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But what were the chances of a man who could crook his finger and have any woman in the world—any able-bodied woman in the world—he wanted desiring her?
Now that was pure fantasy—a pointless, fanciful daydream she needn’t waste her time indulging.
What she did need to do was stay focused, remember what was important: her job, her independence, her art.
Especially her art.
But now all of that was under threat. In danger of being disrupted by some anonymous admirer who must be mentally unstable, or, if she were being less kind, completely deranged.
Six weeks. That was how long she’d been receiving the bunches of flowers and the notes she’d thought quaint and amusing—even flattering—at first. But over the weeks the messages had gone from sweet to intense, their content growing more personal, more intimate. More possessive.
It was the note that had come with a bouquet of thirteen crimson tulips on a Friday two weeks ago, however, that had for the first time left her truly spooked.
Such a beautiful dress you wore yesterday, amore mio. Red is perfect on you—and my favourite colour. You see? We were made for each other! S.
Those words had clamped a cold fist around her throat and squeezed hard as their import had slowly sunk in. And she had realised something she hadn’t considered before then—that he, whoever he was, was following her, watching her, stalking her.
Gooseflesh rose on Marietta’s forearms and she resisted the urge to rub them, to scrub away the sensation of something unpleasant crawling over her skin.
She’d been so shaken she’d confided in her sister-in-law, Helena—which in hindsight had been a mistake. Helena, in spite of Marietta’s pleas for her not to, had told her husband—Marietta’s brother—who had, of course, flipped. Within minutes Leo had been on the phone, severely chastising her for not going directly to him and urging her to involve the police.
Advice she’d promptly ignored. She hadn’t wanted to create a fuss and her big brother was, as always, being over-protective. The fact he’d waited an entire forty-eight hours before calling on his friend Nico for assistance was, she reflected now, nothing short of astonishing.
That Nico, whom she’d last seen at Leo and Helena’s wedding two years before, had, in the first instance, sent his man Bruno rather than handle the matter himself, was something Marietta had not, she’d assured herself, been a little disappointed about.
Nicolas César was, after all, a busy man—CEO of a renowned global network that provided security and protection services to some of the world’s most powerful corporations and influential figureheads. Dealing with an overzealous admirer was never going to figure high on his priority list, no matter how solid his friendship with her brother.
And yet...here he stood. Or perhaps towered was the better word, she thought, conscious of a crick in her neck. Of the warm pulse of blood beneath her skin. Her heartbeat had not quite settled back into its normal rhythm since he’d walked, unannounced, into the gallery some forty minutes earlier.
After a brief, polite greeting he’d asked to see the cards Bruno had told her to keep, and then, despite the fact they were written in Italian, had proceeded to read every intimate word until Marietta’s face had burned with mortified heat. Then—since it was mid-afternoon on a Friday, and that meant another bouquet was likely on its way—he’d commandeered one of the soft chairs reserved for the gallery’s clientele and artists and waited for the flowers she had silently prayed wouldn’t come.
‘Where’s Bruno?’ she asked now. Not because she missed the rigid presence of the dark-suited man, but rather because she could see the small white envelope attached to the roses and wanted to delay, if only for a minute longer, having to open it.
‘Following up a lead.’
A lead. That sounded vague. ‘What sort of lead?’
He didn’t answer her. Instead he turned to Lina, as if he’d not heard the question or had simply chosen to ignore it.
Marietta tamped down her annoyance—only to feel it flare again when she glanced at her assistant. Santo cielo! Had the girl no pride? No sense of dignity? Marietta wanted to snap her fingers at her. Tell her to wipe that silly doe-eyed look off her face. To straighten up and pull her hip back in, instead of jutting it sideways in a come-hither pose she probably wasn’t even aware she’d adopted.
Nico detached the envelope from the roses, his strong fingers snapping the straw ribbon like a strand of cotton, and handed the bouquet to Lina. ‘Get rid of them.’
Lina—foolish girl—beamed at him as if he’d paid her a compliment rather than barked an order at her. Marietta bristled on her assistant’s behalf. Lina, however, was oblivious. Without so much as glancing at Marietta for confirmation, she took the roses and disappeared out to the back—heading, presumably, for the outdoor dumpster behind the building.
Marietta couldn’t help herself. ‘That was rude.’
Nico’s eyes narrowed on her again...so blue. So disconcerting. ‘Pardon?’
‘Lina,’ she clarified. ‘You could have asked nicely. Barking commands at people is rude.’
One heavy eyebrow arced, ever so slightly, towards his dark brown hairline. ‘She did not look upset.’
Of course she hadn’t looked upset. She’d looked smitten and flushed and...ravenous. As if she’d wanted to drag Nico into the storeroom, bolt the door shut and tear his clothes off—with her teeth.
Marietta was sure Nico knew it, too.
And yet, to his credit, he hadn’t encouraged her attentions. Hadn’t seemed to give out any inappropriate cues. In fact he’d seemed barely to notice her—unlike some of the male visitors to the gallery, who appeared more entranced by Lina’s legs than by the sculptures and paintings on display.
