“No, relieved.” She clutched his hand. “My fame doesn’t bother you? I have a lot of money. Does it change anything?”
“Not in the slightest.”
She wasn’t just wrong for Matthew Wheeler; she was in a whole other stratosphere of incompatibility, with a life full of limos, designer drugs and glittery celebrities. Hell, she was a glittery celebrity and glittery didn’t gel with the blue bloods in his circles. But he’d realized they were wrong for each other five minutes after meeting, and though he desperately wanted to find a way to get back home, that wasn’t happening today.
This was a finite Venetian affair, and Matt didn’t care who she was. She made him feel alive for the first time in eighteen months, and that made her perfect for right this minute.
“Since we’re going full bore on disclosures, I have money, too. I bought this palazzo as a wedding gift to Amber, my wife. In Dallas, I was a partner in a multimillion dollar real estate firm and drove an Escalade. Then I dumped all my responsibilities and jumped on a plane. I have little to offer anyone right now. Should I have told you that before we got involved? Does it change things for you?”
If it did, he wouldn’t blame her. He was a bad bet emotionally.
“Is that what we are? Involved?” Some snap crept back into her eyes.
“Yeah. Wasn’t looking for it, wasn’t planning on it. I left Dallas to regain my sanity after my wife died, and I finally feel like that’s possible, thanks to you.” He slid a thumb down her jaw. “Stay.”
“Matt,” she whispered, and her palms came up to frame his face. “This is crazy. We just met.”
“Tell me you’re ready to walk away and I’ll show you to the door.”
She shook her head. Hard. “But you don’t want to be seen in public with me. Someone always recognizes me. Then the harassment starts, rehashing how my career is over.” Her eyes filled again. “It’s not a lot of fun.”
There was the source of all that anguish he’d sensed. This amazing, beautiful butterfly had been damaged beyond repair, and the public refused to let her forget. A fierce, protective instinct tightened his arms around her, filling him with a heavy impulse to do something to fix it for her, to help her.
They’d both lost something, and perhaps she needed him as much as he needed her, though she seemed much less willing to admit it.
In order to get her to stay—to give them both the peace they desperately sought—the terms might have to be less structured than he would like.
“Good. I don’t want to go out. I don’t want to share you.” He gestured toward the room at large. “Inside these walls, we can block out the rest of the world and just be together. I need that. If you do too, then go to Vincenzo’s, get your stuff and stay here for as long as that’s true. When it’s not, leave. No rules. No expectations.”
It was crazy. And rash. So unlike a guy who missed his wife and valued commitment. That was the reason it worked, why he and Evangeline gelled, because he wasn’t that guy right now.
Crazy was what made it great.
Evangeline sneaked into Vincenzo’s without stumbling over any passed-out revelers.
Once in her room, she threw on a sweater over Matt’s T-shirt and stabbed her legs into jeans. Then she packed her suitcases in preparation for either the biggest mistake of her life or the smartest thing she’d ever done.
Jury was still out on which one Matt was. But she was willing to see what unfolded as they blocked out the world for a few days, especially with the caveat of his consent to leave whenever things got too stifling.
Roots weren’t possible for someone like her, who fed from new experiences and new destinations. Who knew the dangers of staying in one place too long and allowing someone to matter. Being with a man who got that was huge.
So was the fact that he wasn’t in a hurry to get rid of her.
When he’d asked her to stay, he still had no idea who she was—she could tell. And somehow, that had been the clincher. Eva ceased to have any relevance. Actually, it hadn’t been a factor between them all along and she’d never had that. What started as a short-term anonymous encounter had accidentally turned into something else.
It was scary to be just Evangeline, scary to be so exposed, but deep inside, she yearned for someone to see beneath the layers and value her.
As soon as she found out Matt wasn’t that someone, she’d be out the door.
In record time, she shut the lid on her second suitcase and zipped it. She had packing down to a science.
As she carried the suitcases down the marble staircase to Vincenzo’s first floor, one of his buddies who’d passed out on the couch stirred. Franco. Or maybe it was Fabricio. He sat up and blearily evaluated her as he scrubbed his jaw.
“Eva. Didn’t know you were here.” A night of hard drinking slurred his accented English almost unintelligibly. He zeroed in on the suitcases. “Leaving already?”
“Yeah. Tell Vincenzo I said later.”
“Wait. Do my show this week.” He lifted his chin. “Milano Sera will treat you well.”
She took in his too-handsome face and two-hundred-dollar haircut that not even a night of couch surfing could ruin. Now she remembered him. Franco Buonotti. He was the host of a late-night talk show on an Italian network. He’d bugged her a couple of times before to do an exclusive with him.
“I don’t think so.”
“Aww. Not even for me?” He batted his eyelashes, and she almost snorted.
Italian playboys were so not her type—she was more into blue-eyed blonds Regardless, she hadn’t broken her silence on the botched surgery in six months and didn’t see a reason to change that now.
“Not even.”
She escaped to the haven her blue-eyed blond had offered.
Upstairs in Matt’s bedroom, she unpacked her clothes and arranged them in the empty spots he’d cleared for her in the closet and dresser. Unable to resist, she opened a drawer to finger his shirts. Very few of his items lay folded inside or hanging in the closet. He traveled as light as she did. But then, neither of them had a permanent home.
Oddly, seeing their clothes mixed felt very permanent. It shouldn’t have put a smile on her face.
Matt ordered lunch to be delivered, and the soup grew cold because they were too busy talking to eat. He was transparent and genuine, and his willingness to share covered her tendency not to. He never ran out of stories, and she forgot to be wary by the middle of the afternoon.
That’s when Milano Sera’s host intruded on her haven. Matt answered a knock at the door, and she glimpsed the too-handsome face of Vincenzo’s friend through the crack.
“I’ll take care of it,” she told Matt and shooed him away from the door. “I already said no.”
“Cara, no one says no to me.”
He’d cleaned up and squeezed his impressive build into tight Dolce & Gabbana jeans and a distressed T-shirt. That kind of sexy might work on tittering schoolgirls, but Evangeline couldn’t titter to save her life.
“Yet I did. This is a private home. Please respect that.”
She shut the door in his face and turned to see Matt watching her.
“Sales guy?” he asked with raised eyebrows. “What was he selling? Ice