Sienna POV
Luca watched me, and mistook my silence.
“Scared?”
I didn’t answer.
Fear had nothing to do with it.
What stopped me was that the offer had come too easily.
If I really moved into the Hawthorne Residence, everything I wanted to dig into would be far more convenient.
I’d only need the right moment, the right chance to leave evidence of what Luca and I were to each other.
I pushed the calculation down, looked up at him, and let a measure of hesitation show.
“If I really move in? I live in your house and keep being your lover. What happens to Evelyn?”
I paused, then added, with a careful note of unease, “She is your fiancée, after all.”
Luca looked at me, his expression unchanged.
“That’s my business. It has nothing to do with you.”
He answered flatly, without even leaving me a seam to keep probing at.
I lowered my head as though he’d talked me into it, my fingers closing lightly on his lapel.
In my head the decision was already made.
Since the opportunity had been handed to me, I had no reason to refuse it.
I lifted my face, deliberately letting my expression go a little dull, and leaned my whole weight into him, my forehead knocking against his chest.
“You talk too loud.”
Luca put a hand on my shoulder to steady me.
I took the opening, went up on my toes, and tried to kiss him.
He turned his face, and my mouth only caught the corner of his.
I frowned, pressed in closer, and let my arms wind slowly around his neck.
“I want a hug.”
I put all my weight on him and buried my face against his neck, as if I were too drunk to stand on my own.
“Sienna.”
”Hmm?”
His voice had gone lower than before.
A hand came around, closed on my arm, and tried to peel me off him.
“Stop pretending.”
I kept my eyes shut and let my voice go soft.
“I’m not pretending… I’m really dizzy.”
Then I held on tighter.
Five years ago, this had always worked on him.
Back then, when I wanted something out of him and didn’t want to ask for it outright, softening my voice was usually enough to make him stop and listen to the end of it.
“Luca, you were mean to me just now.”
”I wasn’t mean to you.”
”You were.”
I pressed closer to the side of his neck.
“I’m cold. Hold me tighter.”
My hand slipped in through the front of his coat, through the shirt, to his stomach.
I let the touch drag out, then lifted my head and looked at him through half-closed eyes.
“You’re so hard. It isn’t comfortable to hold on to.”
Luca’s breath stopped for a beat.
“Get off.”
There was a warning in it now.
I didn’t loosen my grip.
Instead I hooked one leg around his and went on clinging to him like a burr.
“No.”
I put my face back against his neck and drew the words out.
“I can’t walk. Carry me.”
Then, after a pause, as if I’d only just thought of it: “Do you have a big bed at your place? I want to sleep on something soft.”
He looked down at me.
“Sienna. Look carefully. Who am I?”
My head was still against his chest.
At that, I put on a show of trying to work him out, reaching up to touch his brow, then following the bridge of his nose down to his mouth.
“You are…”
I stopped there on purpose.
“You are…” I said it again, letting my eyes drift vaguely, and then laughed suddenly.
“You’re the new male model at Aurelius? You’re really handsome.”
His brows drew together.
“No, no.” I shook my head and corrected myself.
“You’re… Mr. Moretti? No, Moretti’s hair is blond…”
At the word Moretti, the arm around me tightened so sharply that a small sound escaped me.
His jaw set into a line.
I could tell that one more sentence out of me and he might actually throw me off the building.
Just as he was about to break, I laughed, reached up, and pressed his frown flat with a fingertip.
“I remember now.”
I cupped his face and smiled until my eyes curved.
“You’re Luca.”
His body went still.
“My Luc.”
I used to think Luca was too formal a name.
Between the two of us, and only between us, I called him Luc.
He had never once corrected me.
Luca said nothing.
He only looked down at me, and I couldn’t sort out what was in his eyes.
Anger, wariness — I couldn’t tell what he was actually thinking, and I didn’t keep testing him.
I knew I’d gotten what I came for.
At least tonight, he wasn’t going to leave me here.
He bent, one hand behind my knees and the other at my back, and lifted me.
I settled into him and kept my eyes closed, still playing drunk.
At an angle he couldn’t see, the corner of my mouth slowly turned up.
He carried me down the last of the stairs and pushed open the door of the building.
Night wind poured in and lifted the hem of my coat against my legs.
He walked toward the car at the curb.
The driver saw him and hurried around to open the rear door.
Luca put me into the back seat and got in after me.
The door shut and cut off the wind.
I lay on my side with my head in his lap, eyes closed, able to feel one of his hands resting on my shoulder.
The car started and pulled out onto the main road.
My eyes stayed shut, but my head was perfectly clear.
From tomorrow on, I would be living in the Hawthorne Residence.
I had found the most convenient way in to whatever it was Evelyn wanted.
All I had to do next was stay beside Luca and find something that would really prove what we were to each other.
The plan had gone more smoothly than I would have believed.
And yet, lying here in his lap, listening to the streetlights sweep past outside the window, I was carrying something I didn’t much want to admit to.
When he had asked me who he was, pressed against his chest the way I was, I had heard the beat his heart missed.
Perfectly clearly.