to Nico. “You are getting tall, Nico. Pretty soon you will be working with your grandfather in the store, no?”
Nico beamed with obvious delight and Elisa had to wonder just how much of a friendship had developed between her employer and her ex-lover over the year she’d been avoiding Salvatore.
“If I have a store.” The old man’s voice lowered with defeat, but then he smiled. “This little girl here, she’s given me new hope. Has she told you about the crown jewels?”
“Her father did.”
“It is a miracle she convinced the former crown prince to let us handle the auction, but she is smart and pretty enough to convince any red-blooded man of whatever her heart desires.” The old man winked at Salvatore. “Is that not so?”
She could have told Signor di Adamo that she hadn’t been pretty or desirable enough to convince Salvatore to love her, but she didn’t. Because she no longer cared. She didn’t want his love. She didn’t want his second-hand concern either. She just wanted to be left alone.
She didn’t get her wish. Salvatore stayed and discussed the shortcomings in Signor di Adamo’s security with the old man. He insisted on doing so in the store, frequently coming into close proximity to her. And every time it happened, the desires of her body betrayed the knowledge of her heart.
It didn’t matter what she did to avoid him. She moved to one side of the store and began cleaning jewelry. He followed. The same happened when she went to a jeweler’s case on the other side to rearrange its contents. Always it appeared he had been about to move there too, but she felt stalked. Considering the primitive view he had of life, it wasn’t hard to imagine him as a predator and herself as the prey.
In less than thirty minutes, her nerves were shot.
Unable to stand the pressure any longer of being around a man she had once loved, who had not loved her and whom she now despised, she sought escape at her desk in the back room. She would work on the auction. Signor di Adamo could man the store.
“You have been running away for a year, Elisa. That is over.”
Stupid. She castigated herself mentally as the voice she was trying so desperately to avoid attacked taut nerve endings. It had been really dim to take refuge in the small confines of an office that had only one exit. She faced him, wishing for the numbness she had felt for so many months after the death of her baby and the destruction of her dreams.
He stood blocking that exit—his head almost brushing the top of the doorframe, his shoulders filling it.
She refused to allow any of the emotions roiling inside her to show on her face. “I’m not running. I have work to do.”
“So, it has not been running when you manage to be gone every time I have come to visit.”
“I wasn’t always gone.”
“No, this is true. The first time I came, you were home in your apartment, but you refused to open the door.”
She’d threatened to call the police if he didn’t go away and she’d meant it. Even so, she had not expected him to leave, but he had. A male of his wealth and standing could have talked the police around, but he hadn’t even pushed it. Although she’d been relieved, she still had no real clue why he had gone.
“You came back,” she accused.
“And you left.”
“I had a buyer’s trip.” He’d made the mistake of calling to tell her he was in Rome on his way to see her. She’d left for the buyer’s trip three days early.
“You were running, just as you ran the next time I attempted to see you.”
“I owed my mother a visit.”
“Your father told you I was coming to Rome. You knew that meant I was going to try to see you again. You took off on a flight for America less than an hour before I arrived.”
“My father thought I might want to see you.” A hollow laugh escaped her. Nothing could have been further from the truth, but Papa had done her a favor in warning her of Salvatore’s intended travel plans.
“You ran away, Elisa, and I let you, but I cannot let you run any longer.”
“I don’t want to see you. That’s not running away.” Even he should be sensitive enough to realize she wanted to avoid a man who had cost her more than she had to give. “That is simply reality.”
He flinched, or maybe it was a trick of the lighting. Old wiring sometimes made it flicker.
“It is also reality that your father has asked me to look after you. This I will do.”
“I don’t need looking after.”
“You can say this?” There was no trick of the lighting now. Salvatore looked furious. “The security in this store is worse than I could have thought possible. The fact Signor di Adamo has not been robbed is by the grace of il buon dio. This store is the amateur thief’s dream hit.” His stress on the word “amateur” underscored his contempt for their security.
“There hasn’t been money to make improvements in that area.”
“That is no excuse. According to both Signor di Adamo and your father, you spend many days here alone. Is this true?”
Why was he asking her when they’d already said that it was?
“It’s none of your business.”
“You are my business.”
That possessive statement set off something inside her. Pain that had been festering for months while she tried to pretend she was over him exploded in her chest. There had been no confrontation, no final end to their relationship. She’d walked out of the hospital against doctor’s orders and refused to see Salvatore from that point on.
She shot to her feet without any thought of doing so and stormed forward until they were mere inches apart. Poking him right in his rock-solid wall of a chest with each word for emphasis, she said, “I am nothing to you.” She managed to contain the level of her voice, barely. “I was nothing to you when you were screwing me, and now that we aren’t even doing that I’m less than nothing to you. And you are nothing to me.”
“You said I was the father of the child you lost.”
She reeled from the words as if they’d been multiple body blows, staggering backwards, the pain so intense she did not know if she could contain it.
In a lightning-quick move that shocked her, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her the remaining inches while his mouth formed words she could not comprehend. Her body molded to his in a way that had once given her pleasure, but now filled her with loathing and fear. Loathing for her own physical reaction and fear that he would see it.
“Do not speak of yourself in this crude way. Whatever you were before, when we were together, you gave yourself to me. It was not ugly, as you make it out to be.”
Whatever she’d been before? A virgin. That was what she’d been, but because the physical barrier had not survived her years in gymnastics
