her throat.
Shaking her head, she pushed her hair back. “I’m fine. Can I have something to drink?”
For a few seconds, he stood there staring at her.
Tall, impossibly wide, six feet three inches of prime Sicilian male, and all his focus was on her. His eyes perused her with a leisurely intensity that made her feel exposed, raw.
Not that she trusted her body’s response.
Finally, he moved to the glittering bar that covered one side of the lounge. “What would you like to drink?”
“Just some water, please.” There was a false comfort in talking about something so mundane. Maybe because it reminded her that the world did not fall away even through the earthquake in her life. “Alcohol gives me—”
“A migraine, I know. Are they still as bad as they used to be?”
He had remembered. Clio squashed the spurt of warmth that bloomed in her chest with ruthless will. So one of the youngest millionaires in the world had a good memory. Not a big surprise. “I never found anything to help me. So I don’t touch it,” she said, shrugging.
The sound of the refrigerator opening, the soft clink of the ice cubes against the glass punctured the silence that swathed them with awkwardness.
She hadn’t even told him why she was here. And he hadn’t asked.
Yet, it felt as if there was something in the air, an imbalance of power, a swirl of currents eddying around them, caging them together in the cavernous lounge. And she recoiled at adding to it by telling him what had happened tonight.
Would he laugh at her stupidity that she hadn’t even seen through Jackson’s facade for so long?
She grabbed the glass from him, and took a greedy gulp. All the while, he stood there like a dark specter, watching her, assessing her. And somehow she had a feeling, he found her wanting.
She had fallen in her own eyes. Did it matter if she did in his? a rebellious part of her mocked.
The answer had to be no because she didn’t have a single feeling to spare for him. There was nothing but cold will to keep her going.
“I’m sorry about intruding on you unannounced,” she said, once the cold water brought feeling back into her throat. “I didn’t even realize I had started walking toward...”
Catching the gleam of mockery in his green gaze, she faltered.
He took the glass from her shaking fingers. “Clio Norwood—epitome of good manners and decorum, even as she’s falling apart.”
“I’m not falling apart.”
His blunt-tipped fingers landed on her jaw and tilted her face up.
Panic chasing her stringent awareness of him, she caught his wrist to push it away. The pressure of his fingers increased.
“Then why are you so jumpy?”
There was no sympathy in his voice and for that she was a thousand times grateful. One kind word from him would break the small thread that was holding her together.
Falling apart, in front of him, was not a choice.
“I’m not. I just...” A ball of tears tightened her throat.
“Tell me what’s going on, Clio.”
The inherent command in his tone somehow grounded her.
Instead of jerking away from his touch, she slowly pushed it back. But the rasp of his hair-roughened wrist, the strong tendons of it, was too much sensation. She dropped his hand, her pulse thudding too loud.
“Have you eaten dinner?”
“No.”
“How did you get here?”
She raised her gaze. “What?”
“To the Chatsfield?”
“I walked.”
“From where?”
“From the dinner party.”
“At the Empire State Building?”
“Yes.”
He cursed so vehemently that Clio hugged herself instinctively. “That’s almost fifteen blocks from here and it’s nine-thirty at night. What the hell is wrong with you that you would walk at night in New York of all places?”
She remained mute, no response rising in the face of his valid point.
He sighed. “Finish that water and then order something from room service. I’ll get dressed and be back. And then you can tell me why you look like you—”
Anxiety hit her in waves. If he disappeared, she knew she would lose whatever it was that had brought her this far.
Saving face in front of him would become more important than moving on in her life.
“No, wait. Don’t leave. I...”
“Then get rid of that look in your eyes, bella,” he said. “I can’t stand it.” A hint of emotion colored that bland statement.
“What look?”
Pushing his tensile body into her space, he folded his hands. The muscles in his biceps curled enticingly and Clio choked back hysteria. Her life was falling apart, and yet it seemed the sight of Stefan half-naked could distract her as nothing else could.
“Like you’re terrified of me,” he said through gritted teeth. “We might have become strangers to each other but I would never hurt you, bella. Whatever Jackson did, you need to shake yourself out of it.” His voice fell as if she were a wounded animal he was persuading into his care.
“I’m not a danger to you, Clio.”
Oh, but he was, Clio admitted, her pulse skyrocketing.
If Jackson had reduced her to a shadow of herself over the years, Stefan could destroy the small part of her that was still intact. That he knew what she had been once and what she was now, it was a weapon he could wield with ease and without emotion, if he didn’t like what she was about to say.
The young man she had known at Columbia had not only been idealistic but also kind, with a rosy view of the world.
This man he was now, he rattled Clio on so many levels.
But she had no intention of ever letting a man define her sense of self. Ever again.
The thought gave her the courage to say what she wanted to. “I decided to take you up on your offer. I need your...I need help, Stefan.”
Something infinitesimal flashed in his brooding gaze, gone before she could read it. His defined jaw hardened. He moved to a small side table
