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She walked deeper into the room. His chest tightened as she neared the bed.
“It’s...cozier.” She sat on the chaise longue in front of the bed and nodded in the direction of the fireplace. The architect had replicated Antonio’s vision perfectly, mounting it in stone that stood proudly from floor to ceiling, while the glass provided a window into the sitting room beyond.
“This hotel is different than my others. With only having twenty rooms, including this penthouse, it provides more intimacy and exclusivity for my guests.”
“And why am I sharing this room with you when there are nineteen empty ones?”
“To keep up the pretense.”
She frowned. “For who?”
“The construction workers. The employees with the interior design firm. Anyone other than Paul.”
The frown deepened. “I don’t remember you being so suspicious.”
“In my line of work, I have to be. A freckle-faced waitress could turn out to be a corporate spy from another hospitality chain. Or a vendor who schedules a meeting with me could be trying to get the layout of my office so they can break in and try to access my computer. Both have happened, by the way,” he added with a nonchalance he didn’t quite feel.
It had been unnerving to be thrust out of the bubble of security he’d enjoyed in Granada to the cutthroat world of reality when he’d entered the halls of Cambridge. He didn’t keep friends, partially because of the past, but also because the people he came across in the outside world seemed to care more about his money than him. He dated casually but selectively. When the relationship moved further into intimacy, he’d taken Adrian’s recommendation of having background checks performed or only dating women who moved in the same social circles as he did. It had kept his reputation intact, a professional necessity. As much as he might look back on his freer past in Granada with nostalgic longing, his current method was safer, logical.
If he occasionally felt the urge to resist the confines he’d set in place for himself, too bad. What right did he have to enjoy life when he’d nearly taken it from someone else?
“People can be cruel,” Anna said as she stood up and moved to the fireplace. She ran a hand along the nearly black wood of the mantel. “Although they can be kind. Alejandro’s wife was very kind to me at the party in Paris.”
“She’s a special kind of woman to be able to put up with Alejandro,” Antonio replied dryly. “But then again, so is Everleigh to put up with Adrian’s musty old soul.”
Anna’s lips twitched. “An apt description.” She continued to walk around, her footsteps muffled by the thick rug between the fireplace and the chaise longue. “There are good people in the world.”
“There are. There are also bad people. You trusted Leo White. Look what happened. The real world is a far nastier place than the vineyards back home.”
Her shoulders slumped. “That’s true.” A self-derisive laugh escaped. “I was so naïve thinking that I could break into designing on my work alone. Like you said, it’s who you know.”
He suddenly found himself wishing the world was a gentler place, a place that didn’t gobble up people like Anna and leave them hardened.
“You mentioned a long story about why your designs aren’t being picked up?”
“Yeah.”
She drifted away from him, walked into the sitting room. He followed at a distance, hands in his pockets. She sat on the low-slung leather couch, resting her chin in one hand as she gazed at the empty grate.
“You saw the article.”
He leaned against the wall, nodded once.
“At first I was embarrassed that I had been duped and shared something so personal. I sounded like a five-year-old wanting to play dress-up.” She sat back and scrubbed her hands over her face. “He didn’t want to talk about my work. Just wanted dirt on people for his puff piece on the ‘engagement party of the summer.’”
The face she made and the snobby accent she affected as she quoted Leo’s article made him press his lips together to repress his laughter.
“But then...” The room grew so quiet, he could hear the slight whisper of her breathing as she inhaled. “I looked at what I was wearing.”
He frowned. “What you were wearing?”
“At the party.”
In his mind’s eyes, he recalled the picture that had been posted next to Anna’s biography.
“Pale blue dress, right?”
She nodded, her face sad. The urge to cross to her, pull her into his arms and soothe away the pain made him lean harder against the wall. He’d comforted her once before as a friend. But his role had changed drastically. He didn’t trust himself not to take things too far in the confines of his private suite.
