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“I don’t know. It was on the spur of the moment. It was nothing—”
“Nothing?”
“Yes. No. It was—it was a harmless prank.”
“A prank,” she said, through bloodless lips.
“We were strangers. We were never going to see each other again. And then—and then—”
Dante stormed toward Rio, eyes blazing.
“You SOB,” he snarled, and hit Rio with a fist that felt as if it were made of iron.
Rio staggered back but his eyes never left Isabella’s.
“I wanted to tell you. I tried to tell you. Even tonight—”
“A prank,” she whispered, while her heart shattered. “Pretending to be someone you weren’t. Telling me we were in his house when it was yours. Telling me stories about how you’d come to be working for him—”
“Isabella, please, I beg you—”
“And—and you—you made love to me …”
A sob broke from her throat. Rio groaned and reached for her; Dante put a hand in the center of his chest and pushed him back.
“Iz,” Dante said harshly, “Anna’s outside. Get out of this house, go to her and wait in the car.”
“No,” Rio shouted. “Don’t listen to him. Stay where you are. Let me talk to you. Let me explain—”
“You already did,” Isabella whispered. “You said it was nothing. You said it was a prank.”
“I wanted to tell you. A dozen times. A hundred. But—”
“When?” Isabella said brokenly. “Before you seduced me? Or after?”
Dante hit him again. It was a good, solid shot. Rio, who was a boxer, could have put Dante down with one blow. Instead, he snarled with pain, anger and rage.
At himself.
“I made a terrible mistake, cara. What I did was wrong. And not admitting to it sooner was cowardly but—”
Isabella had stopped listening. He could see it happen, that she was gathering herself together, leaving him behind. She had never looked more beautiful than now, standing straight and proud, her chin lifted, wearing the cotton throw as if it were a queen’s cloak.
“Orsini,” Rio said desperately, “give us five minutes alone.”
“Not in this lifetime,” Dante growled. “Iz? We’re leaving, baby. You just take my arm and—”
“Amazing,” Isabella said. “Here I thought I was the one playing games.”
Rio blinked. “What?”
“A caretaker. A man who lives in another man’s home, eats another man’s food, takes another man’s orders.”
“No. I’m telling you, I am—”
“Oh, I believe you. You’re Rio D’Aquila.”
Isabella’s voice had turned chill and smooth. She smiled, and told herself that all she had to do was get through the next couple of minutes and then this would all be nothing more than a bad dream.
“And I—I enjoyed our little idyll but the thing is, if I’d know who you really were, I’d probably never have bothered with you in the first place.”
She saw the man she knew as Matteo narrow his eyes. Good. Better than good. But it wasn’t enough. She wanted to put the knife in deep and then give it a twist.
“I mean, men with lots of money, you know, power brokers like Rio D’Aquila, are a dime a dozen in my world.” She forced a smile; she hoped it held amusement and not anguish. “But guys with dirt under their nails, studs like Matteo Rossi—”
“Izzy,” her brother said softly, “honey, it’s okay. Just go outside to Anna.”
“Dante can tell you,” she said, putting her hand on her brother’s rigid-with-fury arm, praying he wouldn’t spoil the lie. “I’m not exactly the little innocent you decided I was.”
“Iz.” Her brother’s voice was rough. “Iz, honey—”
“I wanted something different. Well, Matteo Rossi was different. And—and it was fun,” Isabella said, and prayed her voice would not break into the same tiny shards as her heart. “But you used me. You lied to me. And I’ll despise you for it, for the rest of my life.”
Rio’s face had gone blank. Isabella looked at her brother.
“Dante,” she said, “leave him alone. He’s not worth the effort.”
Somehow, she made it to the door. She heard Dante say something sharp and ugly. Then they were outside, where the air was cool and clean and she could let the darkness enfold her.
“Izzy,” someone said, “oh, Izzy, baby …”
“Anna,” Isabella whispered.
Anna’s arms opened wide. She flew into them and then, only then, was it safe to give way to racking sobs.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ISABELLA knelt in the middle of her sister’s penthouse garden, carefully pulling weeds and deadheading spent flower blossoms.
