The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance

“Giancarlo—”

“You will resign and leave of your own volition. Today. Now.”

She lifted her hands, which he saw were in tight fists, then dropped them back to her sides, and he admired the act. It almost looked real. “I can’t do that.”

“You will.” He decided he was enjoying himself. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. “This isn’t a debate, Paige.”

Her pretty face twisted into a convincing rendition of misery. “I can’t.”

“Because you haven’t managed to rewrite her will to leave it all to you yet?” he asked drily. “Or are you swapping out all the art on the walls for fakes? I thought the Rembrandt looked a bit odd in the front hall, but I imagined it was the light.”

“Because whatever you might think about me, and I’m not saying I don’t understand why you think it,” she rasped, “I care about her. And I don’t mean this to be insulting, Giancarlo, but I’m all she has.” Her eyes widened at the dark look he leveled at her, and she hurried on. “You haven’t visited her in years. She’s surrounded by acolytes and users the moment she steps off this property. I’m the only person she trusts.”

“Again, the irony is nearly edible.” He shrugged. “And you are wasting your breath. You should thank me for my mercy in letting you call this a resignation. If I were less benevolent, I’d have you arrested.”

She held his gaze for a moment too long. “Don’t make me call your bluff,” she said quietly. “I doubt very much you want the scandal.”

“Don’t make me call your bluff,” he hurled back at her. “Do you think I haven’t looked for the woman who ruined my life over the years? Hoping against hope she’d be locked up in prison where she belongs?” He smiled thinly when she stiffened. “Nicola Fielding fell off the face of the planet after those pictures went viral. That suggests to me that you aren’t any more keen to have history reveal itself in the tabloids than I am.” He lifted his brows. “Stalemate, cara. If I were you, I’d start packing.”

She took a deep breath and then let it out, long and slow, and there was no reason that should have bothered him the way it did, sneaking under his skin and making him feel edgy and annoyed, as if it was tangling up his intentions or bending the present into the past.

“I genuinely love Violet,” she said, her eyes big and pleading on his, and he ignored the tangling because he knew he had her. He could all but taste it. “This might have started as a misguided attempt to reach you after you disappeared, I’ll admit, but it stopped being that a long time ago. I don’t want to hurt her. Please. There must be a way we can work this out.”

He let himself enjoy the moment. Savor it.

This wasn’t temper, hot and wild, making him act out his passions in different ways, the line between it and grief too finely drawn to tell the difference. Too much time had passed. There was too much water under that particular bridge.

And she should never have come here. She should never have involved his mother. She should never have risked this.

“Giancarlo,” she said, the way she’d said it that bright and terrible morning a decade ago when he’d finally understood the truth about her—and had seen it in full color pictures splashed across the entirety of the goddamned planet. When he’d showed up at the apartment she’d never let him enter and had that short, awful, final conversation on her doorstep. Before he’d walked away from her and Los Angeles and all the rest of these Hollywood machinations he hated so deeply. Five painful minutes to end an entire phase of his life and so many of his dreams. “Please.”

He closed the distance between them with a single step, then reached over to pull on the end of that dark, glossy hair of hers, watching the auburn sheen in it glow and shift in the light. He felt more than heard her quick intake of breath and he wanted her in a thousand ways. That hadn’t dimmed.

It was time to indulge himself. He was certain that whatever her angle was, her self-interest would win out over self-preservation. Which meant he could work out what remained of his issues in the best way imaginable. Whatever else she was, she was supple. He had her.

“Oh, we can work it out,” he murmured, shifting so he could smell the lotion she used on her soft skin, a hint of eucalyptus and something far darker. Victory, he thought. His, this time. “It requires only that you get beneath me. And stay there until I’m done with you.”

She went still for a hot, searing moment.

“What did you say?”

“You heard me.”

Her changeable eyes were blue with distress then, and he might have loathed himself for that if he hadn’t known what a liar she was. And what an actress she could be when it suited her. So he only tugged on her plait again and watched her tipped-up face closely as comprehension moved across it, that same electric heat he felt inside him on its heels.

That, Giancarlo told himself, was why he would win this game this time. Because she couldn’t control the heat between them any more than he could. And he was no longer fool enough to imagine that meant a damned thing. He knew it was a game, this time.

