He couldn’t tell whether this rooftop patio had been repaved or the old bricks merely pulled up and reset, exposing the hidey-hole he had discovered as a child. He doubted his half brothers had ever found it. If they had, they wouldn’t have been so sly in their sale of this estate. There was every chance the new owners had found the treasure, though, and kept the contents without mentioning it. Angelo had very little faith in humanity, particularly those who sat like cream on the top of society without having worked to get there.
He couldn’t leave until he knew for sure. He had come this far, and so decided to wait her out.
He joined her at the wall. The last time he’d been here, he’d barely been tall enough to peer over. His distant memory of that time was swept away by the breeze off the water and the woman’s voice beside him.
“If you didn’t follow me or come to meet someone, why are you here?”
“Curiosity.” It wasn’t a complete lie. He was definitely intrigued by her. “You?”
“To think.”
“About?”
“The nature of happiness. Whether it’s a goal worth pursuing when there are no guarantees I’ll find it. That it would come at the expense of others if I did.”
“Nothing too heavy, then,” he drawled. Her hand was close to his on the wall, pale and ringless. “In my experience, happiness is a fleeting thing. A moment. Not a state of being.”
“And if a moment is all you have?”
His scalp prickled beneath his hat. He turned his head and tucked his chin, trying to see through the dark and the holes in his mask to read her expression, but it was impossible.
“Regret is also a moment. A choice not to seize happiness when it presents itself.”
“I would regret it if I didn’t take a chance,” she agreed with a nod of contemplation.
“What kind of chance?”
She let a couple of seconds tick by with crushing silence, then said in a thicker voice, “An overture. Letting my interest in someone be known.” Her hand had been curled into a tense fist, but it unfurled, her pinkie finger splaying toward him.
His stomach knotted. “Are you married?”
“No.” Through the rush of relief in his ears, he heard her add, “But obligations to do so loom. And I don’t want to risk making a fool of myself when I don’t know if he’s even—”
“He is,” he cut in. His chest felt tight and his throat could barely form words. “He’s interested.”
CHAPTER TWO
PIA’S HEART WAS pounding so hard, she ought to have hammered down the walls around her.
“Do you know who I am?” she asked faintly.
“Should I?”
“No.” If he did, he would be treating her differently. With kid gloves, because of her family’s influence. There would be no intimate questions about whether she was meeting someone or encouragement to act impulsively.
It was enormously refreshing not to carry the weight of history and expectation, which had been the nature of her dilemma when she’d come up here. That ever so brief moment with him in the marquee had sent her into a spiral of doubt about duty to family versus selfish pursuits.
“Are you married?” she asked.
“I’m not involved with anyone. But a moment is all I have, too.” His velvety timbre was layered with regret.
She kept trying to place his voice, certain she would remember if she’d heard him before.
“I don’t even know what I want except not to let this moment pass without...”
“Seizing it?” he suggested.
“Stealing it,” she said wryly, finding the idea deeply seductive. It was the best of both worlds. She could briefly shed mousy, dutiful Pia Montero without giving her up for good. It was safe.