She was dripping with sweat, her back ached, the light-headedness and vague nausea that had plagued her for the past couple of weeks seemed ever-present, but she’d be damned if she’d give in to a summer virus when she had so much work to do.
Summer could be tough in New York.
Pavement. Concrete. Skyscrapers that created man-made canyons trapped the heat and reflected it back with the ferocity of a gigantic convection oven.
The result was predictable.
Horns blared, tempers rose, pedestrians wilted.
So did plants. Isabella always warned her clients about that.
“Plants are living things,” she’d say. “They need food some of the time and unless they’re succulents, they need water all of the time, especially in summer.”
She gave them handsome calendars filled with instructions on caring for their gardens if they didn’t hire her to do it for them and when summer arrived, she emailed cheerful reminders to water, water, water.
Some people, she thought grumpily, didn’t get the message.
An end-of-season heat wave had the city in its cruel clutches. Isabella’s phone rang and rang with desperate pleas for help.
My hydrangeas are dying!
You know that green and yellow shrub with the funny leaves? Well, the leaves are all brown and now they’re falling off!
And there was always her favorite complaint: Really, Ms. Orsini, we are very upset! You said these flowers would last forever!
Nothing lasts forever, Isabella had finally told a caller after one angry voice mail too many.
Because, of course, nothing did.
“Hell,” she muttered, and sat back on her heels.
She was not going there.
Ridiculous, that after four weeks she could still say something, see something, hear something and just like that, the entire horrible interlude with Rio D’Aquila would pop into her mind.
The Horrible Interlude.
Isabella snorted, ran the back of her hand over her dripping forehead, then gave another dig to a particularly hardy weed.
It sounded like a bad movie title but what else would you call what had happened? Interludis Horribilis?
She laughed.
Not bad, she thought, not at all bad—and then her throat tightened and what had started as laughter turned into a lump and she heard herself make a pathetic little sound, really pathetic, painfully pathetic—
“Izzy, for God’s sake, what are you doing out here?”
Isabella shaded her eyes with a grimy hand and looked up. Anna stood over her, looking cool and elegant in a silk suit and high heeled pumps.
“Anna,” she said brightly. “You’re home.”
“It’s after six. Even lawyers know when to knock off for the day. What are you doing?”
“Playing in the dirt. Or trying to save your pansies. Which does it look like?”
“What it looks like,” Anna said, “is that you’re trying to get sunstroke. For goodness sake, come inside. Those pansies are fine. You said so yourself last week.”
“Exactly. Haven’t you touched them at all since then? Thinned them out? Weeded them? Watered them?”
“Draco did.”
“Nobody did. Honestly, Anna—?
?
“Honestly, Izzy, enough is enough. Get up and come inside.”
“Ask me nicely and I might.”
“What?”
“I’m not a child, Anna. I know you mean well, but—” Isabella sighed. “Never mind. Just give me another couple of minutes.”
“You’re very prickly lately, Iz.”
“I’m not prickly at all,” Isabella snapped. Anna rolled her eyes and Isabella let out a long breath. “Look, I don’t want your flowers to die, okay?”
“So you had to pick the hottest day of the year to give them a manicure?”
“It’s not a manicure. And this was the first chance I had to come by. I’ve been so busy with other idiots that—”
“Other idiots?” Anna folded her arms. “That’s really nice.”
“Hell,” Isabella said wearily. “Okay. Point made. It’s time to call it a day.”
“Good. Come sit inside and we’ll have some iced—Izzy?” Anna grabbed Isabella’s arm as her sister swayed like a sapling in a breeze. “My God, you’re white as a sheet.”
“I’m—I’m okay. I got up too fast. The sun. And being on my knees all this time—”
Anna put her arm around Isabella and led her into the cool comfort of the penthouse living room.
“Sit down on that chair. I’ll get some water.”
“I’m filthy,” Isabella said shakily.
“Sit down,” Anna said in her best courtroom voice.
