by Penny Jordan
Stepping back from her, he looked as though she had struck him again. As though he couldn’t bear to hear the weight of her confession.
As though he never wanted to set eyes on her.
As though she had stuck a knife in his back while smiling to his face.
And it was the haunted expression in his gaze, the horrified look that sealed her fate for Clio, that ripped her last thread of hope into pieces.
He would never accept her love. He would never give her his trust.
“You’re not in love with me. You’re deluding yourself like every other woman that has come into my bed before you. I warned you about that, bella.”
The nasty barb landed where he intended, lacerating her, carving a nice little slice in her breastbone.
That he would throw his own past in her face, that he would dirty him and her and what they shared, only showed how much her declaration rattled him, how deeply buried his heart was.
She wished she could be furious with him, she wished she could hate him for it.
But all she felt was a keening gnawing that ate through her gut.
“I didn’t think I would ever feel like this again, that I would ever want to place my happiness in another man’s hands. But it’s not my fault. Even with the block of ice you have for a heart, even with the poison you have held on to all these years, you’re kind and funny and you’re the most honorable man I’ve ever met.”
He recoiled as though she had struck him again. “That is proof enough that you’re still lost, Clio.” He sounded so far away.
“No. Finally I know myself, Stefan.”
“How can you forget the pain Jackson caused you? How do you even know what you…what you claim is real?”
“By putting a value on you and me, our happiness together, you have showed me how priceless I am, how all consuming and incredible my love for you is. And how little it will always mean to you, how we could do this—” she moved her hands between them “—for the next decade and you will still never give me what I want, what I deserve.
“You’re my knight, Bianco, once again saving me from my own desperation. You’re the best friend a girl could ask for, the best lover for a woman with tattered self-esteem. But to spend a lifetime with you…it will destroy me.”
His gaze darkened, inch by inch of his face hardening as if he was willingly shutting himself down.
“Don’t do this, Clio,” he said, grabbing her. His mouth branded her in a fiery kiss that almost broke her resolve. Her knees melted and she clung to him as he seduced her with tenderness and passion. “We can have a good life together.”
Clasping his cheeks, she pushed him back, stared at the storm gathering in his gaze. He wasn’t untouched by this. But it wasn’t enough. Nowhere near enough.
She was greedy, she wanted all of him.
“No.”
“Stay, bella.” Even now, he only commanded with that hard look in his eyes, even now, he held his heart locked away from her.
Even now, he scowled at her because she had dared to fall in love with him.
Smiling through the tears in her eyes, Clio shook her head. “I would have, a few hours ago. I would have danced with joy, thrown myself at you. But I can’t now. I don’t want your money, and I don’t want the little you offer of yourself. Have a nice life, Stefan. And thank you for teaching me my own worth.”
Without looking back, Clio stepped out of the tent and into the open grounds.
A thousand sounds and scents greeted her, but nothing could touch her past the audacious hope ringing through her that he would chase after her, that he would kiss her and hold her and tell her that everything would be fine. Tell her that he had made a colossal mistake and that he wanted her in his life.
That he wanted to be loved by her.
But he didn’t.
And the emptiness around her only made her realize what she wanted that much harder.
She wanted the Stefan who had admitted to having a wild, reckless thing for her.
She wanted the Stefan who admired her and respected her.
She wanted the Stefan who had been one of the warmest, most openhearted men she had ever met.
She wanted to lose herself in his arms and be the woman he lost his control over.
She wanted to be the woman that made him smile, laugh and she wanted to do it for years to come.
She wanted them to be friends, lovers and so much more. She wanted the contract ripped and burned, she wanted his millions and her penury to never come into the equation between them, in any form.
She wanted it to be just her and him and their love for each other.
Clio wanted all of him, every breath and every cell, every thought and every sigh, every kiss and every touch.
And the want was so deep, so raw that it was a physical ache in her gut. That want was so desperate that she shook all over, waves of pain splintering inside her.
But this time, she would not settle. She would not let a man, even the one who she loved with every breath, define what she was worthy of.
Because she deserved all of him.
* * *
Stefan sank to the divan, reeling under Clio’s angry accusations, reeling under the weight of her confession.
So in love with you…
Those words pierced him even as he recoiled at the fury that had been shining in her glittering gaze, even as he couldn’t believe the truth of it.
How could she love him? How could he begin to believe her when there was nothing to love, when he had given her nothing but pain?
How could she ruin everything by bringing that word between them?
He had no use for her love. He had nothing to give her back. And the one thing that he had wanted to give, the one gesture he had made because he cared about her, she had thrown in his face.
How could she let her claim destroy what they had?
He wanted to call it a dent to her pride, a tantrum she was throwing because he had hurt her with offering her money.
But Clio never threw tantrums and Clio didn’t have any fascination with his wealth.
