Bought by Her Italian Boss (13 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

G
WYN
THOUGHT
SHE
was doing pretty well. It had been two months and most of the paparazzi vultures had learned that she lived a very boring life, going from Henry’s to work to the grocery store to the dentist to the quickie oil change place. Even she was bored with her life.

Which is why she went on a date with a friend of her brother’s. She told herself it was any number of things: getting back on the horse, research about a possible move to New York, interest in a career change to landscape architecture—hilarious. As if she had any interest in watching grass grow. But it was also an opportunity to eat in a restaurant where she didn’t work, to see a jazz trio and wear one of the dresses she couldn’t bring herself to discard.

She also told herself it was a test, to see if she could let any man other than Vito kiss her.

She was honest with him, told him up front that it was her first date since “it” had happened. He was good-natured, kept things casual and friendly, was a gentleman and a pleasant companion, making her laugh. He made her forget for moments at a time that she was pining and lost without the man she really loved.

But at the end of the night, when he moved to kiss her, she balked. It was instinctive. He wasn’t Vito. It felt wrong.

He drew back, solemn and knowing, ruefully disappointed. “Not ready, huh?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” He picked up her hand and kissed her bent knuckles. “I’ll be back at the end of the year. We can go out again then. See if you feel differently.”

“Thank you,” she said, privately sighing.
But I won’t.

Then Henry turned on the porch light and they both chuckled.

Travis was at the breakfast table when she walked into the kitchen the next morning.

“Do not look at
anything
,” he warned.

She knew the paparazzi had gone crazy. Cameras had been flashing around them all evening.

“He said we could go out again the next time he’s in town.” She poured a cup from the coffee he’d made. “But he doesn’t realize how notorious I really am, does he?”

Travis said it wouldn’t matter to his friend and as Gwyn went about her week, she wondered if anything mattered. It certainly hadn’t mattered to Vito that she was dating other men.

Because deep in a sick corner of her soul, that was the real reason she had done it. She had hoped he would see one of those images that had been taken of her dining and dancing. She had hoped it would make him react.

Nothing.

Crickets.

Which was as painful and disheartening as the fact that she’d felt nothing for a perfectly nice man when he’d acted like he liked her, not just her face or body or the bare skin he’d seen online, but her.

With a shaky sigh, she looked down at the payments she was approving and wondered how many times she’d written her initials without taking in what she was actually signing. She started again.

When she walked outside, summer was announcing its intentions with a heat just this side of uncomfortable and a memo that humidity intended to climb to unbearable.

She dug her keys from her purse, ignoring the sound of a car door opening because it was likely yet another paparazzo—

“Cara.”

Cupid’s arrow, right through the heart. Sweetly painful, painfully sweet.

She turned to regard him and wished she’d taken a moment to find a bored expression. Instead, she was sure he read all the mixed feelings of welcome and yearning and hurt and betrayal. Why would he show up now, as she was finding ways to live without him?

Why like that? So iconic in one of his banker suits, cut to precision on his leanly sculpted form. He wore a hint of late-day stubble on his cheeks and his eyes were the color of morning light on mountain glaciers.

He stepped to the side and indicated the interior of his limo.

She sputtered, arms folding, aware of footsteps running toward them as some lurking paparazzo realized who she was talking to.

“Have dinner with me,” Vito said, paying no attention to the click and whiz of the camera.

“It’s four-thirty. I have my own car.” She showed him her keys.

He turned and leaned down to speak to his driver, then slammed the door, walking toward her to hold out his palm.

“Really,” she said, letting the full scope of her disbelief infuse the word. “Just take up where we left off? No.”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Does it occur to you that I might not want to talk to you?”

“That is a bluff.” He met her gaze and there was a myriad of emotions behind that brutally beautiful face and somber expression. Knowledge shone in his eyes, knowledge of her and what he did to her, his patented arrogance, a kind of desolation that stopped her heart. Heat that made it jump and race again.

He took her keys from her limp fingers.

