“Signore'sorders, Mrs. Ses—”
“Don't call me that,” I hiss under my breath.
“My apologies,signora.” His tone is respectful, but why do I have a feeling that he doesn't really mean it? And come to thinkof it, he looks like someone who came from the same world as Nicolo did, and so isn't it kinda fishy—
Hmm.
I look at him suspiciously. “I'm not supposed to see you now, am I?”
“No,signora.”
Knew it!
“But you let me see you...because youwantedme to see you. Didn't you?”
He doesn't say anything, but he doesn't deny anything either, so I'll take that as a yes. But even so. There's still something I don't understand—
“What exactly are his orders?”
“He asked me to watch over you.”
The words catch me off guard, and I'm just blurting out the first thing that comes to my mind.
“Is he still in danger?”
Because I still remember what he told me three days ago, and who knows if his father has another enemy who wants him dead, and—
“Would you care if it were so,signora?”
“I—I—” Why is this man so good at catching me unawares? “No,” I finally manage to say. “I d-don't care. At all.”
I say it as insistently as I can, but why do I feel like I'm not fooling anyone?
“Signoreasked me to report back to him,” Rollo says after a moment. “He wants me to make sure Mr. Wheeler doesn't do anything...improper.”
Oh, that's rich. That's so, so rich coming from the man who was in bed with another woman on our wedding night and then disappeared on me after eighteen years.
“I'm sorry to tell you this, but you're wasting your time. Elliot isn't the type to do something improper.”
Unlike your boss.
I don't actually say this out loud, but the way Rollo's eyes suddenly twinkle makes me think he's heard it nonetheless.
Oops.
I clear my throat and shift in my chair, smoothing the silk over my knee—and that's when I catch it. Rollo's eyes are no longer twinkling. They've dropped, just for a moment, to the green silk at my hip, and his forehead has done a very small thing that's almost, but not quite, a frown.
I freeze.
I don't move.
I don't move because Rollo is too polite to comment on a lady's dress and we both know it, but a man like Rollo doesn't have tocomment.A man like Rollo just has tolook,and the look is the comment, and the comment is—
Oh, no.
It's aprettydress.
That's why I'm wearing it. Because it'spretty.Because the occasion called for somethingpretty,and it's the only pretty thing I own, and that has nothing,nothing,to do with who paid for it eighteen years ago, and Rollo doesn't know that, Rollocan'tknow that, Rollo—