The Couple who Fooled the World Page 14

  The past four days had been like nothing he’d ever experienced before. A woman he wanted, in his home, in his bed, answering his cravings and desires.

  It was such a pleasurable arrangement it made him wish he’d put one together years ago. Except, then the woman wouldn’t have been Julia. And he couldn’t find it in him to be interested in the idea of having a woman other than Julia.

  But that was simply because she was his lover. It was normal, he was sure, to possess a certain amount of fascination with her, to the exclusion of others. He imagined. He had never had a lover before Julia.

  Her admission to him in his office, about her date, had made him feel protective of her in a way he’d never felt protective of anyone. Had made him crave violence. Had made him feel…connected. It was so very strange.

  But then, the entire relationship was.

  “It’s a gorgeous night out.” Julia climbed out of his bed and walked to the windows that overlooked the ocean. She was naked, and not at all embarrassed. He had loved watching her self-consciousness fall away. Now she seemed completely at ease with him, with or without clothes.

  “It is. Do you like the stars?” He didn’t know what had compelled him to ask. Why he felt compelled to share this part of himself. But he did. Because he had never shared himself with anyone. The people who had cared for him until he could care for himself were a blur. There was no love or affection from them. Only food and blankets, which, for a child on the street was enough.

  Then there were his clients. Women who didn’t care for him personally at all. He shared nothing of himself with them. Nothing at all.

  And Julia…wonderful Julia with her excitement for life, shared her smile with him. Her happiness and joy. He wanted to share this. Something personal. Something real.

  “Sci-fi geek. Love them.”

  “Yes, well, my love for them is not sci-fi related but, perhaps you’d like to come up to the roof and see my telescope anyway?”

  Her eyebrows shot up and she looked down. “Telescope, eh? Are you trying to seduce me, Mr. Calvaresi? Because you don’t have to try that hard.”

  He got out of bed and crossed the room to her, taking her into his arms and kissing her on the lips. “Didn’t I promise not to charm you?”

  “You did. But I have to confess, I’m charmed.”

  He wanted to tell her not to be. To warn her away. But he also wanted her to keep looking at him like that.

  She went back to the bed and grabbed a blanket. “I think this will do.” She wrapped it around her shoulders and opened the door to his room. “After you.”

  He reached down and picked up a pair of black briefs, tugging them on before going out into the hall. “This way,” he said, holding out his hand. She took it, lacing her fingers through his.

  Another thing he’d never done when it wasn’t for show. He just wanted to touch her. Just wanted his skin against hers.

  The stairs that led to the roof curved tightly, leading up to a small garden set into the edge of the rooftop. It all overlooked the ocean and gave a brilliant view of the crystal clear sky. Out away from The city, there was no light pollution, and so many stars were visible to the naked eye, so many more than he’d imagined as a boy. The big ones, always there, helping him find his way through the dark streets, helping orient him, giving him a sense of direction.

  But now, here, he could see them all. From the largest ones down to the stars that were no more than diamond dust.

  He tugged her onto the white divan that was set up there, the perfect place for him to look out at all he had achieved. But that wasn’t why he’d brought her here. It wasn’t a show of wealth or status. He wanted to show her something of him.

  “I’ve always been fascinated with the sky at night. I spent a lot of time looking at it when I slept out on the streets. In doorways, alleyways, wherever I could find that wasn’t occupied by another homeless person. And when I had to get somewhere quickly in the dark, I used the North Star to find my way.”

  “You were always smart,” she said, her voice soft, her fingers trailing lightly over his bare chest.

  “It is what saved me. Of that I’m certain.” He paused, hesitated. “When I first started making real money I got a telescope, and I started looking at the stars. It was exciting. Like meeting a friend for the first time, if that makes any sense. But I was very alone, Julia, for most of my life. My surroundings were my only constant. My companion and my enemy.”

  “I can’t even imagine, Ferro, but I do try.”

  “I know you do.” It made his throat tight. What Julia did for him was more than any person had ever done.

  “So show me your favorite places,” she said, gesturing to the telescope.

  He got up and positioned it, bending down and looking, searching. “There,” he said. “The Orion nebula. I took particular joy in being able to see that. Once I got the telescope.”

  “New discoveries opened up to you,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  She stood up, dropped the blanket. He stepped aside and went back to the divan while she bent and looked through the telescope.

  “Such a fantasy, Julia. A naked woman who takes joy in looking at the stars. I should think that’s a very rare thing for a man to possess.”

  She straightened and looked at him. “And I have a mostly naked man who understands the sheer beauty of an eight core processor. That is also fantasy material.”

  “I love it when you talk nerdy to me.”

  She laughed and joined him on the divan, tugging the blanket up over both of them. “It’s beautiful,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “The nebula. All of it. This place. Your place. What you’ve done with your life, Ferro, it’s not a small thing. When I first read your biography—”

  “That damned book.”

  “I know. But when I first read it, I didn’t think it could be true. Because how could a boy with no education, who had been through everything you’d been through, transcend it all and reach the place you have. You’re truly amazing, and now that I see you as something other than my enemy I realize that.”

