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.
Bianco’s Redhead… God!
Clio laughed so hard that her jaw hurt, her eyes pooled. She took the tissue that Stefan patiently extended and wiped her face.
There was a relief in realizing she had seen the worst, and lived to tell it.
Stefan gazed at her with a stunned expression in his eyes. “Clio, why you are smiling?”
Clio pointed to the tablet and shrugged. “Bianco’s Blonde has so much more zing, don’t you think?” She fingered her hair and pulled it forward. “Maybe I will dye it.”
Leaning forward in a movement that jammed the breath in her throat, he caught the thick strands between his fingers, a reverent expression in his gaze. Instant tension wove around them, thick and charged.
“No, bella,” he said, his words a rough command that would brook no argument.
Wrapping the silky locks around two of his fingers, he turned them around and around, tugging her forward.
There was a feral quality to his gaze as it turned to her, a possessiveness that drenched her in heat. “Do not dare to change a strand of it, Clio. Whatever transformation you think you need, I forbid you to ruin something so glorious.”
The sight of his hair-roughened wrists handling her hair sent a tremor through her. As did the inherent command in his tone. There was nothing about him that didn’t cause Clio to lose her breath, that didn’t make her feel as though she would combust if he didn’t touch her.
But if he did, if she let him explore this heat between them, as every tingling inch of her wanted to, there would be nothing left.
And his eviscerating brand of friendship was the only precious thing left to her.
“We can’t keep doing this, Stefan,” she said, her words hoarse and uneven, completely opposite to how she wanted to sound. “I…can’t think straight when you touch me and I need everything I have to deal with Jackson.”
The magnitude of her admission hung in the air around them but she would rather face the attraction between them than pretend it wasn’t always there.
Slowly, he unwound his fingers around her hair. Disappointment and fury wreathed his features until inch by inch, he pushed them out of his face. “How do you suggest we pretend to be engaged without touching each other, Clio? If you’re weak enough to call the thing off because you can’t—”
“I don’t think it’s weak to acknowledge a weakness.” She held his gaze steadily. “To pretend in front of the world and even our friends, it’s one thing. But I don’t want anything else to muddy our relationship.”
“It worked perfectly for us this time, but it won’t happen again, sì.”
Rubbing a hand over her tummy, Clio nodded jerkily.
When he met her gaze again, it was impassive, in control. And Clio almost bought it. But now that she had tasted the heat of his kiss, saw him smile and argue with Rocco, she knew it was only a hardened facade.
Stefan still felt as passionately as he had done a decade ago. Only now, all that firestorm of emotion and passion was buried under a coldly ruthless will.
And it twisted her gut that that well of passion, all that love he had to give, would never see the light of day again.
His ready acceptance suddenly threw her even though it was what she wanted. What she needed.
“Anything else, Clio?”
“I won’t be made a fool of again, Stefan. Not even in a pretend relationship.”
“I do not understand.”
Heat crept up her neck and she pointed to the tablet, images of him with other women accompanied with captions like predatory playboy in capital letters.
Stefan changed girlfriends like she did her clothes. And their kiss, it had made her feel more alive than she had in years.
Two different facts and both she needed to accept without giving it more weight.
“You are never without a woman.”
Something devilish gleamed in his gaze. “You still have me lost, bella. Say it in words I can understand, Clio. You forget that English is not my language.”
She was not a prude. But thinking of Stefan and sex in the same sentence sent a burst of heat through her belly that she didn’t even begin to know how to handle.
He knew how uncomfortable she was talking about this and yet he was goading her.
“What are you going to do for sex, Bianco?” she said, gritting her jaw, daring him to laugh at her now.
He did it anyway, but it was an indulgent smile that cut grooves through his cheeks. Her fingers itched to trace them, to feel the stubble on his cheek.
“Was that so hard?”
“No.” She returned his smile, feeling as if they were on equal footing again. “You haven’t answered me, though.”
“I will not take up a woman on the side while all this is going on, sì? You have my word, bella. And I’m sure a few months of deprivation won’t kill me. If I do get desperate, I have two very capable hands,” he said, holding them up, his expression deadpan.
Blushing at how quickly her mind supplied an image of him, naked, Clio threw her purse at him. “Too much information, Bianco.”
He waggled his brows at her and, shaking her head at that lewd expression, she laughed.
“You have such a beautiful laugh, Clio. You should do it more.”
Struck speechless by his abrupt observation, Clio nodded.
“We’ll be landing in an hour,” he said, tilting his head toward the New York skyline emerging through the clouds and visible through the windows. “Have you started looking at Jackson’s documents? Do you require help?”
“No, I can do it myself,” Clio replied, just hearing Jackson’s name making her feel dirty from the inside. “I have downloaded and printed every document pertaining to his finances and his hedge fund company. There isn’t a single number or transaction that I don’t have a hard copy of. But I haven’t seen anything yet, Stefan. Are you sure—”
“He’s dirty? Yes. I’ll bet my entire fortune on that.”
Leaning back against the seat, he propped one ankle over the other knee. Clasped his hands behind his head, causing his white dress shirt to stretch tight against that wide chest. “Keep looking, bella.”