Defying Her Billionaire Protector

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.