics. "You can start with a demonstration of the makeup."

My enthusiasm returned as quickly as it had fled. Even the interested investors had stopped me before any in depth discussion on the samples.

"Everything is natural," I began as I reached for the case. "I'm really proud of the illuminators--"

"
Si, si, si,
"
he interrupted. "Your customers want to know that, their men don't."

His hand found the hollow of my back, the spot just above my tailbone. His palm filled the space as he steered me across the cavernous office to where a changing screen of dense copper lace had been set up in front of a large window. Stepping behind the screen, he created a gap of about two feet between the heavy drapes that were blocking what remained of the early evening light.

"Let's keep the magic going and save the tutorials for the website," he suggested and gestured for me to step behind the screen.

I would have rather worked under proper lighting, but I complied as a muted growl thrashed inside my chest. So long as he didn't turn on any of the other lamps I had noticed in the room, I could apply enough of the cosmetics to make a good impression without looking like a circus clown. All bets were off the second the lighting changed.

I worked quickly, not slowing down even when Anders entered the room and I heard Parisi unzip my bag and sort through the clothes. I chewed ruthlessly at my bottom lip as I dabbed on the top layer, coloring in my brows to symmetrical perfection, contouring in bronze and gold and silver-gold.

Exiting from behind the screen just as Anders closed the office door behind him, I saw Parisi holding the twin to the beige-gold swing dress I had brought and matching sandals. The bag he had taken them from rested on an end table at his side. The newly sewn lace panties and bra poked up past the rim of the suitcase as if they were attempting to crawl into the jacket pocket of his expensive silk suit.

I walked toward him, a far off bell tolling the hour. The sound distracted me, made me take a few extra seconds to realize what was wrong with the scene. Parisi wasn't inspecting anything. Instead, he held them much as a valet would.

A ridiculous possibility flashed through my head but I immediately rejected it.

"The screen should shield you sufficiently." He squeezed the words through pursed lips, his gaze unreadable in the room's dim light.

Fuck, he really did want me to change into the dress while he was here with me!

I shook my head. "That's not ... I mean, you just don't throw these items on..."

His brows lifted and the mouth narrowed even more. A little jiggle of his hand and he managed to flip the skirt of the short dress up to reveal the inside stitching. "Not sure what you mean,
bella.
Looks solid to me."

Bella?

The tension running through me ratcheted up another notch. He wasn't the first man to call me beautiful, not even the first Italian male. Franco and Benito had both liberally sprinkled the word throughout the trip from the airport to the island. Heck, Franco had slid it into his first sentence when all he was trying to do was ascertain that I was Nadine Hopkins.

But no matter how favorable my impression of the Bassani brothers' good looks, Silvio Parisi was his own level of hotness.

"The construction isn't the problem," I stammered, trying to figure out how to communicate my dilemma without referencing the fact that I was wearing an industrial strength bra and granny panties.

His brows inched up, there arch taking an amused cast and giving me the impression that he was having a little too much fun misunderstanding me.

"It's about the lines of everything else," I growled softly.

"Ah, I see." He thrust the dress and sandals into my hands.
"Un attimo, bella."

His fingers snatched up the lacy bra and panties. This time he did make a thorough inspection of my handiwork, his mouth curling up in a grin as he tested the seam of the gusset then ran the pad of his thumb over the front panel.

"Lines are crucial," he agreed, handing me the undergarments. "Straight lines, curvy lines. Hard lines and soft."

Lines you can cross and lines you shouldn't!

I stared at him, dumb struck and my fingers tingling with a numbness that loosened my grip on the two wisps of fabric.

"Careful,
bella,
" Parisi teased as I dropped the material. He bent quickly and scooped them up. Instead of returning them directly to me, he softly blew against the fabric as if his staff didn't keep the rooms immaculately clean and there was dust he needed to remove.

"A tad too soon for these to be on the floor, don't you think?"

I nodded, my brain suddenly absent from my skull, and let Parisi put the underwear in my hand and fold my fingers around them.

His chin tilted once at the direction of the folding screen. "Show me what I'm buying, Nadine."

********************

Behind the screen, I closed the gap in the heavy drapes. I had needed the incoming light while putting the makeup on, but I wasn't about to risk even my silhouette being visible to Parisi as I changed.

I tried a few calming breaths that did nothing to lower my anxiety level. If anything, the slow breathing gave me time to grow more anxious. I mean, what the hell was happening? Was I hysterically exaggerating cultural and language differences or was Silvio Parisi trying to seduce me? And if that was his plan, was it nothing more than a ruthless business tactic?

Turning my back to the screen and the man beyond it, I took off my bra and top, every movement carefully orchestrated so that Parisi wouldn't get to see so much as the shadow of a side boob. Then I put on the lacy gold-beige bra and the swing dress before just as carefully removing my shoes, pants and underwear and slipping on the matching panties and the strappy little sandals I had handcrafted.

By the time I was changed into the outfit, there wasn't a muscle in my body that wasn't shaking. I forced a few more slow breaths and tried to come up with a plan of action -- not an easy thing with competing goals of saving my company versus saving my ass if the nature of Parisi's intent was darker than I had already imagined.

"It's okay,
bella,
" Parisi called. "It's safe for you to come out. I'm not in a mood to bite."

Yeah, like that was what I needed to put me at ease!

I was all the way out from behind the screen when a second thought popped into my head. He had known I was done changing. Maybe that was only because he had freaky good hearing. More likely, he could at least see my silhouette while I changed and then became still.

