Opposites Do Most Certainly Attract!

This is still about the house, right?

Scarlett's mom and grandma had been shocked at the news - more particularly the part where the daughter and granddaughter was linked with a bank owner who already had a fiancé. Scarlett had explained, they still hadn't understood why Mr. Valenti would be so nice as to offer her lunch. People in business did that all the time, gosh!
And therein lay the complication of the situation - even for Scarlett who was currently on said Valenti's private jet and off to said Valenti's villa in a Southern Italy paradise called Tropea.
Safe to say she hadn't told her mom and grandma about Dante's generous offer - they'd die. Good thing they were both in England and couldn't trace her whereabouts - they'd have no reason to. They thought she was still in Manhattan - that's what she'd told them.

God forgive her.

If this wasn't a deception already! She thought as she sipped some wine aboard Dante's luxurious aircraft and looked around her.

Such ostentatiously magnificent surroundings she found herself in, out of this world couldn't even begin to describe the interior of Dante's jet.

The ridiculously long dusty grey sofa she was seated on to start with was so plush, so soft she couldn't remember having sat anywhere so comfortable in her life -it made her want to lie back and close her eyes, relax, let go...? Something she hadn't done in such a long time.

She looked up at the ceiling and marvelled at how shiny it was with tiny white lights lined up along either side of it - she could see her reflection on the marble finishing and wondered how much it would cost someone to have a marble ceiling, on a jet...

Scarlett had never sat on a private jet but she was sure they weren't usually this big and spacious - she'd seen pictures!
What she was confronted with was an apartment - a three bedroom apartment!
She hadn't expected such opulence when Dante had convinced her to board one of his jets, she'd almost suffered a stroke when she'd had her first glimpse of the majestic aircraft. And when she'd got in, Scarlett blew a breath at the memory, she'd almost screamed. She never screamed- this was a very big deal.
Dante had told her shortly before she'd boarded the plane that she could have anything she asked for during the flight, she just needed to ask. And he hadn't lied. She was being treated like a queen or something! It was easy to forget she was a just a defense lawyer back in Manhattan.
To think just a few days back she'd been -

Ring Ring!

Her phone rang so suddenly she jumped -yes, felt like she was doing something wrong. She wasn't sure yet why she felt that way. Or she knew and was just  too afraid to admit it to herself.

"Hello, Dante!" she answered in an unusually high pitched voice and squeezed her eyes shut at the out of character pitch of her voice when he said, "Hello?" with a confused tone - like he wasn't sure it was her who had picked the phone.

"Hi!" she made another slip, dammit, what was wrong with her?! You didn't say 'hi' to a duke for Pete sake! At least not an Italian one!
"I mean, hello." she tried to salvage the situation and that's when she heard it, a chuckle. A dukely, bank owner, hot Italian guy chuckle. He was laughing. Again.

"Are you OK, Scarlett? You don't sound like yourself?" his deep voice, coloured with amusement rushed down the line and into her blood. "I hope you're comfortable and well taken care of?"

Scarlett wanted to throw herself off of his out- of- this- world luxurious private jet. She was so embarrassed! "I've never been more comfortable in my entire life, there, I said it. You can laugh harder now."

"Scarlett, I wasn't laughing at you, honestly. It's just the way you sounded when you picked up - you sounded overwhelmed." he said, a smile very clear in his voice, "Are you?" he added in question.