Possibly, Paige thought ruefully as she turned every last part of the story over in her head, she had studied that Hollywood fairy tale with a little more focus and attention than most.
“He doesn’t seem particularly lonely,” Paige said when she felt Violet’s expectant gaze on her. She sat very still in her chair, aware that while a great movie star might seem to be too narcissistic to notice anyone but herself, the truth was that Violet was an excellent judge of character. She had to be, to inhabit so many. She read people the way others read street signs. Fidgeting would tell her much, much more than Paige wanted her to know. “He seems as if he’s the sort of man who’s used to being in complete and possibly ruthless control. Of everything.”
The other woman’s smile then seemed sad. “I agree. And I can’t think of anything more lonely,” she said softly. “Can you?”
And perhaps that conversation was how Paige found herself touching up what she could only call defensive eyeliner in the mirror in the small foyer of her cozy little cottage when she heard a heavy hand at her door at precisely eight o’clock that night.
She didn’t bother to ask who it was. The cartwheels her stomach turned at the sound were identification enough.
Paige swung open the door and he was there, larger than life and infinitely more dangerous, looking aristocratic and lethal in one of the suits he favored that made him seem a far cry indeed from the more casual man she’d known before. This man looked as if he’d sooner spit nails than partake of the Californian pastime of surfing, much less lounge about like an affluent Malibu beach bum in torn jeans and no shirt. This man looked as forbidding and unreachable and haughtily blue-blooded as the Italian count he was.
Giancarlo stood on the path that led to her door and let his dark eyes sweep over her, from the high ponytail she’d fashioned to the heavy eye makeup she’d used because it was the only mask she thought he’d allow her to wear. His sensual mouth crooked slightly at that, as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking when she’d lined her eyes so dramatically, and then moved lower. To the dress that hugged her breasts tight, with only delicate straps above, then cascaded all the way to the floor in a loose, flowing style that suggested the kind of casual elegance she’d imagined he’d require no matter where he planned to take her.
“Very good, cara,” he said, and that wasn’t quite approval she heard in his voice. It was much closer to satisfaction, and that distinction made her pulse short-circuit, then start to drum wildly. Erratically. “It appears you are capable of following simple instructions, when it suits you.”
“Everyone can follow instructions when it suits them,” she retorted despite the fact she’d spent hours cautioning herself not to engage with him, not to give him any further ammunition. Especially not when he called her that name—cara—he’d once told her he reserved for the many indistinguishable women who flung themselves at him. Better that than “Nicola,” she thought fiercely. “It’s called survival.”
“I can think of other things to call it,” he murmured in that dark, silken way of his that hurt more for its insinuations than any directness would have. “But why start the night off with name-calling?” That crook of his mouth became harder, deadlier. “You’ll need your strength, I suspect. Best to conserve it while you can.”
He’s only messing with you, she cautioned herself as she stepped through the door and delivered herself into his clutches, the way she’d promised him she would. He wants to see if you’ll really go through with this.
So did she, she could admit, as she made a show of locking the front door, mostly to hide her nerves from that coolly assessing dark gaze of his. But it was done too fast, and then Giancarlo was urging her into a walk with that hand of his at the small of her back, and their history seemed particularly alive then in the velvety night that was still edged with deep blues as the summer evening took hold around them.