“I should like to visit this South someday,” he said truthfully. “It sounds fascinating.”
She pushed back and arched an eyebrow. “I can see you there, Renzo. Eating barbecued ribs and drinking sweet tea. You’d be the third most exciting thing to happen to Cottonwood.”
“Only the third?” he teased. “Perhaps I should do something a bit more scandalous first.”
She laughed. “Perhaps you’d care to text a nude photo of yourself to the town elders? That would surely get some blood pumping.”
“Happily, cara, if it meant they would forget about your photo.”
She looked wistful, and he reached out to push a strand of hair from her face. “They will never forget it. I am persona non grata in Cottonwood.”
“I doubt that,” he said. “But I understand why you think so. It was a long time ago, and you are a very successful career woman now. Would they truly not welcome you back if you wanted to go?”
She frowned. “I don’t want to go. Ever.”
He understood her conviction. They were more alike than she knew, but instead of telling her so he took her hand and pressed it to his lips. Then they continued down the street, threading their way back toward the apartment and talking about the differences between Georgia and Italy. He was so lost in the conversation that he didn’t realize where they were until it was too late. They emerged from a narrow alley between buildings, out onto a wider thoroughfare, and he realized his mistake. He’d come here as if on autopilot, and he stiffened even as Faith gasped at the magnificent villa before them.
“Oh, it’s gorgeous,” she exclaimed. “Does someone actually live there, or is it open to tourists?”
The wrought iron fence surrounding the Villa de Lucano was imposing, but the house that sat back from the street was ornate, part of its facade carved from Carrara marble and carefully timeworn in that way that only houses in the Old World could be.
The gardens were vast, lush, manicured. A fountain gurgled somewhere out of sight. Renzo imagined children playing there, imagined a father coming outside to greet them after time away, bending to hug them all as they flew into his open arms. It was an old fantasy, and not a particularly welcome one.
“No, it is a private residence,” he said, unable to hide the bitterness in his voice.
She turned to him, her soft eyes questioning. And, in spite of everything she’d shared with him, he still couldn’t seem tell her the shameful truth of his life before he’d become Lorenzo D’Angeli, tycoon, Grand Prix bad boy, superstar.
He wasn’t ready for that. Didn’t know if he would ever be ready for it. He would never, ever allow his life to sink to that level again. Anger surged through him.
He had to win the championship. Had to.
Success was everything. Renzo wanted his father to choke on his success, to regret every single day that he had not found a way to be a part of his son’s life. The conte was proud, and Renzo was the richest, the most successful of his children. And no one knew.
“Is everything okay, Renzo? Does your leg hurt?”
“A bit,” he said, seizing on the excuse. His leg did hurt, but it was a mild discomfort more than anything.
She looked contrite, and for that he felt a pinprick of guilt. He knew she blamed herself, as if the walking was her fault.
“It’s not far now,” he said, guiding her away from the Villa de Lucano. “Just a few minutes more.”
Once they reached the apartment, Renzo laid his keys on a table and went to look out the huge plate window fronting the living area. He’d picked this apartment because of the city view, and because it was the best money could buy. He could see the rooftop of the Villa de Lucano, but that didn’t usually bother him.
Now, however, it irritated him.
He stood with his hands in his pockets and stared at nothing in particular. Faith came to his side and quietly studied the view with him.
“What is it, Renzo?” she finally said when he didn’t move or speak. “I know something is bothering you, and I know it’s not your leg.”
He closed his eyes for a moment. Of course she knew. She was attuned to him somehow. He didn’t understand the connection between them, but he knew there was one. It was odd, and yet somehow necessary, too.
The words he didn’t want to say burned at the back of his throat until he had to let them out or choke on them. “It’s that place. The Villa de Lucano.”
She pulled him around to face her, her green eyes wide and full of concern. “What is it about that place that bothers you so much?”
He studied her for the longest time—the sheen of moisture in her eyes, the determined set to her jaw, the high color in her cheeks. She’d endured much humiliation, and she’d survived it. She’d reinvented herself, the same as he had. She understood what it took to do so.
“The Conte de Lucano is my father,” he found himself saying. And once he’d said that much, he told her the rest. What did it matter? “He does not want to know me. He never has.”
He watched the emotions play over her face: confusion, anger, sadness and worry.
“Oh Renzo, I’m sorry,” she finally said, her voice barely more than a whisper. A moment later, a single tear spilled down her cheek. It stunned him that she would cry for him. He caught the droplet with his thumb, smoothed it away.
“Tears, cara?” he asked.
She closed her eyes and shook her head, as if shaking the tears away. “I’m just emotional. It’s part of being a girl.”
He laughed in spite of himself. In spite of the vise squeezing his chest. She made him laugh, even when he did not want to. He pulled her closer and dipped to nuzzle her hair. He ached inside, but for once it was almost bearable.
“I like very much that you’re a girl.”
And then, because he didn’t want to talk anymore—because he didn’t think he could talk anymore—he swept her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom.
FAITH looked up from her computer, her heart doing that funny little flip thing it always did as the door to Renzo’s office opened. They were spending days at the factory now while he went over the details for the Viper and for the next production launch. The launch was timed to coincide with the Viper’s debut on the Grand Prix circuit, and everyone was working long hours to make it happen smoothly.
She’d never been so happy and so miserable at the same time. She was happy because she enjoyed being Renzo’s lover, and miserable because she felt as if she’d done everything wrong. The other office staff kept their distance. She knew why. It wasn’t a language barrier, as everyone spoke English, but more of a perception barrier. She was the boss’s girlfriend, and everyone knew it.
It was, in some respects, a nightmare. She felt their censure, and it felt far too much like the censure she’d gotten at home when the photo of her began to circulate. People were distant, judgmental. They whispered behind her back.
She hated the way it made her feel. As if she were different. Damaged.
It had been inevitable, she supposed. The pictures of the two of them had finally appeared in the paper after the night in Florence when they’d been photographed together at the restaurant. Those photos were innocuous, but when you added in the photo of the kiss at the