of his valid point.
He sighed. “Finish that water and then order something from room service. I’ll get dressed and be back. And then you can tell me why you look like you—”
Anxiety hit her in waves. If he disappeared, she knew she would lose whatever it was that had brought her this far.
Saving face in front of him would become more important than moving on in her life.
“No, wait. Don’t leave. I...”
“Then get rid of that look in your eyes, bella,” he said. “I can’t stand it.” A hint of emotion colored that bland statement.
“What look?”
Pushing his tensile body into her space, he folded his hands. The muscles in his biceps curled enticingly and Clio choked back hysteria. Her life was falling apart, and yet it seemed the sight of Stefan half-naked could distract her as nothing else could.
“Like you’re terrified of me,” he said through gritted teeth. “We might have become strangers to each other but I would never hurt you, bella. Whatever Jackson did, you need to shake yourself out of it.” His voice fell as if she were a wounded animal he was persuading into his care.
“I’m not a danger to you, Clio.”
Oh, but he was, Clio admitted, her pulse skyrocketing.
If Jackson had reduced her to a shadow of herself over the years, Stefan could destroy the small part of her that was still intact. That he knew what she had been once and what she was now, it was a weapon he could wield with ease and without emotion, if he didn’t like what she was about to say.
The young man she had known at Columbia had not only been idealistic but also kind, with a rosy view of the world.
This man he was now, he rattled Clio on so many levels.
But she had no intention of ever letting a man define her sense of self. Ever again.
The thought gave her the courage to say what she wanted to. “I decided to take you up on your offer. I need your...I need help, Stefan.”
Something infinitesimal flashed in his brooding gaze, gone before she could read it. His defined jaw hardened. He moved to a small side table with delicately carved legs, and pulled out a checkbook.
He flipped it open with a pen poised in his left hand. That familiar sight of him balancing the book on his right forearm brought forth such a strong memory that she almost didn’t hear him when he said, “How much do you need?”
Her jaw falling open, Clio stared at him. Acid crawled up her throat and she forced herself to hold his gaze, realizing what his look had meant.
He thought she had come to him for money.
Even as he had reminded her of what she had been, it was clear that Stefan had already written her off as a lost cause.
It rankled just as much as Jackson’s treacherous perfidy did; it tore her in half that she had brought this on herself. But it was high time she started fighting for herself, too. High time she started growing a backbone.
“How much, Clio?”
“Will you give me as much as I want, Stefan? How about a million dollars?” Something in her challenged him, pushed to see how far he would go.
He didn’t even blink. “A million it will be, bella. I will tell my finance guy that this year our charity contribution is going to the Clio Norwood Foundation.”
I don’t want your charity.
Swallowing back the bile his offhand comment provoked, she reminded herself to not flinch, to not betray the hurt that lanced through her.
She had no idea why she was inflicting this on herself, but she couldn’t stop.
“And if I come back for more?”
“I’ll give you more.” He threw the checkbook on the coffee table between them, the gesture so full of powerful arrogance and a masculine elegance that Clio forgot what had prompted it. Even half-naked as he was, power and ruthlessness emanated from every cell in him.
“You can have as much as you want, Clio. All you would have to do is walk away from that crook. No matter how deep you are in, you can walk away.”
“Why? Why would you help me?”
“Once, you were my friend. Once, I used to think the world of you. Seeing you like this...”
Some unnamed emotion flickered in his eyes and Clio stared anew. His face transformed so much when a hint of emotion touched it that it was like seeing a shadow of the old Stefan.
“If I can help you get away from—” he scowled as if he hated even saying Jackson’s name again “—I’ll save you, even if it has to be from yourself. It’s like taking a friend or a family member to a rehabilitation clinic for treatment for addiction.”
“Even though you think I’m not worth the ground I’m standing on?”
His dark smile didn’t falter for a second. “Your words, bella, not mine.” A blast of cold solidified in her core and Clio shivered.
It was one thing to think that of herself, another to hear someone confirm it. But with Stefan, there was nothing but honesty. Cutting, lacerating honesty, but honesty all the same.
His gaze swept over her, lingering and intense. “But, yes, even then. I would do the same for Rocco, Christian and Zayed, too.”
The Columbia Four’s friendship, the inviolate bond they had forged with each other, she had always been envious of it. To be included now as something he had to salvage from the wreck she’d made of herself... “Wow, at least in one regard, I’m in illustrious company, aren’t I?”
He moved around the coffee table, and it was like watching a wild animal move. With grace and purpose.
The moment he was within touching distance, everything within Clio retreated inward into a tight ball. But still, the heat of his body incited a trembling in her very bones.
The breadth of his frame swathed her as he bent down. “Do not ask a question of me if you don’t have the constitution for truth, Clio.”
Her brain taken over with issuing flight responses, Clio nodded dumbly.
Stefan Bianco was a Sicilian alpha male in his prime.
Physically magnificent, powerful beyond her wildest imagination, ruthlessly rich. A potent combination of masculinity and heat that could probably compel a stone to react if he so intended.
A woman like her, with her very sense of self battered and beaten down, was nothing. She wrapped her hands around herself, as if it could corral his presence and her reaction.
If she wasn’t careful, he would overpower her so much that she would get swept away in unraveling that enigmatic disinterest he projected so easily. As so many women did—deluding themselves that they could melt the icy heart beneath the fiery exterior of his Sicilian temperament.
Stefan had buried his heart so deep and so long ago that he didn’t even have one anymore, she sensed. Stepping away from him, she shook herself free of his magnetic pull. Met his gaze head-on. “I never want to hear anything but the truth from you, Stefan.”
“Deal,” he said with an indulgent smile that was more like a threat than a reassuring promise. “Now it’s time to put your cards on the table, bella. Without fear.”
She knew exactly where she stood with him; she would always know.
His brand of friendship—eviscerating and without an ounce of pretension—was what she needed to remake herself, to redefine herself. Stefan was the perfect path for her to walk on toward becoming her own woman again.
“As gratifying as it is to learn I could have millions if I just made myself your charity