“For a reason.”
Her hands clenched by her sides. “Because you think I was with Giovanni.”
“Because you were with Giovanni.”
She made a sound in the back of her throat. “Do you really know your grandfather so little you think he would have been having an affair with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter?”
“He was not in his right mind.” A muscle ticked in his jaw, a flare of fury firing in his eyes. “He was off in some...fairy-tale land of late. Doubtless you perpetuated that.”
Her head pounded with fury. “You are so wrong, you know that? So laughably wrong. And you know what else? You deserved that tonight, Rocco. And more, if I were to be honest. You can’t even admit the truth to yourself about how you feel.”
He stared at her, long and hard, his face contorting into an expression that made her want to head for the door and run. “Here I am, then, Olivia,” he rasped, his gaze impaling hers. “About ten showers away from finding your payback amusing. And that is the truth.” A muscle in his jaw ticked wildly. “You want to finish what you started? Put your hand back where it was, cara. In fact, put more than your hand there.” His voice softened to a low purr. “I dare you.”
The heat, the potent attraction that had been smoldering, building, between them all night wrapped itself around her like a shroud, seizing her lungs. Despite what he thought of her, despite what he’d done to her that night in Navigli, her body wanted him to finish what he’d started. Badly.
She raised her gaze to his. Dark color stained his high cheekbones, everything about him hard, masculine challenge. He would be spectacular in bed. All that intensity caged in an outrageously good body. She could almost taste how good he would be.
She nearly did it, too. Because numbing her brain as to what lay ahead just a little bit longer was high on her agenda. Then her rational brain kicked in. Short-term avoidance wasn’t going to help her in reality. She stepped back, removed herself from all that heat and called it a brush with insanity.
“No, thank you, Rocco. I’m finally starting to learn the rules of your game, and I decline. This year is going to be hard enough without introducing sex into the mix.”
She watched him process her response. The emotion that flickered through his volatile gaze. Watched him firmly slam a lid on it. “I tend to wholeheartedly agree. But push me again like that, Olivia, and I won’t be responsible for my actions, deal or not. Count on that.”
A shiver rocked through her. She turned and walked into the bedroom before the madness escalated. She should be focusing on the day ahead, figuring out how she was going to get through it rather than allowing herself to become hopelessly distracted with Rocco.
Not that anything could prepare her for returning to the life she’d left behind. Nothing ever could.
CHAPTER SIX
IT WAS A New York press frenzy at its finest, camera people crawling over one another to get a better position, journalists jockeying their way to the front of the room, extralarge coffee cups clutched in their hands. The buzz of a big story was in the air.
“No doubt way over the fire code,” Savanna Piers, Mondelli’s chic head of public relations, commented wryly, “but no one’s going anywhere.”
Olivia stood alongside Savanna and Rocco in the atrium of the hotel where the annual meeting of fashion designers was being held, the opening press conference about to begin. Standing beside them were spokespeople from the other represented manufacturers, but it was clear from the tone of the overheard conversations nobody wanted to talk to them. They all wanted to talk to her: Olivia Fitzgerald, the supermodel who had abandoned her career at its peak, defected on a three-million-dollar contract with a major French cosmetics company and disappeared from the face of the earth.
A sheen of perspiration blanketed her body. She felt a pool of it trickle down her back. Felt her breathing quicken as the oxygen in the room seemed to drain with every second...
The colors and movement around her faded into a detail-less swirling gray. It reached out for her then, the panic, beckoning her, dark and familiar. She pulled in a desperate breath and fought it. Tried to hold it at bay, but the room grew darker around her.
“I need some air.” She backed away and headed toward the hallway. Standing with her back against the wall in the corridor as catering staff bustled by her, she closed her eyes and made herself breathe in and out, deep long breaths like her therapist had taught her.
Eleven years she’d been having these panic attacks. Since she was fifteen. And they never got less terrifying. On the road in foreign countries with no support system in her emotionally unavailable parents and the stress of having to be the best every time she stepped onto a set, they’d started one night in Berlin. Debilitating, overwhelming, she’d been terrified of them. It had felt as though she was losing her mind.