That's why Gwyn was so determined to prove to Travis her attachment to Henry was purely emotional. It was deeply emotional. Henry was the only family she had.
"You do make an easy target, don't you? A single woman of no resources or support," Vittorio commented. Perhaps even desperate, she could hear him speculating.
"You must think so, offering an affair when I'm at my lowest," she said. "You might as well hang around bus stations looking for teenaged runaways."
Something flashed in his gaze, ugly and hard and dangerous, but he leaned forward onto the table between them and smiled without humor.
"It's not an offer. Until I say otherwise, you're my lover. I'm a very powerful man, Gwyn. One who is livid on your behalf and willing to go on the offensive to reinstate your honor."
His words, the intense way he looked at her, snagged inside her heart and pulled, yanking her toward a desire to believe what he was saying.
"You mean the bank's behalf. To reinstate the bank's honor," she said, as much to remind herself as to mock him. Her prison-cell analogy had been wrong. This was the lion's cage she was trapped in with the king of beasts flicking his tail as he watched her.
"You understand me," he said with a nod of approval. "We've been very discreet about our relationship, given that you work for us," he continued in a casual tone, sitting back and taking his ease. "But I assure you, I'm intensely possessive. And very influential. This crime against you-" the bank "-won't go unpunished."
He was talking like it was real. Like they were actually going forward with this pretense. Like they were really having an affair.
She choked on a disbelieving laugh, pointing out, "That just switches out one scandal for another. It doesn't change anything. I still look like a slut."
She might have thought he didn't care, he remained so unmoving. But sparks flew in the hammered bronze of his irises, as if he waged a knife fight on the inside.
He still sounded infinitely patronizing when he spoke.
"Sex scandals have a very short lifespan in this country. A little one like a boss-employee thing, between two single adults?" He made a noise and dismissed it with a flick of his fingers. "Old news in a matter of days. I would rather weather that than have the bank suspected of corruption. The impact of something like that goes on indefinitely."
"Do you even care if I'm innocent? All you really want is to protect the bank, isn't it?" She looked at where she'd unconsciously torn off the whites of two fingernails, picking with agitation at them.
"Of course the bank is my priority. It's a bank. One that not only employs thousands, but influences the world economy. Our foundation is trust or we have nothing. So yes, I intend to protect it. The benefit to you could be exoneration-which I would think you would pursue whether you're guilty or not. We'll imply that Paolo knew of our affair and that's how he and I were made aware of Jensen's activities. We kept you in place to build the case."
"Will I keep my job?" she asked, as if she was bargaining when they both knew her position was so weak she was lucky she wasn't being questioned by the police right now. Or being hurled from this stupid helicopter.
"No," he said flatly. "Even if you prove to be innocent, putting you back on our payroll would muddy the waters."
"Let's pretend for a minute that I'm as innocent as I say I am," she said with deep sarcasm. "All I get out of this, out of being targeted by your client with naked photos that will exist in the public eye for the rest of my life, is a clean police record. I still lose my job and any chance of a career in the field I've been aiming at for years. Thanks."
He didn't own the patent on derision. She found enough scorn to coat the walls of this floating lounge, then turned her dry, stinging eyes to the window.
After a long moment, he said, "If you are innocent, you won't be left with nothing. Let me put it another way. Cooperate with me and I'll personally ensure you're compensated as befits the end result."
"You're going to pay me to lie?" she challenged, her tone edging toward wild. "And what happens when that comes out? I still look like an opportunist."
He didn't flinch, only curled his lip as he asked, "Which lie is closer to the truth, Gwyn? That you want to sleep with Kevin Jensen? Or that you've been sleeping with me?"
Could he see inside her thoughts? Did he know what she fantasized about as she drifted into slumber every night? She sincerely hoped not. Talk about dirty images!
Blushing hotly all over, she crushed the fingers of one hand in the grip of the other, trying to keep herself from ruining any more of her manicure. Having him aware of her attraction made this worse, just as she had suspected. It was mortifying to be this transparent around him.
All she had to do was picture Nadine's disapproving face to know how far protesting with the truth would get her, though. If she had more time, she might have come up with a better solution, but the helicopter was much lower now, seeming to aim for a stretch of green lawn next to a lakeside villa.
On the table before her, her phone vibrated with yet another message.
It didn't matter who it was from. Everyone she knew was being told she had sent naked photos of herself to a married man. The existence of the photos was bad enough, but she was prepared to do just about anything, as the people in Nadine's line of work would say, to change the narrative. Vittorio said this would cut the scandal down to a few short days and she had to agree that it was a more palatable lie than the one Kevin Jensen had put forth.
"Fine," she muttered, swallowing misgivings. "I'll pretend we were having an affair. Pretend," she repeated. "I'm not sleeping with you."
He smiled like he knew better.
CHAPTER FOUR
HE LET HER into the house, then watched her wander it as he made a call, allowing her to listen as he greeted someone with a warm, "Cara. Come stai?"
Gwyn took it like a punch in the stomach, wondering how crazy she was to agree that he could call her his lover if he already had one.
The restored mansion was unbelievable, she noted as she clung to her own elbows and stared at the view of Lake Como that started just below the windows off the breakfast nook. The rest of the interior was warmly welcoming, with a spacious kitchen and May sunshine that poured through the tall windows and glanced off the gleaming floors with golden promise. Family snapshots of children and gray-haired relatives and the handsome owner and his wife adorned the walls, making this a very personal sanctuary.
This felt like a place where nothing bad ever happened. That's what home was supposed to be, wasn't it? A refuge?
Would she ever build such a thing for herself, she wondered?
Gwyn moved into the lounge and lowered into a wingback chair, listening to the richness of Vittorio's voice, but not bothering to translate his Italian, aching to let waves of self-pity erode her composure. She felt more abandoned today than even the day her mother had died. At least then she'd had Henry. And a life to carry on with. A career. Something to keep her moving forward. Now...
She stared at her empty hands. Vittorio had even stolen her phone again, scowling at its constant buzz before powering it down and pocketing it.
She hadn't argued, still in a kind of denial, but she was facing facts now. She had no one. Nothing.
In the other room, Vittorio concluded with, "Ciao, bella," and his footsteps approached.
He checked briefly when he saw her, then came forward to offer the square of white linen that was still faintly damp and stained with her mascara.
So gallant. While she felt like some kind of sullied lowlife.
She rejected it and him by looking away.
"No tears? That doesn't speak of innocence, mia bella," he jeered softly.
She never cried in front of people. Even at the funeral, she'd been the stalwart organizer, waiting for privacy before allowing grief to overwhelm her.
"Is that all it would take to convince you?" she said with an equal mixture of gentle mockery. "Would you hold me if I did?" She lifted her chin to let him see her disdain.
"Of course," he said, making her heart leap in a mixture of alarm and yearning. "No man who calls himself a man allows a woman to cry alone."
"Some of us prefer it," she choked out, even though there was a huge, weak part of her that wanted to wallow in whatever consolation he might offer. She'd had boyfriends. She knew that a man's embrace could create a sense of harbor.