Parisi had moved from standing next to the side table to sitting on a couch positioned dead center of the screen I had changed behind. His posture strongly suggested that he had been watching, as he sat there. His legs were spread wide, his hands dangling between them so that his balls likely cushioned his wrists. The heavily hooded eyes signaled a drowsy satisfaction.

Sliding to the far side of the couch, Parisi gestured for me to sit at the opposite end. "Your lease option on the factory is about to end, is it not?"

"I have two weeks to sign the lease," I agreed, relieved that he didn't seem to want to crowd me and that the conversation was headed in the right direction. "After that, it will be available for new offers. I'm not really concerned about the factory -- the market favors me right now."

He plucked at the pressed seams on his dress pants. "There have been rumors that a major Italian fashion house intends to launch a similar line."

"Not a rumor," I answered, knowing he was subtly pointing out that between competitors and real estate, among other factors, I had only a small window of time to finish finding an investor. "I was offered a six-figure kill fee to abandon my plans and just short of seven figures if I also turned over my existing intellectual property."

His brows lifted then his head slowly wagged side to side. "I'm surprised you didn't accept."

My face felt like it was going to cave in. Did he find everything I'd done to date so shitty that a million dollars would more than cover its value?

Forcing a hard smile in his direction, I shook my head. "I know my value, Mr. Parisi. A million is nowhere close."

"Silvio," he murmured, reiterating his insistence from our phone call that I address him by his first name. "I didn't mean it as an insult, Nadine. Your talent is..."

His tongue stalled as his gaze slide over my body, slow crawling from my face down to the hint of cleavage at the dress's neckline to the bottom hem a little above my knees then over the curve of my calves.

"Amply evident," he finished. "But most start-up entrepreneurs would have bailed before now, especially with a solid money offer on the table."

He slid a little bit closer to my end of the couch but didn't cross over the invisible line dividing it in half. "This venture of yours is about far more than money,
sì
?"

"Yes," I whispered then repeated the word loud enough so that I didn't sound like I was about to break down in tears. "This all started when my mother was diagnosed with inflammatory breast cancer. She didn't want to wear a wig, thought it was too artificial, especially with the loss of her eyebrows. She despised the caps and scarves even more, thought them too pedestrian no matter how bright or expensive the fabric. Her skin wouldn't tolerate even the gentlest cosmetics commercially available because of the chemicals. The depression got so bad..."

I couldn't finish. I hadn't even known my mother had cancer until she was admitted to the hospital after what the doctors thought was a suicide attempt masked as an unintentional overdose.

"I understand," he said, sliding toward me until he was close enough he could reach out and pat my knee. "The therapies work better if the patient maintains a sense of optimism."

I nodded my agreement even though the cancer therapy had ultimately failed.

"So you turned to what you learned in college and working at the museum for a solution?"

"Yes. I've worked at the museum almost as long as I've been walking," I started. Seeing the puzzled look on his face, I explained. "My father was a professor at the school and was a curator for the museum's Egyptology department until he retired a few years ago. I grew up around the exhibits and the restoration rooms."

Parisi's mouth twitched once then twisted before he said anything more. "So, which parent is which,
bella
?"

I didn't need him to elaborate on what he meant. Almost thirty, I had grown up biracial before it was something that made other kids at school think I was inherently cool, before there were adorable little girls in Cheerios commercials whose televised existence sparked a national dialogue. Most people I met growing up were curious, but most of them also waited for the information to come out organically.

Of course, few people were anything like Silvio Parisi.

"My dad is the quintessential northeast Ivy League college professor," I answered, smoothing the hem of my dress. "He is officially whiter than milk."

Almost giving me whiplash, the conversation swung back to the topic of my mother.

"To have come up with all that," he said, gesturing at the steamer trunk of samples I had wheeled into the room for him to look at. "You must have been very close with her."

"In the end," I agreed and immediately wanted to punch my own mouth for how I had framed the response. There were parts of the story I was fine with telling, especially if it moved me a little closer to securing the financing. But other parts I had so far kept to myself beyond one investor. And that jerk's reaction had renewed my determination to keep the story private as best I could

"My dad raised me as a single parent," I said, pushing on and hoping I could satisfy Parisi's curiosity without revealing much more. "They were only together a few years -- their lives didn't mesh."

His mouth pursed and I realized my mistake. He was like a shark who could detect a single drop of blood miles away from him in the ocean.

"It was my impression that the American courts favored the mother in custody battles."

"There was no battle," I admitted, a hurt I had thought long buried rising up again. "She was a model -- a supermodel, actually. She traveled a lot and I didn't fit in."

I tried to stop my hand before it gestured at my body, but I couldn't. Not once had my glamorous mother ever criticized my body -- out loud at least. She had just surrounded herself with people who constantly did and never said a word to silence them.

"It just wasn't an environment you raise a kid in," I finished. "So we became estranged, just perfunctory interactions...until the cancer."

"You're breaking my heart, Nadine."

He spoke the words all soft and tender, but I couldn't consider them as anything other than sarcastic. I wrapped one hand around the armrest and placed the other palm flat against the cushion, my gaze on the open steam trunk.

Before I could push up and begin gathering my things for an awkward return to the guest room, Parisi captured my wrist.

"I wasn't mocking you, Nadine," he assured me, his thumb stroking at the inside bend of my wrist. "It is heartbreaking when any child is estranged from a parent."

He tilted his head in my direction, his brows lifting and his mouth twisting into a grimace. "Of course, I would be lying if I didn't acknowledge your history is also great public relations material."