Seduced by Innocence Read Online Free PDF Page A

and always ready to stick my nose into everything, especially where it had no business being—according to my mother. But when I was about fifteen I—I changed.”
    “Of course, a girl grows up,” Maurizio agreed, “but she doesn’t usually alter completely.”
    “Well, I changed,” Terri said quickly. She didn’t want to explore this topic. Even in her own mind, she didn’t like to dwell on the way winter had fallen on her, nipping her spring promise in the bud, freezing her heart and her senses. She hurried on. “When we were children, Leo rescued me from trees I shouldn’t have climbed, from bullies. I rescued him from the wrath of the adults.” Her face softened. “It’s funny how someone can make you feel protective. He’s a cheery soul, full of life and laughter, and quite sure he can take care of himself. It’s just that somehow he’s like a puppy who doesn’t understand what a dangerous place the world is.”
    “And you do?” Maurizio was watching her face closely.
    “Yes, I do,” she said quietly. She became suddenly self-conscious. “I don’t know what’s making me talk like this. I’ve never discussed my feelings for Leo before.”
    “Perhaps you’ve never needed to,” Maurizio said. He added softly, “It can take a long time for us to understand what people mean to us.”
    “You say that as if it meant something special,” Terri said, watching him curiously.
    After a moment, he said, “It does. I, too, had a brother whom I had to protect, because he was much younger than me, little more than a boy. I raised Rufio after our parents died and I felt more like his father than his brother. I, too, feared for him because he didn’t know that the world was a dangerous place. I tried to teach him caution but—I failed.”
    “You talk about him in the past tense,” Terri said slowly.
    “Yes. Rufio is dead.” Maurizio’s tone was abrupt, shutting off further inquiry.
    Anyone else would have been awed into silence, but Terri’s quick sympathy had detected the pain behind the curtness, and she asked gently, “Has he been dead for long?”
    “Nine months. He died in February, during Carnival. It’s a time when we celebrate life, good food and wine and the joys of love.” A shudder went through Maurizio’s big frame. “And in that time he died,” he finished harshly.
    “That must have been terrible for you.”
    “Yes, it was,” Maurizio answered. “He was the closest family I had.”
    “You have no wife or children?” Terri asked the question simply and without archness, as though she was completely unaware that she was an attractive woman dining with an eligible man.
    “Neither.”
    “Then you’re completely alone. I’m sorry.”
    The sweetness of her voice touched his heart, and for a moment he could find nothing to say. This wasn’t how he’d planned it. He’d known in advance what Elena Calvani’s daughter would be like, and her looks had seemed to confirm it. She was beautiful in the same way as her mother, with an apparent fragility that was designed to put a man in a fever, and, he had no doubt, an inner core of steel to lure her victim to destruction.
    But so far, he couldn’t detect the steel. Instead, she dressed like a woman who didn’t want to be noticed, and talked about her missing brother with a gentle wistfulness that had given him a pang of guilt for what he was concealing. And in her protective attitude toward Leo, she’d revealed herself as a kindred spirit, with an empathy that had taken her straight to the heart of Maurizio’s loneliness. It was all wrong.
    He realized that he’d fallen into a reverie when he saw her looking at him inquiringly. He forced himself to concentrate. “I’m hardly alone,” he said, indicating his surroundings with a light laugh. “The owner of the Midas can never complain of too much solitude.”
    “But that wasn’t what I— I’m sorry. It’s none of my business.”
    He had a disconcerting desire to tell