“So, why are you still protecting the bastard?” he asked. “Why don’t you tell your side of the story?”
She felt the flare of heat in her cheeks, as if she’d been slapped. “Watch it, Rossi. There are some lines not even you can cross.”
“Have it your way.” He marched into the elevator, holding her garment bags like a barrier between them.
They didn’t speak until they reached the sidewalk. She opened the back of her car, and he slid the bags inside into the empty taupe compartment. Whatever kinship had developed between them had been killed by his reference to Marshall. He had no fucking right, and she ought to tell him that right now. Better to just let him go. She’d let go of plenty in the last year. What was one more man?
“Thanks for your help today,” she said, not making eye contact.
“Anytime.”
Great. He was finally out of her life, walking in his shit-kickers, toward that battered embarrassment of a truck, which would no doubt carry him back to her mother’s restaurant and a career as star chef or star lackey, depending on how good he really wasin the kitchen. She could let him go, or she could speak. Silence would be best.
“Only one thing.” Rossi turned, his arms stiff and fisted. “Why do you have to take the heat for that affair, anyway? Cameron’s the one who’s married, not you. You’re looking out for too many people.”
“And what about you? Who the hell are you looking out for?”
“You.”
She started to tell him to go to hell, but that hypnotic, caring light in his eyes stopped her before she could. So what did she tell him?
“I don’t want to share my secrets with anyone,” she said. “Enough of me has been spread across the headlines. They say I almost destroyed Marshall Cameron’s reputation. But I’m the one who was destroyed, no ‘almost’ about it.”
“You could even the score. Hell, even write a book.”
“I’ve had offers, and I might one day.”
“One day means never. You won’t do it, because you still love him. That’s the reason, isn’t it?”
“Of course not. Now, get out of here.”
“Fine. But first, tell me how you could love anyone who said what he did about you.”
She slammed the back door of the car shut. “You don’t know he said it.”
“Butyoudo.”
She closed her eyes to stop the sudden tears.
“You think I’d believe anything his wife said in some pathetic interview, especially then, with all of the pressure on both of them? She could have lied.”
In reality, Lucy Cameron had wounded her in her frigging magazine interview Princess Gabby would callso California.
Lucy had said their marriage was stronger than ever. Tania Marie expected that. She had said she loved her husband. Goodluck, lady. But the quote that sent Tania Marie on a week-long Milanos binge still hurt so much she tried to forget she ever read it.
“Indeed, my husband made a mistake, one that was probably based on pity. He started out really wanting to help this girl, his assistant, and he had no idea, until itwastoo late, that she was infatuated, obsessed with him. He also told me, and I believe this in my heart, that he could never, ever carry on a serious relationship with someone with a weight problem.”
Rossi came back to where she stood. “Forget the son of a bitch. Can you do that?”
“For Virginia? Is that what she sent you here to do? Are you just another…?”
The rest of her anger was crushed against his lips. The middle of Los Angeles, broad daylight, and she was kissing the hell out of this man who worked for her mother. She broke away, pressed her forehead against his.
“Let’s go,” he whispered.
“Not so fast.” She ran her fingers over his thin, rose-colored lips, sexier than Marshall’s full, lying ones.
“Come on.” He pulled her closer. She fought the internal signals of attraction that had proved to be lies the last time. She couldn’t fall head-first again, not physically, not metaphorically, thank you very much, Marshall Cameron.
