“Paige.” He breathed her name as if it was one of his Italian curses, or perhaps a prayer, and she didn’t know when he’d dropped his hands down to take hers, only that his hands were so warm, so strong, and she was far weaker than she wanted to be if he was what made her feel strong. Wasn’t she? “Why didn’t you tell me this? Why didn’t you let me help you?”
“Because I was ashamed,” she said, and her voice cracked, but she didn’t look away from him. “Your mother was Violet Sutherlin. My mother was a drug addict who sold herself when she ran out of money, and it still wasn’t enough. Who wanted to sell me because until I met you, I was a virgin.”
He paled slightly, and she felt his hands tighten around hers, and she pushed on.
“The first night I spent with you, she realized I’d slept with you,” Paige said, aware that she sounded hollow, when still, she couldn’t regret it. Not a moment of that long, perfect night. Not even knowing what came after. “And when I got home that next day, she slapped me so hard it actually made my ears ring. But not enough to block her out. I’d already ruined her life by being born, you see. The least I could have done was let her sell the one commodity she had—I mean my virginity—to the highest bidder. She’d had the whole thing planned out with some friends of Denny’s.”
“How did I miss this?” Giancarlo asked, his voice a hoarse scrape in the empty studio.
“Because I wanted you to miss it.” Her voice was fierce. “Because you were my single rebellion. My escape. The only thing I’d ever had that was good. And all mine. And you came without any strings.” She dropped her gaze then, to where their hands were clasped tight. “But she was my mother.”
He muttered something in Italian.
“I think,” Paige said, because she had to finish now, “that if I hadn’t met you, even if I’d had a different boyfriend, I would have just slept with whoever Denny told me to sleep with. It would have been easier.”
“It would have been prostitution,” Giancarlo said, viciously, but she knew that this time, it wasn’t directed at her.
“What difference would it have made?” she asked, and she meant that. She shrugged. “I didn’t know anything else. A lot of the dancers slept around and let the men help with their rent. They didn’t call it prostitution—they called it dating. With benefits. Maybe I wouldn’t have minded it, if I’d started there. But I’d met you.” She blew out a breath and met his dark gold gaze. “And I was twenty years old. My mother told me a thousand times a day that men like you had a million girls like me. That I’d thrown myself away on you, that you would get sick of me sooner rather than later and we’d have nothing to show for it. And she, by God, wanted something to show for all her suffering.”
“How, pray, had she suffered?” His tone was icy, and it warmed something inside of her. As if maybe all those foundations she’d thought he’d shattered in Italy had only frozen and were coming back now as they warmed. As she did.
“It wasn’t my idea,” Paige said quietly, because this was the important part. “Denny insisted that sex sold. That you were worth an outrageous amount of money. And I thought—I really thought—that I owed her something. That it was just what love looked like. Because I might have ruined her life, but she was my mother. I loved her. I owed her.”
“You don’t have to tell me any more,” Giancarlo said, his voice a deep rumble. “I understand.”
“I loved you, too,” Paige whispered. “But I’d had twenty years of Arleen and only a couple months of you. I thought she was the real thing and you were just a dream. I thought if it was really a true thing between you and me, you’d try to understand why I did it. But I wasn’t surprised when you didn’t.”