“Okay,” she acquiesced.
“Good girl.”
“Don’t push it,” she warned, but turned her face toward the caress of his fingertips as he smoothed her hair back behind her ear. Her eyes drifted closed.
“I’d like your father’s contact number.”
“Oh, no, I’ll call Dad.” She straightened, but found herself still in the prison of his hold.
“No, Tiffany. This is my fault. I should have taken more care to shield you. He’s already uncomfortable with our relationship. I should have introduced myself before something like this made our first conversation an unpleasant one.”
“I really think—”
“We’re not negotiating, draga. We’ll stand here until you’ve given me his number, but I’d like to get to Rome sooner than later, so make this easier on both of us.”
“You’re unbelievable,” she choked.
“His people will have questions about the arrangements I’ve made. Quit being stubborn,” he pressed.
Her? Stubborn? Kettle. Black.
With a sigh of defeat, because she really didn’t want to face down her father and his people, she offered up his private mobile number.
* * *
How could he kiss something so hideous?
She didn’t know why she looked it up. She should have known better, but she’d been compelled to know what they were saying. It was horrid. Beyond cruel.
Ryzard had been furious when he had emerged from his shower and found her with his tablet in her lap, fingers white, throat dry, eyes unable to meet his.
“Why would you take a dose of poison? It’s self-destructive, completely against everything you are,” he’d growled, nipping the tablet away from her and tossing it across the room onto the bed.
Somewhere in his words she supposed a compliment lurked, but all she heard was disapproval. It made her cringe all the more.
The flight to Rome was exhausting and silent, his mood foul, but she hadn’t wanted to speak, either. She didn’t want him to notice her. She seemed like a burden, something he was carrying with him because he had to, not because he wanted her. How could he want anything to do with her when she was bringing shame on him like this?
Like sleeping with snakeskin. She shuddered at the headlines and comments from trolls that would stay in her mind forever. Her husband was lucky he died and didn’t have to stay married to that.
Ryzard’s interview was staged in a hotel room, the pristine white decor too bright for her gritty, bloodshot eyes. Neither of them had slept despite lying next to each other for a few hours. He’d stroked her for a time, but she hadn’t been able to respond, too frozen inside. Feeling betrayed. Her parents hadn’t called, not even replying to her text that she was available if they wanted to talk. The only friend she had right now was Ryzard, and he was so remote he might as well have stayed in Bregnovia and sent a wax double in his place.
She’d been too afraid to ask what he intended to say and wound up standing at the side of the room, staring dumbly from the shadows into the light as he took his seat. The interview began.
Her father had done a million of these things, so she wasn’t surprised to hear them tiptoe through a variety of political tulips on the way to the meat of the interview. Ryzard’s devotion to his country was on full display, and she imagined the whole world was reevaluating him as he spoke passionately about Bregnovia’s desire for peace and plans for prosperity. She hoped so. He deserved to be taken seriously.
She grew more and more tense as the interview dragged on, however. Didn’t they realize the audience was waiting for the mention of her name?
Twenty-five minutes in, the question finally came.
“Photos have circulated showing you with American heiress Tiffany Davis. Is it serious?”
“I take very seriously that your bottom-feeder colleagues are making their fortune on photos that for all we know have been manipulated for a higher profit.”
Nice of him to defend her with such an implication, but the photos had not been airbrushed. She genuinely looked that bad.
The interviewer smiled tightly. “I meant is the relationship serious?”
“That’s between us. We’re private people,” Ryzard stated implacably.
Tiffany caught back a harsh laugh. Did he really think he’d get away with as little as that?
“My sources tell me you met at the notoriously secret Q Virtus,” the newscaster continued.
See? she wanted to cry. The press never rested until they drew as much blood as possible, even when they called themselves a friend.
“That’s true,” Ryzard allowed.
“Q Virtus is a rather exclusive club, isn’t it? What can you tell me about it?” the journalist pressed.
“I’m sure contacting them would get you more information than you’d ever get out of me,” Ryzard said smoothly.
Oh. Ha. That was smart. She relaxed under a ripple of humor. The public’s insatiable curiosity would now turn to the club. Papers could trot out as many before-and-after photos of Tiffany Davis as they wanted, but viewers and readers would be more interested in learning the names of other people in the secret club. They’d hungrily eat up the scant yet salacious details of what went on there. She and Ryzard would be old news before the credits rolled on this broadcast.
In fact, when she watched later that evening, she noted that while the names rolled, her own image came forward to Ryzard’s reaching hand. She shook hands with the newscaster and thanked him, all of them standing in friendly banter. Her good side was angled to the camera. Her hair was done and her makeup was decent. Wearing a simple alabaster suit, she looked...normal. Pretty even.
Ryzard clicked it off as it went to commercial. She collapsed on the foot of the hotel bed, emotionally exhausted. Could it really be over as easily as that?
* * *
Ryzard watched Tiffany as he unknotted his tie and released first the cuffs, then the front buttons of his shirt. As tough as she was, he’d seen what a toll this attack had had on her. She’d been shutting him out as a result, and that infuriated him. Her talk of running away where he couldn’t reach her had nearly put him out of his mind.
He was still beside himself that this incident had happened at all. His captain had warned him that an unidentified boat kept turning up in their radar, but he’d shrugged it off. None of his mistresses in the past had warranted much attention, but he supposed his own profile was elevated to the international stage these days. Tiffany’s family was certainly of a level to feed the appetite of her country’s gossip columns.
And she’s not just a mistress, is she? The question beat in warning like a jungle drum in his chest, ominous and dark. His plans for his relationship with Tiffany were changing, but he hadn’t wanted to allude to anything more in his interview. The last time his link to a woman had been public and indelible, she’d been used as a pawn in his country’s civil war and the outcome was fatal.
Seeing Tiffany beaten and wounded by words shook loose his nightmare of losing Luiza. He’d grasped at anger to counter his resurgence of helplessness, hating that he couldn’t stem the damage being done to her, but agony and guilt were constant. He should have protected her better. If he could have stopped Tiffany from searching out what they were saying about her, he would have. Humanity’s capacity for ugliness astounded him. His job, the one he’d taken on for his country, for his own sanity, was to push brutality and attacks to the furthest fringes of existence that he could.
And keep himself apart so the pain of life couldn’t reach inside him and wring him into anguish.
It wasn’t easy when Tiffany sat with her spine slouched and her golden hair trailing loose from its neat bun, seeming incredibly delicate, like a dragonfly that had its wings crushed. When she was like this, she stirred things in him that needed to stay in firmer places. The chin-up, spoiled and cheeky Tiffany he could easily compartmentalize as a friendly partner in a game of sexual sport. Like a tennis opponent who gave him a run for his money, athletic and quick.
The vulnerable Tiffany frightened him. She made him feel so ferociously protective he would do violence if he ever found the photographer who’d reduced her image to a commodity in filthy commerce.
Shaken by the depth of his feelings, he tried to pull them both out of the tailspin with a blunt, “Dinner out or in?”
She sighed and looked up at him. Her heartrending expression was both anguished and amused. His heart began to pound in visceral reaction, and he swayed as though struck with vertigo, not sure why.
“My first thought is, Duh, Ryzard. Of course I’d never dine in public, but how could I be such a coward when you’ve just defended me so fiercely? No one else has. I can’t tell you how much that means to me.”
A sensation of wind rushing around him lifted all the hairs on his naked chest, as if he was free-falling into space. Her gaze was so defenseless, he couldn’t look away. She reached inside him with that look, catching at things he couldn’t even acknowledge.