He was six feet tall, shirtless and muscled, standing by the pool, his black hair slicked away from his face, a pair of dark glasses covering his eyes. He was the most beautiful human being that Heather had ever seen. And her mother had worked for celebrities.
She had seen her share of beautiful humans, both on the silver screen and at her mother’s cleaning jobs for the rich and lovely.
She had seen her share of glamour and glory. Somehow, even at fourteen, Romeo Accardi supplanted them all.
But everything his father was, he was not.
The first time he looked at her, he was not struck dumb as she had been when she laid eyes on him. Rather, his lip curled into a sneer.
“Who are you?”
“I… Heather. My mom works here.”
“Are you meant to be at the pool?”
“Your father said that I could.”
He had lowered his sunglasses, looking at her with deep disdain. “I see.”
Then he had left. As if sharing the same air as her was anathema. That had set the tone.
Things did not improve after that. In fact, they only got worse when her mother began a romantic relationship with Giuseppe.
Worse still when they got married.
It wasn’t a clean start to a relationship. Carla Accardi, Giuseppe’s wife, had always been a distant presence in the house. At least from Heather’s perspective. The beautiful, statuesque socialite hadn’t been cold; she’d simply been the way that employers usually were.
When the relationship had started between Heather’s mother and Romeo’s father, he had been insistent his romantic relationship with his wife was long over. At least that was what he said later.
It had been confusing for thirteen-year-old Heather, whose life had been improved in almost every way by her mother’s relationship with Giuseppe.
And yet she had known that the way it had all come about was…wrong. She also had no control over any of it. Which, to this day, was the most important angle on that, she felt.
As an adult, she didn’t think her mother was responsible for the dissolution of the Accardi marriage. The truth was, there had to be issues. Many of them, in order for infidelity to have been able to get a foothold. And Giuseppe wasn’t a serial adulterer. He had married Lisa Gray and they had stayed together until death did them part after Lisa suffered a heart attack two years ago.
In the end, Heather saw them as a love story. An imperfect one perhaps, but over the years it had become clear that they were meant for each other. At least, it was clear to her.
One thing she could be certain of was that Romeo had never gained any perspective on the situation. As a result, Heather had never gained any perspective on him.
When his father and her mother had married, his disdain and distance had turned into outright cruelty. He blamed her mother for his own mother’s unhappiness, and he hated Heather.
Popular and adored by all of their classmates, he had made her life a living hell at school. And then he had proceeded to make it hell at home as well. When he was in residence, that was. Often, he was with Carla. But when he was around he never hesitated to make his dislike of their family situation known.
Their warfare was as covert as possible, of course. Heather would never complain and risk ruining her mother’s happiness. She had never really understood why Romeo bothered to hide his disdain, but while they were never friendly to each other in any situation, they were civil—mainly—in front of their parents.
If it had changed when they were adults, Heather would’ve been happy to revise her opinion of him. Like her, he had been young and at the mercy of the adults in their lives. But he had never changed. He had never grown any kinder, or seemed to gain any deeper understanding of the complexity surrounding his parents’ marriage or anything of the kind.
He had been just the worst. Responsible for making her life miserable.
As if her rumination had conjured him, Romeo strode into the library where Heather was sitting staring at her computer. She felt him before she saw him. That low, vibrating frequency that always resonated in her chest when he was near. And then she looked up.
He was wearing a resplendently cut navy blue suit, his dark hair pushed off of his forehead, his jaw as sharp as broken glass. The artful stubble that covered it was like a tease. As were his full lips, which looked mobile, like they might smile easily and beautifully. The truth was, they did. For other people.
Never for Heather.
That had been one of the most damaging things about Romeo back when they’d been teenagers.
He liked everyone. To know him was to long to be in his orbit. He was like the sun, creating warmth and light wherever he went.
