Five dates with the bill.., p.13
Five Dates with the Billionaire, page 13
Thank God. Giovanni wasn’t at the table Lou sat at, but that only afforded Mia brief relief.
What if Lou realised it was her mother he was thinking of?
Shit.
What the hell would she do if he realised who she was? Change her identity again and walk away from this life as well? Walk away from Connor?
Oh, stop it! It’s not like you have a future with Connor. You’re going to have to walk away from him sooner or later.
But it would need to be sooner now Lou had seen her with Connor.
Clasping her hands together in her lap, Mia tried to pull herself together.
There was nothing for it. She would have to break things off with Connor tonight. She couldn’t risk putting him in jeopardy.
She cursed inwardly.
So much for her changing her appearance. Even with the change in hair colour, she must still resemble her mother far more than she’d realised.
When she’d been growing up, people had often said their bone structure was similar—except for the bump on Mia’s nose from a slight skirmish she’d had on the basketball court. But the bump had been repaired to make her look less recognisable as Callie. Nobody had considered that in removing the bump, she’d end up looking more like her mother.
Leave everything from your old life behind, the FBI agent had warned her.
Mia hadn’t been able to. She’d buried her own identity, but had needed something to link her to her mother, so she’d smuggled her mother’s treasured jewellery box and this pendant into her belongings.
‘Mia!’
Belatedly, she registered that Connor was leaning forward in his seat and trying to gain her attention.
Questions danced in his eyes. Questions she couldn’t answer.
Oh God, but she wished she could. More than once he’d stripped her of her clothing and she’d laid her body bare for him, but she could never bare her soul. No matter how long they were together, she’d always be holding something back from him—her true self. Her awful past.
‘Would you like to tell me what the bloody hell that was all about?’ Every word was quiet but held determined intensity.
Her stomach knotted up and she wanted to scream out with the fear of discovery and the agony of her deceit. ‘Pardon?’
‘Don’t treat me like a fool,’ he warned. ‘You have met that man before, haven’t you?’
Her throat worked up and down as she swallowed hard. Digging deep, she tried to come up with an Academy Award winning performance.
I have to lie for Connor’s protection as much as my own.
‘As far as I’m aware,’ she said, carefully, ‘we’ve never been introduced.’ It was a half-truth. Lou had never been introduced to her and certainly never since she’d been Mia Simms. She hadn’t been important enough to warrant an introduction, she’d simply been the gangly kid in the background not worth noticing.
No. Don’t even think about those times.
She picked up her fork and started eating her dessert in a pretence of calm normality. ‘As you said, everyone is supposed to have a double somewhere.’ She licked her fork. ‘Mm. This tiramisu is superb.’ She may as well have been eating cardboard.
Connor reached across the table and touched his finger to the corner of her mouth where she must’ve left traces of cream. Slowly, he placed his finger to his mouth. ‘You’re right. I hope you weren’t saving the coffee cream for later.’ Mia didn’t have time to enjoy the intimacy of the moment as he continued, ‘I got the distinct impression you didn’t want Correlli to recognise you.’
She supposed Connor’s tenacity and his refusal to take anything at face value was what had made him so successful in the business world, but he had to let this go.
‘How on earth could he recognise me? He’s American and I’m nobody famous.’
He let out an audible, impatient breath. ‘I don’t know how he knows you but he does, doesn’t he?’
‘Really, Connor! That’s absurd. I don’t know why you’d think it.’
‘You told me a few nights ago it was important not to oversell your product. You were way overselling. You think I didn’t notice your accent? Bloody hell! It sounded as though you were trying to hobnob it at a Buckingham Palace garden party.’
When she remained silent he mimicked, ‘Thank you ever so much. I’m so awfully glad.’
Unable to think of a sassy reply, or even a denial, she spooned some more of the dessert into her mouth making certain this time that none of it ended up on her lip. ‘Please don’t make fun of me. I get a bit nervous when I meet strangers. I guess my accent becomes more pronounced because I’m tense.’
‘Oh, come on.’ He sat back and made a dismissive gesture with one hand. ‘Even if I did believe that, it wasn’t necessary to go into such detail about your necklace. It was as though you were trying to throw him off. And then there was the mistake you made on his surname. Please. He said Correlli with a distinctive American roll on the ‘r’. There’s no way it sounded like Comelli.’ He leaned forward again and pinned her with his gaze. ‘Who is he, Mia, and why don’t you want him to recognise you?’
Connor was way too smart.
‘Hey, I don’t get out much, remember?’ She matched his low volume. ‘I’m the twenty-six-year-old who spends her Saturday evenings playing mahjong, so you’ve got to expect me to be a bit socially awkward.’ His grim expression told her he wasn’t convinced. ‘You paled before you made your mad dash under the table. I thought I’d made you panic by talking about us being together for longer than another two days.’
‘Panic?’ She tilted her head back and laughed. ‘I wasn’t panicking about anything. I don’t know how you come to that conclusion.’
Shut up! You’re overselling again and if you keep talking he’s going to hear the tremor in your voice.
