Rising Stars & It Started With… Collections. Кейт Хьюит
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She tickled Lola’s chin. The kitten swatted at her and she laughed. “I’m glad you went and got her.” She pictured him crossing over to her room and scooping Lola from her nest in the bathroom. That he even remembered the tiny kitten made her heart swell.
“She needs you as well as I.”
Needs. She told herself not to read anything into that word, but she couldn’t help it if it made her feel as though she’d swallowed sunshine.
There was something else she’d been thinking about, too. “Thank you for believing me last night, Renzo. It means a lot.”
His blue eyes seemed to see inside to her soul as he sat and watched her. “You don’t trust people, do you?”
Lola curled against her leg and Faith rested a hand on the tiny purring body. “I—I’m just cautious.”
“Why? Who hurt you, Faith?”
“I don’t know what you mean.” It was evasion, pure and simple. And it wasn’t working, because he was looking at her like he knew better. He did know better, she realized. Something about that knowledge pricked her to her core. He could see right through her, and she still knew nothing about him. Other than he had a big heart and a stubborn streak a mile wide.
And that his reputation as a lover wasn’t in the least bit exaggerated, she thought with a twinge of heat.
“I think you do,” he said softly. “Something happened to you. Something that made you leave home and never want to go back. Something that made you unwilling to trust.”
Faith’s shoulders sagged beneath the weight of his words. She was tired of being cautious, of carrying her burdens alone. It wasn’t tragic, what had happened—though she’d certainly thought so at the time.
No, with the perspective of years and distance, it was simply humiliating. Once she’d left Cottonwood behind, she’d never told anyone. She’d been terrified to tell anyone, as if it would bring the whole ugly business up again.
“Yes,” she said softly. “You’re right. But it’s not what you think. It’s just, um, embarrassing.”
“As embarrassing as my first sexual experience?” he said, one corner of his mouth turning up in a grin.
Faith smiled. “Worse, actually.” She toyed with the edge of the coverlet. “I had a boyfriend I thought I was terribly in love with in high school. It was assumed we would get married once school was over.”
“But you did not.”
“No.” She sighed as she let herself remember the ugly events of her senior year. “His name was Jason, and my parents adored him. He wanted to, uh, go all the way—and I didn’t. It almost happened, on my parents couch when they were out one night. But it didn’t, and Jason was angry with me.
“He texted me later, telling me it was over between us. Unless I proved I loved him.” Faith sucked in a breath, remembering how naive she’d been. How trusting and gullible and downright stupid. “I sent him a picture I took with my phone.”
“A picture?”
Faith closed her eyes. Even now, the humiliation was intense. “A naked picture, Renzo. I wasn’t smart enough to cut my head out of the picture when I took it. It was clearly me—and Jason sent it to a friend. Who sent it to another friend, and on and on. You get the idea. My parents were furious. I made my father look bad, you see, since he was a minister.”
Renzo reached over and squeezed her hand. “This is why you haven’t spoken to them in eight years?”
The lump in her throat ached. Her family hadn’t stood beside her at all. They’d thrown her to the wolves, and all because of her father’s self-righteousness. “Yes. It was hell, absolute hell, going to that school for the rest of the year. Everyone laughed at me. Everyone pointed and talked about me. I lost all my friends. I was mortified.”
She took a deep breath, determined to hold her angry tears at bay. It was cathartic to tell someone, and so very hard at the same time. “But my parents wouldn’t take me out of school or let me go to another school. They made me keep going until I graduated—which I barely did since I stopped studying and getting good grades. My dad thought it was a fitting punishment for my sins. When I graduated, I left town and I’ve never looked back. I even changed my last name so I could feel like someone new.”
She’d had to change her name because the thought of being Faith Winston made her physically ill. It was so much easier to become someone else, another Faith who had never done something as stupid as send a naked photo to a boy. Reinventing herself had been the only way to survive.
Renzo looked furious, but he leaned back against the headboard and pulled her into the curve of his arm. “You were young,” he said fiercely. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I was stupid,” she said. “And because I was eighteen, the authorities did nothing about it. I imagine you could still find the picture if you typed Faith Winston into a search engine.”
Renzo swore softly. “I’m sure you were absolutely beautiful, but I have no desire to see this photo when I have the real Faith warm and naked in my bed. And you were not stupid, cara mia. You were young. And in love with someone who did not deserve you.”
He handed her his cup of coffee. She took it silently, sipped. It was such an intimate gesture, but she was determined not to think it meant more than it did. No doubt he was always this solicitous with his lovers. And, right now, he felt sorry for her.
“Why don’t we get dressed and go into Florence?” he said a few moments later. “We’ll have lunch there, and I’ll take you to see the David.”
“I’d love that,” she said wistfully. “But you have a meeting this afternoon. I remember because I went over your calendar when we returned from the factory.”
And as much as she wanted to go to Florence with him, to pretend they were a normal couple on a date, she couldn’t let him down when it was her duty to manage his appointments. They might have spent one night together, but she was still his PA. The job came first.
He took the coffee from her and placed it on the bedside table. And then he tilted her head back, kissing her until she squirmed with the sizzling tension coiling inside her body.
“Cancel it,” he murmured a few minutes later. “In fact, cancel getting dressed, too. At least for another hour …”
Renzo was on edge in a way he couldn’t recall ever feeling before.
He trailed after Faith, who walked through the Accademia Gallery and oohed and ahhed at everything like a child at her first carnival. She was so lovely and sweet that he couldn’t imagine the sort of family who would be cruel to her. How could anyone want to hurt Faith?
She strolled along, oblivious to his dark thoughts. She’d temporarily forgotten him, and it made him oddly jealous. He wanted her to look at him the way she was looking at the art, wanted her to turn and slip her arm around his waist and stroll beside him, her warmth pressing into him.
He’d loved the expression on her face when they’d first entered the long Galleria del David where Michelangelo’s Prisoners lined the walls. Her soft pink mouth had dropped open, her eyes growing wide. She’d studied each of the Prisoners before making her way to the David, who stood on his pedestal beneath the dome at one end of the long gallery.
Voices echoed throughout the chamber, but it was also solemn, thanks to the guards stationed nearby who refused to allow shouting or running—or camera flashes. Faith stopped and stood with her head tilted back and her jaw loose as she let her gaze skim the perfect form of the sculpture.
Faith studied the statue, but Renzo studied her. He’d often heard about a woman glowing—when she’d had fabulous sex, when she was in love, when she was pregnant—but he’d never noticed that glow until today.
There