“It’s fascinating. For example, did you know that when—”
“So you still have a thing for numbers,” he drawled softly.
“And you’re still the only man in the world that can make that sound dirty.”
“Now that you have me locked in with no relief in sight, I have to find my pleasure where I can,” he said with a twinkle in his eye.
Clio looked away from him, feeling the heat of his gaze like a caress, praying that she didn’t fall apart before she had a chance to be whole again.
Because this time there would not even be pieces of her heart and self-respect left.
Leaning forward, he tugged her left hand into his. She barely managed a gasp as the diamond ring slid in smooth and cold against her skin.
Her heart slammed against her rib cage. Instant refusal rose to her lips. But she held it off as she caught Stefan’s expression.
Distaste, and something else, something she didn’t even want to know, glimmered in his eyes.
Was he remembering Serena just as she was thinking of Jackson?
That day in the flat, she had removed the heavy, over-the-top diamond that Jackson had bought for her. Had finally felt free after so long.
Eyeing the ring, she willed herself to calm down. This was only a pretense, something she was walking into with her head screwed on right.
At least it was something that was close to her own taste—the most beautifully cut diamond, in a princess setting.
Her gaze flew to Stefan, who watched her with an intensity that arrested her thought process.
“Stefan, thank you…for everything. I—”
“Not required, bella. Do not, even for a moment, believe I’m doing you a favor or that there’s anything personal to all this. You have your side of the bargain and I have mine to keep up.”
While she grappled with his ruthless warning, he leaned forward and unbuckled her belt. “We will see Jackson tonight at a party, Clio. I made sure he can’t get to you before the evening. But obviously he will be foaming at the mouth to see you and to challenge me. He will make a scene, bella, and if I’m right about Jackson, it’s going to get dirty.
“Do you have what it takes to face him, Clio?”
“And if I don’t want to?”
“Then I will drag you with me anyway. Jackson needs to be stopped and I won’t get an opportunity like this again.”
The utter ruthlessness with which he said it stunned Clio. Every time she thought she knew him, he surprised her again. Once again, she wondered why Stefan despised Jackson so much.
But with a self-preservation instinct she should have had long before this, she didn’t prod him. For some reason, understanding what drove Stefan was a territory she didn’t want to go into. So she reassured him of her own intentions. “I’ll never want him back in my life, Stefan. This week has helped me see more than just Jackson’s betrayal.
“I’ll need you to stand by me tonight, but yes, I’m ready to take Jackson on.”
For once, there were no doubts in his gaze as it swept over her face searchingly. And Clio measured her progress in that green gaze, felt a small flicker of hope for herself.
“You have me, bella. For as long as you want.”
The moment Stefan helped her out of the limo onto the private estate in the Hamptons where the night’s party was, Clio heard the exponential rise in the intensity of the charged atmosphere.
Flashes of cameras and microphones were thrust in their faces from behind ropes. Their names seemed like a chant on a hundred lips.
Jackson had always been a media favorite, too.
Handsome, hardworking, successful—the perfect poster boy for America’s success stories. Or at least that was the image he had liked to project.
But the crowd that the security team was trying to corral tonight was like nothing Jackson had ever warranted.
Clutching the ring on her finger like a lifeline, Clio fisted and unfisted her hands as security guards ushered them inside the mansion through the throng.
“Mr. Bianco, are you seeing Ms. Norwood now?”
“Ms. Norwood, is it true you and Mr. Bianco were college sweethearts at Columbia?”
“Have you left Jackson Smith for Mr. Bianco? Or is it his bigger and better status and wealth that lured you in?”
She almost slipped until Stefan caught her hand in his and shielded her with his body. There was no end to the relentless questions, no lower depth that they could attribute to her motives.
Gritting her jaw, Clio followed Stefan’s lead until one bold reporter shot out a hand and blocked Stefan’s path.
“Give us one sentence, Mr. Bianco. Is Ms. Norwood just one of your usual arm candies or is there anything special about her?”
