the mansion through the throng.
“Mr. Bianco, are you seeing Ms. Norwood now?”
“Ms. Norwood, is it true you and Mr. Bianco were college sweethearts at Columbia?”
“Have you left Jackson Smith for Mr. Bianco? Or is it his bigger and better status and wealth that lured you in?”
She almost slipped until Stefan caught her hand in his and shielded her with his body. There was no end to the relentless questions, no lower depth that they could attribute to her motives.
Gritting her jaw, Clio followed Stefan’s lead until one bold reporter shot out a hand and blocked Stefan’s path.
“Give us one sentence, Mr. Bianco. Is Ms. Norwood just one of your usual arm candies or is there anything special about her?”
Stefan stilled and took in the crowd around them with a sly smile. Tugging her to his side, he wrapped an arm around her waist until she was plastered to him.
Something glittered in his gaze as he looked at her and a hundred flashes went on again to capture that mesmerizing look.
His gaze was molten fire, his mouth a study in sensuality.
Every inch of Clio gathered into a trembling ball at that heated look. He raised her hand to his face and kissed her knuckles, making sure the diamond on her finger caught the glare of every flash.
He played them so well.
Clio shivered uncontrollably. Gathering her against him, Stefan absorbed the tremors as if his solid, hard body was made for the very purpose of cushioning her and her emotions.
“After all these years, it didn’t take us long to realize how perfect we are for each other. Ms. Norwood has done me the honor of agreeing to marry me, yes. And whoever else has been in her life until now, it’s me she’s walking to the altar with,” he announced, possessiveness and pride dripping with each word, a flash of his Sicilian temperament wreathing his face.
It was all an act, Clio reminded herself, a perfectly orchestrated one by a man who wanted to hit his opponent where it would hurt.
The crowd went ballistic at the direct cut aimed toward Jackson. Her breath balling in her throat, she clung to Stefan’s hard frame to stop from being mobbed with more questions.
She knew she should speak up, she knew that she was remaining calm just as she had done with Jackson. But for the life of her, she couldn’t utter a word through the tightness in her chest.
She couldn’t help but wish, with a powerless fury, that time would turn back.
Before Stefan had changed and before she had let herself be lost. Before life had woken them up to the gritty reality of it all.
“Mr. Bianco, will you settle down in New York now that your betrothed is here?”
“Will you make New York the base of operations for Bianco Luxury Real Estate?”
For the first time that evening, Clio saw a momentary doubt shadow Stefan’s gaze.
His grip over her wrist tightened into a vise and she gasped.
Instantly, it loosened but he didn’t break his stride to answer their questions this time.
* * *
Clio made it through most of the evening with herself intact. Of course, she had to remind herself more than a few times that what she and Stefan were putting on was an act.
Because it was intoxicating to be in the company of a man who didn’t belittle anyone to prove his own worth, a man who could acknowledge the value of a competitor, a man whose confidence and self-belief was so bone deep that it was enthralling to watch for someone like her who had lost all sense of herself.
And because of their genuinely shared history, it was doubly easy to slip into the role of a loving fiancée, to finish each other’s sentences, to laugh at a shared joke without having to communicate.
They fit together too well, as he had noted. More than one conservative businessman, some Stefan claimed had never liked him previously, dropped by to congratulate and backslap him.
To tell him in obvious terms that he had made a fantastic choice by finally giving up his playboy ways and turning into a family man.
His brows rose, he laughed as his cell phone continued to chime with calls from his board members from all over the globe.
The worst part of the evening was standing by him without betraying the shiver that went through her when he casually touched her every other minute.
A hand on her waist, a kiss on her cheek, the intimate way he pushed a strand of hair that had slipped from its knot behind her ear, the way his long fingers lingered over her nape, sometimes dipping lower, sometime pressing into the very spot on her shoulders where she was getting stiff.
The chemistry that they had discovered in Athens seemed only to grow exponentially even under the most innocent of touches.
It thrilled her and scared her equally.
Excusing herself, she made her way to the buffet table. Determined to look her best tonight, and at Stefan’s urging, which was the nicest way to put his high-handed arranging of her day, Clio had spent most of the day lazing in the ultraluxurious spa at the Chatsfield, nibbling cucumber slices and drinking kale juice that had her looking supersuave in her designer dress—again arranged for her by her arrogant “fiancé”—but that had also left her on edge with hunger.
A migraine was looming, she was sure, and she wanted to stop it before it got worse.
She was about to grab a plate when her nape prickled, and a familiar scent sent her gut twisting into the most painful knot. She cast a look around and realized Jackson had her cornered.
“I didn’t think you had it in you to lure someone of Bianco’s stature. Fool me, huh, Clio?”
Nastiness dripped from every word Jackson uttered. But Clio held off the impulse to instantly scan the crowd for Stefan.
This had begun with Stefan at her side, true, but it was high time she looked after herself. Squaring her shoulders, she turned around.
His mouth curling, Jackson swept his blue gaze over her with such disdain that sweat pooled over her skin.
“Don’t make a scene, Jackson.”
“Oh, come on, Clio. After that entrance, after that clip of you crawling all over him out there for the world to see...after you jumped into his bed without even telling me we’re through, you disgust me.”
That he could think all that of her, that he could say it to her face stunned Clio.
“You’re the one who’s been fooling me for months,” she said, unable to curb the words from falling out of her mouth. All the warnings she had given herself about not betraying what she had seen flew out. Her throat felt like there was glass stuck in it and she had to remind herself that it was not her shame.
“God, you had sex with Ashley and you laughed at me with her.”
Something like shame filled his gaze, and was gone in a nanosecond, a calculating look emerging in his features. “So that’s what this is about? Payback? You think you’ll dangle yourself on his arm and make me sorry for what I did? You think I’ll come running back to you and beg for forgiveness?”
His gaze took in her designer dress, her upswept hair, the diamond on her finger as if he was cataloging everything about her.
Venomous satisfaction filled his gaze. “Of course it is. Why else would a red-blooded Sicilian like Bianco, who’s known to never date a woman for more than a week, want to marry you of all the women on the planet?”
For the first time since she had heard the sound of him shamelessly shagging his assistant, Clio was filled with molten fury unlike she had ever known.
It was cleansing, it was invigorating