He pushed back from the table in his courtyard in Rome now and stood up, shoving his hair back out of his face. Ivy was still asleep in her guest suite upstairs—or he assumed she was still asleep, as she had not yet emerged—and the real trouble was that he was finding it increasingly impossible to ignore the fact that he was attracted to her.
At first he’d thought it was simply because she was beautiful. Who was he to swim against the tide of a beautiful woman? He’d never failed to appreciate beauty when he saw it before. There was no reason to start now.
But as the weeks passed, it had become terribly clear that this was something far more personal than a reasonable appreciation of feminine pulchritude.
The thing he had to keep reminding himself was that Giaco Tavian did not dopersonal. He couldn’t afford it. He hadn’t come this far only to toss it all away on a pair of blue eyes.
No matter how they seemed to see deep into the heart he could have sworn he didn’t have.
He found himself staring up in the direction of her room, like a lovesick fool, and he hated that. It told him things about himself he refused to take on board. He turned on his heel and stormed through the house until he reached the pool he’d had installed on the lowest level, far away from any windows or prying eyes. He didn’t bother looking for a swimsuit, simply stripping off his usual robe and boxer briefs and diving into the water.
It was crisp. A deliberate slap. He kept it cold enough to clear his head, but just in case the water temperature didn’t do the trick, he started banging out laps. Down one length of the pool and back, over and over.
He told himself it was simply because he hadn’t found any kind of release in far too long. He hadn’t been kidding when he’d told Ivy that he required a significantly high amount of sex per day. He hadn’t intended to forgo that pleasure, either, no matter what image he was projecting to the outside world. Despite what everyone believed—what he had worked so intently tomake certainthey believed—he was perfectly capable of discretion if it suited him.
And yet he hadn’t done it.
He’d left the castle as soon as possible, putting the necessary space between him and his loathsome father. Throughout the entire drive back to Rome he’d planned to call one of his trusted paramours as soon as he arrived. He had a very select few of them. They distinguished themselves by keeping their mouths shut and never imagining that there might be anything more between them than a hot, hard night in his sheets from time to time.
The less talking, the better. These particular women understood that when he called them, it was for a specific purpose.
But when he arrived home, he hadn’t called anyone.
Later, when he and Gabriele had started discussing this particular media campaign, Giaco had decided that authenticity could only help push the narrative.
Besides, every paparazzo in Europe would go looking for proof that he hadn’t reformed at all. They would dig into every connection he’d ever had—no matter how seemingly tenuous—looking for any indication that he was actually still the degenerate he’d always seemed to be.
And as discreet as he always was and as much as he had been able to trust his usual paramours for years, this was different. This was too important.
Giaco couldn’t take the chance that any one of them might jump at the opportunity for a payday.
That was what he’d told himself. That was what he continued to tell himself as he grew hungrier by the day. And yet as he sliced through the water, all he could think about was Ivy. And not just thatappetiteinside him that he was determined to believe was simply because she was the woman nearest him—
But didn’t. Not really. The craving was so intense. It didn’t help matters that she was so intriguing.
He could not remember the last time he had been intrigued by anything or anyone. Giaco had always had a singular focus for the whole of his life, and everything else that came along was a casualty because of it.
But now, suddenly, there was Ivy.
And despite a lifetime of paying no attention to anything but his end goal and bonding with nothing but his own thirst for vengeance, he found that his fake girlfriend was actually fascinating.
I would love to be a sculptor, she had told him as they walked through the gardens at the Musée Rodin in Paris.
I didn’t know you were artistic, he had replied.
It had been a great day, meaning it had been perfect for their purposes. They had walked about a selection of museums. They’d stayed next to each other, clearly together, and the pictures that had come from that day supported it. They’d looked lost in conversation, as if they might at any moment have reached out for each other, though it had been chilly.
I’m not at all artistic, Ivy had replied.I know that there are those who believe that everyone has a certain amount of creativity lurking around inside of them, but I’m pretty sure that I missed that boat entirely. That’s all right. In this life, I get to admire the creativity of others. And imagine what it must take to mold clay into such wonder with my hands, or find these perfect shapes in a block of stone.She had smiled when she looked at him and only then had seemed to remember who they were. He’d found that he didn’t much care for that, though he had opted not to ask himself why that was.What about you? Do you have secret creative outlets?
There’s the obvious answer, he had said, almost by rote. She had actually rolled her eyes, which he’d found nothing short of astonishing. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had dared. Whatever people might think of him, they had always taken him seriously in person. He’d assumed that was part of his so-called boundless charm.And I assure you, of course, that my creativity in the bedroom knows no bounds.
Of course, she said, still rolling her eyes.The maestro himself, etcetera.
Just so.He had gazed up at the statue before them, noting the exquisite lines and the emotion that seemed to be captured in hard stone, and could not have said why it felt to him like another impertinence. Maybe that was why he’d offered up something different. Something more than his usual playboy prattle.I did paint once.
Really?Ivy had shifted closer to him. Her head had canted slightly to the side as she’d studied his face.Let me guess. You astonished everyone immediately with your innate and unstudied talent and could easily have been the next Picasso, had you managed to stop all the carrying on in the bedchambers of Europe? That sounds like you.
I was appalling, he’d replied, and had then…actually found himself laughing.Embarrassing, really. I would have been better off simply pouring the paints onto the canvas and spreading them about with my hands. I could have claimed that was modern art, at the least. Alas, it was a figure-drawing class and the goal was an adequate representation of said figure.
