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It was beautiful, she told him, just beautiful.
“You think?” he said, in a way that suggested he’d been wary of her reaction.
“I know! It’s incredible. And the view…”
“Yeah.” His grin reminded her of a kid on Christmas morning. “That’s the real reason I bought the place.” He tossed his keys on a small table near the door. “I had a decorator do the rooms but, I don’t know, sometimes I think it still needs something.”
Fallon was miles ahead of him. Fresh flowers. Some small paintings—the ones she’d found in a French antique shop, for instance—above that couch. Her Chinese rug centered on the marble floor, and those masks she’d picked up in Bali on that wall.
“I have—” She cleared her throat. Funny. She’d been sleeping with this man for weeks; she knew every inch of his body just as he knew every inch of hers, yet suggesting bringing some of her things here and adding them to his seemed almost too personal. “I have some—some stuff,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Things I collected in places I’ve been, and I thought…”
Thought what? Stefano was looking at her so strangely. Maybe she’d gone too far.
“You thought?” he said politely.
“Never mind. It was a silly idea. I mean, this place is so perfect…”
“Tell me what you thought,” he said, gathering her into his arms.
“Well…” She played with his tie. “I thought you might like to see how some of my things looked—”
“Here?”
She nodded. Stefano tilted her face up and kissed her.
“They’ll look wonderful.”
“But you haven’t even seen them.”
“I don’t have to. Give up your own place. Move all your things here. You don’t need an apartment of your own anymore.”
She longed to do it, but logic held her back. Had he really thought about how different life was going to be in New York?
“Let’s take things one step at a time,” she said carefully. “I mean…This isn’t Sicily, Stefano. We had our own world then. Just you and me, and nobody else.”
He silenced her with a kiss. “It’s still just us. Nobody else matters.”
“You’ve spent your life running from the press, Stefano. I’ve spent mine dealing with it. They’re going to be merciless. They’ll want to invade my privacy. Your privacy.”
“I’ll take care of the press,” he said grimly.
Fallon touched the tip of her tongue to her top lip. “Maybe. But even if you do, people will talk. They’ll have questions.”
“Mr. Lucchesi?”
It was Stefano’s housekeeper. She’d been good at disguising her reaction to Fallon’s scars, but Fallon had seen the quick flash of recognition, then shock followed by a look of pity in the woman’s eyes.
“Sir, Miss Allen is here.”
A woman came briskly across the marble floor toward them.
“Stefano. I’m sorry to bother you so soon after your arrival, but—” Her voice faltered as she looked at Fallon. There it was again. Recognition. Shock. Pity, intermingled in a way that made Fallon’s belly knot. “But some documents came in and they’re urgent.”
Stefano nodded and introduced Fallon to his PA, but the papers had distracted him and Fallon knew he’d missed the woman’s reaction.
“You’re going to be busy, Stefano,” Fallon said politely. “Why don’t I wait on the terrace?”
“Don’t go.” Stefano glanced up, slid his arm around her waist and drew her against him. “I’ll only be a minute.” He kissed her lightly and walked a few feet away.
Fallon thought his assistant’s eyebrows would fly off her face.
“Um, don’t I…Have we met before, Miss O’Connell?”
“You might have seen my picture,” Fallon said calmly. “I am—I was—a model.”
“Oh. Oh, of course. I knew…I mean, I recognized…”
They stared at each other in strained silence. Yes, Fallon wanted to say, it’s me. And yes, my face was cut. And yes, your boss wants me anyway…
But she said nothing and, after a moment, Stefano rejoined them.
“Well,” the PA said briskly, “if you don’t need me, sir…Oh. One other thing. You have that Animal Defense Fund dinner tonight.”
Stefano glanced at Fallon. “Phone and make my apologies.”
“But they’re honoring you with—”
“Tell them I’m sorry but something’s come up.”
“No.” Fallon spoke quietly, her words meant only for Stefano. “Please, don’t cancel on my account.”
“It’s your first night home,” he said softly. “I’m not going to leave you.”
“But the dinner. The award—”
“They’ll muddle through without me,” he said, and smiled.
Fallon took a deep breath. When she was seven and Meg and Bree, Cullen, Sean and Keir could all swim like seals, she was still afraid to do more than dip one foot in the water. Her mother said she’d had a scare when she was little, something about wading into a lake and everybody thinking somebody else was watching her, and how she’d stepped into deep water, gone under and almost drowned.
“You’ll get over the fear,” Mary Elizabeth had said gently.
Fallon had. She’d done it by closing her eyes, holding her nose and jumping into the deep end of the pool at the chintzy motel where they’d been living.
Yes, she’d swallowed half the pool and yes, she might have drowned, but she hadn’t. She’d survived, learned to swim, and learned a hard lesson.
When you were afraid, the best cure was to shut your eyes, hold your breath and jump.
“I’ll go with you,” she told Stefano.
“It isn’t necessary. One step at a time, remember?”
“I want to go with you,” Fallon said, and when she saw how his eyes lit with pleasure, she almost believed that she’d meant it.
After all, people were civilized. She could handle stares and Stefano could handle the rest. How bad could it be?
* * *
Bad.
Horrible, to put it bluntly.
Less than a month later, Sicily had receded so far into the distance that it might have been a dream.
To Fallon’s surprise, reporters weren’t the problem she’d anticipated. Word got out; they came around, but never more than once. She was certain Stefano had done something to keep them at bay. Only a couple of lines hit the gossip columns and, just to be on the safe side, she phoned her mother and told her she’d been in an accident, in case the news spread.
Mary was upset and wanted to fly to New York. Fallon lied, said her injuries were nothing much and promised to come home for a visit over Labor Day weekend. As luck would have it, the rest of her family were out of the country, on business or on vacation, so she didn’t have to worry about fooling them.
On the surface, they seemed to have weathered the storm. They hadn’t. The problem wasn’t publicity.
It was Stefano, and what she was beginning to see in his eyes.
Not shock, of cours
e. He was used to her scars.
What she saw was pity. That same gut-wrenching pity she saw in the eyes of others.
Her lover had a busy public life. A king might want privacy, but kingdoms weren’t ruled from the shadows. The city slumbered in end-of-summer heat, which meant that life had moved east to the Hamptons.
Benefits, charity auctions, dinner parties. Invitations poured in and each time he received one, Stefano would tell her about it and say, with an air of studied casualness, Do you want to go, sweetheart? And she’d think “no” and say “yes,” because she was determined not to change the way he lived.
Fallon had grown accustomed to the changes to her face and years of applying makeup had paid off. She could cover the scars so that they didn’t show very much, at least from a distance.
Up close, things were different.
They’d go to whatever function it was and Stefano would hold her hand and introduce her to everyone in a way that made her importance to him clear.
People always said it was nice to meet her and wasn’t the weather hot and humid, and all the while she’d see the usual sequence of shocked recognition, horror and pity on their faces and always, always, she knew they were trying to figure out why Stefano would have burdened himself with a woman who looked like her.
And then she’d look at Stefano and know he knew what she was thinking, and sometimes he’d murmur, Shall we leave, sweetheart? and whenever he did, she’d smile and say No, of course not, this is fun…
He pitied her. What else could that darkness in his gaze mean?
A woman wanted many things from her lover. Passion, tenderness, fidelity and yes, compassion, but pity? Never.
The worst of it was, she understood what had happened. In Sicily, her face had been the only reality. Stefano could look past it and see her for the woman she was. In all fairness, she knew that he still could.
