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“We have half a dozen spectacular young designers Giovanni trained working with Mario,” Rocco said smoothly. “No company can be content to rest on its laurels. We had always intended these designers to carry the torch forward. Giovanni was seventy after all.”
“Olivia.” A notoriously bigmouthed gossip reporter waved from the front. “How does it feel to land one of the world’s most sought-after bachelors?”
Olivia relaxed back into Rocco’s arm and turned to smile up at him. “Very lucky.”
Eyes glittering with humor, Rocco lifted a hand to cup her jaw. “I am the lucky one to land, as you put it, Olivia.”
“Since you’ve managed to elude us for the past week,” the gossip reporter continued, “how about a kiss?”
Her fiancé let loose a good-natured smile. “I suppose that’s only fair.”
Her heartbeat picked up in a steady thrum as Rocco splayed his fingers wider around her jaw, leaned down and covered her lips with his own. Her lashes fluttered closed as he took her mouth in a thorough kiss that had the camera flashes going off madly like fireworks.
She was just off balance enough when he set her away from him to much applause from the scrum that the next question hit her from left field.
“Olivia. Can you tell us what happened that night at the Lincoln Center? What caused your meltdown?”
She froze, her face suspended midsmile. Frederic, the producer of the show that night at the Lincoln Center, an old personal friend of hers, had swiftly replaced her when she’d faltered and hadn’t been able to take the stage. He’d forbidden any talk of what had happened afterward on pain of his influential wrath. But apparently someone had talked.
How much did they know?
The room started to sway dangerously around her, perspiration sliding down her back in rivulets now. Air got harder to pull in, but she sucked it in desperately, the question echoing over and over in her head. Scenes from that night flashed through her brain—ugly, paralyzing, stomach churning...
“Olivia?” Rocco set a supporting palm to the small of her back. The touch sent words tumbling out of her mouth.
“It was very hot backstage that evening,” she rasped. “I was not feeling well.”
Rocco started proactively detailing some of the key campaign elements they would see from Mondelli in the spring/summer. She managed to plaster a smile on her face as their time ran out and Rocco thanked the media. But it wasn’t over. It was never going to be over.
* * *
Three hours and an excruciatingly boring reception later, Rocco shoved a glass of brandy into the hand of a still blank-faced Olivia in the quiet stillness of their apartment salon, and tried to contain his growing frustration. Neither he nor Savanna had been able to get his fiancée to talk after the press conference, despite their repeated attempts to discover what she was hiding. No one thought it was going to end there, and preempting whatever was to come was the best strategy. Unfortunately, his fiancée wasn’t talking.
Can you tell us what happened that night at the Lincoln Center, Olivia? What made you have a meltdown?
The reporter’s question rang in his head. No doubt Olivia hadn’t been the most reliable model in the final couple of years she’d worked, but she’d never been billed a prima donna. So what had the reporter meant? What had happened that night?
He had a feeling it was the key to everything, the key to Olivia, yet no one was talking, not even Frederic Beaumont, the man who had produced the show that night, deflecting Rocco’s inquiry at tonight’s reception with a lifted brow. “As your fiancée said, it was extremely hot backstage. A lot of the models were struggling.”
Closing ranks. He didn’t believe him for one minute.
He glanced at his mute fiancée, grabbed his own tumbler and paced the room. “I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”
Olivia pushed the brandy aside, her face white and pinched as she sat curled up in his favorite reading chair. “I don’t want your help. It’s ancient history.”
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” he disputed heatedly, “it came back to life today. You are a very expensive asset of mine, Olivia. You think they’re going to let whatever it is lie? Tell me what it is and we’ll deal with it together.”
She gave him another one of those blank looks. “You heard what I said. I wasn’t feeling well. End of story.”
He eyed her with growing ire. “The reporter referred to it as a meltdown.”
“Reporters like to make things dramatic that aren’t.”
He muttered an oath beneath his breath. “And the reason you fell apart when the question was asked?”
She pressed her lips together. “I am frustrated. I just wish people would leave it alone and stop prying into my personal life when it’s none of their business.”
His free hand fisted at his side, his five-million-dollar investment pounding in his head. He counted to three, forced out a long breath and went to kneel by her chair. “I want to help you, Olivia. Give me something. It can’t just have been the heat that night.”
She pushed her spine back into the chair, recoiling away from him. “You want to protect an asset. Rest assured, Rocco, I will not renege on our deal, and I will perform the duties of my contract to the letter.”
“This isn’t just about you being an asset. You are struggling... I can help.”
