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Because Clio knew with a nauseating clarity that Ashley was just the tip of the iceberg for what was going on between her and Jackson.
Suddenly, it felt blatantly scandalous of Ashley to drag him away with a barely disguised proprietary claim on him.
Squaring her shoulders, Clio let her long stride eat up the space. She hated creating a scene, hated the pitying and speculative glances that had been coming her way far too frequently the past few months, but she had endured it all silently.
Tonight, she had had enough. She stilled as a tall, commanding figure came into her focus.
Clio blinked, the impact of those jade green eyes and generous but scornful mouth instantaneous.
Stefan Bianco.
Her first instinct was to head for the elevator before he could see her, leave the party. Even her parents, with their disapprovingly stifling silence, would have been welcome. She didn’t want the man she had known a long time ago, one of her oldest friends, to see her tonight.
Stefan, Christian, Rocco and Zayed made up the Columbia Four—the four young men she had known when they had all been at university together, who had turned into supersuccessful, ultrawealthy, sought-after bachelors for whom the world was a playground and its most beautiful women were playthings.
But before they had all become successful in their own right, she had known them, had seen them every day for four years, and had shared her deepest fears and hopes with them.
And the fact that she wanted to run away from one of the few people who had genuinely known her, had understood her, left a bitter taste in her mouth.
Was she that much of a failure, then? Was she running away from Stefan or was she running away from what she had become?
* * *
Stefan Bianco looked around at the glittering cityscape of Manhattan and gritted his jaw tight.
The vibrant pulse of it, the memories from almost a decade ago everywhere he looked, his own sheer naïveté when he had studied at Columbia with his other three friends—the memories rose up around him like a specter that wouldn’t let him breathe easy even for a few minutes.
And yet, as the head of a multimillion luxury real estate company, New York was unavoidable even though he tried to reduce the number of times he came here.
But this time, he had a reason for being at this exact party, on top of the Empire State Building.
It was high time he found a way to stop Jackson Smith.
The memory of his executive assistant Marco’s whitened face as he lay against the hospital bed after his suicide attempt, Marco’s five-year-old daughter’s chubby face wreathed in confusion as she asked Stefan about what had happened to her papa...
The powerlessness he had felt was like acid in his stomach.
Jackson had swindled Marco out of his savings, pushed him to bankruptcy, until his assistant had lost everything, had seen no way out...
The eviscerating self-doubt, the sense of being an utter failure, of letting down everyone that had counted on him—looking into Marco’s eyes had been like looking at his own reflection of a few years ago.
Guilt corroded his insides. If only he had found a way to stop Jackson years ago when he had swindled Stefan himself...
It had been the worst time of his life—Serena’s betrayal, his guilt driving him to not return to his parents in Sicily and the around-the-clock hours he had worked to secure a deal...
He had lost the little he had made because of Jackson’s treachery. He would have been in Marco’s place if it hadn’t been for his friends Rocco, Christian and Zayed anchoring him, if he hadn’t already been woken up to the reality of life by Serena, the woman who had professed to love him.
This time Jackson needed to be stopped, whatever it took.
As though Stefan thinking Jackson’s name invoked the very devil himself, the American laughed in a group not two feet from where Stefan stood.
A short blonde, dressed in jeans and a tight T-shirt, dragged Jackson away, interrupting the conversation. His craggy face tight with tension, Jackson leaned toward another woman in the group, a tall redhead, and whispered something.
An apology, Stefan assumed. That didn’t quite work, given the way the woman flinched and turned her head away. More curious than ever, Stefan looked on as the woman’s bare shoulders stiffened, bones jutting out of her shoulders.
Everything about her posture screamed tension and something more. Jackson let himself be dragged away even as the tall woman stood ramrod straight, her head held high and so perfectly still that Stefan wondered if she would break if someone blew a wisp of breath her way.
Her face wreathed in shadows, there was a quiet dignity to her. And then he noticed her hair. Even tucked away from that angular face and scrunched tight into an elaborate knot, that red hair was as unmistakable as the narrow, upturned nose and stubborn tilt of the chin.
That face would be perfectly oval and her eyes green, like glittering emeralds. When she smiled, one corner of her mouth turned upward in a crooked slant.
Clio Norwood, the one woman he had never tamed.
Every cell inside him went on high alert, as if he had been infused with a charge of live current. What the hell was Clio doing with Jackson Smith?
