Ruthless Revenge: Priceless Proposal. Margaret Way

away from him, she sighed. “You were right. I ran away from the terrace because I couldn’t breathe there.”

      “Why?”

      “Let it go, Stefan.”

      “No.”

      “Haven’t you seen enough? Won’t you leave me with even a facade to hide behind?”

      “No, I won’t. Better me than the whole world, bella, than the corrupt man you left behind. Jackson won’t meekly accept our engagement. There’s only going to be more—”

      “Light on me, yeah? I know.”

      How pathetic was she that for a minute she’d thought he insisted because he cared. How easily she fell into her own trap of wanting to matter...

      She was nothing but a means to an end for Stefan. Just as she had been to Jackson. Only with Stefan, there were no lies, no deception.

      “I saw Olivia Fitzgerald, the supermodel. I saw Alessandra Mondelli, world-famous photographer. Every woman who was in there was someone who had made a life for herself in the world, someone who carved a niche for what she exceled in. Then I caught my reflection in the jug. Who’d think a jug could do so much for you, right?”

      And both women, while beautiful and successful, had men who respected them and loved them.

      “Here I was sitting among some of the most accomplished women on the planet and what did I have to show for a decade of slogging, for a lifetime of walking away from a safe life...

      “Nothing.

      “I couldn’t stay another minute and puncture the happiness of so many people. I couldn’t forgive myself if I did that.

      “Do you still see the goddess Athena, Stefan?”

      His fingers tightened on her bare arms, his face fierce as he looked down at her. “You walked away from him. By your own words, you crawled out from the lowest point of your life and came to me. And you had enough guts to use what you saw in my face that night to your own advantage.

      “I know what it takes to move ahead from that moment in which your heart shatters and there’s nothing but a hole in your chest.

      “All you need to do now is stay the course and carve your life the way you want. And until you can wage your own battle, I’ll do it for you.”

      His words were whispers that reverberated around them in the open space.

      Clio nodded slowly.

      For all the ruthlessness that had become second skin to him, Stefan was much kinder than a mirror. When she looked in his eyes, her own reflection held promise. Touched by a brave past that she had almost forgotten, it held hope.

      He was using her and she was using him. It was the perfect relationship for two people who had been burned by love, who had had their hearts shattered and trodden upon.

      A man who would love her unconditionally—she didn’t even know what that meant anymore. Maybe she had never deserved it.

      But she so much wanted that day when she wouldn’t run away in shame, when she wouldn’t feel this cavernous emptiness inside at another woman’s success.

      The day when she wasn’t an utter failure in life.

      She sketched a bow in front of him, letting hope fill her entire body.

      “Then I’m ready for training, Master.”

      A matching smile curved his mouth and he returned her bow and then stepped back into an elaborate pose that had economic movements and slices through the air that were perfectly synchronous. “Let us begin, Clio.”

      Shaking her head, Clio laughed. For anyone watching them from the hotel, they would look comical.

      “If you tell me you’re like a black belt in karate or some such thing, I’ll have to knock your teeth in, Bianco. I can only take so much of your all-rounded macho perfection before I start choking on it.”

      Grooves bracketed his serious mouth as he burst into laughter. With his hair falling onto his forehead, his stunning features bathed in sunlight, he looked like one of those warriors that could have conquered the Parthenon.

      “All-rounded macho perfection?” he said, color bleeding into those sculpted cheeks.

      Narrowing her eyes, Clio stepped toward him. “Let me look at you,” she mumbled, laughter bubbling up inside her. He shielded his face with his forearm and she pulled it down.

      “Oh. My. God. You’re blushing.” She lifted her camera and clicked close-ups of him and he tried to grab it from her. Pushing back at his chest with one hand, which was like an impenetrable wall, she clicked some more.

      She swung the camera away from him, still laughing. “There’s my fortune. Women of the world are going to be crazy for it. A shot of arrogant Sicilian Stefan Bianco doing something as mundane and human as blushing.”

      A vein flickered in his temple, his mouth tight with laughter. “Stop it, bella.”

      “Oh, come on. Like you don’t know your own appeal. Why do you think that model went nuts over you dumping her?”

      “The regular gifts she was ordering for herself from Tiffany’s? The champagne and caviar and the trips to Paris and London and Hong Kong aboard my private jet? The modeling contracts she was getting offered by networking through me?”

      The camera dangling from her raised hand, Clio went still.

      He had become so cynical, she remembered Christian saying a few years after they had left Columbia. But to see that hardness become such an intrinsic part of him that he filtered everything in the world through that, it was such a sharp contrast to the man she had known.

      Did he think there was nothing about him, the true him, that would appeal to a genuine woman? Or had he made it true by burying everything that had been so intrinsically good about him?

      “You don’t believe that of all of them, do you, Stefan?”

      “Of course not. Let’s not forget my masculine prowess,” he added with a wink that in no way belied the cold truth in his eyes.

      Clio rolled her eyes and swatted his forearm, hiding the shiver that went through her.

      “I’ll reduce my awesomeness into little doses for you, sì?” His English favored a stronger accent just then. “I know that you’re going all...fluttery inside—” he moved his hand in front of himself, encompassing his lean frame “—at the thought of having me all to yourself.”

      More laughter spilled from her mouth as forgotten memories of him making a play for her at Columbia during that first year rushed forth. His attentions were almost a knee-jerk response to any moderately attractive woman.

      Oh, she had had so much fun cutting him down to size every time he had tried it during that first year. Had missed the chance to put him down after he had fallen in love with Serena, though.

      “Okay, that’s it, Bianco. You need to be pegged down a bit.”

      His hands on his hips, his lush lower lip jutting out, he stared her down. “And you’re the woman for it, Norwood?”

      Tingles swept through her at his open challenge, mocking as it was. “Of course I am. If not for me cutting you down to size, you would have grown a second head back when we were at uni.”

      He grinned. “I do have a second head—”

      Blushing and laughing, Clio clapped her hand over his mouth. Sharp teeth dug into the heel of her palm and she squealed.

      Her tummy felt tight and achy, and tears ran down her face as he chased her and she ran, both of them hurling long forgotten challenges at each other.

      How long had it been since she had laughed like this?

      He had just