“You need to stop being a fake.”
There, she’d said it.
“A fake?” An incredulous laugh escaped him. “You’re the one pretending to be an Italian contessa.”
She shook her head. “The two are not at all the same, and you know it.”
His jaw clenched, and the thunderstorm returned to his eyes. He couldn’t deny it.
Here, Valentina found the opening she needed. “You have two selves.”
“You make me sound like a bedlamite,” he said, as lordly and dismissive as she’d ever heard him. She’d definitely struck a nerve.
“The Lord Archer that the world knows, and this other man only revealed in the dead of night,” she began. “I don’t understand why it’s so necessary to keep them separate.”
He looked as if he wouldn’t respond, then he said, “Everyone loves the Lord Archer they know. He’s always up for a lark and a laugh.” He shrugged, as if indifferent. “Does the world really need another temperamental artist?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Why is that, pray tell?”
“So you can stop living half a life.”
Chapter Fourteen
Archie went stone still, as if mere words could bind one physically.
But her words weren’t mere.
They had the power to clear all the fury from his body in an instant.
He felt…
Seen.
And for the first time in his life he experienced permission to feel that way.
Because it was this woman who saw him.
Valentina.
He propped a shoulder against a bare patch of garden wall and crossed his arms over his chest. “Do you want to know something, Valentina?”
Her eyes narrowed with sudden wariness. “What?”
She didn’t trust the smile now curling about his mouth. Perhaps she was right not to. His smile set hidden places inside her aflame—he’d noticed.
“You’re incredibly beautiful when you’re scolding me.”
Her mouth clamped shut, and though it was difficult to tell in the monochrome light of the moon, he thought her cheeks might have brightened into a dusky pink blush.
The next instant, she collected herself. She wasn’t finished. “You think you can’t be vulnerable, so you hide behind that gorgeous smile of yours.”
Oh, what he was about to ask next was really going to infuriate her. “You think my smile is gorgeous?”
She let out a near growl of frustration. “Thetonwill still like you. Thewholeyou.”
He could love her for her earnestness.