“I said I wanted to talk. You only need to listen.” He touched her elbow, turning her toward the parked cars. At the same time, he clicked the button so the lights on her hatchback flashed. Then he held the passenger door for her.

She hadn’t sat on this side of her new car, which wasn’t bottom of the line, but wasn’t the kind of luxury Vito was used to. While he drove, she took out her phone long enough to punch in Henry’s number, leaving a message that she wouldn’t be home right away because she was going to dinner with Vittorio.

He glanced across as she dropped her phone into her purse.

“Things are well with your family? You’re living with your stepfather. Is that because of the attention?”

He knew she hadn’t moved into her own place? She hardly stalked him at all.

She shrugged. “He wants me there. I guess if there’s a silver lining to the photos it’s learning that I really do have a family. I know now exactly what other women mean when they say that older brothers are annoying. Your sisters must say that a lot.”

His brow cocked at her cheeky remark, but he only said, “His protectiveness surprised me after the way you sounded so dismissive of him.”

“Join the club,” she snorted under her breath.

“He knows you went out with a man the other night?”

“I assume the whole world knows it, if you’ve heard about it.” She reminded herself that it didn’t matter that he was bringing it up—even if his voice had lowered to a tone that pretended to be casual, but was actually quite lethal. “He’s a friend of Trav’s so yes, he knows. He set it up.”
Chew on that.

“You had a nice time?” Again with the light tone, but his knuckles were white on the steering wheel.

“I don’t talk about the men I date,” she said flatly.

Silence for a full minute, until he stopped behind a line of traffic waiting for a light.

“No. You don’t. I appreciate that,
cara
,” he said softly, and this time his voice was filled with gravity and sincerity. “I know you’ve had offers for tell-alls. They must have been generous. You wouldn’t have to work again, I’m sure.”

She only turned her face to her side window. If he thought she was the least bit tempted in profiting from what they had shared, he really didn’t know her at all.

“How do you like your job?” he asked.

“It’s a job, Vito. It’s no pin-up gig as Kevin Jensen’s piece on the side. It’s no mistress to a playboy banker. But it pays the bills.”

“You’re angry that I sent you away.”

“I’m angry that you’re here,” she said, swinging her head around to glare at him. “My life was starting to look normal. Why stir it up again?”

* * *

Why?
It was a fair question. One Vito couldn’t answer. At least, not without admitting to himself that he was a very weak man.

“I want to explain why I sent you away,” he said. Even though he had walked out on Lauren that day, telling himself she was wrong. Better to break ties cleanly, to let Gwyn move on with her life without knowing what kind of a near miss she’d had.

Why had he decided, after seeing her with another man, that he should let her know why she couldn’t be with him? It was flawed logic.

He had wanted to see her again was the real answer. He could say that he wanted to talk and her to listen, but that was a lie. He wanted her to talk. He wanted her to relay every detail of the minutes she’d been away from him, the way she might have given him the highlights of her day visiting a museum, or conveyed a funny conversation she’d overheard on the street or simply traded views with him that might be more liberal than his own, but were always well thought out and left him with a broader view of the other side.

“I thought we were going to dinner,” she said as he turned into the underground parking lot of the Donatelli International building.

“You said it was too early,” he reminded, pulling into the spot reserved with his name, right next to the elevator. She scowled so mistrustfully at him, he had to chuckle. “I’m not going to kill you and eat you,
cara
.”

No promises against licking and nibbling, of course.

It was all he could do not to pounce on her after he punched in the override code to get him to the floor he wanted. She had come out of her workplace with her jacket slung over her arm. Her black skirt was of a modest length, but narrow and stretchy, clinging to her hips and thighs. She wore a light green top that was so plain it was unremarkable, but the narrow belt at her waist gave it some traction across her bustline, emphasizing her hourglass figure. And those shoes with straps as narrow as her belt were positively erotic.

He hoped like hell he had paid for them, unsure why it mattered, just wanting to know she was still allowing him some place in her life.

