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Her body didn’t care.
“Because I need you, cara mia.”
She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. He’d said something similar to her that night in his apartment. And she, like an idiot, had believed him. Worse, she’d wanted it to be true. Well, she wasn’t that naive anymore. Italian billionaires did not fall in love with simple, unsophisticated virgins in the space of an evening.
They didn’t fall in love at all.
“Sorry, but the answer is no.”
His long elegant fingers were steepled together in his lap. “You have not yet heard the proposition.”
“I’m still sure the answer is no,” she said. “I’ve been propositioned by you before, and I know how that works out for me.”
He shook his head as if he were disappointed in her. “I liked you better in New York.”
Her skin stung with heat. “Of course you did. I was a mouse who did whatever you told me to do. I’ve learned better now.”
And she was determined to prove it.
“You like being a cocktail waitress, bella? You like men touching you, rubbing up against you, thinking you’re for sale along with the drinks and the chips?”
The heat in her cheeks spread, suffusing her with an angry glow. “No, I don’t. But it’s just about all I’m qualified for.”
“And if I were to offer you something else? A better way to earn your money?”
Her stomach was beginning to churn. “I won’t be your mistress.”
He blinked at her. And then he laughed again, and she felt the hot, sticky slide of embarrassment in her veins. Oh, for pity’s sake. After the way the woman he’d been with tonight looked, did she truly think he was interested in her?
But he had been once. She hadn’t dreamed it. Nicky was proof she had not.
“Charming, Holly. But I don’t need to pay a woman to be my mistress. If I were to choose you for that...position...I am certain you would not refuse.”
Holly could only gape at his utter self-confidence. “It’s a wonder you bother with casinos when you have such bad instincts. I’m surprised you haven’t lost everything when you reason like that in the face of such overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”
“Dio,” he said, “but you are a stubborn woman. How did we end up in bed together again?” He didn’t wait for her reply. He nodded sagely as if answering his own question. “Ah, yes, that’s right. You were deceiving me.”
Shame suffused her at that mention of their night together. But she didn’t bother to deny it. He wouldn’t believe it anyway. “Clearly, you like your women to shut up and do as they’re told.”
“Which you seem to be incapable of doing,” he growled.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Tell me what you want so I can say no.”
His stare was unnerving. But not because it made her uncomfortable. More likely because she wanted to drown in it. “I want you to model for the Sky campaign.”
Holly’s mouth went dry. Sky was the signature fragrance from NC, the one she’d modeled for in New York when she hadn’t been able to tell Drago why she was really there. “That’s not funny,” she said tightly.
His expression was dead serious. “I’m not joking, Holly. I want you for Sky.”
“I did that already,” she said. “It didn’t work out, as I recall.”
He shrugged. “A mistake. One we can rectify now.”
The trembling in her belly wasn’t going away. It was spreading through her limbs, making her teeth chatter. She clamped her jaw tight and tried not to let it show. Thankfully, the car was dark and the lights from the city didn’t penetrate the tinted windows quite as well as they otherwise would have.
“I don’t think it’s possible,” she said. And it wasn’t. How would she go to New York with a three-month-old baby in tow? She didn’t think that was what Drago had in mind at all.
“Of course it is. I will pay you far more than you earn in that casino. You will do the shoot and any appearances that are needed, and you will be handsomely rewarded. It’s a win for you, Holly.”
She thought of her baby in his secondhand crib, of the tiny, dingy apartment she shared with Gabi. The air conditioner was one window unit that rattled and coughed so badly she was never certain it would keep working. The carpet was faded and torn, and the appliances were always one usage away from needing repairs.
It was a dump, a dive, and she would do just about anything to get out of there and take her baby to a better life.
But what if he didn’t mean it? What if he was toying with her? What if this was simply another way to punish her for not telling him the truth in New York?
She wouldn’t put it past him. A man who threw her out and then refused all contact? Who didn’t know he had a son, because he was so damn arrogant as to think she would want to contact him for any other reason than to tell him something important?
He was capable of it. More than capable.
“I want a contract,” she said. “I want everything spelled out, legal and binding, and if it’s legit, then I’ll do it.”
Because what choice did she have? She wasn’t stupid, and she wasn’t going to turn this opportunity down when it could mean everything to her child. Once she had a contract, signed and ironclad, she would feel much more in control.
“Fine.”
Holly blinked. She hadn’t expected him to agree to that.
“I hope you’re certain about this,” she said, unable to help herself when her teeth were still chattering and her body still trembling. What if this was a mistake? What if she were opening up Pandora’s box with this act? How could she not be opening Pandora’s box, when she had a three-month-old baby, and this man didn’t know he was a father? “You know I’m not a model. I have no idea what I’m doing.”
“Which is precisely why you’re correct for the campaign. Sky is for the real woman who wants to recapture a certain something about her life. Her youth, her innocence, her sex appeal.”