“I want to make sure I’m understanding you.” She swallowed, hard, and he was certain she’d understood him just fine. “You want me to sleep with you to keep my job.”

He smiled, and watched goose bumps rise on her smooth skin. “I do. Often and enthusiastically. Wherever and however I choose.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“I assure you, I am. But by all means, test me. See what happens.”

Her lips trembled slightly and he admired it. It looked so real. But he was close enough to see the hard, needy press of her nipples against the silk of her blouse, and he knew better. He knew she was as helpless before this thing between them as he was. Maybe she always had been. Maybe that was why it had all got so confused—she’d chosen him because he was Hollywood royalty by virtue of his parents and thus made a good mark, but then there’d been all of this to complicate things. But he didn’t want to sympathize with her. Not even at such a remove.

“Giancarlo...” He didn’t interrupt her but she didn’t finish anyway, and her words trailed off into the afternoon breeze. He saw her eyes fill with a wet heat and he had to hand it to her, she was still too good at this. She made it so believable.

But he would never believe her again, no matter the provocation. No matter how many tears she shed, or almost shed. No matter how convincingly she could make her lips tremble. This was Hollywood.

This time, he wouldn’t be taken by surprise. He knew it was all an act from the start.

“Your choices are diminishing by the minute,” he told her softly. It was a warning. And one of the last he’d give her. “Now you have but two. Leave now, knowing I will tell my mother exactly why you’ve left and how you’ve spent these past years deceiving her. It might break her heart, but that will be one more black mark on your soul, not mine. And I’d be very surprised if she didn’t find some way to make you pay for it herself. She didn’t become who she is by accident, you must realize. She’s a great deal tougher than she looks.”

“I know she is.” Her gaze still shimmered with that heat, but none of it spilled over—and he reminded himself that was acting talent, not force of will. “And what’s the second choice?”

He shrugged. “Stay. And do exactly as I tell you.”

“Sexually.” She threw that at him, her voice unsteady but her gaze direct. “You mean do as you tell me sexually.”

If she thought her directness would shame him into altering his course here, she was far stupider than he remembered. Giancarlo smiled.

“I mean do as I tell you, full stop.” He indulged himself then, and touched her. He traced the remarkable line of her jaw, letting the sharp delight of it charge through his bones, then held her chin there, right where he could stare her down with all the ruthlessness he carried within him. “You will work for me, Paige. On your back. On your knees. At your desk. Whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want.”

He could feel her shaking and he exulted in it.

“Why?” she whispered. “This is me, remember? Why would you want to...?”

Again, she couldn’t finish, and he took pleasure in these signs of her weakness. These cracks in her slick, pretty armor. Giancarlo leaned in close and brushed his mouth over hers, a little hint of what was to come. A little test.

It was just as he remembered it.

All that fire, arcing in him and in her, too, from the shocked sound she made. All that misery. Shame and fury and ten years of that terrible longing. He’d never quite got past it, and this was why. This thrumming, pounding excitement that had only ever happened here, with her. This unmatched hunger. This beautiful lie that would not wreck him this time. Not this time.

He needed to work it all out on that delectable body she’d wielded like a weapon, enslaving him and destroying him before she’d finally got around to killing him, too. He needed to make her pay the price for her betrayal in the most intimate way possible. He needed to work out his goddamned issues in the very place they’d started, and then, only then, would he finally be free of her. It had only been two months back then. It would have burned out on its own—he was sure of it, but they hadn’t had time. He wanted time to glut himself, because only then would he get past this.

Giancarlo had to believe that.

“I know exactly who you are,” he told her then, and he didn’t pretend he wasn’t enjoying this. That now that the shock had passed, he wasn’t thrilled she’d proved herself as deceitful as he remembered. That he wasn’t looking forward to this in a way he hoped scared her straight down into her bones—because it should. “It’s long past time you paid for what you did to me, and believe me when I tell you I have a very, very detailed memory.”

“You’ll regret it.” Her voice was like gauze and had as much effect.

“I’ve already regretted you for a decade, cara,” he growled. “What does it matter to me if I add a little more?”

