elegant monstrosity that was La Bellissima. For his heedless, callow twenties playing silly playboy games with films and a parade of famous and beautiful lovers, which this woman had brought to a screeching, excruciatingly public halt. For that dry blast of relentless heat on the wind, spiced with smoke from far-off brushfires and the hint of the Pacific Ocean that never cooled it, that made him feel too edgy, too undone. For his mother’s recklessness in lovers and husbands and assistants, in all her personal relationships to the endless delight of the predatory press, a trait of hers Giancarlo had long despaired of and had shared but once.
Once.
Once had been enough.
He studied Nicola—Paige—as she stood there before him, gazing back at him from her liar’s eyes that were neither blue nor green, that fall of thick, dark hair with a hint of auburn that she’d tamed into a side plait falling over one bare, exquisitely formed shoulder. Back then her hair had been redder, longer. Less ink, more fire, and he wished he found the darker shade unpleasant, unattractive. She was still as tall as he remembered but had gone skinny in that way they all did here, as if the denial of every pleasure in the world might bring them the fame they wanted more than anything. More than breath, more than food. Much, much more than love, as he knew all too well.
Don’t even think that word, he snarled at himself.
She stiffened as he let his gaze roam all over her, so he kept doing it, telling himself he didn’t care what this woman, whatever the hell she called herself now, thought or felt. Because she’d made it clear that the only things she’d ever seen when she’d looked at him—no matter how many times he’d made her scream his name, no matter how many ways they’d torn each other up and turned each other inside out, no matter how deeply he’d fallen for her or how enthusiastically he’d upended his life for her in those two months they’d spent almost entirely in his bed—were Violet’s fame and a paycheck to match.
It wasn’t only his heart she’d broken. She’d ground his pride, his belief that he could read anyone’s intentions at a glance and keep himself safe from the kind of grasping predators who teemed over this city like ants, under her heel. She’d completely altered the way he’d seen himself, who he was, as surely as if she’d severed one of his limbs.
Yet she still held herself well, which irritated him. She still had that dancer’s easy grace and the supple muscle tone to match. He took in her small, high breasts beneath that sleeveless white shirt with the draped neck, then the efficient pencil skirt that clung to the swell of her hips, and his hands remembered the lush feel of both. The slick perfection of her curves beneath his palms, always such a marvel of femininity in such a lean frame. The exquisite way she fit in his hands and tasted against his tongue. She’d left her legs bare, toned and pretty, and all he could think about was the way she’d wrapped them around his hips or draped them over his shoulders while he’d thrust hard and deep inside of her.
Stop, a voice inside him ordered, or you will shame yourself anew.
Her disguise—if that was what it was—did nothing to hide her particular, unusual beauty. She’d never looked like all the other girls who’d flocked around him back then. It was that fire in her that had called to him from that first, stunning clash of glances across the set of the music video where they’d met. She’d been a backup dancer in formfitting tights and a sport bra. He’d been the high-and-mighty pseudo director who shouldn’t have noticed her with a band full of pop stars hanging on his every word. And yet that single look had singed him alive.
He could still feel the same bright flames, even though she’d darkened her hair and wore sensible, professional clothes today that covered her mouthwatering midriff and failed to outline every last line of her thighs. Like the efficient secretary to his mother that he knew she’d proved herself to be over these past years, for some reason—and Giancarlo refused to let himself think about that. About her motives and intentions. Why she’d spent so long playing this game and why she’d bothered to excel in her position here while doing it. Why he couldn’t look at her without wanting her, even with all of this time between them. Even knowing exactly what she’d done.
“Is this where you tell me your sob story?” he asked coldly, taking a grim pleasure in the way she reacted to his voice. That little jump, as if she couldn’t control this crazy thing between them any more than he could. “There’s always one in these situations, is there not? So many reasons. So many excuses.”
“I’m not sobbing.” He couldn’t read that lovely oval of a face, with cheekbones made for a man to cradle between his palms and that wide mouth that begged to be tasted. Plundered. “And I don’t think I’ve made any excuses. I only apologized. It’s not the same thing.”
“No.” He let his gaze move over her mouth. That damned mouth. He could still feel the slide of it against his, or wrapped hot and warm around his hardness, trailing fire and oblivion wherever she used it. And nothing but lies when she spoke. “I’ll have to see what I can do about that.”
She actually sighed, as if he tried her patience, and he didn’t know whether he wanted to laugh or throttle her. He remembered that, too. From before. When she’d broken over his life like a hurricane and hadn’t stopped tearing up the trees and rearranging the earth until she was gone the same way she’d come, leaving nothing but scandal and the debris of her lies in her wake.
And yet she was still so pretty. He found that made him angrier than the rest of it.
“Glaring ferociously at me isn’t going to make me cry,” she said, and he wanted to see things in those chameleon eyes of hers. He wanted something, anything, to get to her—but he knew better, didn’t he? She hadn’t simply destroyed him, this time. She’d targeted his mother and she’d done it right under his nose. How could he imagine she was anything but evil? “It only makes the moment that much more uncomfortable.” She inclined her head slightly. “But if it makes you feel better, Giancarlo, you should go right ahead and try.”
He did laugh then. A short, humorless little sound.
“I am marveling at the sight of you,” he said, sounding cruel to his own ears, but she didn’t so much as blink. “You deserve to look like the person you really are, not the person you pretended you were.” He felt his mouth thin. “But I suppose this is Hollywood magic in action, no? The nastiest, most narcissistic things wrapped up tight in the prettiest packages. Of course you look as good as you did then.” He laughed softly, wanting it to hurt. Wanting something he said or did to have some effect on her—which told him a bit more than he wanted to know about his unresolved feelings about this woman. “That’s all you really have, is it not?”
GIANCARLO HAD FANCIED himself madly in love with her.
That was the thing he couldn’t forgive, much less permit himself to forget, especially when she was right here before him once again. The scandal that had ruined his budding film career, that had cast that deep, dark shadow over what had been left of his intensely private, deeply proper father’s life, that had made him question everything he’d thought he’d known about himself, that had made him finally leave this damned city and all its demons behind him within a day of the photos going live—that had been something a few shades worse than terrible and it remained a deep, indelible mark on Giancarlo’s soul. But however he might have deplored it, he supposed he could have eventually understood a pampered, thoughtless young man’s typical recklessness over a pretty girl. It was one of the oldest stories in the world.
It was his own parents’ story,