Irritation slid into her veins. “I’ve smelled Sky. It’s not bad, but it’s not all that, either.”
The match-scent of anger rolled from him again. Why, oh, why did she feel the need to antagonize him? Just take the money and shut up, she told herself. The silence between them was palpable. And then he spoke. “Ah, yes, because you are an expert perfumer, correct?”
Sarcasm laced his voice. It made her madder than she already was, regardless that she knew she shouldn’t push him.
“You have no idea. As I recall, you threw me out before I could show you.”
He sat back in the limo then, his long limbs relaxing as if he were about to take a nap. She knew better, though. He was more like a panther, stretching out and pretending to relax when what he really planned was to bring down a gazelle.
“It takes years to learn how to blend perfumes. It also takes very intense training, and a certain sensitivity to smell. While you may have enjoyed mixing up essences you’ve ordered off the internet for all your friends, and while many of them may have told you how fabulous you are, that’s hardly the right sort of training to create perfume for a multinational conglomerate, now, is it?”
Rage burned low in her belly, along with a healthy dose of uncertainty. It wasn’t that she wasn’t good, but she often felt the inadequacy of her origins in the business. She had no curriculum vitae, no discernable job experience. How could she communicate to anyone that she was worthy of a chance without backing it up with fragrance samples?
She glanced out the window, but they weren’t quite to her neighborhood yet. So she turned back to him and tried very hard not to tell him to go to hell. He was so arrogant, so certain of himself.
And she suddenly burned to let him know it.
“It’s gratifying that you know so much about me already,” she said, a razor edge to her voice. “But perhaps you didn’t know that my grandmother was born in Grasse and trained there for years before she met her husband and moved to Louisiana. She gave up her dreams of working for a big house, but she never gave up the art. And she taught it to me.”
It wasn’t the kind of formal instruction he would expect, but Gran had been extremely good at what she did. And Holly was, too.
She heard him pull in a breath. “That may be, but it still does not make you an expert, bella mia.”
The accusation smarted. “Again, until you’ve tried my scents, you can’t really know that, can you?” She crossed her arms and tilted up her chin. Hell, why not go for it? What did she have to lose? “In fact, I want that in the contract. You will allow me to present my work to you if I model for your campaign.”
He laughed softly. The sound scraped along her nerve endings. But not quite in a bad way. No, it was more like heated fingers stroking her sensitive skin. She wanted more.
“You realize that I will say yes to this, don’t you? But why not? It costs me nothing. I can still say no to your fragrances, even if I agree to let you show them to me.”
“I’m aware of that.”
She believed him to be too good a businessman to turn her fragrances away out of spite. He hadn’t built Navarra Cosmetics into what it was today by being shortsighted. She was counting on that.
And yet there was much more at risk here, wasn’t there? They were getting closer and closer to her home, and she had a baby that was one half of his DNA.
But why should that matter?
He was the sperm donor. She was the one who’d sacrificed everything to take care of her child. She was the one who’d gone through her entire pregnancy alone and with only a friend for support. She was the one who’d brought him into the world, and the one who sat up with him at night, who worried about him and who loved him completely.
This man hadn’t cared enough about the possibility of a child to allow her even to contact him. He’d thrown her out and self-importantly gone about his life as if she’d never existed.
A life that had included many trysts with models and actresses. Oh, yes, she’d known all about that even when she hadn’t wanted to. His beautiful, deceptive face had stared out at her from the pages of the tabloids in the checkout line. While she’d been buying the few necessities she could afford to keep herself alive and healthy, he’d been wining and dining supermodels in Cannes and Milan and Venice.
She’d despised him for so long that to be with him now, in this car, was rather surreal. She had a baby with him, but she didn’t think he’d like that at all. And she wasn’t going to tell him. He’d done nothing to deserve to know.
Nothing except father Nicky.
She shoved that thought down deep and slapped a lid on it. Yes, she absolutely believed that a man ought to know he had a child. But she couldn’t quite get there with Drago di Navarra. He wasn’t just any man.
Worse, he’d probably decide she was trying to deceive him again, and then her chances of earning any money to take care of her baby would be nullified before she ever stepped in front of a camera. He’d throw her and Nicky to the wolves without a second thought, and then he’d step into his fancy limo and be ferried away to the next amazingly expensive location on his To See list.
No, she couldn’t tell him. She couldn’t take the chance when there was finally a light at the end of the tunnel.
The car pulled to a stop in front of her shabby apartment building. Drago looked out the window—at the yellow lights staining everything in a sickly glow, the fresh graffiti sprayed across the wall of a building opposite, the overflowing garbage bins waiting for tomorrow’s pickup, the skinny dog pulling trash from one of them—and stiffened.
“You cannot stay here,” he said, his voice low and filled with horror.
