“You disapprove?” Vito challenged lightly, but with very little actual lightness.
“I don’t pass judgments on the private lives of family. You know that,” Paolo said with a sardonic twist of his mouth. “If I saw impact to the bank I would comment, but I wouldn’t have to, would I?”
No, he wouldn’t, but Vito still wound up feeling defensive. He wasn’t sure it would matter to him if this affair impacted the bank. He suspected he would carry on with Gwyn regardless.
He had intended to end things after the announcement of charges against Jensen. It would have been a tidy break without loose ends or deeply hurt feelings. Gwyn had been as prepared for it as he had. Even as she had suggested pretending a visit home to see family, he’d been thinking along the same lines.
Then she had touched him, kissed him, somehow stepped inside the shields he wore so easily against the rest of the world and imprinted herself on his very psyche. He had sought satiation that afternoon, certain that when his libido was exhausted, he’d be ready to release her.
But she’d only had to shift away from him in the bed and his entire being had been racked with agony. The single command for her to stay had slipped past his renowned self-discipline, left his lips and landed on her naked skin.
And he didn’t regret it. Even though he knew she was falling in love with him. All the signs were there. She wanted to know about his childhood, wanted him to share. Aside from dining with Paolo and Lauren, he’d drawn a fine line between her and his personal life, but her yearning to feel connected to the broader landscape of his world, to make her place within it, was obvious.
He couldn’t offer her the life she dreamed of when she held his cousin’s son and scrambled his eggs in the morning and met him at the door with a kiss when he came home, though.
And cheating her of those things made him reprehensible. If Paolo didn’t quite approve of the relationship, that was why. His cousin was an honorable man and knew that Vito was not behaving with complete honor. If she’s a victim, don’t make her more of one.
Vito was implying certain promises that he wouldn’t keep, buying time with a woman who could be spending her affection more wisely elsewhere.
But Vito wanted her. His possessive desire was a kind of ferocious pulse beat inside him, territorial and unwavering. He was glad to get this settlement out of the way, glad to put another stage of the scandal behind them. Along with whatever arrangements he made for her when they eventually parted, she would have this very generous cushion for her future, but this was no more an end point to their liaison than the press conference had been.
She was his. He was keeping her. No one would stop him. If Paolo had tried, Vito might very well have shed his cousin’s blood for the first time in twenty-odd years.
* * *
Gwyn only ever saw her stepbrother in casual clothes, usually wearing stubble and jeans. That’s why it took her a full three pulse beats to realize the man who came in behind her lawyer, the man who was clean-shaven, wore a tailored suit as razor sharp as the Donatelli men’s and said a grim, “About time,” in a voice she knew was Travis.
“Oh, my God! What are you doing here?” She was taken aback, surprised by a light rush of excitement at seeing a familiar face. She almost stepped forward to hug him, but embarrassed realization hit at the same moment, along with the only reason she could imagine he would turn up so unexpectedly. “Is Henry okay?”
“He’s fine. Worried sick about you,” he said, sending a hostile glance around the conference room. “Why haven’t you called him?”
“I...didn’t know what to say. You told him I was okay, didn’t you?”
“Are you? What is this?” He waved at the conference table where red folders had been set in front of a handful of chairs. “I told you not to sign anything without talking to me first.”
“I texted you,” she said.
“When I say talk, I mean talk, Gwyn.”
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Vito start forward with purpose, as if he took exception to Travis’s patronizing attitude. Paolo stopped him with a hand on his chest and came forward with his own extended.
“Paolo Donatelli. And you are?”
“Travis Sanders. Gwyn’s brother.” He bit the words off.
Step, she almost clarified, but Travis was still talking.
“I’d like a word with her if you’ll excuse us?” So dismissive to the men who owned the skyscraper.
Vito didn’t move a muscle, stating implacably, “I’ll stay.”
Travis tried to stare Vito down. All the hairs on Gwyn’s body stood up, electrified by the open animosity pinging back and forth between the men.