  “When this is over,” he said, “we will still be competition. Everything is going back to how it was before. It’s part of our bargain.”

  Something flashed through her eyes. Sadness. Deep, heartbreaking sadness. “I know. But you’ll never be my enemy again, even if I’m yours.”

  He put his hand on her cheek, felt her skin, soft beneath his. He wanted to make her promises. Wanted to find a way to fuse the pieces of himself, as they’d been in that moment following the time they’d made love in his office. For one, brief flash of time, he had been whole, and he wanted it again so badly. So he could even begin to understand what he wanted to say. What he should say.

  But he had nothing. No words. So he leaned in and kissed her, because it was what he knew. Because he knew it would cover his inadequacies.

  She kissed him, sweet, giving. Giving in a way he could never hope to be.

  He pushed her onto her back, kissed her neck, her collarbone, the curve of her breast. He tugged the blanket away so he could look at her body, bathed in the moonlight.

  “You are without a doubt, the most beautiful thing I have seen beneath the night sky.” He lowered his head, ran his tongue over her nipple and watched as it peaked in the cool outdoor air. “Without a doubt.”

  She put her hands on his cheeks, her eyes boring into his. “You are an amazing man, Ferro. The most amazing I have ever known. If I could make you feel what I feel. If I could give the feelings I have for you to you, I would. So you would know how incredible you are.”

  Her gaze, unflinching, honest, made him feel far too exposed. Made him feel like he was naked for the first time with her. Yes, he’d been naked with her many times over the course of the past week, and before that, there had been other women he’d been naked with.

  Not like this. Never like this.

  He lowered his head, kissed her neck
, inhaled the sweet scent of her skin.

  “Ferro—”

  He cut her off with a kiss, moved his hand down between her thighs and started stroking her damp flesh until her words turned into sighs of pleasure. He watched her face as he pushed a finger deep inside her while stroking her clitoris with his thumb. He could do this. He could do sex. He could give her pleasure, take pleasure.

  It was the talking that was causing the unbearable pressure in his chest. There could be no more talking.

  “Please,” she whimpered. “Please.”

  He pushed his underwear down his hips and positioned himself, testing her readiness, sliding into her slowly, so slowly he thought the pain of want would kill him before he was all the way home.

  Then he lost himself in her. In her body, her breath fanning against his cheek, wet kisses on his neck, her nails in his shoulder blades. He lost himself in Julia and he never wanted it to end. Here with her it made sense. Life seemed to make sense. And he felt more at peace, he felt more whole, he simply felt more, than he ever had before.

  Orgasm rushed over him like a wave and as she arched beneath him, crying out her release, he found his own.

  When it was over, he held her against his chest, smoothed her hair. Wondered if his heart would ever slow down. If it had slowed down at all since that first night they were together.

  Julia reached down and picked up the blanket, drawing it over their bodies.

  “We should go in,” he said.

  “I don’t want to,” she said. “Too sleepy.”

  “The only alternative is sleeping out here.”

  “And what’s wrong with that? It’s a beautiful night, and we can look at the stars.”

  Terror expanded in his chest, pushing out the comfort and well-being he’d felt only a moment before. “I don’t like being cold.”

  “I’ll keep you warm.”

  “Julia,” he said, sitting up. “I have not spent one night outside since I could first afford to put a roof over my head.”

  “But you’re not back there, Ferro, it’s not the same. You’re not in Rome. You’re not on the street. And you aren’t alone.” She sat up and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind, her breasts pressing into his back. “I promise I won’t let you get cold.”

  Ferro relaxed, followed Julia’s gentle tug back down to the divan. He lay on his back and looked at the stars, while Julia rested her head on his chest, her body heat seeping through his skin.

  Her heat chased away the cold. The fear. And he slept.

  It wasn’t until he was in the office the next day that he realized what he’d done. He’d been so desperate to get Julia to stop talking, to get her to stop making him feel, to be inside her, that he’d forgotten about condoms.

  That had never happened in his life. Never. Condoms were the most important thing in his sexual encounters when he’d been a prostitute. Dio, but he hated that word. It still had the power to flay his skin from his bones. To make him feel like less than a man.

  And yet it was the truth about him. A truth he was trying to ignore, by replacing those memories with memories of Julia. He clung to her as if her touch had the power to clean all the dirt from his skin.

  But far from that, he was starting to wonder if he was just spreading the dirt to her. No matter what she said. No matter what she claimed to see when she looked at him.

  Actions like his didn’t come clean. I wish you could see how amazing you are.

  No, she was wrong. He wasn’t amazing. He was just a man selfish enough, without conscience enough, to do whatever he’d had to do to get where he wanted to go.

  And now he’d brought her into it, compromised her. After all that had already happened to her…would he hurt her, too?

  Damn. They had the meeting with Barrows today, too. He stood up and stalked out his office door. “No one calls me,” he growled at his assistant as he walked past, contacting his driver from his phone as he did so.

  He got into the elevator and took it down to the lobby where his car was already waiting, idling against the curb.

  “Julia’s,” he said to the driver. He didn’t have to say more. Everyone knew now that they were lovers. Everyone knew who Julia was.

