doing it.” She took another calming breath. “Tell me about Rocco’s wedding.” It was obvious that she wanted to turn the conversation away from her life, but still, warmth spilled into her green eyes as she said Rocco’s name. “It would have been something to see Rocco dance to the tunes of the woman he fell so hard for. Olivia Fitzgerald must be really special.”
The wistfulness in her gaze before she looked around herself and covered it up tugged at his curiosity. “Olivia is definitely something, and Rocco is well and truly caught.”
He noted the way her gaze kept going to the entrance to the terrace, the same revolving door that Jackson and the blonde had walked through. “It was only a plane ride away, Clio. If it’s money for the plane ticket, you could have just asked one of us.”
“I’m not destitute, Stefan,” she said tiredly, as if she would do anything if he just left her alone. “After Christian paid my rent for a few months that one time, I managed fine.”
Shock reverberated through Stefan.
Christian had helped Clio once with the rent? Had it been that bad for her?
But he had no doubt as to why Christian wouldn’t have breathed a word. His friend had grown up in poverty on the streets of Athens, was the one who really understood what it meant to make ends meet when you started with nothing.
He understood why it would have been Christian that Clio had gone to. But still, he didn’t like that things had been so bad for her and he hadn’t even had an inkling of it.
He stared at her anew.
There was no emotion, not even bitterness, in her tone. Only an underlying urgency and fear prompted by what, he had no idea.
It had to be something related to Jackson.
A renewed purpose filled him. He had to help her get out of whatever it was.
“If you ever needed something, you only had to ask.”
“I don’t want charity. Yours or anyone else’s. I paid Christian back when I was able to. I’m fine now.”
“Then why did you not come to the wedding? Why did you blanch when you saw me?”
“I told you. I’ve had too many things going on and—”
“Is it that or is the fact that your new associations and your new way of life don’t let you see your old friends anymore?”
She paled. “Whatever it is that you’re implying, say it straight to my face, Stefan. It’s not like you to worry about someone else’s feelings, is it?”
“Jackson Smith.”
A stillness came over her and Stefan knew. Whatever it was that robbed all color from her skin, that made a shadow of Clio, it was Jackson. “What...what do you mean?” He saw her throat swallow forcibly.
“Are you not well, bella?”
She jerked away from him, her breath coming in sharp bursts. “What. About. Jackson, Stefan?”
“Jackson is a crook. A polished, smooth-talking, self-centered crook. The best thing I can say about him is that he doesn’t lack for female company wherever he goes.”
Her brittle laughter interrupted him. “I could say the same or even less about you. A Slavic model and the ripples that she created just a couple of months ago come to mind.” A feverish gleam entered her eyes. “What was it? ‘Bianco’s last name should really be Bastard,’” she finished with a mutinous gleam. “You have been dubbed the One-Date Wonder because you won’t even the see the same woman twice.”
Her defense of that crook infuriated Stefan. “You have no idea what Jackson could be up to. His business practices are extremely murky. I have been looking for proof for a long time to pin him for it. He’s a greedy bastard, a leech who will use anyone to climb the ladder a little more, will use any means, even illegal ones to get what he wants. In straight words, he’s scum through and through. Whatever connection you have with him, cut it and walk away, before he brings you down with him.”
Every ounce of color fled from her face, leaving a pale, tight mask behind. “I don’t believe you. I know that Jackson can be brash and even uncouth sometimes, but he...”
“Then you’ve also become a fool and are not worth my time or advice.”
Fury that she would put him on the same level as Jackson left a bad taste in his mouth. This was not the woman he had known and admired once.
“Or maybe this is the life you lead now, Clio. Maybe walking away from wealth and the status you were born to didn’t work out quite like you thought it would. Maybe the facade of status and wealth that Jackson provides you makes being part of his crooked schemes worth it.”
Something flittered in her gaze, and against every instinct that warned him to walk away, Stefan stayed. Instead of the anger he expected, hurt wreathed her features. And again, this pale imitation of the old Clio he had known once twisted a knot in his gut.
“You don’t think that really.”
“A decade is a long time. You might be just as power hungry and itching to be kept like most women I know.”
“And you must have really become a cold bastard to be able to say that to me.”
Her words fell away like water on rocks. Had he become sentimental about her because he had known her a decade ago?
Clio was no different.
Women with self-respect, women who weren’t out for everything they could get could be counted on one hand. Like Rocco’s Olivia.
“Touché, bella. Maybe we are strangers to each other.”
“With nothing more to say to each other.”
She looked as if she was caught in a trap with no way out. It would haunt him if he walked away now.
“Dio, Clio...are you in some kind of trouble? Just tell me how you know him.”
Her chin lifted. As if she was bracing herself for attack.
“I work for him, have done for five years now. He gave me a job when no one would hire me, Stefan, showed me a way to make it in New York when I would have returned home to England with shame on my face. I have to believe that you’re mistaken. I have to believe for my own sake that everything you’re saying...” As erect and stiff as her shoulders were, she trembled. “Jackson’s my fiancé.”
“You are...” Gritting his jaw, Stefan curtailed the stinging response that rose to his lips, waited for the shock that was reverberating inside him to abate.
The fact that she had mentioned her engagement to Jackson as a second thought, that she had almost swayed while saying it—nothing could dilute the acidic taste that filled him.
How could Clio, of all the women in the world, be engaged to marry Jackson Smith? Had she changed that much?
Was it all shine and no substance to Clio either?
A