And the girl had good legs—long and shapely—and a good body that she dressed, or on occasion underdressed, to showcase. Why shouldn’t she? She was tall and graceful. Feminine, yet lithe.
Unbroken.
Everything Marietta might have been and wasn’t, thanks to one fateful split-second decision. One irreversible moment of teenage stupidity. A moment that had altered the course of her life and shattered what little had remained of her childhood innocence.
Still—as a few well-intentioned if slightly insensitive people had pointed out during the long, excruciating months of her rehabilitation—she’d been lucky.
She had survived.
The three teens in the car with her—including the alcohol-impaired driver—had not. Two had died on impact with the concrete median barrier, the third on a gurney surrounded by the trauma team trying desperately to save her.
For Marietta, the sole survivor of that tragic car crash, a long string of dark, torturous days had followed. Days when she’d lain unable or sometimes unwilling to move, staring at the ceiling of the hated rehab unit. Reliving those final moments with her friends and wishing, in her darkest moments, that she had died alongside them.
But she had not died.
She had fought her way back.
For the brother whom she knew had taken the burden of responsibility—and blame—upon himself. For the second chance at life she’d been given that her friends had not. For her mother—God rest her soul—who would have wanted Marietta to fight with the same courage and determination with which she’d battled the cancer that had, in the end, cruelly won. And—even though she’d stayed angry with him for a long time after he’d died—for her father, who’d fought his own grief-fuelled demons after his wife’s death and tragically lost.
Her chin went up a notch.
She had faced down every brutal obstacle the universe had thrown at her and she was still here. She would not let some stranger, some clearly unhinged individual, disrupt the life she’d worked so long and hard to rebuild. And she certainly wasn’t afraid of some pathetic words on a little white card.
She held out her hand for the envelope. Nico hesitated, then handed it over. Willing her hands not to shake, she tore open the flap and pulled out the card. She sucked in a deep breath and started to read—and felt the cold pasta salad she’d had for lunch threaten to vacate her stomach.
* * *
Marietta’s hands had started to shake.
She glanced up, her espresso-coloured eyes so dark Nico couldn’t differentiate between iris and pupil. They were glassy, enormous—larger than usual—and, he noted, unblinking. Combined with her sudden pallor, the tremor in her slim hands, they conveyed an emotion Nico had more than once in his life been intimately acquainted with.
Fear.
He cursed under his breath, reached over the glass-topped desk and whipped the card out of her hands.
His Italian wasn’t impeccable, like his native French or his English, but he had no trouble reading the typewritten words. His fingers tightened on the card but he took care to keep his face expressionless. Marietta was a strong woman—something he’d intuited the first time they’d met in passing at her brother’s office, and again at Leo’s wedding—but right now she was shaken and he needed her to be calm. Reassured. Safe.
Anything less would be a disservice to her brother, and Leo was a good friend—had been ever since their paths had crossed via a mutual client eight years ago. Nico had recognised in the Italian the qualities of a man he could like and respect. Leo’s company specialised in cyber security, and his people occasionally lent their technical expertise to Nico’s own. Outside of business the two men had become firm friends—and Nico did not intend to let his friend down.
He slipped the card into a plastic folder along with the others. Aside from an insight into their composer’s mind, the notes offered nothing of real value and no means by which they could track the original sender. The flowers were always ordered online, the cards printed by the florist, the words simply copied from the order’s electronic message field.
Bruno had been confident at first. Online orders meant a traceable digital trail to IP addresses and credit cards. But whoever Marietta’s stalker was he was careful—and clever. Their tech guys had chased their tails through a series of redirected addresses and discovered the account with the florist had been opened using bogus details. The invoices were sent to a rented mailbox and payments were received in cash via mail.
It all indicated a level of premeditation and intent neither Nico nor Bruno had anticipated. And Nico didn’t like it. Didn’t like it that he’d underestimated the threat—assuming, at first, that they’d be dealing with nothing more troublesome than a jilted boyfriend. It galled him now to accept that he’d been wrong because he knew better than to assume.
But he was here now, in Rome, with the meetings he’d had scheduled for today in New York cancelled after Bruno’s call twenty-four hours earlier.
And they would find this guy. They’d break some rules, sidestep some local bureaucracy, and they would find him.
He strode around the desk and dropped to his haunches in front of Marietta’s chair, bringing his eyes level with hers. She jerked back a little, as if she wasn’t used to such an action, and he wondered briefly if it were not the accepted thing to do. But he’d have done the same with any woman he sought to reassure, conscious that his height, his sheer size, might intimidate.
‘We will stop him, Marietta.’
Her eyes remained huge in her face, her olive complexion stripped of colour. ‘He’s been in my home...’
Nico ground his jaw. ‘Perhaps.’
‘But the note—’
‘Could be nothing more than a scare tactic,’ he cut in. Yet the tension in his gut, the premonitory prickle at his nape, told him the truth was something far less palatable. More sinister.
I have left you a gift, tesoro. On your bed. Think of me when you unwrap it. Sleep well, amore mio. S.