He leaned in closer, felt her quiver against him and thrilled to it. To her, because he knew her true face this time. He knew her. There would be no losing himself. There would be no fanciful dreaming of marriage and happy-ever-afters in the Tuscan countryside, deep in all the sweet golden fields that were his heritage. There would only be penance. Hers. Hard, hot, bone-melting penance, until he was satisfied.

Which he anticipated might take some time.

“This doesn’t make sense.” Did she sound desperate or did he want her to? Giancarlo didn’t care. “You hate me!”

“This isn’t hate,” he said, and his smile deepened. Darkened. “Let’s be clear, shall we? This is revenge.”

* * *

Paige thought he would leap on her the moment she agreed.

And of course she agreed, how could she do anything but agree when Violet Sutherlin had become the mother her own had been far too addicted and selfish and hateful to pretend to be? How could she walk away from that when Violet was therefore the only family she had left?

But Giancarlo had only smiled that hard, deeply disconcerting smile of his that had skittered over her skin like electricity.

Then he’d dropped his hand, stepped away from her and left her alone.

For days. Three days, in fact. Three long days and much longer nights.

Paige had to carry on as if everything was perfectly normal, doing her usual work for Violet and pretending to be as thrilled as the older woman was about the return of her prodigal son. She’d had to maintain her poise and professionalism, insofar as there was any professionalism in this particular sort of job that was as much about handling Violet’s personal whims as anything else. She’d had to try not to give herself away every time she was in the same room with Giancarlo, when all she wanted to do was scream at him to end this tension—a tension he did not appear to feel, as he lounged about, swam laps in the pool and laughed with his mother.

And every night she locked herself into the little cottage down near the edge of the canyon that was her home on Violet’s property and tortured herself until dawn.

It was as if her brain had recorded every single moment of every single encounter she’d ever had with Giancarlo and could play it all back in excruciating detail. Every touch. Every kiss. That slick, hard thrust of his possession. The sexy noise he’d made against her neck each time he’d come. The sobs echoing back from this or that wall that she knew were hers, while she writhed in mindless pleasure, his in every possible way.

By the morning of the fourth day she was a mess.

“Sleep well?” he asked in that taunting way of his, his dark brows rising high when he met her on the back steps on her way into the big house to start her day. Violet took her breakfast and the trades on a tray in her room each morning and she expected to see Paige there, too, before she was finished.

Giancarlo stood on the wide steps that led up to the terrace, not precisely blocking her way, but Paige didn’t rate her chances for slipping past him, either. Had she not been lost in her own scorching world of regret and too many vivid memories as she’d walked up the hill from her cottage, she’d have seen him here, lying in wait. She’d have avoided him.

Would you? that sly voice inside her asked.

A smart woman would have left Los Angeles ten years ago, never to return to the scene of so much pain and betrayal and heartache. A smart woman certainly wouldn’t have got herself tangled up with her ex-lover’s mother, and even if she had, she would have rejected Giancarlo’s devil’s bargain outright. So Paige supposed that ship had sailed a long time ago.

“I slept like a baby,” she replied, because her memories were her business.

“I take it you mean that in the literal sense,” he said drily. “Up every two hours wailing down the walls and making life a misery, then?”

Paige gritted her teeth. He, of course, glowed with health and that irritating masculine vigor of his. He wore an athletic T-shirt in a technical fabric and a pair of running shorts, and was clearly headed out to get himself into even better shape on the surrounding trails that scored the mountains, if that were even possible. No wonder he maintained that lean, rangy body of his that appeared to scoff at the very notion of fat. She wished she could hate him. She wished that pounding thing in her chest, and much lower, was hate.

“I’ve never slept better in my life,” she said staunchly.

Her mistake was that she’d drifted too close to him as she said it, as if he was a magnet and she was powerless to resist the pull. She remembered that, too. It had been like a tractor beam, that terrible compulsion. As if they were drawn together no matter what. Across the cavernous warehouse where she’d met him on that shoot. Across rooms, beds, showers. Wherever, whenever.

Ten years ago she’d thought that meant they were made for each other. She knew better now. Yet she still felt that draw.

Paige only flinched a little bit when he reached over and ran one of his elegant fingers in a soft crescent shape beneath her eye. It was such a gentle touch it made her head spin, especially when it was at such odds with that harsh look on his face, that ever-present gleam of furious gold in his gaze.

