“How can you underestimate yourself, when you’ve been such a stabilizing influence in so many lives since you first set foot on Castaldini? Without you, Castaldini would have gained many new enemies and wouldn’t have been able to prevent a few old ones from gaining ground. Without you, your sister’s and my cousin’s marriage wouldn’t have lasted one year, let alone ten.”
“Whoa. Don’t go overestimating me to counteract my alleged underestimation of myself. Paolo and Julia love each other.”
“And their love, like mine and Donatella’s, could have been total chaos, until one or both couldn’t bear it anymore.”
“You never told me it was like that with Donatella.”
“It was so intense, it sometimes left us gasping for breath. The good times were heaven, but the bad times were hell, and, regretfully, they lasted longer. Both of us were older and stronger than Paolo and Julia, and we weathered the hellish parts and would have done so forever had she lived. But I fully believe that without your support and counsel, the intensity of Paolo and Julia’s love, muddied by his impetuousness and her insecurity, would have pushed them apart in less than a year. They have a beautiful marriage, and Julia is that giving, nurturing wife and mother now because of you.”
“Oh, no, you’re not handing me all the credit here. Julia struggled long and hard, and Paolo did and still does everything in his power to do his part and more. Even though I may have helped, she would have done the same for me had the situation been reversed.”
“So you think your role isn’t to be admired or thanked?”
“I don’t care one way or another for admiration or thanks. But whatever my role, as you call it, was, it’s over.”
“Exactly. And you’re free now to start a new phase in your life. To live for yourself at last.”
Everyone must be fed up with her. They were all bringing it up. She huffed. “Yeah, now I’ve run out of excuses not to.”
“Causes, Phoebe. And you’ll never run out of those to champion. I ask only for the honor of sharing your life while you find more lives to enrich. You and I, we’re kindred spirits.”
“We may be, Armando, but I have nothing to offer you.”
Suddenly he winced, his eyes flashing gold. “Dio—how didn’t I see this before? It’s another man, isn’t it? A man you loved and lost, but not like I lost Donatella? This man hurt you, didn’t he? But you still can’t move on. You are still waiting for him.”
She gave denial a second’s consideration, especially since she wasn’t waiting for Leandro as he intimated. She just nodded.
The flare in his eyes and the step closer he took seethed with urgency. “Don’t let that man claim more of your life.”
She shook her head wryly. “I’m done letting people, or life, do things to me. I’m taking charge, as of now.”
“I’ll hold you to that. And Phoebe…” Her heart dropped a beat at the harshness that suddenly blazed on his face as he cast a look behind him. “It’s Leandro, isn’t it?”
This time she didn’t consider denying it. She even told him how things stood. She was done hiding things.
Armando digested this with a frown. “He might be the power Castaldini needs now, but he always was like a force of nature, unstoppable and indiscriminate on his quest for greatness. Now that he’s fulfilled his potential…” He suddenly caught her by the shoulders. “Stay away from him, Phoebe.”
Her eyes escaped his, clung to Leandro. “I can’t, Armando.”
“If he hurt you before, he will destroy you now.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not a silly twenty-year-old anymore.”
“It’s because you’re a mature and very sensible thirty-year-old that I am worried. What you felt when you were barely an adult will pale in comparison to what you’re capable of feeling now.”
She touched his hard cheek, loving him, but knowing she’d never be in love with him. She had terminal one-man-woman disease. “Here’s another possible outcome to all this. That I’ll put things in perspective, purge them and move on.”
He clearly wasn’t buying that. Then he gritted his teeth. “I may not be as powerful as he is—yet. But if he ever hurts you again, I’ll destroy him. Tell him.”
And with that he turned on his heel and strode away. She stared after him, stunned. Who knew Armando was capable of all that passion? Evidently it had taken his late wife—and Leandro—to rouse the sleeping tiger. Not her. Thank God.
Speaking of tigers, an even more impressive one, the one for her, had gotten rid of his human shackles and was stalking toward her with danger and desire blasting off him.
“That was quite a conversation,” he drawled.
She cocked her head at him. “Yes, it was.”
“Nothing more to say?”
She sighed. “You like to say that, don’t you?”
“I can’t think of anything I dislike saying more. You have a habit of forcing me to say it.”
“I’m making the poor mogul prince do things against his will?”
Emerald fire leapt in his eyes. “You could make an army of mogul princes jump in the air and stay there until you say ‘down.’”
She exaggerated a flutter. “Whoa, I must be super potent.”
“And how. And you are super exasperating, too.”
She gasped in mock innocence. “What have I done now? Besides ignore another of your infringing allusions?”
He snatched her hand to his lips for a compulsive kiss. “How many years will it take you to get enough of saying that to me?”
He was telling her she had…years? Figure of speech, girl. “What you’re saying is, find some fresh lines, huh? Drat. I loved that line. I was so proud of how pompous it sounded. I churned it up to give you the benefit of all those important-sounding words I learned in law school.”
He growled, bit into the flesh at the base of her thumb. “You talk too much, yet say nothing. The sure sign of a master lawyer.”
She gasped at the pleasure shooting from her thumb to her core. “Says the master mogul-cum-diplomat.”
“Phoebe, voi shaitana bella, you beautiful devil, tell me what Armando had to say that took so long and looked so serious.”
“Why don’t you ask him? You are related, after all.”
“Si, and I used to even like the man. Now you’re really putting il bastardo in harm’s way.”