At the Count's Bidding(77)

                “Why would she do that?” she whispered.

                “Because my father was a good man,” Giancarlo said, his hands hard and warm and tight on hers again, “and a kind man, but a cold one. And shortly after I told her you’d left she informed me that the only time in my life when I didn’t act just like him, inaccessible and aloof and insufferable—her words—” and his mouth crooked then “—was when I was with you. Ten years and three months ago.”

                “She knew,” Paige whispered, trying to take it in. “Is that why she was so kind to me?”

                “That,” Giancarlo said, a certain urgency in his voice that made her shift against the chair and tell herself it was only nerves, “and the fact that no matter what you might have been taught, it is not that difficult to be kind to you.”

                “You’ve found it incredibly difficult,” she pointed out, and it was getting harder by the moment to control the things shaking inside her, the things shaking loose. “Impossible, even.”

                “I am a selfish, arrogant ass,” he said, so seriously that she laughed out loud.

                “Well,” she said when the laughter faded. “That’s not the word I would have used. But if the shoe fits...”

                “I am my mother’s son,” he said simply. “I was born wealthy and aristocratic and, apparently, deeply sorry for myself. It took me all of an hour to realize I’d been completely out of line that day in Italy, Paige. It wasn’t about you. It was about my own childhood, about the vows I’d made that only you have ever tempted me to break—but I have no excuse.” He shook his head, his mouth thinning. “I know you didn’t try to trick me. I considered chasing you down at the airfield and dragging you back with me, but I thought you needed space from the madman who’d said those things to you. I took the earliest flight I could the following day, but when I got to Los Angeles, you weren’t there. Your things were packed up and shipped out to storage, but you never went there in person.”

                “That storage facility is in Bakersfield,” she said, blinking. “Did you go there?”

                “I haunted it,” he said, his gaze dark and steady on hers. “For weeks.”

                There was no denying the heat that swirled in her then, too much like hope, like light, when she knew better than to—

                But he was here. He was kneeling down in front of her even after she’d told him the kind of person she’d been at twenty. The kind of life she’d have led, if not for him. The kind of world she’d been raised in. He was trying, clearly.

                And Paige didn’t want to be right. She wanted to be happy. Just once, she wanted to be happy.

                “I was going to ship it wherever I settled,” she told him, letting that revolutionary thought settle into her bones. “There was no point carting it all around with me when I didn’t know where I was going.”

                “What ‘all’ are you talking about?” he asked, his tone dry. “It is perhaps three boxes, I am informed, after bribing the unscrupulous owner of that facility a shockingly small amount of money to see for myself.“ His expression dared her to protest that, but she didn’t. If anything, she had to bite back a smile. “My mother requires more baggage for a long afternoon in Santa Monica.”

                Paige shook her head, realizing she was drinking in his nearness instead of standing up for herself and the little life inside of her. That she owed both of them more than that. That the fact she felt lighter than she had in years was nice, but it didn’t change anything. That wasn’t happiness, that was chemistry, and she’d already seen where that led, hadn’t she? She needed more.