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ew weeks ago. Tea?’
She followed him in. ‘Looks like the concierge service has been in,’ she said, noting the freshly cleaned scent of the place.
‘I called them to get everything ready for us. We’re eating at the hotel tonight but there’s plenty of snack food if you’re hungry...’ Suddenly he turned to face her. ‘Do you remember the concierge service here?’
She nodded and grinned. ‘Like the one in London but with extra “have a nice day.”’
‘Your memories are coming back quickly now,’ he observed.
‘There are still holes but they’re filling.’
At that, judging by the gleam in his eyes, his mind had taken an entirely different route. She was glad. Tension had been etched on his face since his conference call that not even a long bout of lovemaking before they’d left had been able to erase. When she’d asked what was troubling him, he’d said only that it was to do with work and that he’d tell her about it after the awards. With work still feeling a lifetime away, she didn’t bother to pursue it.
‘You have a filthy mind, Stefano Moretti.’
He pulled her into his arms and nipped at her earlobe. ‘And you love it.’
Yes, she thought, yes, she did. She loved him.
But hadn’t she already known she loved him? That tight, painful feeling that had been in her chest since she’d seen Christina follow him out of his car; that had been a symptom of it. It was liberating to finally acknowledge the truth to herself.
She loved him.
With only flat shoes on, her face was flat against his chest. She inhaled his scent greedily and sighed into him before tugging at his shirt to loosen it and slip a hand up it and onto his back.
The words rolled on her tongue, so close to being spoken aloud, but she held them back.
The last time she remembered saying those words had been to her father in the minutes before they’d turned his life support off.
Stefano gathered her hair and gently tugged her head back. ‘You don’t want tea?’
‘I’m not thirsty.’ She moved her hands to the front of his shirt and began undoing the buttons. She might not yet be able to say the words to him but she could show him. ‘But I am hungry.’
* * *
As was always the case, Stefano was showered, shaved and ready a good hour before Anna, who’d had a beautician provided by the apartment’s concierge service in to help her.
He pressed Miranda’s name on his phone again and tapped his foot while waiting for it to connect.
He hadn’t been able to get hold of her. He’d left her three messages and sent two emails. Anna had disappeared for a couple of hours’ ‘retail therapy’ that afternoon and he’d tried Miranda again, even calling her newsroom.
Miranda Appleton was editor-in-chief of the US’s bestselling celebrity magazine that had an accompanying website with the highest daily click rate of any media in the world. Miranda had her finger on the pulse of all celebrity news and in today’s instant world a billionaire such as himself was considered a celebrity.
He’d chosen Miranda for his scoop because, for all her unscrupulous dealings, she was a woman of her word and he’d known she wouldn’t break the embargo.
And now she had gone off-grid. No one knew where she was. No one could reach her.
His call went yet again to her voicemail.
‘It’s Stefano,’ he hissed quietly down the line. ‘Miranda, I need you to kill that story. I retract my statement. You cannot publish it. Call me back as soon as you can.’
Feeling sick to his stomach, he waited for Anna in the living room, sitting on the new sofa that had been delivered to replace the one he’d ruined when he’d made his first trip to San Francisco after she’d left him. He’d remembered making love to her on it and the rage that had ripped through him, which had caused him to rip up the one item of furniture she’d loved, pulling chunks out of it as she had ripped chunks out of him.
He’d been as out of control as he’d been before prison had cured him of his temper.
Jail itself hadn’t been too bad but the six months he’d served behind bars had dragged interminably. He’d grown to hate the confinement, the suffocation that came from spending all day every day in an enclosed space surrounded by people there wasn’t a hell’s chance of escaping from. He understood why prisoners might turn to drugs, just to relieve themselves of the brain-numbing boredom. As he’d already been hooked on nicotine at the time he’d known better than to take that route himself. But, still, the days had been so long.
His temper had been the reason he’d been incarcerated. He’d walked out of those prison gates with a determination to never let it get the better of him again and until Anna had left him, he never had.