She steeled herself to say what had to be said. ‘As for us staying together, if you’re going to be jumping to ridiculous conclusions like this—mistrusting me and turning what was a pleasant evening into an argument—then maybe we should end this here and now.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ He bunched up his serviette and threw it down on the table.
Calm down, Connor. Don’t draw any attention to us.
‘Please, Connor. Can we simply enjoy our dessert before we head to the airport?’
There wasn’t a chance she’d enjoy her dessert, but it might raise suspicion if they rushed out too quickly. Hopefully Lou would simply pass the whole incident off. But if he didn’t … if he went digging …
Damn that he knew Connor’s name.
Thank God they were flying out of Venice tonight. Even if Lou connected the dots and phoned every hotel in the city looking for Connor, they’d be long gone. But, a simple internet search would tell Lou exactly who Connor was and where to find him. And that would lead Lou to her.
She had to call Stanley about this.
Stanley! Of course.
Stanley was in Paris.
The weight pressing down on her shoulders eased a little.
She’d phone Stanley from the airport and arrange to meet with him—provided she could slip away from Connor.
Guilt pressed on her again. She’d have to phone her liaison agent at the FBI and tell him what’d happened. He’d be furious when he learned that she’d been wearing her mother’s necklace.
‘I’ll let this go for now, Mia, but I don’t believe you’re telling me the truth and I want to know why.’
Reaching up to push her glasses up the bridge of her nose she realised she wasn’t wearing them. ‘My glasses!’
‘I wondered how long it’d take you to miss them,’ Connor said as he reached into his jacket pocket. ‘I picked them up from the floor when you were under the table.’
Oh hell.
As if seeing Lou hadn’t been bad enough, he’d seen her whole face, unobstructed.
‘Why didn’t you give them to me straight away?’
‘I was enjoying looking at you without them.’
She held her hand out for them.
‘I’m surprised you didn’t miss them sooner.’ He took his linen napkin and began to clean the lenses. ‘You should get contact lenses, or at least buy a different frame.’
Her gut knotted. ‘Please give them back. They’re clean enough.’
A law unto himself, he held them up to the light to make certain they were clean. Her stomach hollowed out as she watched his eyes widen.
Lord! The evening was going from catastrophic to… whatever it was that was worse than catastrophic.
‘Spill,’ he demanded.
There was no use pretending she didn’t know what he was talking about but what could she say?
‘Why are you wearing these God-awful glasses if you don’t need them?’ ‘You’re an optometrist now, are you?’
‘I don’t have to be an optometrist to know these are only ordinary glass!’ To illustrate the point, he perched them on the bridge of his nose. ‘That’s it. We’re leaving and going somewhere we can talk without having to keep whispering.’
‘No!’ She reached out and grabbed his arm to stay him. ‘We can’t leave yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because …’ She cast around for a plausible excuse. ‘I want to finish my dessert.’ ‘You’re just pushing it around your plate.’
‘Connor, we promised Violet we’d have dinner here. I’m not leaving until I’m finished.’ She held out her hand. ‘Please give me my glasses back, I feel naked without them.’
With obvious reluctance, he offered her the spectacles. ‘Mia, are you in some sort of
trouble?’
That was an understatement.
She was in trouble on a whole lot of levels.
Any other time she would’ve dwelt more on the little shock of electricity that arced through her body when her hand brushed against Connor’s as he handed the glasses back. Now, all she could think about was whether or not Lou Correlli would identify her and if so, how long it would take him to reach out to Giovanni and act on the instructions Giovanni was certain to give him.
Kill her.
She tried to put a cork in the hysteria that made nausea rise in her stomach.
Connor sat perfectly still and waited for her to answer his question.
‘No, Connor. I’m not in trouble.’ Not for the moment. Her voice was steady, but her hands shook as she spooned some more dessert into her mouth willed her stomach to keep it down.
‘I don’t believe you. There’s something going on here that you’re not telling me about.’
Oh, how she wanted to tell him.
In a gentler tone he said, ‘You’ve shared your body with me in the most intimate ways possible. I believed what we shared was real and honest. Was I wrong?’
His words were like knives to her heart. ‘Of course not.’ The last thing she wanted to do was taint the memory of what they’d shared.
His lips twisted into a parody of a smile. ‘So what’s this?’
Self-loathing weighed her down as she perpetuated the lie that was her life.
It was unfair for her, but it was even more unfair to Connor because he had absolutely no idea what was going on. No idea of the stakes. No idea she’d selfishly dragged him into this. He’d told her she was playing a dangerous game, but he was the one here who’d unwittingly stepped into a world of evil.
‘Don’t shut me out, Mia.’
She tilted her head as she looked at him. If she came across as cold and unfeeling it would be easier for him to walk away. ‘Connor, when I went to bed with you, you warned me not to get too close. We agreed this would be temporary.’
‘And not half an hour ago you agreed to let it reach a natural conclusion.’
Hardening her heart, she said, ‘I did. And it has.’
‘Just like that?’
Of all the lies she’d had to tell to keep her past a secret, this was the most difficult. She clenched her jaw and used every bit of sheer bloody determination she had to keep her tears at bay. Spine rigid, she swallowed down on the words she really wanted to say.