  The drive across town in the afternoon traffic was unbearable. Too hard to wait that long. He couldn’t wait. When his driver was a block away, Ferro jerked open the door and got out, striding the rest of the way down the sidewalk, his focus straight ahead. He ignored the tourists, the few people who recognized him who were gaping, the sun, the palm trees that lined the walk. He ignored them all.

  He walked into Julia’s building and made his way up to her office.

  “You can’t go in there she’s prepping for a mee—Oh, Mr. Calvaresi.” Julia’s assistant offered him a toothpaste-white smile.

  “I need to see her.”

  “She said she didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  “She did not mean me.”

  “I already got in trouble for the salmon.”

  “She didn’t mean it. She loves it. I need to see her now. I’m going to, even if I have to break the office door down, you might as well buzz me in.”

  Thad smiled again and pressed a button on the desk. “Ferro Calvaresi to see you, darling.”

  He didn’t return the other man’s smile as he walked toward Julia’s office doors and swung them open.

  She jumped up. “Ferro.” She rounded her desk and wrapped her arms around him, kissing him quickly. Such a normal, couplelike gesture. So strange to him. “I wasn’t expecting you yet, we weren’t supposed to meet until later.”

  “That is for business, this is a personal call,” he said.

  “Oh, really?” Her expression turned suggestive.

  “No,” he bit out. “Not that.”

  “Oh.” She was hurt, and it was his fault. Because he was short with her. Much more than he’d intended to be.

  “I needed to tell you, I realized that I didn’t use a condom last night.”

  Her cheeks turned pink. “Oh.”

  “You’re safe, in terms of your health. It’s fair of you to be concerned about that all things considered. But I was very careful with my clients. And I had not had sex in twelve years, and in that time I’ve been tested, just in case. My concern is pregnancy, of course.”

  “Oh…oh that. No. No that won’t be a problem.”

  “It won’t?”

  “It’s a bad…time of the month and stuff.”

  Julia felt a little shell-shocked. A lot shell-shocked. She wasn’t sure how she’d missed the oversight last night. But she had. So stupid of her. Irresponsible. And yet, shell-shocked though she was, she didn’t feel terrified.

  And she had no idea if she was at a fertile time in her cycle or not. She’d never really paid attention to that kind of thing since, until recently, she hadn’t been sexually active. But it sounded like the right thing to say. Sounded like something she should know.

  Except lying was wrong.

  “I…I don’t really know if it’s a bad time of the month,” she said. “But…but I don’t want to take anything. Any pills or anything to…to stop it. I just don’t want to.”

  He nodded slowly. “I understand.”

  “You do?”

  “I do.”

  “I have enough money to take care of a baby,” she said. “I could get all the help I’d need. Even if I had to bring the baby to work, I could. I’m the boss lady. There’s like…no woman on earth more ready, financially speaking, to handle an accidental baby than me, and you wouldn’t have to do anything.”

  “You think I want to do nothing?”

  “You came in here all panicked.”

  “I don’t want you to be pregnant,” he said. “I don’t want to raise a baby, with you or anyone else, but I’ll be damned, if there is a child, if I walk away from it.”

  “That’s…well, that’s crazy.”

  “How? How is it crazy? Do you want to be pregnant?”

  With
the potential father looking at her like she was public enemy number one and all kinds of frightening unresolved feelings for the man? No. No she did not.

  “No.”

  “But if you were pregnant?”

  “I would love my baby. I would take care of it.”

  “So then, I’m not crazy.”

  “Look, nice cart, but the horse doesn’t go behind it.”

  “What?”

  “Cart before the horse. I’m probably not pregnant. Let’s all chill.”

  “This kind of a lapse is unacceptable, Julia.”

  “Okay, so let’s be more responsible then.”

  “It never should have happened.”

  Julia felt her ears starting to burn. “Great. Fine. So it won’t happen again. We’ll be more careful.”

  “Because…”

  “Stop it!” she shouted. “Stop reiterating how awful it would be to have a child with me, please. I can’t take the repeated statements of your horror.”

  “Don’t make this about your insecurities, Julia, it’s bigger than that.”

  “I’m sorry, it’s hard not to make it about my insecurities since…you know it’s so heavily about me.”

  “And about a child,” he said, his words clipped. “Do you really think I should raise a child? Do you think I’m daddy material? What life lessons do I have to pass on? If you’re struggling, don’t give up, sell yourself to the highest bidder?”

  “But you wouldn’t let our child struggle,” she said, her voice muted.

  “But I would still be who I am.” He looked out the window, past her. “It is, in some ways, a blessing I have no family. No one who loves me. Because they would be horrified by the man I had to become to get to the place I’m standing in now. I know I am. I’ll see you in a couple of hours, at Barrows. Be ready to make the presentation of a lifetime.”

  She nodded slowly and watched him walk out of her office. Something in her chest burned. Fought for recognition, fought to get through all the walls she’d built up, to tear off the blinders she’d put on. It burned until it hurt. Until the words swam through her head, clear and undeniable.

  That’s where you’re wrong, Ferro. Someone does love you.