She flicked her hair behind her shoulder, affecting cool composure, but her mouth was pulling at the corners as she said, “I know why you sent me away. It was an affair, nothing more. Like you said, it was always going to happen.”

“Sì,”
he agreed, and the word moved up from his chest like gravel. “But for different reasons than you think.”

The elevator opened into the private residential floor, where he and Paolo had suites and guest accommodations were made available to other family members. There was a private gym and indoor pool here, a dining lounge with views to the ocean that was closed because he was the only one here. Paolo’s suite, where he had taken Lauren the night he’d told her that her husband was dead, was on the far side of the oversize foyer. Vito’s was here, to his left, but before opening his door, he paused in the foyer and indicated the portrait on the wall.

It was a print of the original that had first hung in the old bank in Milan and now occupied the main lobby of the new tower.

“My great-grandfather,” he said, looking at the man who’d been painted in his middle-aged prime wearing a brown plaid suit and a bowler hat.

He felt Gwyn’s gaze touch him, questioning why this might be important, but she gave the portrait a proper study.

“He had two sons and five daughters, but only his sons inherited.” He nodded at the two brothers who had cemented the foundation for what Banco Donatelli would become. “This one is my grandfather. His brother only had daughters. We’ve become more progressive and all share in the dividends now, but my uncle, Paolo’s father, was recognized as his successor.”

He moved to the photo of his grandfather with his wife and five children. It was a formal color photograph with the family posed for posterity, the fashions laughably dated. His grandfather had long sideburns and his pointed collar jutted out like wings against his tan suit and gold tie. His grandmother wore a floral print dress and Paolo’s father, nearing twenty, was dressed like a newsboy. The four teenage girls wore identical dresses in a truly horrid purple.

“You Donatelli men get stamped out with the same mold generation after generation, don’t you?” She glanced from his great-grandfather, to his grandfather, then to his uncle and then to him. “The girls take after your grandmother. Except this one.” She pointed at Antoinietta, barely twelve.

“Sì,”
he agreed, giving himself one last moment for reservations, but he had none. “That’s why I look so much like a Donatelli. She is my actual mother.”

* * *

Gwyn didn’t know what to say, and Vito’s profile gave nothing away as he moved to unlock a door and hold it for her.

She entered a private suite that was much smaller than his penthouse in Milan, but had such a similar decor, was stamped so indelibly as
his
, she felt as though she had come home.

“I don’t understand,” she told him, and the phrase covered many topics. Why had he told her that; why did it matter?

He moved to a photo on the wall in his lounge. The midnineties fashions weren’t quite as painful as the seventies had been. A stout man wore a dark suit with a narrow tie that made his barrel chest seem more pronounced. His wife wore a black dress with a scoop neck. Young Vito actually pulled off the red suspenders over his white shirt, but his sisters’ hairstyles, all wisped to look like a sitcom star’s, were priceless.

She studied his image, realizing he looked...unlike the others.

Maybe she wouldn’t have noticed it if he hadn’t told her this was not his biological family, but he was taller, leaner, more intense as he gazed into the camera while the rest of them beamed warmly. They seemed relaxed the way a family should when they were together, but he had that smoldering personality that never stopped emanating danger.

“
Mia famiglia
. I love them. My parents taught me generosity and acceptance. They love me every bit as much as they love their daughters. I would die for any of them. But my sisters have never been told,” he said, making her swing her attention to him in surprise. “Paolo knows, but he’s likely the only one in our generation or lower who does. He hasn’t even told Lauren. I know some of my great-aunts and uncles have suspicions, but none has ever breathed a word...” He shook his head and shrugged. “This is something that was put in the vault and meant to be left there.”

“Because your mother was young? Unmarried?” she guessed. His grandfather might have progressed to including his daughters in his will, but illegitimate babies had still been a scandal for a man in such a lofty position. It wasn’t a big deal
now
, though. Was it? Why continue to hide it?