It took her one shaky breath, then another, to realize he’d traced the dark circle beneath her eye. That it wasn’t a caress at all.

It was an accusation.

“Liar,” he murmured, as if he was reciting an old poem, and there was no reason it should feel like a sharp blade stuck hard beneath her ribs. “But I expect nothing else from you.”

Bite your tongue, she ordered herself when she started to reply. Because she might have got herself into this mess, twice, but that didn’t mean she had to make it worse. She poured her feelings into the way she looked at him, and one corner of that hard, uncompromising mouth of his kicked up. Resignation, she thought. If they’d been different people she might have called it a kind of rueful admiration.

But this was Giancarlo, who despised her.

“Be ready at eight,” he told her gruffly.

“That could cover a multitude of sins.” So much for her vow of silence. Paige smiled thinly when his brows edged higher. “Be ready for what?”

Giancarlo moved slightly then on the wide marble step, making her acutely aware of him. Of the width of his muscled shoulders, the long sweep of his chiseled torso. Of his strength, his heat. Reminding her how deadly he was, how skilled. How he’d been the only man she’d ever met, before or since, who had known exactly what buttons to push to turn her to jelly, and had. Again and again. He’d simply looked at her, everything else had disappeared and he’d known.

He still knew. She could see it in that heat that made his dark eyes gleam. She could feel it the way her body prickled with that same lick of fire, the way the worst of the flames tangled together deep in her belly.

She felt her breath desert her, and she thought she saw the man she remembered in his dark gaze, the man as lost in this as she always had been, but it was gone almost at once as if it had never been. As if that had been nothing but wishful thinking on her part.

“Wear something I can get my hands under,” he told her, and there was a cruel cast to his desperately sensual mouth then that should have made her want to cry—but that wasn’t the sensation that tripped through her blood, making her feel dizzy with something she’d die before she’d call excitement.

And as if he knew that too, he smiled.

Then he left her there—trying to sort out all the conflicting sensations inside of her right there in the glare of another California summer morning, trying not to fall apart when she suspected that was what he wanted her to do—without a backward glance.

* * *

“I think he must be a terribly lonely man,” Violet said.

They were sitting in one of the great legend’s favorite rooms in this vast house, the sunny, book-lined and French-doored affair she called her office, located steps from her personal garden and festooned with her many awards.

Violet lounged back on the chaise she liked to sit on while tending to her empire—“because what, pray, is the point of being an international movie star if I can’t conduct business on a chaise?” Violet had retorted when asked why by some interviewer or another during awards season some time back—with her eyes on the city that preened before her beneath the ever-blue California sky and sighed. She was no doubt perfectly aware of the way the gentle light caught the face she’d allowed age to encroach upon, if only slightly. She looked wise and gorgeous at once, her fine blond hair brushed back from her face and only hinting at her sixty-plus years, dressed in her preferred “at home” outfit of butter-soft jeans that had cost her a small fortune and a bespoke emerald-green blouse that played up the remarkable eyes only a keen observer would note were enhanced by cosmetics.

This was the star in her natural habitat.

Sitting in her usual place at the elegant French secretary on the far side of the room, her laptop open before her and all of Violet’s cell phones in a row on the glossy wood surface in case any of them should ring, Paige frowned and named the very famous director they’d just been discussing.

“You think he’s lonely?” she asked, startled.

Violet let out that trademark throaty laugh of hers that had been wowing audiences and bringing whole rooms to a standstill since she’d appeared in her first film in the seventies.

“No doubt he is,” she said after a moment, “despite the parade of ever-younger starlets who he clearly doesn’t realize make him look that much older and more decrepit, but I meant Giancarlo.”

Of course she did.

“Is he?” Paige affected a vague tone. The sort of tone any employee would use when discussing the boss’s son.

“He was a very lonely child,” Violet said, in the same sort of curious, faraway voice she used when she was puzzling out a new character. “It is my single regret. His father and I loved each other wildly and often quite badly, and there was little room for anyone else.”

Everyone knew the story, of course. The doomed love affair with its separations and heartbreaks. The tempestuous, often short-lived reunions. The fact they’d lived separately for years at a time with many rumored affairs, but had never divorced. Violet’s bent head and flowing tears at the old count’s funeral, her refusal to speak of him publicly afterward.

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.”