Her sapphire eyes heated to a dark blue flame. “Like you wanted to help me when you seduced me that night in Navigli to find out what kind of a woman I was? Like you wanted to help me when you coerced me into a return to modeling you knew I didn’t want? Better we both do our jobs, Rocco, and refrain from pretending we care when we don’t.”
He almost would have bought her bravado had it not been for the wounded, vulnerable glint in her eyes. The pallor in her skin. The look she’d had all day that a slight breeze might knock her over. Her fiery gaze spoke of fear and pain and, most of all, a bone-deep sadness that got to him despite his efforts to remain detached.
He rose, sat on the edge of the chair and caught her chin in his fingers to turn her gaze to his. “Tell me.”
He was surprised at the tenderness in his voice. At an empathy he hadn’t known he possessed. She blinked and stared at him. Dio, this woman did something to him. It didn’t matter she had been his grandfather’s, that Giovanni’s body wasn’t even cold in his grave and still he wanted to comfort her. Touch her. He wanted to carry her to bed and make love to her and banish those demons from her eyes.
Madness. Pure madness.
The far too perceptive Stefan Bianco had had it right. Olivia did have his number. She had always had his number, right from that first night in Navigli.
Her gaze connected with his and read what lay there. Confusion darkened her vibrant blue orbs.
“Rocco...”
Her husky, hesitant tone prompted the return of his sanity. She had never been, nor would she ever be, his. Impossible.
He stood up with an abrupt movement. “Drink the brandy,” he muttered roughly. “I will order us dinner.”
When he’d finally sent an exhausted Olivia to bed and sat on the terrace with a final brandy in his hand, he was glad for the city that never slept. The honking horns and peeling ambulances kept him company, floodlit Central Park a feast for the senses as he tipped his head back and drank it in.
The silence, the solitude, grounded him as it always did. Made his present situation crystallize like the stars emerging from the silvery haze in the cloudy night sky above.
The more distance he kept from the woman inside who was driving him mad, the better. It had taken him hours last night to wrestle his body into an acceptable enough state to get into bed, after which the scent of her had driven him half-crazy. He’d been out of bed at 5:00 a.m. out of the pure need, not to look at his sultry fiancée splayed across his bed, glorious hair everywhere.
But it was more than that. This restlessness in him came from a place he was loath to face. He was bitterly afraid he had been wrong about Olivia. Very wrong.
She had clearly been lying just now, as she had during the press conference. The shut-down, blank look on her face had said it all. Which pointed out an uncomfortable fact. He’d never seen that look on her face before. Not when she’d denied Giovanni was her lover that night in Milan after he’d seduced her. Not through this past trying week when he’d plied her with a million questions to get their stories and backstory straight. She had always told him the truth, however painful, or she hadn’t said anything at all.
Until tonight. Until today at the press conference. He could tell the difference. He could read her now.
Do you really know your grandfather so little you think he would have been having an affair with a woman young enough to be his granddaughter?
He ran his palm over the stubble on his jaw, a jolt of unease slicing through him. Giovanni not giving him sole control of Mondelli had shaken him, made him question how well he knew the man who had raised him, who had been his heart and soul. But Giovanni was also a complex man with many layers. Perhaps there were facets of him he hadn’t known. Perhaps he had had an affair with Tatum Fitzgerald.
Tonight when he’d had that chat with Frederic Beaumont, the wily old Frenchman had congratulated him on capturing the “most enchanting creature he’d ever worked with” in Olivia, and made a veiled comment about Mondelli men having a thing for Fitzgerald women. When Rocco had lifted a brow at the comment, Frederic had only said sagely that Tatum Fitzgerald had been one of Giovanni’s great muses, but his eyes had said much more.
He took a swig of the brandy, closing his eyes as its warmth heated his insides. If his grandfather had engaged in an out-of-character affair with Tatum Fitzgerald, that was one thing. But to have an affair with her daughter, as well? It didn’t sit right in his chest. Maybe it never had. He’d been so angry at his grandfather’s death when he’d confronted Olivia, he’d wanted to lash out, and she had been the most convenient target. Brand her a gold digger and make himself feel better by solving the problem.
The uneasy feeling inside him intensified. Propelled him out of his chair and to the railing, Manhattan glistening below in all its finery. What if he’d been wrong? What if he’d branded the woman sleeping in his bed an opportunist when she had really been Giovanni’s inspiration in the most innocent sense? When perhaps she had been the one to reinvigorate a creativity that had begun to fail the aging genius? He had seen it in those designs...