On impulse he took her hand—small compared to his, and yet strong rather than dainty or delicate. Her fingers were slender and long, her nails short and neat, manicured at home, he guessed, rather than by a professional.
Incredibly, Nico could still remember clasping her hand on their very first introduction—four, maybe five years ago at her brother’s office. Their handshake had been brief but he’d noted that her skin felt cool, pleasant to the touch, her palm soft and smooth in places, callused in others. He remembered, too, seeing her at Leo’s wedding a couple of years later. Remembered watching her, intrigued and impressed with the way she handled her wheelchair—as if it were a natural extension of her body.
In the church she’d glided down the aisle before the bride, composed and confident, unselfconscious—or at least that was the impression she’d given. Her sister-in-law, a beautiful English woman, had looked stunning in a simple white gown, but it was Marietta to whom Nico’s attention had been repeatedly drawn throughout the ceremony.
In his thirty-six years he’d attended two other weddings—his own, which he preferred not to dwell upon, and an equally lavish affair in the Bahamas to which he had, regrettably, allowed a former lover to drag him—but he could not recall a bridesmaid at either who might have outshone Marietta in looks or elegance.
With her thick mahogany hair piled high on her head, the golden skin of her shoulders and décolletage bare above the turquoise silk of her long bridesmaid’s sheath, the fact she was in a wheelchair had not diminished the impact of her beauty.
And then there were the shoes.
Nico could not forget the shoes.
Stilettos.
Sexy, feminine, four-inch stilettos in a bright turquoise to match the gown.
That Marietta could not walk in those shoes had made him admire her all the more for wearing them. It was a statement—a bold one—as though she were flipping the bird to her disability...or rather to anyone who thought a woman who couldn’t walk was wasting her time wearing sexy shoes, and it had made him want to smile.
Hell, it had made him want to grin.
And that was an urge he rarely experienced.
‘Nico?’
Marietta’s hand twitched in his, jerking his thoughts back to the present. He refocused, realised his thumb was stroking small circles over her skin. Abruptly he broke contact and stood. ‘Stay here. Keep Lina with you.’
She wheeled back and looked up at him. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Your apartment.’
She frowned, a smudge of colour returning to her face. ‘Not without me, you’re not.’
‘It is better that you stay here,’ he said evenly.
‘Why?’
When he hesitated a fraction too long, her fine-boned features twisted into a look of horror.
‘Mio Dio. You think he might be there, don’t you?’ She stared at him accusingly. ‘But you said the note was just a scare tactic.’
‘Could be,’ he corrected. ‘I won’t know for certain until I’ve checked it out.’
‘Then I’ll come with you.’
‘I’d prefer you didn’t.’
Her shoulders snapped back, her eyes, wide with shock and fear only seconds before, now narrowing. ‘It’s my apartment. I’m coming whether you prefer it or not.’ Her delicate chin lifted. ‘Besides, you need me. You won’t get in without my security code and key.’
‘Both of which you are about to give to me,’ he told her, keeping his voice reasonable even as he felt his patience slipping. He was unaccustomed to people arguing with him—especially women.
Marietta folded her hands in her lap. The gesture combined with her conservative attire—a sleeveless high-necked lilac silk blouse, long black pants and, perhaps less conservative, a pair of purple high-heeled suede boots—made her look almost demure. Yet there was nothing demure in the set of her shoulders or the bright glint of defiance in her eyes.
‘Do people always jump when you bark?’
He crossed his arms over his chest. Outwardly he was calm. Inside, impatience heated his blood dangerously close to tipping point. ‘Oui,’ he said, injecting a low note of warning into his voice he hoped she had the wisdom to heed. ‘If they know what is good for them.’
Her eyebrows rose at that, but the shrug that rolled off her shoulders was careless. ‘Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you—’ she looked pointedly at her legs and then back at him ‘—but you might have noticed I can’t jump very high these days.’
Nico flattened his mouth, returned her stare. Channelled his trademark control—or tried to. ‘You are wasting time, Marietta.’
‘Me?’ Somehow she managed to look utterly innocent. ‘You’re the one holding us up, Nico. We could have been halfway there by now.’
He sucked in a breath and exhaled sharply. Leo had warned him that Marietta could be stubborn. Resolute. Headstrong. No doubt those qualities had served her well through some difficult times, helped her overcome the kind of obstacles most people, if they were fortunate, would never have to face in their lifetime. He respected those qualities, admired them, but right now he’d settle for a lot less lip and a great deal more acquiescence.
The determined glitter in those liquid brown eyes told him he had zero chance of getting it. Nico couldn’t decide if that surprised him, impressed him, or angered him.
People did not defy Nicolas César.
They obeyed him.
Fortunately for Marietta he had neither the time nor the patience to stand there and argue. He uncrossed his arms. Muttered an oath. ‘Wait here,’ he growled. ‘I’ll bring my car to the front of the gallery and collect you.’
A smile broke on her face that almost made the pain of his capitulation worth it. He blinked. Mon Dieu. Did she give that smile freely to everyone she met? If so, he wouldn’t be surprised to find a thousand infatuated admirers lurking in the wings.
