I’m not a nice man, bambina. I’m never going to be that nice man. If you give yourself to me, you’re entering into a world that will scare you. He didn’t think himself a nice man, but in the next breath he told her just as honestly . . . Trust that always, always, before any other, I will have your back. I’ll keep you safe. I’ll make you happy and give you the world. He didn’t understand how beautiful he was to her. How amazing that a man like him existed.

“You don’t know anything about me. What I’m like. What my character is. It’s impossible to want to be with me, to say I’m your world, when you don’t even know me.” It killed her to state the truth, because she was giving him up. And she wanted him. But it was the truth, and she wasn’t going to live a lie just so she could have him.

He laughed softly, shaking his head, his gaze drifting possessively over her face. “Do you think after spending an entire lifetime knowing bad, studying bad in every form, I don’t know good when I see it? I’ve spent thousands of hours in the company of superficial. Of shallow. All about looks. Money. Image. Grasping and greedy. That’s the last thing you are.”

“You can’t know that, Stefano,” she whispered. Her heart pounded so loud she feared he might hear it.

“Really? Bambina.” His fingers curled around the nape of her neck. “You gave your coat to a stranger, a woman in the street, when you needed it desperately. Joanna has money, a family, a warm house to live in. She was with you. She didn’t offer her coat. Neither did anyone else walking down that street seeing Dina shivering and cold. They saw a homeless woman if they saw her at all. You saw a human being.”

“But . . .”

“I gave you my coat, Francesca, with well over a thousand dollars in the pocket. How many women or men for that matter would have left that money there?”

“I bought boots.” Her voice was small and color crept up her neck. Her gaze slid from his; she was ashamed at having to admit she’d taken his money and still couldn’t pay it back.

His thumb slid along her jaw and then traveled to her bottom lip. He traced the soft curve, sending little shivers down her spine.

“Bella, I sent my brother into the store to make certain you bought yourself shoes. That was important to me. And you took extra care of my coat. Hanging it in Pietro’s office away from anyone else. You were freezing in that horrible apartment, yet instead of using the coat to keep warm, you hung it carefully.”

“I thought about using it,” she admitted. The floor was dirty and even after she’d scrubbed it, she didn’t want his coat ever touching it.

“But you didn’t, even though you should have. You didn’t want anything to happen to it. It mattered to you.”

It did matter more than she cared to admit to herself. She kept saying she wanted to return his coat to him. It seemed so much of a responsibility, but if she was being strictly honest with herself, she knew the truth was she wanted to wrap herself in his scent. He made her feel safe. Having his coat was a little like having a part of him. She moistened her lips, the tip of her tongue tasting the pad of his thumb. Her heart jerked and her sex clenched and went slicker, hotter. Needier.

“Stefano, if you knew the things they say about me . . .”

“The things Barry Anthon said about you? Made up about you? Manufactured evidence against you?” His voice went cold. Hard. Scary. “When you woke up from your nightmare and you told me about him . . .”

“Stop.” Now her face was cherry red. She was so ashamed of deliberately dragging him into her mess. “You have no idea what I did. I manipulated you. I knew you were scary protective. Off-the-charts protective. I told you about Barry . . .”

“Because you were half awake and scared out of your mind. You think holding you in my arms I couldn’t feel that? We’re connected. I know you feel that, too. The moment you were awake enough, you backtracked.”

She had. “Still, I did drag you into my nightmare. It doesn’t count that I regretted it afterward. That is a terrible character flaw, to use someone because I felt so alone and tired and . . .” She broke off.

“Scared. You were scared and you needed someone.”

“Not just anyone.” She had to give him that much. Give him truth. “You made me feel safe for the first time in what seems forever, since my parents died, since my sister was murdered,” Francesca confessed in a little whisper.

“I want you to feel safe when you’re with me, dolce cuore. Most importantly, when you thought Anthon had found you, you decided to run to protect me. In my lifetime, I can’t remember another human being protecting me. I was raised to be a shield standing between harm and everyone else. I learned that from age two. You have no idea what it meant to me, knowing that you were terrified, no money, nothing at all, yet you would leave in order to protect me.”