There had been intimacy in the way Jackson had bent closer to her and whispered something, in the way his open palm had caressed her bare arm.
Yet Stefan could feel the tension in her as the silence of the group reverberated against her. Saw the speculative and intrusively hungry glances cast her way. Noted the way she retreated into herself as an older woman inquired something.
And knowing Jackson and his perfidious ways, a thousand kinds of thoughts swarmed in on Stefan.
Anything even remotely connected to Jackson, Stefan didn’t touch with a pole. Yet, he found himself moving toward her, his gaze savoring the sight of her. Inch by glorious inch, light bathed that long neck and her face.
He stilled, supremely aware of the insistent beat of his own pulse, of the heightened charge of his own breath.
Clio was just as utterly gorgeous as she had always been, if a little too thin.
His mind cast back to over a decade ago, to his university days with Rocco, Christian and Zayed—who’d become more brothers than friends—to the unparalleled enthusiasm of learning the world and knowing that it could be at their feet, to the glory of discovering women and the pull they held for them, and to Clio Norwood—the woman who had known the Columbia Four as well as they had known each other.
Every inch an aristocrat she no longer wanted to be and used to privileged playboys just like them, she had often laughed at their exploits, seeing their escapades with other women with a decidedly amused resignation and distance. She’d rejected his come-ons that first year, as easily as she had shrugged away the elaborate wealth and standing she had been born into.
Of all the men on the planet, the last man he would have envisioned Clio to be with was Jackson Smith.
In no mood to get into a sparring match with Jackson again, especially when his patience was already dangerously low, Stefan waited. Minutes piled on top of each other. With a graceful tilt of her head, Clio excused herself from the group.
Ignoring the uncharacteristically frantic thrumming of his heart, Stefan cornered her in the next moment. “Ciao, Clio.”
He wrapped his fingers over her arm to turn her and felt the shiver that went through her. Saw the bracing breath she took before she turned around. A flash of fear, feral and bright, danced in her green eyes.
Until she blinked, those long lashes hiding her expression.
When she looked up again, a flicker of warmth dawned in those green depths. “Stefan...what a surprise...I had no idea you were in New York.”
That accent of hers—it had always done strange things to his insides, swept over him with a mix of warmth and heated awareness. But her tone was reserved and artificial; it rattled him.
Granted, they hadn’t seen each other in a while, but for four years, Clio had been a part of his life—an integral one and one he remembered without bitterness.
Placing his arm around her toward the railing, he trapped her, shielding her from the rest of the crowd.
“You would have known if you’d kept in touch, wouldn’t you, bella?”
Tension thrummed in the tight set of her shoulders. “You barely ever set foot in New York whereas this is my home.”
“True. But you didn’t think it important to even attend Rocco’s wedding. Does your new...life not allow room for old friends, Clio?”
She didn’t flinch as she had done with Jackson, but there was an infinitesimal withdrawal. That shadow of fear again.
Dio, what was her association with Jackson?
“I’ve always been here, Stefan.” A remnant of the old Clio—full of adventure and plans for a new kind of life—flashed in her gaze. “I’m not the one determined to wipe anything related to our life in New York from memory.”
“Maybe I realized there wasn’t anything of value left for me here in New York. It’s not like Rocco, Christian or Zayed live here.”
She didn’t strike him down with words as she used to, only stared at him with those wide eyes and her mouth pinched. Why didn’t she just put him in his place with a cutting remark as she had always done?
Where was this need to land a shot at her coming from? And why? Just because she had some kind of association with Jackson Smith while she had rejected his cocky advances a lifetime ago?
He didn’t need his male ego to be validated by her interest in him.
Women flocked to him with one interested glance from him and he took advantage of it. He liked sex, had a healthy libido and when he was done, he walked away from the woman whether she liked it or not.
He had no place or use for a woman in his life, except in his bed.
Yet he had barely spent two minutes with Clio and suddenly, he was more interested in her thoughts and her actions.
Her chest rose and fell with the calming breath she took, coating his skin with warmth. He saw the mask that fell into place covering up her obvious distress, saw years of breeding and good manners slide into place.
The very thing she had been determined to overcome about herself...
“It was good to see you, Stefan,” she said evenly, with a perfectly bland smile. “But you’ll have to excuse me. I have things to do.”
He clasped her arm. “You didn’t answer my question. Why didn’t you come to Rocco’s wedding?”
