It had been a long time since a kiss had turned him inside out with need.
A long time since anything had touched him.
But he would have preferred if it had been anyone but her.
The short clip was already up on most celebrity gossip websites and spreading like a virus. The rabid speculation had begun.
His features had been distinctive. So the media knew it was him.
What they hadn’t figured out yet was her identity. And they were going crazy trying to figure out who the new woman in his life was, angling to find out who else was on the guest list at Christian’s wedding.
The press had dubbed her Bianco’s Redhead, a name he was sure the redhead in question was going to dislike, if not despise.
He grabbed the remote just as Rocco, wearing the blackest scowl Stefan had ever seen, entered the suite without knocking.
His gaze turned to the plasma screen on the far wall seconds before Stefan turned it off. The silence grew heavy, almost stifling, as Rocco, his oldest friend, studied him.
“Whatever you want to say, don’t,” Stefan snarled, his hackles rising at his friend’s continued silence.
“All four of us have treated the world and the women in it as our playground for years, true,” Rocco said, cutting straight to the point, “but I always thought there was still a bit of honor left in all of us. First Christian with Lessie, and now you and Clio… Dio, didn’t you find anyone else to play with other than our oldest friend, Stefan?”
Stefan had had every intention of telling his friends the utter truth. But now, his friend’s well-meaning interference locked the words in his throat. Even as the short clip was sweeping the internet like wildfire for all the world to see, to actually dissect their kiss with Rocco, to reveal Clio’s confidence and their deal, felt too private.
Too intimate to be shared.
Which in itself should have rung all his internal alarms like a damn gong.
He ran the heel of his palm against his jaw, striving for a casual tone. One kiss and it was like Mount Etna had erupted.
“I’m not playing with her.”
“No? In a decade, I have not seen you make one meaningful connection with another person, much less a woman. And you always had a thing for her. Damn it, you cannot play with and then discard Clio like you—”
“Enough, Rocco,” he said through gritted teeth.
Leashing his temper by the skin of his teeth, because no way did he want to betray how much that kiss had affected him, Stefan smiled at Rocco. “Just because you have settled into marital bliss with Olivia doesn’t mean you can expect us all to change colors already, fratello. Clio…she is safe from me.”
Grinning, Rocco clapped him on the back. And once again, Stefan wondered at how well love and Olivia suited Rocco.
He had never seen his friend so happy and at peace.
“You know I had to—”
“Not needed, Rocco,” Stefan said.
Rocco looked at him as if he wanted to say something more. Instead, he embraced Stefan and bid him goodbye.
Pouring himself a drink, Stefan went to the balcony.
Olivia and Clio were seated at the outdoor café on the ground floor.
Instantly Stefan shifted to see Clio better. She wasn’t laughing like Olivia but a smile curved her mouth. And something loosened in his chest.
He was glad she was smiling again. She had lost that awful pallor, that stricken, lost look she had had when she had come to his suite.
As if she could sense his eyes on her, she looked up.
Across the distance, their gazes held. Stefan raised his glass and she did the same with a nod.
The elegant set of her shoulders, the long fiery locks, the high cheekbones—everything about her drew his attention.
With a ruthless will, he pulled his gaze away from her and went back into his suite.
He couldn’t touch her again, couldn’t risk any complications. Women and sex were uncomplicated for him. It was the only way he had put himself together, the only way he had moved forward after Serena’s betrayal.
Clio, whatever state she was in, deserved a hell of lot more. He had nothing to give her except memories of what she had been, except to be her pretend strength to face a man he abhorred.
The only reason he had agreed to this was because he needed justice to be served for Marco. He needed her help to see through Jackson’s destruction.
Switching his phone on, he made a call to his PR guy and to his head of security, instructing him to leak her name as the woman in the clip.
The sooner they accomplished what they had come together for, the sooner Clio would be out of his life, untouched and unscathed.
CHAPTER SIX
THEY WERE JUST an hour away from landing in a private airstrip in New York. Finally, Clio gathered enough nerve to switch on her tablet and opened a search engine.
More than once, her fingers slipped on the smooth surface. Tension turned her shoulders into stiff rods as she finally typed Stefan’s name.
Because he would be at the center of all this, he was the one whose coattails she would be riding through the storm they were unleashing.
Her heart hammered in her throat as the video file played again and she saw Stefan’s body enveloping her protectively even as they were lost in each other.
It spoke to the man she had known once.
Closing the video file, she scrolled down and froze at the title.
Bianco’s Redhead Is None Other than Clio Norwood, New York Financier Jackson Smith’s Fiancée of Three Years.
There was no end to the questions posed, to the number of links to other articles. No end to how the media talked about it as though it was a win on Stefan’s part that he had landed her. As though she was a prize and not a woman with feelings and emotions.
How did Stefan Bianco steal Clio Norwood from under the nose of Jackson Smith?
How long has the affair been going on? Is it serious?
Which Man Will Clio Norwood Choose in the End? one headline read, giving Clio at least the illusion of power over her own choices.
Even having been prepared for it, anger, disbelief and frustration and so many more emotions ran through Clio.