He took another sip of the brandy. The spirit blazed an undeniable path of self-awareness through him. Had he wanted to think the worst of Olivia because of just how very much she got to him? How she’d managed to penetrate the ironclad exterior he’d adopted the day he’d realized his father as he’d known him was never coming back? When he’d decided no one would ever get to him emotionally again?
Sandro had only been twenty-seven when his wife of the same age had died giving birth to Alessandra. Suffering from severe preeclampsia, Letizia had delivered him a healthy baby girl, but stolen his one true love in the process. His father had fallen apart, descended into a grief so raw it had scared his two children witless and left them with no one but each other.
At first, Giovanni had been patient with his son. Had turned a blind eye to Sandro’s drinking, to his gambling, but after a time, when he’d decided enough was enough, that Sandro’s children needed a father and he needed his son back at Mondelli, Sandro had said he’d needed more time. Then more. Until it became clear he couldn’t mentally handle a return to the family business, until he’d gambled Rocco’s family home away and it had become apparent he wasn’t capable of taking care of his children, either. Of himself.
Rocco could remember the day vividly when Giovanni had arrived at their house, soon to be taken by creditors, and ordered him and Alessandra to gather their things. He’d only been seven and a half at the time, but he would never forget the anguish in his father’s eyes as his grandfather had scooped them up and took them home to Villa Mondelli, his disappointment in his son palpable in the older man’s demeanor.
Rocco had absorbed his father’s anguish, the hint of madness that losing his mother had instilled in him, and although he had been too young to understand it all, he had known one thing—love meant making yourself vulnerable. Love meant pain. And he would never do that to himself willingly.
He tipped his head back and took a long swallow of the brandy. The lights from the park cast an otherworldly glow over the high rises that soared behind it. It was as mystifying a view of New York as his behavior had been tonight. Because even if he had been wrong about Olivia, even if Giovanni had been mentoring her as a way to pay back what he owed to her mother, even if she was that vulnerable, frightened creature he’d witnessed tonight that his grandfather had elected to shelter and protect, it didn’t change anything. What he and Olivia had was a business deal. He was no white knight to ride in on a steed and save the day.
He finished off the brandy and set the glass down. Whatever crazy thing drew him to Olivia, whatever it had been between them from the start, was precisely what he needed to avoid. His only interest should be preserving his family legacy. In doing what had always been paramount for him. Allowing himself to care for anything beyond that had never been in the cards.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u2f038bdc-aa8b-55ce-8958-6eda5adf9691)
A WEEK INTO his and Olivia’s return to Milan, every aspect of Rocco’s plan seemed to be falling into perfect strategic place. The announcement of his fiancée as the new face of Mondelli was making waves across fashion circles, her sudden return to modeling an angle it seemed no media outlet could resist. And although some media chose to speculate on the reason behind Olivia’s disappearance from modeling, most were universally positive about the union, choosing, as Savanna had predicted, to focus on the glamorous engagement of two high-profile personalities and brands rather than speculate on a story for which they had no answers.
He glanced down at the front page of the weekly gossip magazine that typically featured royalty on the cover, but instead this week featured the kiss, as the press had dubbed it. The one he and Olivia had shared at the press conference.
He’d seen more of the vivid, easy smile on Olivia’s face the tabloid had featured in the after shot since they’d returned to Milan, his fiancée seeming to relax as soon as they’d cleared New York airspace. The staff at Villa Mondelli appeared to love her, and she seemed at peace roaming the beautiful grounds. It was only at night when they retired to the master suite that the tension ratcheted up between them. He’d taken to going to bed even later than he normally did, working in his office until he was sure Olivia was asleep. Because to do otherwise was asking for trouble.
He took the last sip of his espresso and pushed the cup away. His efforts to harness his potent attraction toward his pretend fiancée had been successful. If he didn’t see, touch or hear her, he was okay. And he intended to keep it that way. Particularly when he was now sure he’d been right. His grandfather would never have had a relationship with her. He must have been out of his head to think it possible.
The knowledge removed a barrier he instead needed to be ten times thicker.
Gabriella stuck her head in his office. “You need to leave now if you’re going to make it to your lunch.”
His mouth curved. “Even with my driving?”
“Even with your driving,” she acknowledged drily.
“On my way.”
His nemesis was seated at a prime table near the windows when Rocco entered the popular seafood restaurant, the chairman’s quick glance at his watch as he sat down indicating he was five minutes late. Rocco didn’t bother to acknowledge it. Rialto pointed at his glass. “I’ve ordered a bottle of merlot. I thought we could toast your very successful week.”
