amazed at her own strength in managing it. But seeing Rocco, Christian and Zayed, seeing the disbelief and pity that would fill their faces when they saw her, she didn’t have the heart for it.
“There’s nothing you will gain by dragging me to Christian’s wedding.”
“That’s for me to decide,” he said, arrogant implacability in his tone.
“Stefan, listen to me. I’ll go back to Jackson tonight and pretend like nothing happened. Even as nauseous as it makes me to do it. For the next week, I’ll continue to keep my mouth shut like I did over the last few years and let him think I’m still the same, spineless Clio.” Just thinking of it made her skin crawl. “I’ll wait until you return from Christian’s wedding. That’s innumerable chances for me to back out of this thing, by your logic. But I’ll be here, waiting. Then you’ll know that I’m serious.”
“No.”
“Why the hell do you care if I go to Christian’s wedding or not?”
“If you want to start a new life, bella, why not start it with coming back to your old friends?”
“I can’t, Stefan. I don’t have the...”
“What?”
He reached out to her and pulled her hand into his. Immediately, her fingers stiffened in his but he didn’t let go. “Neither of us is going to benefit by lying to each other or by treading carefully, Clio. If this pretense has any chance to work, it has to be anything but between us. Capisce, bella?”
“Yes, but I don’t see the point in carrying the pretense forward to our friends, too. Will you lie to Rocco, Christian and Zayed, Stefan? Will you be able to?”
“If we want the world to buy into our shock engagement, yes. Leave them to me. You...you will not breathe a word to another soul what’s happening between us.
“With Rocco already married and Christian doing the same, the whole world’s eyes are already on the Columbia Four. Won’t be difficult to get them to buy that I’m following in my friends’ footsteps and looking forward to a happily-ever-after with the woman I adore.”
“I won’t be able to pull it off. Deception and lying have never come easy to me.”
“Don’t worry, Clio. You’ll be just as good or even better at pulling this off as any other woman I’ve ever known.”
“Stop insulting me, Stefan. I’m not one of your—”
“The jury’s still out on that one,” he cut her off without blinking an eye, without an ounce of emotion. “Think of it this way, bella. For us to begin a pretend engagement that the media and the whole world will eat up, we need to lay the groundwork.
“And what better way to start a lifelong love affair that will be the talk of the world than going to an old, mutual friend’s wedding? Every way I look at it, this is what we need to start our fairy-tale romance.”
A fairy-tale romance with one of the most gorgeous, arrogant, hard-hearted men she had ever met...it was a fate that would have sent Clio running a decade ago.
It had been the fate she had walked away from.
But joining forces with Stefan in this was her choice, she reminded herself.
Meeting his gaze, she nodded. “Fine. Let’s go to Christian’s wedding. But I have to see Jackson tomorrow.”
“No.”
“If I have to look through his finances, I can’t walk away from him yet.”
“Then I will come with you.”
“No. I won’t fall apart, Stefan. Not tomorrow, not in the coming days.”
* * *
“Where the hell have you been, Clio? You don’t answer your cell, you’re not at work... ”
Her breath balling in her throat, Clio stilled as she walked into the lounge of the flat she had lived in for more than four years. Jackson swept his gaze over her. Shock pervaded it and something else.
Pushing his laptop onto the sofa, he shot up and walked toward her. And Clio automatically stepped back.
Do not betray yourself, bella.
With Stefan’s warning ringing in her ears, she forced herself to not flinch as Jackson neared her. Her gut twisted and she wondered if Stefan had been right. That she was not up to even facing Jackson again.
“Clio?”
At five-nine, she topped him a good couple of inches. His gaze on level with hers, he cupped her cheek. There was no way to curb the shiver that spewed within.
“Is everything all right?”
The false sweetness in his greeting sent nausea rising through her. “Actually, I’m not okay.”
There was no need to pretend about her mood. She had not an ounce of belief that she could carry it off even if she tried.
Stepping away from him, she walked to the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water.
His gaze was still on her but she let hers drift over the sitting area and the dining room.
Desperate to be loved, desperate to feel she’s succeeded at something...
Her chest was so tight that it felt like a miracle that she was breathing. Because everywhere she looked, there was no trace of her in the space she had lived in for four years. It was all either an extension of Jackson’s loud personality or the abode of a New York financier. Nothing about the flat reflected her.
How had she not seen this until now? Her fingers shaking on the plastic bottle, she took a sip of the water and forced the knot in her throat down.
“Clio, you left the party yesterday without informing me, you didn’t return last night except for that text. Where the hell were you?”
“With an old friend,” she replied, finally setting her gaze on him.
Not one strand of his expertly cut blond hair was out of place. He was dressed to impress in a charcoal-gray suit—his ice-blue shirt chosen explicitly to bring out the blue of his eyes by none other than Ashley and picked up at the dry cleaner every week by Clio.
He had screwed his assistant barely half a mile away from her and had the temerity to demand explanation of her. Felt not an ounce of shame or guilt. Not even a shadow of hesitation.
Had she made it that easy for him? Had it been so easy to mock her, to use her?
“Clio... Open that mouth and say something or—”
“Or what, Jackson?” the question burst out of her on a wave of anger. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and counted to ten.
The minute Stefan had shown her into the extra bedroom, she had collapsed onto the bed. Yet, sleep had evaded her, the awareness she had tried
