Page 36 of In Bed with Her Billionaire Bodyguard

She turned to find him looking at her. Really looking.

‘Now you know how I feel,’ he said, and her heart fluttered in her chest, replacing the earlier discomfort from the encounter with the paparazzo.

For just a moment, she’d allowed herself to forget. Forget that they couldn’t be seen in public together, that the easy affection she wanted to give was not possible. Forget that this, whatever it was, had limits before it had even started.

He pulled a chair out for her and she sat, before he took the seat opposite her.

‘Thank you,’ she said, not knowing how much she meant it until the words left her lips. He nodded, the look in his eyes understanding, rather than dismissing what the moment meant to her. And it was novel. To be so understood.

Being a twin was a connection that was hard to explain to most people. There was a bond there that went so deep, sometimes she’d wanted to break free from it. But then Nate had collapsed and the fear she’d felt that day, the genuine, honest-to-God moment of heart-stopping, mind-blanking fear had rocked her to her core.

And though that connection blazed strong between them, she sometimes felt that Nate didn’t take the time to understand her. Sending Luca after her without speaking to her, believing that she needed protection—or that she couldn’t have seen to that herself, believing that she wouldn’t realise that there was more to Luca than being a chauffeur, were prime examples. Perhaps even doubting that she could be CEO of Harcourts was another.

But Luca? She felt he did actually understand her. He didn’t underestimate her or what she wanted or could even achieve. And it frustrated her that she didn’t know the same about him. It was possible that his reticence was just with her, but Hope felt that it went deeper than that, instinctively knowing that he would be just as much of a closed book with other women.

She thought back to the other day, when they’d argued about this lifestyle.

‘What kind of life is that? It’s bland. It’s ridiculous. You’re being used for someone else’s momentary fascination and you’re allowing it.’

She’d never forget those words as long as she lived. And now, she realised, truly realised, he hadn’t been talking about her.

Hope waited until the waitress had poured both water and wine and left before asking the question burning in her chest.

‘Who is she?’

‘Who?’ Luca asked with a frown marring his brow.

‘The person you know who lives this life.’

Her gaze took in the pulsing muscle at his jaw, the living, breathing dragon that lived behind the blank gaze he’d erected between them. His body had betrayed nothing. But the energy that pounded beneath his skin, the change in temperature between them told her so much.

He stayed silent for so long, Hope looked away. What right did she have to pry into his life? She felt foolish and embarrassed for asking, for overstepping whatever line it was—as invisible as it might be—that lay between them.

She reached for her glass and her hand nearly knocked it over when he answered.

‘My mother.’

CHAPTER NINE

THEWORDSENDEDyears of silence and secrecy, landing between them like an unexploded bomb. Luca’s heart pounded in his chest. He’d never told anyone. Thirty-four years of keeping a secret was a hard habit to shake and even now he felt nearly sick at the thought of it.

He could see Hope trying to make a mental connection between his name and someone she knew and, when that failed, she looked at him, searching for features she might recognise. His cut glass cheekbones, the rich dark hair, the unusual silvery grey gaze.

‘Oh,’ she said, blinking as she put two and two together. It was his eyes. They were his mother’s. Anna Bertoli, the famous Italian actress who had managed to do the unthinkable: cross from Italy to Hollywood without disdain or derision. She was a screen siren with more global recognition than Harcourts could even dream of having.

‘I didn’t know she had children,’ Hope said, without thinking.

‘She doesn’t.’

Hope flinched at the cutting edge of his tone and he instantly regretted it. But the internal battle raging between wanting to protect his mother and wanting to tell her was riding him hard. Because he thought she, of all people, might understand. Hope knew the weight of the attention of the press, of the importance of reputation. And because he thought she might be able to keep his secret. Hoped that she would, because a part of him wanted someone he didn’t have to lie to, someone he didn’t have to keep himself separate from.

Luca’s sigh was a surrender. ‘There are only two other people, besides Anna and myself, that know this.’ He hadn’t realised it, but his palms had turned upwards, a physical manifestation of the question he didn’t have to ask.

‘I will never tell,’ Hope promised and he—who rarely trusted anyone—believed her with absolute certainty.

‘I don’t see her much. Ican’t,’ he said, trying to explain his very complicated feelings about the press and public life. ‘Anna forged her career as an ingenue, an enigma, an alluring woman who remained dedicated only to her career and her fans. That she’s not had children is part of her brand,’ he said with a shrug, as if he were running down the CV of a client rather than describing his mother’s achievements. In part because all of those achievements had required him to be invisible.

‘She must have been incredibly young when she had you,’ Hope hedged. He knew it was a gentle probe. Something he didn’t have to answer if he didn’t want to.

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