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And that was where he found her.
He stopped in the door of the library, watching the light stream in from the great domed skylight above, carefully directed into the center of the space and the table that stood there. And not toward the floor to ceiling shelves that lined the walls. Julienne sat at the table, looking perfectly at her ease. Papers, books, his grandfather’s collection of personal letters and a pad she was using to jot down notes were spread across the surface of the center table as if she’d made it her office.
He wanted to charge in and sweep the whole mess of it to the floor, but he couldn’t seem to move. Because she was more beautiful than he remembered.
And God help him, but it caught at him. She caught at him and he had no earthly idea how to stop her.
Cristiano could no longer remember, now, how he’d managed to keep himself from noticing her all these many years. When she’d been nothing to him but another employee, if more ambitious and dependable than most. How had he turned this greed in him off? And why couldn’t he do it again?
Her hair was not up in its normal twist today. It swirled down around her shoulders, gleaming gold in the sunlight. She had a faint frown of concentration between her brows, which he wanted to smooth with his fingers. And she tugged her lower lip between her teeth as she scribbled something on the pad before her.
And everything inside him was fire and fury, regret, and that other thing he couldn’t quite name. That ache that he couldn’t define and was doing his level best to ignore.
He didn’t know when she became aware of him. But he knew when she did, even though she didn’t react at first. She finished writing whatever she was scribbling on her pad, set her pen down with what struck him as unnecessary precision and only then lifted her gaze to his.
“You’ve sicced the press on me?” he demanded, his voice not much more than a growl, because that was better than analyzing thepunchof her gaze. The way it made him want to rock back on his heels. Though he did not. “Do I need to confiscate your mobile, Julienne?”
“You can do that.” Her voice was as cool and mild as her expression. Cristiano believed neither, not when he could still feel that punch. “But then you would have a much bigger problem.”
“I find that difficult to believe.”
“You’ve chosen not to deal with me,” she said, her eyes dark. “And lucky for you, I am accustomed to taking your orders. But you will find my sister more difficult to control.”
“Is that it?” He didn’t quite laugh, but he felt...bigger, suddenly. More in control of this mess he’d made. “Your little sister is the threat? Your big gun?”
Julienne smiled. “A key difference between Fleurette and me, among many others, is that she never liked you all that much to begin with.”
And Cristiano didn’t understand the pull he felt to this woman. He hadn’t understood it that night in Monaco. He certainly hadn’t understood it in the six long months that had followed. Today, when by rights he should despise her for discussing his family’s business with reporters, he found himself leaning against the doorjamb instead. Almost lazily, when he was never lazy.
Almost as if this was some game they played.
“Impossible,” he heard himself say, icily sardonic. “My charm is legendary.”
“You are a distinctly charmless man,” she replied. And there was no reason why Cristiano—who had never given a moment’s thought to whether or not he was considered charming by anyone—should feel a sense of outrage at her offhanded, matter-of-fact tone. “You are known chiefly for your intensity, as I think you are well aware. And now, it seems, your upsetting criminal behavior.”
Cristiano considered her, feeling as distinctly charmless as she’d called him.“I wonder that you did not call the police rather than the press, if your upset is so great.”
She smiled again, but it was a different sort of smile. Far more of a weapon than the politely cool one he’d seen in the office.
“I realize this is not sitting well with you, Cristiano, but you are the father of this baby.” Julienne rose then, clearly pointing her belly in his direction. In case he might have forgotten. “And it is not exactly ideal to have the father of my baby locked up forever in prison, as you surely would be if I called the police and explained to them that you’re keeping me here against my will.”
“You could walk to Florence,cara. It is not so many kilometers from here.”
“It is, in fact, many hundreds of kilometers to Florence. I checked, and when the maps on my mobile failed, I asked one of your guards.”
Cristiano wanted to hurl something back at her, but he was struck by all that light cascading down from above, bathing her in it. Sheglowed.There was no other word to describe it. He tried to tell himself it was a trick of the light, but somehow, he knew perfectly well it was not. It was her.
Julienne was...blooming.
Like the flowers outside in the atrium, she reminded him of spring. Bright and sweet and glowing, like the Roman goddesses who had once been worshiped on this same plot of earth.
“You want my attention, is that it?” he asked, forcing himself to stop thinking about goddesses andglowing.“Is that why you sent me your message in the form of a pack of reporters?”
He could hear the danger in his own voice. He thought she heard it too, because she did that thing with her chin. That defiant tilt, as if, left to her own devices, she might fight him.
“It’s the baby that needs your attention, Cristiano.”
And he had to grit his teeth against that word.Baby.Against all the things that happened in him when he thought of it.
