CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Giorgio sat stoically on the patio outside of the design studio at his house. In nothing but a bathrobe all day. Again. He hadn't designed in months. Missed an entire season for the first time in his career. He wondered if he would ever design again.

It had been over seven months since Pen died, yet her family was still dragging him on social media. Blaming him for everything that transpired. Blaming her, who was the shooter, and Shelly, who gleefully brought her there to catch him in the act, for nothing.

Not that it wasn't true. Had he not been in that hotel room with Effie Ross none of it would have happened. Although he could justify his actions. He could remind himself that Pen knew they weren't exclusive. She knew that even after they were married they weren't going to be exclusive. She claimed to agree with it.

But he knew she would have agreed to anything to become Mrs. Giorgio Janardi, and he exploited that. Even a blind man could have seen that Penelope Winton was so in love with him that she would have agreed to run in front of a speeding train for him. Now she was gone. Thanks to his horny ass that sweet girl was gone.

He leaned his head all the way back and then shook it, as if he could shake away the memories. Then he stood up.

He didn't know what time it was, but he knew it was bedtime. He knew that nighttime was the worst time for him because there was nothing to see but the darkness. Because he could never seem to get any decent rest when it was the designated time to rest. He hadn't had one single good night's sleep since that shitshow in that hotel room. And he knew tonight would be no different. But he went into his studio anyway and turned off the lights, and then untied his bathrobe as he made his way upstairs.

When he got up on the second-floor landing and made his way toward his bedroom at the end of the long, wide corridor, he noticed down one of the side halls that a light was on. Although he never ventured down that hall (he had no reason to), he knew a light had not been on the previous night. And he also knew no household staff was scheduled to be there that day.

He went down the hall to turn it off. But when he made his way up to the open door, he was at first baffled. There was a woman asleep on his floor. In his house! " What the fuck ?" he said out loud.

So loud that it woke up Vivian.

But when she woke up and saw a man standing over her with his open bathrobe, his naked body beneath that robe with his long, thick penis dangling right above her head, she sat up terrified. And when she realized who it was, she was even more mystified. She just stared up at him.

And he stared down at her. Because he knew who she was too. But why would she be in his house? On his floor? It made no sense!

But as she began attempting to get up on her feet, he reached out his hand to help her up.

That was when she saw that small tattoo on the back of his hand. That pink tattoo of a rosebud. Had there ever been any doubt that he was Jonni, the man she slept with nine years ago, that tattoo removed all doubt. And those feelings, as if they had only been dormant all those years, came flooding back. That was why she allowed him to help her up the same way he helped her up after that shooting in Beverly Hills. It felt the same.

And then both of them just stood there staring at each other, unable to reconcile the feelings that were rushing through their bodies with the awkwardness of being together again.

But it was Giorgio, who had a fixed frown on his face, that snapped out of it first. "What is the meaning of this?" he asked her.

The meaning of it? She found that an odd way to put it. "I was sleeping."

"But how did you get into my house? How did you come to be sleeping in my house?"

He didn't know? She was shocked that he didn't know. "I was hired as your live-in housekeeper."

Her response only confused Giorgio more. "I don't have a live-in housekeeper," he proclaimed. "I don't have a live-in anybody."

Now it was Vivian's turn to be confused. "But I was hired by your secretary. By Mrs. Kabec. . . I can't remember her name." She felt like this man was going to deem her a lunatic and have her arrested. Was this some sick joke? "I thought you knew, sir."

Giorgio could feel her anxiousness. He wouldn't put it past Rhonda to pull some stunt like this.But why, he wondered? "I thought you owned your own cleaning company. I gave you that contract to clean ten floors at my headquarters. Why would you need to be anybody's live-in anything?"

"I lost the company when I got arrested. This guy named Mason, my partner's boyfriend, took over. He owns a hundred percent."

"Why would you and your partner let him take over the entire company?"

"We were going to lose it anyway. I was locked up and Nayla, she's my partner and best friend, wasn't the kind of person to manage anything well. She wanted Mason to have it."

Giorgio hated to hear that. He remembered her mentioning how hopeful she was about her company. But that still didn't explain her presence in his home. "And why are you sleeping on the floor in this broom closet?" He looked around at the tiny, windowless room. Saw one twin bed. "Or whatever it is."

Vivian found it amazing that he wouldn't know every room in his own house, but that wasn't her focus. Her focus was to make sure he didn't call the cops on her. That he didn't think she had broken in or was stalking him or anything like that. "When she hired me she said it's my bedroom."

That didn't clear up anything for Giorgio. "When who hired you?"

"Your secretary. Miss Kanectady or Kanec . . . I can't remember her name. But she's the one who told me I was going to live here and be the housekeeper. She brought me to this room and said this was my bedroom."

Her explanations explained nothing to Giorgio. "If it's your bedroom, then why aren't you sleeping in the bed? Why are you sleeping on the floor?"

"That mattress is hard as a rock," Vivian said.

Giorgio almost smiled. That was another thing he remembered about her: her brutal honesty. But he kept staring at her. Somehow he knew that wasn't the reason.

Vivian hated to admit it, but she wasn't going to lie to him. "I just got out of jail," she said and looked at him. He hired that lawyer for her, but did he mean for that act of charity to end up in his house? But the truth was the truth. "When I saw that this room had no window and when the door was closed," she continued, "I kind of panicked. It made me feel like I was back inside. Back in that cell. I was scared of being locked up again so I opened the door and slept in front of it so nobody could close it back."

Giorgio felt a pang in his heart when she gave that reason. She'd probably been through hell in that jail. And Rhonda was putting her in the tiniest room in his house to do what? Why? And why didn't she tell him about this little hire?

But his immediate concern was Vivian. He didn't know why, but he felt that need to look out for her again. All those years had passed, but that need was still there. And he wasn't about to allow her to sleep on the floor, and certainly not in that broom closet. "Come with me," he said and began walking away.

Questions swirled through Vivian's head. Was he going to call the Police? Was he leading her to some other room to take advantage of her? He did, after all, expose himself to her.

But she didn't believe he'd do that on purpose. That look on his face was too sincere for him to be that creepy. She even saw that tenderness in his eyes she remembered seeing at that party nearly a decade ago. He wasn't like that. There was no creepiness in him. He wouldn't harm her. Somehow she knew it.

And that was why she didn't hesitate. She followed him.