The Best Of The Year - Modern Romance. Annie West

CHAPTER FOUR

      AFTER A LONG SHOWER and the application of his own hand to the part of him that least listened to reason, Giancarlo prowled through the house, his fury at a dull simmer. An improvement, he was aware.

      La Bellissima was the same as it ever was, as it had been throughout his life, he thought as he moved quietly through its hushed halls, gleaming with Violet’s wealth and consequence in all its details. The glorious art she’d collected from all over the planet. The specially sourced artisan touches here and there that gave little hints of the true Violet Sutherlin, who had been born under another name and raised in bohemian Berkeley, California. Old Hollywood glamor mixed with contemporary charm, the house managed to feel light and airy rather than overfed, somehow, on its own affluence.

      Much like Violet herself, all these years after her pouty, sex kitten beginnings in the mid-seventies. He should know, having been trotted out at key moments during her transition from kitten to lion of the industry, as a kind of proof, perhaps, that Violet could do more than wear a bikini.

      There was the time she’d released a selection of cards he’d written her as a small child, filled with declarations of love that the other kids at school had teased him about all the way up until his high school graduation. There was the time she’d spent five minutes of her appearance in a famous actor’s studio interview telling a long, involved anecdote about catching him and his first girlfriend in bed that had humiliated fourteen-year-old Giancarlo and made his then-girlfriend’s parents remove her to a far-off boarding school. He knew every inch of this house and none of it had ever been his; none of it had ever been safe. He was as much a prop as any of the other things Violet surrounded herself with—only unlike the vases, he loved her despite knowing how easily and unrepentantly she’d use him.

      He followed the bright hall toward Violet’s quarters, knowing how much she liked to spend her days in the office there with its views of the city she’d conquered. He had memories of catapulting himself down this same hallway as a child, careening off the walls and coming to a skidding halt in that room, only to climb up on the chaise and lie at his mother’s feet as she’d run her lines and practiced her voices, her various accents, the postures that made her body into someone else’s. He’d found her fascinating, back then. He supposed he still did, and Giancarlo couldn’t remember, then, at what age he’d realized that Violet was better admired than depended upon. That her love was a distantly beautiful thing, better experienced as a fan than a family member. The first time she’d released a photo of him he’d found embarrassing? Or the tenth, with as little remorse?

      He only knew they’d both been far happier once he’d accepted it.

      Giancarlo paused in the doorway, hearing his mother’s famous laugh before he saw her. She wasn’t in her usual place today, reclining on her chaise like the Empress of Hollywood. She was standing at the French doors instead, bathed in soft light from the summer day beyond with a mobile phone in her hand, and even though there was no denying her celebrated beauty, his gaze went straight to the other woman in the room as if Violet wasn’t there at all.

      Paige sat at the fussy little desk in the corner, typing something as a male voice responded to whatever Violet had said from her mobile phone, obviously on speaker. Paige was frowning down at her laptop as her fingers flew over the keys, and when Violet turned toward her to roll her eyes at her assistant, Giancarlo could see the face Paige made in immediate response.

      Sympathetic. Fully on Violet’s side. Staunch and true, he’d have said, if he didn’t know better.

      He’d seen that expression before. That was the woman he’d loved in all the passionate fury of those two months of madness. Stalwart. Loyal. Not in any way the kind of woman who would sell a man out and print it all up in the tabloids. He’d have sworn on that. He’d have gambled everything.

      Giancarlo still couldn’t believe how wrong he’d been.

      His stomach twisted, and it took everything he had not to make a noise, not to bellow out his fury at all of this—but mostly at himself.

      Because he wanted to believe, still. Despite everything. He wanted there to be an explanation for what had happened ten years ago. He wanted Paige—and when had he started thinking about her by that name, without stumbling over it at all?—to be who she appeared to be. Dedicated to his mother. Deeply sorry for what had gone before, and with some reason for what she’d done. And not the kind of self-serving reason Violet always had...

       He wanted her back.

      And that was when Giancarlo woke up with a jolt and recognized the danger he was in. History could not repeat itself. Not with her. Not ever.

      “Darling,” Violet said when she ended her call, turning from the window and smiling at him. “Don’t lurk in the hallway. It was only my agent. A whinier, more demanding fool I have yet to meet, and yet I’m fairly certain he’s the best there is.”

      But what Giancarlo noticed was the way Paige straightened in her chair, her eyes wide and blue when they flew to him, then quickly shuttered when she looked back to her keyboard.

      He could think of a greater fool than his mother’s parasitical agent. It was something about finding himself back in Los Angeles, he thought as he fought back his own temper, as well as seeing Paige again. It would have been different if he’d encountered her in some other city. Somewhere that held no trace of who they’d been together. But here, their history curled around everything, like a thick, encroaching smog, and made it impossible to inhale without confronting it every time.

      With every goddamned breath.

      “I must return to Italy,” he said shortly. Almost as if he wasn’t certain he’d say it at all if he didn’t say it quickly and that, of course, made him despise himself all the more.

      “You can’t leave,” Violet said at once. Giancarlo noticed Paige seemed to type even more furiously and failed to raise her head at all. “You’ve only just arrived.”

      “I came because it had been an unconscionably long time, Mother,” he said softly. “It was never my intention to stay away so long. But I have a solution.”

      “You are moving back to Los Angeles,” Violet said, a curve to her mouth that suggested she didn’t believe it even as she said it. “I’m delighted. That Malibu house is far too nice to waste on all those renters.”

      “Not at all.” He wanted to study Paige instead of his mother but he didn’t dare. Still, he was as aware of her as if she was triple her own size. As if she loomed there in his peripheral vision, a great dark cloud, consuming everything. “You must come to Italy. Bring your assistant. Stay for the rest of the summer.”

      Violet looked startled for a moment, but then in the next her face smoothed out, and he recognized the mask she wore then. As impenetrable as it was graceful. A vision of loveliness that showed only what she wanted seen, and nothing else. Violet Sutherlin, the star. Giancarlo didn’t know what it said about him that he found this version of her easier to handle than the one who pretended motherhood was her primary concern.

      “Darling, you know my feelings about Italy,” she murmured, and a stranger might have believed her wry, easy tone. “I love it with all my heart. But I’m afraid I buried that heart with your father.”

      “Not that Italy,” he said. He smiled, though he understood he was speaking as much to the silent woman in the corner of his eye as to his mother. “My Italy.”

      “Do you have your own?” Violet asked. She laughed again. “You have been busy indeed.”

      “I’ve completely transformed the estate,” Giancarlo said quietly. “I know we’ve discussed all these changes over the years, but I’d like you to see them for yourself. I think Father would be proud.”

      “I know he would,” Violet said with a glimmer of something raw in her gaze and the sound of it in her voice, and Giancarlo knew he had her. Paige knew it too, he could tell. He felt more