Defying Her Billionaire Protector

But she couldn’t help but wish now that she’d painted something different. Something a little brighter, more uplifting. She had planned on leaving the painting behind—as a gift for Nico—but it seemed too haunting now for a man who was already haunted.

A shiver rippled through her. Their lovemaking last night had been so intense. So silent. Nico hadn’t uttered a word—not before or during or afterwards—and yet he’d watched her the entire time he had been inside her, with that fierce intensity blazing in his blue eyes.

Her heart twisted painfully in her chest. The emotion she’d been wrestling with ever since her shattering revelation last night refused to be subdued.

She could not have fallen in love with him. Not so quickly. So hopelessly. So irrevocably.

Except she had.

And now her heart would break, because she wanted something she couldn’t have. A man. A man too closed off from his emotions to ever be available to her or anyone else.

And already he was withdrawing.

He hadn’t reached for her this morning...hadn’t lavished her with kisses and caresses while the sun rose and then joined her for a lazy breakfast on the terrace. Instead he’d got dressed and gone straight to his study, emerging only for a quick lunch before disappearing again.

She put her paint

s away and folded her brushes into a rag for cleaning. The ache in her chest was her penance, she told herself harshly. She’d been a fool and now she’d have to live with the consequences—a concept she was all too familiar with.

She wheeled down the hall towards the utility room where she usually cleaned her brushes.

Nico stepped out of his study.

‘Do you have a minute?’

She stopped and looked at him. He sounded so polite. The ache in her chest intensified. For the last three days she’d deliberately avoided asking about her stalker, assuring herself that Nico would tell her anything important.

He had something important to tell her now. Which meant this was the beginning of the end.

Her mouth drying, she nodded, and he stood back so she could wheel herself into the study. She stopped by his desk and he handed her a piece of paper—a printed digital photograph of a man.

‘Do you know him?’

She studied the image. The man was clean-shaven, and he wore trendy thin-rimmed eyeglasses and a baseball cap. The photograph was grainy, as if it had been enlarged a few times, but the man’s face was clear enough and...familiar.

She nodded slowly. ‘It’s Sergio Berardi. He’s an artist.’ She studied the photo again, an icy finger sliding across her nape. ‘I exhibited some of his work at the gallery about a year ago.’

‘Nine months,’ said Nico.

The hairs on her arms lifted. ‘I’ve met him a few times socially, through art circles,’ she said, and suddenly it all made a horrible kind of sense. She put the photo down on the desk, not wanting to look at it any longer. ‘He asked me out a couple of times but I declined.’

He hadn’t been unpleasant, or unattractive, but she’d already decided not to waste her time on relationships. She rubbed her forehead. Thinking back, he had been intense. A little unsettling.

‘Santo cielo...’ Bile climbed her throat. ‘I can’t believe I didn’t think of him before.’

Nico shrugged, as if it were of no consequence. ‘Don’t beat yourself up,’ he said.

Did he sound distant, or was she imagining it? Being oversensitive?

Her heart lurched. She wanted to rewind. Go back to the beginning and relive her time with him. Relive the fantasy. Because she knew with utter certainty that her life wouldn’t be the same when she got back to Rome. Not after Nico.

She swallowed past the lump in her throat. ‘What happens now?’

‘I’m leaving immediately for Toulon.’

She frowned up at him. ‘Don’t you mean we are leaving?’

‘Non,’ he said. ‘I need to get to Rome as quickly as possible, to liaise with the authorities. I can travel faster if I leave at once and go on my own. I’ll do a quick round trip and be back late tomorrow. We can stay here tomorrow night and then get you back to Rome on Wednesday.’