“You…” She swallowed. “You’re not…”
He gazed at her with assassin’s eyes. “Shit. Leave it to me to pick up a stalker.”
“Who are you?” But she’d seen his movies, and she already knew the answer.
“Signore Gage!” Anna Vesto burst into the room. “This woman! She would not leave when I told her to. She is- she is-” The English language couldn’t contain her indignation, and she released a torrent of Italian.
Lorenzo Gage, the philandering movie star who’d driven Karli Swenson to suicide, was also Dante, the Florentine gigolo, the man she’d allowed to taint a corner of her soul. She slumped into one of the chairs along the wall and tried to breathe.
He growled at the housekeeper in Italian.
She replied with wild gestures.
Another growl from him.
The woman huffed and swept from the room.
He stomped out onto the loggia and snapped off the music. When he returned, a lock of inky hair had fallen over his forehead. He’d left the bottle behind, but the pistol still hung from his hand.
“You’re trespassing, sweetheart.” His lips barely moved, and his deadly drawl sounded even more menacing in real life than it did in digital SurroundSound. “You really should have called first.”
She’d had sex with Lorenzo Gage, a man who’d bragged in a magazine article that he’d “screwed five hundred women.” And she’d let herself become five hundred and one.
Her stomach heaved. She buried her face in her hands and whispered words she’d never before spoken to another human being, never even thought to speak. “I hate you.”
“That’s how I make my living.”
She sensed him coming closer and dropped her hands, only to find herself staring at the pistol.
It wasn’t exactly pointed at her, but it wasn’t exactly
“Just when I think the press can’t sink any lower. What happened to your
“The same thing that happened to your Italian.” She sat straighter, finally focusing on what he was saying. “The press? You think I’m a reporter?”
“If you wanted an interview, all you had to do was ask.”
She jumped up from the chair. “You think I went through all
“Maybe.” Faint alcohol fumes wafted her way. He planted his foot on the chair she’d vacated. She gazed at the pistol resting on his thigh and tried to decide whether he was threatening her or he’d forgotten it was there.
“How did you find me, and what do you want?”
“I want my house.” She took a step back, then was angry with herself for doing it. “Is this how you get your kicks? Disguising yourself so you can pick up women?”
“Believe it or not, Fifi, I can do that without a disguise. And I was worth a hell of a lot more than those fifty euros you left.”
“A matter of opinion. Is that gun loaded?”
“Beats me.”
“Well, put it down.” She gripped her hands.
“I don’t think so.”
“Am I supposed to believe you’ll shoot me?”
“Believe whatever you want.” He yawned.
She wondered how much he’d had to drink and wished her legs didn’t feel so boneless. “I won’t tolerate being around guns.”
“Then leave.” He sprawled into the chair, legs extended, shoulders slouched, pistol on his knee. A perfect portrait of decadence in the Villa of the Angels.
No power on earth would make her leave until she understood what had happened. She clenched her hands tighter to keep them from trembling and managed to drop into the chair across from him without knocking it over. She finally knew what hatred felt like.
He studied her for a moment, then pointed the pistol toward a wall-size tapestry of a man on horseback. “My ancestor, Lorenzo de’ Medici.”
“Big deal.”
“He was a patron of Michelangelo. Botticelli, too, if the historians are right. When it comes to Renaissance men, Lorenzo was one of the best. Except…” He stroked the stock with his thumb and regarded her with narrow- eyed menace. “He let his generals sack the city of Volterra in 1472. Medicis aren’t good people to piss off.”
He was nothing more than an egocentric movie star going through his paces, and she wouldn’t be intimidated. Not much, anyway. “Save your threats for the ticket buyers.”
The menace vanished, replaced by boredom. “Okay, Fifi, if you’re not the press, what are you up to?”
Now that she’d dug in, she realized she couldn’t talk about the night before last-not yet, not ever. The house. That’s why she’d come here in the first place.
“I’m here to settle a disagreement about the house I rented.” She tried to put more authority behind her words, something that came normally to her but wasn’t so easy now. “I paid for two months, and I’m not leaving.”
“Why, exactly, am I supposed to care about this?”
“It’s your house.”
“You rented this house? I don’t think so.”
“Not this house. Your farmhouse. But your employees are trying to kick me out.”
“What farmhouse?”
“The one down the hill.”
His lip curled. “I’m supposed to believe the woman I
Even she found it hard to swallow, except that the tourist heart of Florence was small, and she’d run into the young couple she’d met in the Uffizi at two other sites that same day. “Sooner or later every tourist in Florence ends up in the Piazza della Signoria. We just happened to get there at the same time.”
“Lucky us. You look familiar. I thought so last night.”
“Do I?” This was a topic she didn’t care to pursue. “I rented your farmhouse in good faith, but as soon as I arrived, I was told to leave.”
“Are you talking about that place where old Paolo used to live, down by the olive grove?”
“I don’t know who old Paolo is. A woman named Marta seems to be living there now, which I don’t like but am prepared to tolerate.”
“Marta… Paolo’s sister.” He spoke as if he’d dredged up a distant memory. “Yeah, I guess that is part of this property.”
“I don’t care who she is. I paid my money, and I’m not leaving.”
“Why are you being kicked out?”
“Something about trouble with a sewer.”
“I’m surprised you want to stay, considering what happened between us. Or maybe you’re just pretending to be pissed off.”
His words jolted her back to reality. Of course she couldn’t stay. She’d violated the essence of who she was with this man, and it would be unbearable to run into him again.
A crushing sense of disappointment joined her other painful emotions. In the farmhouse garden she’d experienced her first peace in months, and now it was being ripped away from her. She still had a little pride. If she had to leave, she’d at least do it in a way that wouldn’t let him think he’d won. “You’re the actor, Mr. Gage. Not me.”
“I guess that remains to be seen.” A crow cawed a warning note from the gardens. “If you’re staying, you’d better keep away from the villa.” He rubbed his thigh with the barrel of the pistol. “And don’t let me find out you’re lying. You won’t like the consequences.”
“That sounds like a line from one of your horrible movies.”
