“I hate you,” she said, standing in the middle of the now-empty town house.
“Of one thing you can always be certain,cara,” he said, moving his face close to hers, so close that she could smell him, that spicy, masculine scent, so close that she could see the dark stubble on his jawline. So close she thought about reaching out and touching him, just for a second. “I hate you too.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Something had brokeninside of him that day. When he had come to the town house, looking to sleep off some of his excess, and found his stepsister, drunk, crawling all over one of the biggest assholes he’d ever known in school.
And when said asshole had led his stepsister up the stairs, he had lost it entirely.
He knew that it was perhaps as hypocritical as she said that he was breaking up a party which was tame by his standards, but he hadn’t been able to allow it. Heather Gray was a thorn in his side. And the thorn had only grown more acute as she had become more beautiful. They had been cruel to each other over the years, but after that, her behavior toward him became something like psychotic. And the twisted thing was it seemed to ignite a spark within him. Seemed to make him all the more interested in continuing the war that they’d been engaged in for years. Though they saw each other less frequently, it still happened on occasion that they would find themselves at his father’s home in Italy at the same time.
Even their parents had to take notice of the rift, though they thought it was some form of sibling rivalry rather than the burning hatred that existed in them both. They traded barbs in front of both Lisa and Giuseppe, but were careful to walk the line.
In university, Heather traded her school uniform, and out-of-school bikinis, for something a bit more serious. Her red hair was often pinned up into a bun, her color palette ranging from black to darker black.
He would be lying if he said he didn’t miss the color.
But she was clearly now obsessed with being taken seriously, in that way first-year university students often were.
Which was why he had thought—the first time—that perhaps some of her anger at him might’ve cooled. Until she walked by him in the hallway, and looked up at him, her green eyes catching him so hard that he froze.
Then she put her fingertip on his chest, dragged it right across the front of his cashmere sweater. “How nice to see you, brother dearest.”
There was malice and promise in those words, and he would be damned if they didn’t send a sharp signal of arousal straight down to his cock. The problem with Heather was that she took desire and added something more potent to it. It was the extreme distaste he had for her that seemed to add adrenaline to the attraction. What was forbidden to him? Nothing. Nothing but the stepsister he hated. He was a wealthy man, and doors flew open for him. But not her. Touching her would cause an avalanche of destruction. It was what made her compelling.
Over dinner she smiled at him sweetly. Later he cornered her. “And what is your game?”
“I don’t have a game,” she said, smiling sweetly at him.
He’d never once seen the look on her face before.
“I don’t believe you.”
She pouted. “What a terrible view you have of women.”
“Only of you,cara.”
For some reason that only made her smile more.
“You need to be nicer to Heather,” his father said to him later when they were drinking cognac by the fire.
“Why exactly?” he asked, tapping his glass.
“Because I won’t be around forever. You will have to take care of Heather and Lisa.”
“Father, your money will take care of them well enough.”
“Is that all you think I offer them?”
It was certainly why they had so happily broken up Giuseppe’s marriage. Certainly why they had taken to all of this with such ease. Had his father been a poor man, it would never have happened. He knew that for certain. One of the truly difficult things was that Lisa was a kind woman. Caring and one who seemed to enjoy spending time with her husband, doting on her daughter. In spite of the frosty reception that Romeo had given her, Lisa had been persistently kind to him. But he was the one who’d had to be there for his mother. He was the one who had—
“Don’t forget that I have to take care of your former wife.”
“Romeo… You know I feel sorry for the timing of everything.”
“Not so sorry that you didn’t do exactly what you wanted to anyway.”
By the time he was ready for bed he was furious. He walked into his room and stripped his jacket off, his tie, the rest of his clothes. He walked into the shower and stood blindly beneath the hot spray, then dried himself and walked back into the bedroom. He stopped. There was someone in his bed. He flicked the lights on, and there she was, the covers pulled up past her breasts, her copper hair spread out on the pillow.