Holly sucked in a humiliated breath. It looked bad, yes, but the residents here were good, honest people. There were drugs in the neighborhood, but not in this building. Mr. Boudreaux ran it with an iron fist. It was the safest thing she could afford. Shame crawled down her spine at the look on Drago’s face.
“I am staying here,” she said quietly. “And I thank you for the ride home.”
His gaze swung toward her. “It’s not safe here, bella mia.”
Holly gritted her teeth. “I’ve been living here for the past seven months,” she said. “It’s where I live. It’s what I can afford. And you have no idea about safe. You’re only assuming it’s not because it’s not a fancy New York neighborhood like you’re used to.”
He studied her for a long moment. And then he pressed an intercom button and spoke to the driver in Italian. After that, he swung the door open and stepped out.
“Come then. I will walk you to your apartment.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she protested, joining him on the pavement with her duffel in tow. “The door is right here.”
The building was two stories tall, with three entrances along its front. Each stairwell had two apartments on each floor. Hers was on the second floor, center stairwell. And the driver had parked the limo right in front of it. A dog barked—not the one in the garbage, but a different one—and a curtain slid back. She could see Mrs. Landry’s face peering outside. When her gaze landed on the limousine, the light switched out and Holly knew the old woman had turned it off so she could see better.
She was a nosy lady, but a sweet one.
“I insist,” Drago said, and Holly’s heart skipped a beat. She had to take her things to her apartment, and then she had to go to Mrs. Turner’s across the hall and get Nicky.
“Fine,” she said, realizing he wasn’t going away otherwise. If she let him walk her to the door, he’d be satisfied, even if he walked her up the steps to her apartment. And it wasn’t as if her baby was home.
She turned and led the way to the door. She reached to yank it open, but he was there first, pulling it wide and motioning for her to go inside.
“Better be careful you don’t get your fancy suit dirty coming inside here,” she said.
“I know a good cleaner,” he replied, and she started up the stairs—quietly, so as not to alert Mrs. Turner, who might just come to the door with her baby if she heard Holly arrive.
He followed her in silence until she reached the landing and turned around to face him. He was two steps behind her, and it put him on eye level with her. The light from the stairwell was sickly, but she didn’t think there was a light on this earth that wouldn’t love Drago di Navarra. It caressed his cheekbones, the aristocratic blade of his nose, shone off the dark curls of his hair. His mouth was flat and sensual, his lips full, and she remembered with a jolt what it had felt like to press her lips to his.
Dammit.
“This is it,” she whispered. “You can go now.”
He didn’t move. “Open the door, Holly. I want to make certain you get inside.”
He didn’t whisper, and she shot a worried glance at Mrs. Turner’s door. She could hear the television, and she knew her neighbor was awake.
“Shh,” she told him. “People are sleeping. These walls are thin, which I am sure you aren’t accustomed to, but—”
He moved then, startling her into silence as he came up to the landing and took her key from her limp hand. “You’d be surprised what I have been accustomed to, cara,” he said shortly. “Now, tell me which door before I choose one.”
Her skin burned. She pointed to her door and stood silently by while he unlocked it and stepped inside. Humiliation was a sharp dagger in her gut then. A year ago, he’d dressed her in beautiful clothes, made her the center of attention, taken her to a restaurant she could never in a million years afford and then taken her back to his amazing Park Avenue apartment with the expansive view of Central Park. None of those things was even remotely like what he would see inside her apartment and she burned with mortification at what he must be thinking.
He turned back to her, his silvery eyes giving nothing away. “It appears to be safe,” he told her, standing back so she could enter her own home. A home that, she knew, would have fit into the foyer of his New York apartment.
She slid the door quietly closed behind her, not because she wanted to shut him in, but because she wanted to keep her presence from Mrs. Turner until he was gone.
Fury slid into her bones, permeating her, making her shake with its force. She spun on him and jerked her keys from his hand. “How dare you?” she sputtered. “How dare you assume that because I live in a place that doesn’t meet with your approval, you have a right to think I need your help to enter my own home?”
“Just because you’ve entered without incident in the past doesn’t mean there won’t come a night when someone has broken in to wait for you,” he grated. “You’re on the second floor, cara. You’re a beautiful woman, living alone, and—” here he pointed “—these windows aren’t precisely security windows, are they? So forgive me if I wanted to make sure you were safe. I could no more allow you to come in here alone than I could jump out that window and fly. It’s not what a man does.”
“First of all, I don’t see why you care. And second, I don’t live alone,” she grated in return, her heart thrumming at everything he’d just said.
He blinked. “You have a boyfriend?”
“A best friend, if you must know. And she’s at work right now.”
He glanced around the room again. Gabi had left a lamp burning, as she always did, but it was a dim one in order to save electricity. Drago flicked a switch on the wall, and the overhead light popped on, revealing the apartment in all its shabby glory.