Clio didn’t drop hints for gifts, Clio didn’t ask to be introduced to his powerful friends. Clio didn’t flirt with other men to make him jealous.
Clio didn’t dangle sex as a bargaining chip.
In only a few weeks, Clio had made him laugh more than he had in a decade. He had lived more and for the first time in years, he had made love to a woman instead of seeking physical release.
Clio was the farthest from what Serena had been.
Clio was Clio—generous, kind and vibrant. Clio was the first woman, other than his own mother, who cared about his happiness, who cared that he smiled.
Clio had walked through the fire of his distrust and Jackson’s treachery and emerged whole.
And he… Dio, he had treated her worse than he had treated any other woman in his life from the moment she had set foot in it. Had punished her for his own demons, put her through so much because of his own insecurities.
Because somehow, through her struggle with Jackson, through her struggles with herself, through her determination to remind him of what he had been once, Clio had become a mirror in which he saw what he had become.
The picture he saw of himself over the past few weeks, he despised it.
But it was too late.
He buried his head in hands and growled, a chasm of pain opening up in his gut. The tent reverberated with her words, her pain, with the rawness and purity of her emotions. With the darkness of his own poison, with his loneliness, with his utter desolation.
He had done just as Zayed as predicted. He had ruined the most wonderful thing that had come into his life, shattered any chance of happiness with his own hands.
All
I wanted was one sentence that you wanted this to be real between us.
But he hadn’t been able to ask that small thing. He hadn’t been able to give her even a small part of him. He hadn’t been able to take the warmth and generosity and the wonder that was Clio.
He still couldn’t. He couldn’t take that step and open himself to pain and agony again.
Wasn’t that why he had offered her that settlement instead, even if he had realized it too late?
Even after all these years, even as he had found the perfect woman, the woman he had dreamed about his entire teenage years, the woman whom he would have loved for the rest of his life, he still couldn’t take that final step, couldn’t find the courage to be the man who laid out his heart.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
ALMOST TWO MONTHS LATER, Stefan was in the midst of a meeting in his Hong Kong office when his laptop pinged. Still listening to his main accountant drone on and on about their Asian holdings, he looked at the screen and stilled.
The email was from Zayed’s wife, the Sheikha of Gazbiyaa. Wondering what it was that Nadia, the deceptively strong woman his friend had married, would send him, Stefan clicked on it.
His heart pounding so hard in his chest as he viewed the thumbnail, he clicked the attachment open.
It was a shot of him and Clio the morning of Zayed’s wedding that someone must have clicked unknown to them.
They were standing at one of the turreted balconies in the Gazbiyan palace, the morning sun behind them. He remembered the moment instantly.
Rocco and Olivia, Christian and Alessandra, he and Clio, and Zayed had just finished breakfast. Clio had wandered to the balcony, and as if pulled forward like a string, he had instantly joined her there.
Had covered her bare arms with his and shuddered as the scent and warmth of her had stolen into him. Had pushed the thick fall of her hair away so that he could see the delicate crook of her neck. Had loved tracing her slender hips with his hands, had loved how naturally she had fit against him.
An instant surge of yawningly desperate need claimed him and he closed his eyes.
Dio, how she would respond when he pressed his mouth at that crook…how her long fingers would rake over his skin, marking him, owning him as he pushed into her, how boldly she had looked at him that last time, binding him to her… Drenched in the memories of her, which were at the same time so vivid and yet so distant, Stefan almost reached out for her.
She hadn’t flinched or pulled back that morning. Burrowing into his body, she had looked up at him and smiled.
He opened his eyes and stared greedily at the shot again.
And the shot had captured that smile.
There had been no hesitation, no artifice, no shadows in it. Everything she felt for him—it was in that smile.
It spoke of love, courage and the thing that stuck in his chest like an ice pick, open joy. It said so much about their intimacy, about how gloriously perfect that moment had been in his life.
Life with Clio would be full of such indescribable moments—of love and happiness.
In that stunning moment between powerlessness and need, it struck him how much he loved her. How he would do anything if it ensured she would always smile like that.
It was like a lightning bolt, washing away the poison that had festered in him for so long, opening the hurt inside him like an avalanche.
And that smile, that love that shone so beautifully in her eyes, that was what he had gambled away.
The voices around him sounded as if they were coming from far off. The view from the fortieth floor faded as he struggled to breathe past the tightness in his chest.
The ache in his heart, the fear in his gut, was so visceral that he rose to his feet jerkily. That moment brought all the yawning emptiness he’d felt over the past couple of months to the fore.
She had banished him from her life with such ruthless will that even he was impressed. In two months, he had had only heard from her once—one paltry email that had stripped him of even hope.
Do not come back to New York, please. This is my home. If you ever valued me for even a minute, leave this city for me. Leave me be, Stefan.