Stefan stilled and took in the crowd around them with a sly smile. Tugging her to his side, he wrapped an arm around her waist until she was plastered to him.
Something glittered in his gaze as he looked at her and a hundred flashes went on again to capture that mesmerizing look.
His gaze was molten fire, his mouth a study in sensuality.
Every inch of Clio gathered into a trembling ball at that heated look. He raised her hand to his face and kissed her knuckles, making sure the diamond on her finger caught the glare of every flash.
He played them so well.
Clio shivered uncontrollably. Gathering her against him, Stefan absorbed the tremors as if his solid, hard body was made for the very purpose of cushioning her and her emotions.
“After all these years, it didn’t take us long to realize how perfect we are for each other. Ms. Norwood has done me the honor of agreeing to marry me, yes. And whoever else has been in her life until now, it’s me she’s walking to the altar with,” he announced, possessiveness and pride dripping with each word, a flash of his Sicilian temperament wreathing his face.
It was all an act, Clio reminded herself, a perfectly orchestrated one by a man who wanted to hit his opponent where it would hurt.
The crowd went ballistic at the direct cut aimed toward Jackson. Her breath balling in her throat, she clung to Stefan’s hard frame to stop from being mobbed with more questions.
She knew she should speak up, she knew that she was remaining calm just as she had done with Jackson. But for the life of her, she couldn’t utter a word through the tightness in her chest.
She couldn’t help but wish, with a powerless fury, that time would turn back.
Before Stefan had changed and before she had let herself be lost. Before life had woken them up to the gritty reality of it all.
“Mr. Bianco, will you settle down in New York now that your betrothed is here?”
“Will you make New York the base of operations for Bianco Luxury Real Estate?”
For the first time that evening, Clio saw a momentary doubt shadow Stefan’s gaze.
His grip over her wrist tightened into a vise and she gasped.
Instantly, it loosened but he didn’t break his stride to answer their questions this time.
Clio made it through most of the evening with herself intact. Of course, she had to remind herself more than a few times that what she and Stefan were putting on was an act.
Because it was intoxicating to be in the company of a man who didn’t belittle anyone to prove his own worth, a man who could acknowledge the value of a competitor, a man whose confidence and self-belief was so bone deep that it was enthralling to watch for someone like her who had lost all sense of herself.
And because of their genuinely shared history, it was doubly easy to slip into the role of a loving fiancée, to finish each other’s sentences, to laugh at a shared joke without having to communicate.
They fit together too well, as he had noted. More than one conservative businessman, some Stefan claimed had never liked him previously, dropped by to congratulate and backslap him.
To tell him in obvious terms that he had made a fantastic choice by finally giving up his playboy ways and turning into a family man.
His brows rose, he laughed as his cell phone continued to chime with calls from his board members from all over the globe.
The worst part of the evening was standing by him without betraying the shiver that went through her when he casually touched her every other minute.
A hand on her waist, a kiss on her cheek, the intimate way he pushed a strand of hair that had slipped from its knot behind her ear, the way his long fingers lingered over her nape, sometimes dipping lower, sometime pressing into the very spot on her shoulders where she was getting stiff.
The chemistry that they had discovered in Athens seemed only to grow exponentially even under the most innocent of touches.
It thrilled her and scared her equally.
Excusing herself, she made her way to the buffet table. Determined to look her best tonight, and at Stefan’s urging, which was the nicest way to put his high-handed arranging of her day, Clio had spent most of the day lazing in the ultraluxurious spa at the Chatsfield, nibbling cucumber slices and drinking kale juice that had her looking supersuave in her designer dress—again arranged for her by her arrogant “fiancé”—but that had also left her on edge with hunger.
A migraine was looming, she was sure, and she wanted to stop it before it got worse.
She was about to grab a plate when her nape prickled, and a familiar scent sent her gut twisting into the most painful knot. She cast a look around and realized Jackson had her cornered.
“I didn’t think you had it in you to lure someone of Bianco’s stature. Fool me, huh, Clio?”