It was also why he enjoyed supporting her. She didn’t expect to be spoiled so her reaction was priceless when he collared her with precious stones and shackled her with gold bracelets. Her protests against his generosity were refreshing, her newness to belonging to a man endearing.
He moved to the bed and lowered to hitch his hip beside hers, splaying his hand over the rumpled sheet that covered her belly. “I thought you enjoyed the art exhibit yesterday?” He had liked watching her face light with enthusiasm as she had told him about it last night.
“I did. I’m not sure your bodyguards did, though.” She covered his hand, traced her light touch over the backs of his fingers, sending a ripple of pleasure down his back, as if he was a wolf being petted by a maiden.
“Well-secured places like art galleries make their job easy. They’re happy to follow you around one.” That wasn’t the real issue, he could tell, but he didn’t know what else she needed to hear. Perhaps, “Rather than go back to Milan when I finish here, why don’t we take a few days on the water?” he suggested. “I’ll hire a yacht.”
Her gaze met his. “I feel like I’m back in my childhood, moving around before I can establish myself, not even trying to make friends because there’s no point.”
He frowned, having supposed that she connected with her friends online when he wasn’t around, but she never mentioned any conversations or told anecdotes, he realized. She’d already told him that the family she did have was a very loose tie. She was still too embarrassed to speak directly to her stepfather and was keeping to short texts with her stepbrother.
He couldn’t imagine living in that sort of social desert. He had curtailed a lot of his nonbusiness dinners because of work pressures and was sidestepping family occasions to avoid awkward questions about his relationship with Gwyn, but he was Italian. An active social life was in his biological makeup.
“Why did you move so often?” he asked her.
She shrugged. “Every reason. Lost job, better job, good luck, bad luck, harassment, location... I think the biggest reason was that Mom had itchy feet. That’s why she married my dad, to move to America. She and Henry were going to travel once I finished school.” Her fingertips smoothed under his cuff, tracing the band of his watch. “I wanted to see the world, too, but by moving to a new city and settling in, so I could absorb the culture and become part of the community.”
Whatever friendships she’d made in Milan had been blown apart by the photos and her termination. He hadn’t forbidden her from contacting any of her coworkers or neighbors, but she had isolated herself and he’d been pleased to keep things simple. He wondered now if he should make more of an effort to draw her into his own circles, but to what end? This was a temporary affair, not a relationship.
And knowing their time together was finite, he found himself very unwilling to share her.
“No news from Paolo about how much longer the investigation will take?” she asked.
“No,” he said so abruptly her eyes widened and a shadow of injury crept across the back of her gaze. He mentally kicked himself for revealing the brute that he was, but her question almost sounded as though she was anxious to end things and he wasn’t ready.
“Living in limbo is hard,” she said in stiff explanation, trying to sit up.
He gathered her tense form into his lap, looking at the pugnacious glare she tilted up at him. He pressed a kiss against her firmly closed mouth.
“I’m hearing you,” he told her, thinking about those times when he caught a faraway, melancholy expression on her face. He had put those moments down to her distress over the photos, but there was more to it, he realized now. She was a woman longing to put down roots. “I’m not dismissing you. But there’s nothing I can do right now.”
“And nothing I can do either, apparently.”
“Fold my socks?” he suggested, since she often nagged him to pick his up.
She snapped her teeth at him in playful retaliation.
He kissed her again and this time she softened and kissed him back.
But he was still thinking about her discontent when he broke from his meeting with the Hong Kong consortium and picked up a message from Paolo: Fabrizio is asking for leniency in exchange for full disclosure. We could see charges against Jensen early next week.
The tide was turning.
The need for their affair was almost over.
* * *
Gwyn was in a type of shock as they returned to Vito’s penthouse less than a week later, mind still caught up in all that had just been said at the press conference and after it. Be careful what you wish for, she thought bleakly. She had been anxious to embark on her future and here it was.