thought didn’t stop him. He casually made his way to the corner of the house, waited for the guard’s attention to turn and slipped into the dark beyond.
He came up against a Family Only sign on the first step of the spiral staircase and smirked with irony as he slipped past it to climb to the rooftop patio.
The stairs gave a nostalgically familiar creak as he reached the top—where he discovered someone had arrived ahead of him.
The sound and light from the party were blocked by the rise of the west wing of the house, casting the space into deep shadow. He could only see a silhouette and the lighter shadow of her mask as she turned from gazing across the moonlit Mediterranean. Even so, he recognized her as the woman who had careened into him as he was bidding on the portrait of his mother.
For one second as he’d steadied her, he had forgotten everything—his thirst to punish, his purpose in coming here. Something in her uninspired costume gave him the impression she didn’t belong here any more than he did. That she was hiding in plain sight. His male interest had been so piqued, he had nearly asked her to dance.
“Oh.” The lilt in her voice told him she had identified him from their brief encounter as well, which also told him she had found it as profound as he had.
“Were you expecting someone else?” He adjusted his mask to peer harder into the shadows. The rickety bench where his mother used to read to him was gone, replaced by a dark shape that suggested a comfortable, L-shaped sectional.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone.”
That was good news. On many levels.
“Did you follow me?” she asked.
“No.” He would like to think he would have timed things differently if he had known she was up here, but he wasn’t sure. Nor was he as dismayed as he ought to have been that she was now an obstacle to his goal.
“Did you invite someone to join you?” she asked, vaguely appalled.
He should have said, Yes. She sounded so uncomfortable at intruding, she probably would have hurried away, but something in him balked at letting her think he was involved with anyone.
He heard himself say a throaty and inviting, “Not yet.”
Her silhouette grew more alert. The air crackled between them.
“Who are you?” Her voice sharpened and her mask tilted as she cocked her head.
It struck him that he couldn’t tell her. Damn.
“I think the purpose of a night like this is to maintain the mystery.”
“And telling me would identify you as the buyer of that portrait you bid on so generously. And anonymously.”
“True.” The peril he was in began to impact him. She could place him with the painting and here on the rooftop. Maybe she didn’t know his name, but there was a chance she could find out.
Dared he linger? Was it worth the risk?
He couldn’t tell whether this rooftop patio had been repaved or the old bricks merely pulled up and reset, exposing the hidey-hole he had discovered as a child. He doubted his half brothers had ever found it. If they had, they wouldn’t have been so sly in their sale of this estate. There was every chance the new owners had found the treasure, though, and kept the contents without mentioning it. Angelo had very little faith in humanity, particularly those who sat like cream on the top of society without having worked to get there.
He couldn’t leave until he knew for sure. He had come this far, and so decided to wait her out.
He joined her at the wall. The last time he’d been here, he’d barely been tall enough to peer over. His distant memory of that time was swept away by the breeze off the water and the woman’s voice beside him.
“If you didn’t follow me or come to meet someone, why are you here?”
“Curiosity.” It wasn’t a complete lie. He was definitely intrigued by her. “You?”
“To think.”
“About?”
“The nature of happiness. Whether it’s a goal worth pursuing when there are no guarantees I’ll find it. That it would come at the expense of others if I did.”
“Nothing too heavy, then,” he drawled. Her hand was close to his on the wall, pale and ringless. “In my experience, happiness is a fleeting thing. A moment. Not a state of being.”
“And if a moment is all you have?”
His scalp prickled beneath his hat. He turned his head and tucked his chin, trying to see through the dark and the holes in his mask to read her expression, but it was impossible.
“Regret is also a moment. A choice not to seize happiness when it presents itself.”
“I would regret it if I didn’t take a chance,” she agreed with a nod of contemplation.
“What kind of chance?”
She let a couple of seconds tick by with crushing silence, then said in a thicker voice, “An overture. Letting my interest in someone be known.” Her hand had been curled into a tense fist, but it unfurled, her pinkie finger splaying toward him.
His stomach knotted. “Are you married?”
“No.” Through the rush of relief in his ears, he heard her add, “But obligations to do so loom. And I don’t want to risk making a fool of myself when I don’t know if he’s even—”
“He is,” he cut in. His chest felt tight and his throat could barely form words. “He’s interested.”
PIA’S HEART WAS pounding so hard, she ought to have hammered down the walls around her.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked faintly.
“Should I?”
“No.” If he did, he would be treating her differently. With kid gloves, because of her family’s influence. There would be no intimate questions about whether she was meeting someone or encouragement to act impulsively.
It was enormously refreshing not to carry the weight of history and expectation, which had been the nature of her dilemma when she’d come up here. That ever so brief moment with him in the marquee had sent her into a spiral of doubt about duty to family versus selfish pursuits.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“I’m not involved with anyone. But a moment is all I have, too.” His velvety timbre was layered with regret.
She kept trying to place his voice, certain she would remember if she’d heard him before.
“I
