The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance. Annie West

you swapping out all the art on the walls for fakes? I thought the Rembrandt looked a bit odd in the front hall, but I imagined it was the light.”

      “Because whatever you might think about me, and I’m not saying I don’t understand why you think it,” she rasped, “I care about her. And I don’t mean this to be insulting, Giancarlo, but I’m all she has.” Her eyes widened at the dark look he leveled at her, and she hurried on. “You haven’t visited her in years. She’s surrounded by acolytes and users the moment she steps off this property. I’m the only person she trusts.”

      “Again, the irony is nearly edible.” He shrugged. “And you are wasting your breath. You should thank me for my mercy in letting you call this a resignation. If I were less benevolent, I’d have you arrested.”

      She held his gaze for a moment too long. “Don’t make me call your bluff,” she said quietly. “I doubt very much you want the scandal.”

      “Don’t make me call your bluff,” he hurled back at her. “Do you think I haven’t looked for the woman who ruined my life over the years? Hoping against hope she’d be locked up in prison where she belongs?” He smiled thinly when she stiffened. “Nicola Fielding fell off the face of the planet after those pictures went viral. That suggests to me that you aren’t any more keen to have history reveal itself in the tabloids than I am.” He lifted his brows. “Stalemate, cara. If I were you, I’d start packing.”

      She took a deep breath and then let it out, long and slow, and there was no reason that should have bothered him the way it did, sneaking under his skin and making him feel edgy and annoyed, as if it was tangling up his intentions or bending the present into the past.

      “I genuinely love Violet,” she said, her eyes big and pleading on his, and he ignored the tangling because he knew he had her. He could all but taste it. “This might have started as a misguided attempt to reach you after you disappeared, I’ll admit, but it stopped being that a long time ago. I don’t want to hurt her. Please. There must be a way we can work this out.”

      He let himself enjoy the moment. Savor it.

      This wasn’t temper, hot and wild, making him act out his passions in different ways, the line between it and grief too finely drawn to tell the difference. Too much time had passed. There was too much water under that particular bridge.

      And she should never have come here. She should never have involved his mother. She should never have risked this.

      “Giancarlo,” she said, the way she’d said it that bright and terrible morning a decade ago when he’d finally understood the truth about her—and had seen it in full color pictures splashed across the entirety of the goddamned planet. When he’d showed up at the apartment she’d never let him enter and had that short, awful, final conversation on her doorstep. Before he’d walked away from her and Los Angeles and all the rest of these Hollywood machinations he hated so deeply. Five painful minutes to end an entire phase of his life and so many of his dreams. “Please.”

      He closed the distance between them with a single step, then reached over to pull on the end of that dark, glossy hair of hers, watching the auburn sheen in it glow and shift in the light. He felt more than heard her quick intake of breath and he wanted her in a thousand ways. That hadn’t dimmed.

      It was time to indulge himself. He was certain that whatever her angle was, her self-interest would win out over self-preservation. Which meant he could work out what remained of his issues in the best way imaginable. Whatever else she was, she was supple. He had her.

      “Oh, we can work it out,” he murmured, shifting so he could smell the lotion she used on her soft skin, a hint of eucalyptus and something far darker. Victory, he thought. His, this time. “It requires only that you get beneath me. And stay there until I’m done with you.”

      She went still for a hot, searing moment.

      “What did you say?”

      “You heard me.”

      Her changeable eyes were blue with distress then, and he might have loathed himself for that if he hadn’t known what a liar she was. And what an actress she could be when it suited her. So he only tugged on her plait again and watched her tipped-up face closely as comprehension moved across it, that same electric heat he felt inside him on its heels.

      That, Giancarlo told himself, was why he would win this game this time. Because she couldn’t control the heat between them any more than he could. And he was no longer fool enough to imagine that meant a damned thing. He knew it was a game, this time.

      “I want to make sure I’m understanding you.” She swallowed, hard, and he was certain she’d understood him just fine. “You want me to sleep with you to keep my job.”

      He smiled, and watched goose bumps rise on her smooth skin. “I do. Often and enthusiastically. Wherever and however I choose.”

      “You can’t be serious.”

      “I assure you, I am. But by all means, test me. See what happens.”

      Her lips trembled slightly and he admired it. It looked so real. But he was close enough to see the hard, needy press of her nipples against the silk of her blouse, and he knew better. He knew she was as helpless before this thing between them as he was. Maybe she always had been. Maybe that was why it had all got so confused—she’d chosen him because he was Hollywood royalty by virtue of his parents and thus made a good mark, but then there’d been all of this to complicate things. But he didn’t want to sympathize with her. Not even at such a remove.

      “Giancarlo...” He didn’t interrupt her but she didn’t finish anyway, and her words trailed off into the afternoon breeze. He saw her eyes fill with a wet heat and he had to hand it to her, she was still too good at this. She made it so believable.

      But he would never believe her again, no matter the provocation. No matter how many tears she shed, or almost shed. No matter how convincingly she could make her lips tremble. This was Hollywood.

      This time, he wouldn’t be taken by surprise. He knew it was all an act from the start.

      “Your choices are diminishing by the minute,” he told her softly. It was a warning. And one of the last he’d give her. “Now you have but two. Leave now, knowing I will tell my mother exactly why you’ve left and how you’ve spent these past years deceiving her. It might break her heart, but that will be one more black mark on your soul, not mine. And I’d be very surprised if she didn’t find some way to make you pay for it herself. She didn’t become who she is by accident, you must realize. She’s a great deal tougher than she looks.”

      “I know she is.” Her gaze still shimmered with that heat, but none of it spilled over—and he reminded himself that was acting talent, not force of will. “And what’s the second choice?”

      He shrugged. “Stay. And do exactly as I tell you.”

      “Sexually.” She threw that at him, her voice unsteady but her gaze direct. “You mean do as you tell me sexually.”

      If she thought her directness would shame him into altering his course here, she was far stupider than he remembered. Giancarlo smiled.

      “I mean do as I tell you, full stop.” He indulged himself then, and touched her. He traced the remarkable line of her jaw, letting the sharp delight of it charge through his bones, then held her chin there, right where he could stare her down with all the ruthlessness he carried within him. “You will work for me, Paige. On your back. On your knees. At your desk. Whatever I want, whenever I want, however I want.”

      He could feel her shaking and he exulted in it.

      “Why?” she whispered. “This is me, remember? Why would you want to...?”

      Again, she couldn’t finish, and he took pleasure in these signs of her weakness. These cracks in her slick, pretty armor. Giancarlo leaned in close and brushed his mouth over hers, a little hint