Distress marred her gaze, before she composed herself enough to hide it. Her green eyes were huge in her oval face, the pallor of her skin parchment white. “I’ve been busy with work. Not all of us have turned our dreams into such an amazing reality as you have done with your global real estate company.”
“I started with nothing more than you did, Clio. I never took a penny from my parents after they disowned me.”
“Christian told me. After Serena, you—” She must have caught the blaze of anger in his gaze because she grimaced and continued, “After everything that happened in the last semester, you never looked back once.
“So stop blaming me alone for a friendship that didn’t last. In the first couple of years, Christian kept me abreast of what was happening with you guys. After that, it was hard to miss your success with all four of you hitting young millionaires’ lists left and right. But I’m not bitter enough to bemoan your success, Stefan.”
“I’m asking now, bella. What happened to your dreams, Clio?”
“Reality happened, okay? I discovered how hard it is to actually make it in this world. So kudos to you for doing it.” She took another calming breath. “Tell me about Rocco’s wedding.” It was obvious that she wanted to turn the conversation away from her life, but still, warmth spilled into her green eyes as she said Rocco’s name. “It would have been something to see Rocco dance to the tunes of the woman he fell so hard for. Olivia Fitzgerald must be really special.”
The wistfulness in her gaze before she looked around herself and covered it up tugged at his curiosity. “Olivia is definitely something, and Rocco is well and truly caught.”
He noted the way her gaze kept going to the entrance to the terrace, the same revolving door that Jackson and the blonde had walked through. “It was only a plane ride away, Clio. If it’s money for the plane ticket, you could have just asked one of us.”
“I’m not destitute, Stefan,” she said tiredly, as if she would do anything if he just left her alone. “After Christian paid my rent for a few months that one time, I managed fine.”
Shock reverberated through Stefan.
Christian had helped Clio once with the rent? Had it been that bad for her?
But he had no doubt as to why Christian wouldn’t have breathed a word. His friend had grown up in poverty on the streets of Athens, was the one who really understood what it meant to make ends meet when you started with nothing.
He understood why it would have been Christian that Clio had gone to. But still, he didn’t like that things had been so bad for her and he hadn’t even had an inkling of it.
He stared at her anew.
There was no emotion, not even bitterness, in her tone. Only an underlying urgency and fear prompted by what, he had no idea.
It had to be something related to Jackson.
A renewed purpose filled him. He had to help her get out of whatever it was.
“If you ever needed something, you only had to ask.”
“I don’t want charity. Yours or anyone else’s. I paid Christian back when I was able to. I’m fine now.”
“Then why did you not come to the wedding? Why did you blanch when you saw me?”
“I told you. I’ve had too many things going on and—”
“Is it that or is the fact that your new associations and your new way of life don’t let you see your old friends anymore?”
She paled. “Whatever it is that you’re implying, say it straight to my face, Stefan. It’s not like you to worry about someone else’s feelings, is it?”
“Jackson Smith.”
A stillness came over her and Stefan knew. Whatever it was that robbed all color from her skin, that made a shadow of Clio, it was Jackson. “What...what do you mean?” He saw her throat swallow forcibly.
“Are you not well, bella?”
She jerked away from him, her breath coming in sharp bursts. “What. About. Jackson, Stefan?”
“Jackson is a crook. A polished, smooth-talking, self-centered crook. The best thing I can say about him is that he doesn’t lack for female company wherever he goes.”
Her brittle laughter interrupted him. “I could say the same or even less about you. A Slavic model and the ripples that she created just a couple of months ago come to mind.” A feverish gleam entered her eyes. “What was it? ‘Bianco’s last name should really be Bastard,’” she finished with a mutinous gleam. “You have been dubbed the One-Date Wonder because you won’t even the see the same woman twice.”
Her defense of that crook infuriated Stefan. “You have no idea what Jackson could be up to. His business practices are extremely murky. I have been looking for proof for a long time to pin him for it. He’s a greedy bastard, a leech who will use anyone to climb the ladder a little more, will use any means, even illegal ones to get what he wants. In straight words, he’s scum through and through. Whatever connection you have with him, cut it and walk away, before he brings you down with him.”
Every ounce of color fled from her face, leaving a pale, tight mask behind. “I don’t believe you. I know that Jackson can be brash and even uncouth sometimes, but he...”
“Then you’ve also become a fool and are not worth my time or advice.”
Fury that she would put him on the same level as Jackson left a bad taste in his mouth. This was not the woman he had known and admired once.