And so he had. Against his very nature, he had left her to face the media. Left their marriage in a limbo.
Because his business empire was spread out all over the world, it had been easy to stay away.
He didn’t know if she wanted a divorce. He didn’t care.
He had snarled at Christian when the latter had visited him in Hong Kong, told Zayed to leave him the hell alone and had thrown himself into work. Nothing could fill the increasing chasm of his lonely days blending into endless nights, nothing could touch him past the morass of his guilt and grief and emptiness.
He had spent fifty-six days in a hell of his own making, dying to hear her voice, craving her smile, wondering if he would ever kiss her mouth again, listening to little tidbits about her from Olivia, who, he had a feeling, would love to see if he would bleed.
She was flourishing in her new position at the charity.
She had been called in connection to the SEC’s case against Jackson.
She was looking good.
Every day, he broke a little more inside until there was nothing. But he couldn’t be this coward anymore, he couldn’t bear another day without seeing her, without holding her in his arms.
How lost had he been to slap a price on his heart?
She had been right about everything.
He had given her everything except himself.
And the woman she had grown into these past couple of months, she would settle for nothing less than all of him.
He must have said something because suddenly the conference room was empty around him.
Picking up his cell, he made a call, his heart in his throat.
His voice muddled in sleep, Rocco answered. “Stefan?”
“Where is she, Rocco?” he said without preamble
His oldest friend understood immediately. “In New York.”
“I know that. But not where. I know that Olivia knows. I know that Clio went to her. I need to see her, Rocco. Now.”
After what seemed like an eternity, Rocco sighed. “I’m sorry, Stefan. Believe it or not, my stubborn wife hasn’t told even me where Clio is.”
“She is your damn wife, why the hell not?”
“Because she takes standing by her friends seriously. If you want to know where Clio is, you have to ask Liv. Stefan…take care, fratello.”
Stefan barely heard Rocco’s warning. In two minutes he instructed his pilot to fuel the jet, ordered his secretary to cancel everything indefinitely.
Nothing in his life had any meaning without her.
He needed his wife, his friend, his lover back. He needed the woman who had made him live again, smile again, made him feel so much again that he couldn’t breathe for the ache of it. And he would beg if that’s what it took to bring her back into his life.
* * *
As Clio stared at Stefan, standing at Olivia’s friend’s doorstep, his face haggard and covered in stubble, his thick hair rumpled, his collar askew, her entire world tilted and shook. Her gut folded on itself, her breath balling up in her throat.
She pulled the edges of the threadbare cardigan together defensively as his perusal, hungry and invasive, continued.
Without a word, he entered the flat and closed the door with an arrogant kick of his handmade Italian shoe. Wandered soundlessly through the small flat.
Every inch of her stilled in panic as he picked up the cardboard box she had discarded carelessly on one of the sofas.
Anger flashed in his green gaze and then cycled to fury and then to utter powerlessness. He turned the box around and around with those long fingers.
Her bre
ath quivered in her throat noisily as she stared at the expression she thought she never would see. The box was crushed in his hand, his knuckles showing white.
“When did you take the test?” he finally said, something so desperately painful in his tone that she just stared at him.
“Clio?”
Recovering, she fought the urge to go to him. “Yesterday morning.”
Another silence ensued, stretching her nerves so tight that a breath of wind could tear them apart.
“Yesterday morning…”
A quiet sound fell from his lips, shock marring his features. “And?”
The tiny room reverberated with the sound of his question, all the more unnerving for the whispered entreaty that it was.
Clio swallowed and instinctively wrapped her arms around her still-flat tummy. She had expected him to give her a display of that fierce Sicilian temper. This silently obvious conflict rattled her on so many levels. “It was positive. I made an appointment to see a doctor in two days to have it confirmed, but I…I’m pregnant.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” came the instant retort. He pushed his fingers through his hair, paced the small room. Let out a string of angry curses. Came to a standstill within touching distance, his features wreathed in torturous agony. “Dio, Clio… Would you have hid this from me if I hadn’t come today? Would you have…”
Hands tucked in the pockets of his trousers, he turned away from her abruptly. As if he couldn’t bear the sight of her. The tension in his vibrating frame sent her into a panic.
She knew that final thread of his control had unraveled, the last piece of his armor was broken. Knew that he was hurting and that he would attack at any moment. Knew what families and children and the bonds of kin would mean to his Sicilian blood.
Knew that his vulnerability, beneath the hard shell he had acquired all these years, lay in the depth and intensity with which he had once wanted love and family and laughter in his life.
Knew that he was made for it, that he would make a fantastic father. Knew that she was weakening already after facing the truth about the pregnancy, and seeing him so close by, remembering how good it had felt to give herself over to him…