Her insides dissolved into a river of fire, his taunt sending the intimate flesh at the heart of her into an excited, heated pull. She could not believe he’d just said that.
A hard glitter entered his eyes. “But of course, that will never happen.”
She sank her teeth into her bottom lip as her brain crashed rapidly back to earth. Turning, she stacked the designs on the table into neat piles, anger pulsing through her. “Oh, I get it, Rocco. You won’t put a hand on me because you think I was your grandfather’s lover, that I am soiled goods. But you want to, so you use your shock value to send me running.” She straightened the last pile, leaned back against the table and looked up at him. “Have I got it right?”
The in-your-face arrogance faded from his face. “I owe you an apology.”
That caught her off guard. “For what?”
“For assuming things that were not true. I was angry and I made accusations I shouldn’t have about your and Giovanni’s relationship. But the facts were staring me in the face.”
Antagonism replaced her confusion. “What facts? The fact he’d loaned me an apartment?”
“Bought it for you. The fact that he was writing you checks for large sums of money. That he never mentioned you at all. It was not normal behavior for Giovanni. Even your neighbors thought you were lovers.”
“Because he would come visit me at night to work?” She sank her hands deeper into her hips and glared at him. “You assumed a great deal of things, Rocco, and you were dead wrong on all of them.”
He inclined his head. “I was angry. Grieving. To accept that the Giovanni I knew would have cheated on Rosa, that he could be anything but the intensely loyal man I knew him to be, was exceedingly difficult.”
Undoubtedly. Her mouth flattened. “It still didn’t give you the right to treat me like you did.”
His face tightened. “I am apologizing.”
She’d bet he rarely, if ever, did it. It probably made him want to choke. But the relief flaring through her was undeniable. That finally he believed her. It had been like a palpable force between them, stirring mistrust on every level.
She eyed the conflicting emotions shimmering in his eyes. He needed to understand.
She crossed her arms over her chest and held his gaze. “Giovanni told me Rosa was his first love. That he couldn’t imagine ever being with anyone else. Then he met my mother and he was blindsided. She did one of his breakthrough shows in New York. He was on a high from his success, higher than he’d ever been, and my mother was the glittering jewel he couldn’t resist.”
“He should have,” Rocco growled.
“He knew that. He said being with her was like some inescapable force he couldn’t resist. And he wondered if he’d married too early.”
“Rosa was pregnant with my father at eighteen. They had no choice but to marry.”
She nodded. “It was a very different kind of love he had with Rosa—the inviolate pureness of it. What he felt for my mother was passionate, intense. And he was torn.”
“Because he was married,” he ground out, eyes flashing. “Because my grandmother lived for him.”
Her heart constricted. “Giovanni seemed like some mystical force, but he was human, just like we all are. I get how you feel, I do. I watched my father fall apart because his wife was in love with someone else. I lived through it. I hated my mother for my entire teenage years for doing that to us. I still hate her a bit for it. And I wanted to hate Giovanni, too... But when he explained how it was between them, I finally got it. It was never about them deliberately trying to hurt other people. It was about feelings beyond their control.”
His lip curled. “A lovely reiteration of a modern-day Romeo and Juliet story, Liv. Believe me, I do get it—the idea of temptation, how that temptation, that depth of love, can destroy everything around you. It is my father’s life. It’s why I go to such lengths to never let it rule me. It’s a weak man’s poison.”
She frowned. “Giovanni was not weak.”
“I don’t know what he was anymore.” The admission was torn from him in a low, gravelly tone. “But I know he couldn’t have been your lover. That was me projecting my anger onto you.”
She expelled a long breath.
“Who ended it, then?” he asked abruptly. “How did he choose?”
“Rosa. She found out about the affair, told Giovanni he had to choose and, when he did, forbade him ever to see my mother again.”
“It was never in his head to go back to your mother once Rosa died?”
A poignant smile twisted her mouth. “I asked him that. He said once you travel through some doors, you can never go back.”
He was quiet for a long time. Then he walked over to the racks where her designs hung and pulled a couple out. “Mario is right. You are insanely talented.”
For a moment she actually didn’t know what to say. “Thank you,” she said finally.
He came back to lean against the table beside her. “There is a change we have to make in the deal.”
Her heart stuttered. Being so close to her dream and having it be plucked away from her would kill her.
“I met with the chairman of the board today. There is a general sentiment among the board and shareholders that I am a wild card in the wake of Giovanni’s death. My tendency to want to do things my way ruffles feathers. My bachelor persona fails to keep those invested in the company tucked securely in their beds at night with sweet dreams of dollar figures running through their heads. They want to see me stable. Married.”
A flicker of unease slanted through her. This made the reasons for their engagement clear. Given the Columbia Four’s rather wild reputation, she could understand why the board might be uneasy with such a young, strong-minded CEO.
“We just announced our engagement,” she said haltingly. “How much more could they want?”
A cynical smile twisted his lips. “They want a date. A marriage.”
Her knees went weak. “As in us walking down the aisle?”
“Exactly like that, cara.” She didn’t like the premeditated look that stretched his olive-skinned face as he turned the full force of his will on her. “Nothing changes, except we tie the knot in six weeks. Our one-year agreement is still in place and Mondelli brings your designs to market just as we said.”
“Six weeks?” The words came out as a high-pitched squeak.
He shrugged. “You told me yourself you never planned to get married. A quick, uncontested divorce with all the terms outlined will be painless.”
Painless? Her fingers caught the side of the table in a death grip. So this was why he’d been softening her up. Complimenting her designs...
She shook her head. “Oh, no. You are not bullying me into this, Rocco. I am not walking down the aisle with you, lying to the world in six weeks. It’s too much.”
“Ah, but you are, sweet Liv.” The smile that curved his lips was far from reassuring. “It’s inconvenient, I agree. The last thing either of us needs to be doing right now is planning a wedding. But it is what it is. And we both continue to get what we want.”
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