Ending it now is the last thing I want but it’s the only thing I can do to keep you safe.
It had to be a clean break.
But it had to be a brutal break.
‘Taking me to bed didn’t earn you the right to know everything that goes on in my
life.’
His head jerked back and his lips thinned. For a split second, she imagined she saw a wounded look in his eyes, then it was gone, replaced with fury.
Everything in her longed to tell him she adored him.
Oh, God. What she felt for him was stronger than adoration.
The truth almost knocked her sideways.
She was in love with Connor.
Deeply in love.
Totally, madly, head over heels in love.
Of course it had happened.
Part of her had loved him even before they’d become lovers—loved the strong, smart, fair man she knew him to be. Now, as she looked across at him and saw the raw emotions playing over his features, she accepted the truth.
Hell.
What a mess!
How could she have been so stupid?
Hysteria swamped her and she was uncertain whether to laugh or cry at the cruelty of it all. She’d finally fallen in love and fate had intervened to cut short her happiness.
Danger bit at her heels and, loving Connor, she had to protect him. She had to swallow down on all she wanted to say—all she wanted to reveal—and walk away.
‘Mia,’ he tried again, ‘regardless of how short a time we’ve been lovers, if you’re in trouble I may be able to help.’
Yes, she was deeply in love with this wonderful, generous man who was offering to share her troubles even though she’d wounded him. But short of hiring a hit man to take out Giovanni and end this nightmare, nobody could help her. She shook her head. ‘Thank you, but I don’t need your help.’
His teeth must’ve gritted together because she could see the muscles in his cheek tensing.
As her heart splintered, she changed the subject. ‘You know I tried to make this dish once.’ She launched into a story about the Italian cooking class she’d attended with two of the ladies from the Saturday evening mahjong group. But all the while, tension made her shoulders ache.
She feared that at any moment she’d hear Lou Correlli’s New York accent behind her shoulder, rasping, ‘We’ve been searching for you, Callie.’
Chapter Fourteen
In a secluded corner of the first-class lounge at Marco Polo Airport, Connor’s patience finally snapped.
Damn it all! Not only had Mia called a halt to their affair, she’d retreated behind a wall, chatting dizzily about anything and everything ever since the New Yorker had spoken to them. It was obvious she was jittery and unsettled—hyper aware of everything around them and possibly running on adrenalin.
That she was ending their relationship and denying she was in trouble when they’d shared such a deep and intimate connection sent him into a tailspin. He was still losing altitude—as though he’d lost his stomach at thirty thousand feet and was rapidly plummeting towards the earth without a parachute.
It was time to be honest with himself.
This had not been an ordinary affair. His desire for Mia had hit hard and fast but, even before he’d taken her to bed, he’d made an emotional connection with her. He genuinely cared about her.
But how can you believe that when you know so little about her?
Emotion battled logic. The taunting voice in his head was right. What did he know about Mia?
All the initial misgivings he’d had about her flooded back and he turned to her. ‘I want to know what’s going on with you.’ When she remained silent he said, ‘Those glasses you don’t need to wear, the figure you hide, the hair you dye—are you trying to disguise yourself, Mia?’
Her short laugh was forced. ‘Don’t be silly. Why would I do that?’ ‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking.’
‘Given the women you’ve dated, I realise it may seem strange to you, but I really don’t like drawing attention to myself.’
‘You certainly didn’t like the American noticing you.’
Her whole body jerked. ‘Leave it, Connor.’
‘I can’t leave it. I genuinely care about you, Mia. Deeply.’
‘I didn’t ask you to care about me.’ She looked away from him, but not before he noticed the slight trembling of her lips and the sudden sheen of moisture in her eyes.
His gut wrenched.
‘Having sex with you was obviously a mistake, Connor. I’m starting to feel uncomfortable and… crushed by you trying to force your way closer.’
Her words rendered him speechless, his brain reeling at how quickly she’d erected barriers between them. Only a few short hours ago he’d been the most relaxed he’d ever been with a woman and everything had seemed so right.
Now she was calling it a mistake and felt crushed by him?
‘We’ve got two more days to go to honour our promise to Violet and make certain she has the operation. But, as of now, we end this and go back to sleeping separately.’ She stood. ‘Excuse me. I need to use the bathroom.’
Bloody hell.
No. This wasn’t right. None of this was right.
Every instinct told him she was in trouble and warned him not to take her words at face value. He needed to dig deeper if he was going to help her through whatever it was she faced.
He needed to find out more about Mia.
He needed to find out about Lou Correlli.
Considering Mia wouldn’t provide him with answers, Connor was left with only one option. Watching as Mia wound her way through the lounge and reached the ladies’ bathroom, he got out his phone and made the call.
‘Hey, Connor! I was only thinking of you today.’
‘Really?’ He wasn’t in the mood for small talk and it was a strain to respond casually. ‘You want to be thrashed in another game of tennis?’
Tony chuckled. ‘Actually, I’m arranging a reunion from our Eton class. I sent you an invitation.’
‘Sounds good.’ Tony had always been the lynch-pin that kept the group in contact.
‘What’s up?’
