The back of the Majestic smelled like new paint and grease, with stale odors he’d just as soon not identify. Steve slipped inside, finding the dressing rooms by instinct more than memory.
He heard her before he reached the closed door, and grinned to himself. The long-suffering Costanza was the recipient of one of Francesca’s famous tirades, her Italian temper flaring into heated invectives, the gutter speech of her youth more familiar despite her outward elegance.
He opened the door slightly, leaned his shoulder against the frame and waited.
“Am I to wear a gown without a sleeve?” Francesca was demanding shrilly. “It is too much, this! I am not some simple actress who does not care how she looks. Bah! I do not know why I bother! This town has never appreciated my talent, and is full of crude men who leer at me as if they have never seen a woman before!”
“They have never seen a woman like you, carissima.” Costanza’s answer was mechanical and dutiful as she bent to pick up the sleeve her precious bambina had carelessly discarded on the floor. “I will sew it back on. Take off the gown now, before you rip the other sleeve.”
“Oh, it is not the sleeve! It is this town! I do not think I can bear it here.” Pacing, her dark hair loose and held from her face by a glittering diamond comb, she swept regally across the carpet, angrily snatching up a glass of champagne and downing it in a single gulp.
“It is not the town you hate,” Costanza observed with a sniff. “It is a man.”
“No! I never think of him anymore. I am happy with Lord Lindhaven, you know I am.”
“So? You do not seem to miss him when we are away.” Costanza’s sturdy body quivered with indignation, and when she looked up, her dark eyes widened with incredulity and then dismay. “Ah, it is the banditti!”
“I told you no,” Francesca said irritably, flouncing around to glare at her companion, but as she caught sight of him in the doorway, the words died in her throat and the empty champagne glass dropped to the floor with a tinkling crash.
“Stefano! Oh, it is you!”
“Still making poor Costanza’s life miserable, I see. Don’t you ever get tired of being angry?”
His lazy stance in the doorway, and the slow drift of his gaze over her, made her laugh throatily, her dark head tilting back so that her long dark hair swung seductively.
“I never tire of being angry at you, my banditti. What are you doing here, in this hellish town?”
“I could ask you that.”
“Yes.” Her glossy lips curved into a smile, and she moved to him to press them against his mouth in a lingering kiss that made Costanza mutter under her breath. “Leave us,” Francesca commanded, ignoring her protests. The older woman stalked from the dressing room, banging the door loudly behind her.
“She still hates me, I see,” Steve said, his arm having gone automatically around Francesca’s waist. “I feel quite at home again.”
“Do you? I think not.” She drew back a bit, eyeing him with a critical frown. “You look—dangerous. Is that a new scar I see on your so beautiful face?”
He caught the hand she put against his jaw, turned it over to kiss the palm, then held it. “I just came by for old times’ sake, ’Cesca. I can’t stay.”
A note of sadness crept into her tone. “It is your wife, caro? She is with you?”
“Yes, but that’s not the reason. Ginny will be staying in town. I’d like it if you avoided her. She doesn’t need any reminders of recent problems right now.”
A dark brow arched. “And how would seeing me remind her of recent problems? Oh, have you two been quarreling about me? How provincial, caro!”
“Nothing so mundane, ’Cesca. Do you recall a persistent admirer of yours by the name of Rafael Luna?”
Francesca waved a dismissive hand. “So many men follow me persistently. I cannot remember them all, Stefano!”
“But perhaps you recall the man who accosted you in Florence. I had to throw him bodily out of your dressing room after he saw us together.”
“Perhaps I recall him. Has he followed me here? How intriguing. Should I see him, do you think?”
“That would be rather difficult. I had to kill him.”
Francesca laughed. “Such a vicious banditti! Did you kill him for me?”
“No. He abducted Ginny to get to me. She went through hell because of him—and because of you and me.”
“I had nothing to do with this Luna!”
“No, but he blamed me for keeping him from you. And Ginny suffered for it.”
“So you want me to avoid her.” Francesca stared at him for a long moment, then shrugged. “I shall not seek her out, if that concerns you. But should she confront me, I will not play the role of a coward. I warn you now.”
“I don’t think Ginny will be confronting you, ’Cesca. I hate leaving her behind, especially now, but I must.”
“So you try to wrap her in cotton wool so she does not see anything unpleasant? I see. Do you recall that I once told you to go back to your wife, that you must love her? I was more right than even I knew.”
Sighing, Francesca stepped back; her luscious figure was flattered by the gown that hugged her curves, and she looked every inch the princess she claimed to be.
“I knew the day would come, Stefano. I felt it. You were never really mine. But then, I was never really yours. It was always a fleeting thing between us. I do not have time for a man in my life.”
“Not even Lindhaven?” Steve’s mocking reminder of her most faithful protector made her shrug.
“He accepts me as I am, and makes no demands upon me. I am free with him.”
“He’s the kind of man you need in your life.”
“Yes.” She gazed at him with a faint smile. “You and I,