A satisfied rush blanketed him. “I thought it so.”
“Landing Olivia Fitzgerald as a face and a wife? I almost feel you’ve taken my advice to heart. Although I am surprised given your thoughts on the matter the last time we spoke.”
“I’ve reconsidered.” Rocco waited while the cameriera uncorked then served their wine, before fixing Renzo with an even look. “You wanted me to think about what is best for Mondelli. I have.”
“It’s the speed with which you have done so that worries me,” the chairman said drily. “This is not a chess match, Rocco. This is the future of the company your grandfather built. When we spoke last time about witnessing some long-term stability with you, I was asking for a true commitment, not smoke and mirrors.”
Rocco’s blood heated to a dangerous level. “You forget it was I who quadrupled the market value of Mondelli. I do have this company’s best interests at heart. Which is why I have executed a strategic merger that is pure brilliance.”
Renzo eyed him. “Olivia Fitzgerald is undeniably breathtaking, and I’m sure provides a wealth of distraction in the bedroom, but not necessarily what I intended when I suggested marriage. She is unpredictable given her recent past. A wild child.”
“It is a perfect union from every angle,” Rocco countered flatly. “A dynasty of two great brands.”
Renzo took a long, deliberate sip of his wine, set his glass down and sat back, arms folded across his chest. “You don’t see it, do you?”
“See what?”
“The Mondelli men’s weakness when it comes to women. Pensare con quello che hai in mezzo alle gambe al posto della testa...”
Thinking with what’s between your legs and not your head... Rocco ground his back teeth together. “That...”
Renzo waved a hand at him. “Giovanni made a fool out of himself over Tatum Fitzgerald. He forgot his priorities, let his head get swelled by having her even though he was a happily married man, and the company stuttered. Your father’s career imploded over the love of a woman.” He shook his head. “Make a smart decision, Rocco, not one in which you’re thumbing your nose at all of us.”
Blood thudded through his head in a deafening rush. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on the table and met the chairman’s gaze. “I am not my father, nor my grandfather, Renzo. I am the man who took a struggling company and raised it to a higher level. You need me. Don’t forget that important fact.”
“And you need me,” Renzo countered deliberately. “You have taken Mondelli to great heights, Rocco. No one can dispute that. I’m simply giving you some advice.”
Rocco sat back in his seat. “So you have. Are we done on this subject?”
“Set a date.”
Rocco frowned. “Mi scusi?”
“If you want to convince the board you are truly a changed man, set a wedding date.”
The blood thumping against his temples converged in a pool of disbelief. “You’re joking?”
Renzo’s mouth twisted. “It is my job to ensure control is turned over to you when you are well and truly ready. I am responsible to the shareholders, and in this day and age, perception is as important as reality. They think you are a question mark, Rocco—unpredictable at best. So if Olivia Fitzgerald is the choice, marry her. Show your intentions.”
Rocco thought he must be hallucinating. “Olivia and I are far too busy to plan a wedding right now.”
“Undoubtedly.” Renzo’s gaze narrowed on him. “But I suggest you do it. The sooner you prove to the board you can run Mondelli with the measured, mature perspective of a man who’s sown his wild oats, the quicker we will be to hand over control.”
Rocco absorbed the unyielding glint in the chairman’s eyes. “You are actually telling me to speed up my wedding date to pacify shareholder perception?”
The older man’s eyes glittered back at him with something like unmediated glee. “We all sacrifice things, Rocco. I don’t love my wife. I married her because she was the perfect partner for a CEO. Power comes with sacrifice, and if you don’t realize that by now, you will learn.”
He bit back the response that rose in his throat. He didn’t have to explain to Renzo he’d known sacrifice since he was a teenager bringing up his baby sister. Since he’d been fresh out of school, deep in over his head, running a company so vast he’d lain awake at night in the early days, his mind reeling on how to corral it. How to fix it.
He picked up his wine and took a long sip. It was a bitter pill to swallow, but Renzo was right. At the end of the day what mattered was what the analysts said about him. And they thought he was a maverick.
He’d never intended on marrying for love—so why not marry Olivia? It didn’t do anything but cement the plan he’d already put into place.
His hand tightened around the glass as he set it down. Renzo was also right about Olivia. He might think he was in control, but she was a danger to him. He had thought and acted with what was between his legs and not his head. Just like Giovanni had done.
He would not repeat history. He would not be that weak.
