He could still remember, pounding through the water in his cold pool, the way Ivy had laughed at that. As if he had surprised her. She had laughed so hard that she’d actually leaned against him, just for moment, as if his confession was some kind of connection.
The trouble with Ivy was that she made him feel like a regular man.
Giaco knew he couldn’t have that. He couldn’t allow it.
It would ruin everything.
He kept swimming until his arms felt numb, though it was a pity the rest of him refused to follow suit.
A few nights later, Giaco was convinced he had his wits about him again. A precious commodity, no doubt. Particularly when one was widely held to be missing a full set.
He had his people drop them at one of Rome’s most exquisite and currently sought-after restaurants, currently vying for its second Michelin star. They were greeted at the door and then ushered to a table that was set away from the main dining room, as if—despite having managed a pap walk outside one of the hottest restaurants in the world just now—Giaco and Ivy were trying their best to stay private.
“You take your charity work very seriously,” he said, realizing as he broke the silence between them that he sounded…awkward. When he was Giaco Tavian, who had never encountered an awkward moment his entire life.
This woman made him feel like some kind of untrained adolescent. The kind of adolescent he had never been, that was for certain.
Ivy looked at him, her blue eyes as fierce and piercing as ever. He always had the feeling she was as good as punching him straight to the chest. Every time she gazed in his direction. What he couldn’t decide was whether she was doing something deliberately or if he was simply…feelingit like a blow.
When he had sworn offfeelinglong ago.
“Is this going to turn into one of your routines on my supposed canonization?” she asked coolly.
“Little saint,” he found himself murmuring, “it’s neverroutine. I am an endless font of new experiences.”
“Not according to the tabloids,” she retorted, a touch too quickly for his peace of mind. “They’re quite certain you’re up to your old tricks.”
“The only old tricks they are ever referring to involve sex,” he said, because he liked saying things like that in public places.
Even though it was unlikely that anyone could possibly overhear them, she always reacted. Though he could have used a far less socially acceptable word, he could still see splashes of color on her cheeks and the hint of it on her neck. Tonight he could see even more than usual because her hair was twisted up and out of her way, in another one of the seemingly casual yet elegant styles she wore now because they photographed so beautifully.
But her beauty wasn’t the point here. What he could not understand was how Ivy had grown up in the same castle that he had and had somehow emerged capable of shame or embarrassment of any kind.
“I do take my charity work seriously,” she said after a moment, her eyes a darker shade of blue. Clearly jumping right over the sex of it all, as usual. “When I moved back to London, I went with some friends to a charity event one evening and happened to hear a young orphan speak. She made me cry.”
“You mean following your mother’s funeral.” Again, her blue eyes were on him. This time he felt certain that there was something like reproach in them. “You must have been very young.”
Unbidden, the image of Ivy all in black, with only the searing blue of her gaze—shining bright with unshed tears as she’d stared down Umberto—came back to him.
Young, yes. But stunning all the same, though in his memory, it was now less because of the simple fact of her beauty and more about the deep fury she’d clearly been holding inside her.
It made the previous memory of her in the gallery doorway even hotter in retrospect, and if he recalled correctly, she’d been who he’d thought of anyway. His dirty little release.
“I’m still very young by any reasonable measure,” she replied, with a laugh. “I suspect you and I only feel old because every day in your father’s presence is like a decade. A long, grim decade.” She reached out and picked up her wineglass. “And, of course, you actuallyareold.”
That was so surprising that he laughed. “Apparently even the most holy martyr among us has claws when she needs them. Who could have imagined it?”
He thought she looked rather pleased with herself when she kept going. “My father died in a car accident when I was quite young.”
“I remember,” Giaco said. And when she looked surprised at that, he moved his shoulder in a shrug that did not feel like his usual elaborate, affected fare. Neither did his voice as he continued. “I was a teenage boy. There were very few humans alive I admired more than Llewellyn Amis, the greatest action hero of all time.”
The way Ivy smiled at him then made him almost feel as if he’d downed the entire bottle of wine himself. It was that bright, that warm. That dizzying.
“He always felt James Bond took up too much oxygen,” she told him, leaning in closer to him, which did not help the dizziness any. “That’s what my mother always told me. I don’t remember much about him myself, I’m sorry to say. I knew my mother much better, and for longer. And I know all the stories she told about him. By heart.”
She seemed to remember herself then, because she sat back. Or maybe, like Giaco, she was having trouble remembering the boundaries here, the lines between a good act and an actual conversation. Much less a real moment.
He had to swallow then, though his throat felt unduly rough.
