Lessons Learned

murmured. “Now, we push away to the truth. You’re angry with me, for this.” He set the clipping down. “You’re angry because there’s more truth in it now than there was when it was written.”
    “I don’t want to be on anyone’s list, Carlo.” Her voice had lowered, calmed. She dug balled fists into the pockets of her skirt. “Not yours, not anyone’s. I haven’t come this far in my life to let that happen now.”
    He stood, wondering if she understood how insulting her words were. No, she’d see them as facts, not as darts. “I haven’t put you on a list. If you have one in your own mind, it has nothing to do with me.”
    “A few weeks ago it was the French actress, a month before that a widowed countess.”
    He didn’t shout, but it was only force of will that kept his voice even. “I never pretended you were the first woman in my bed. I never expected I was the first man in yours.”
    “That’s entirely different.”
    “Ah, now you find the double standard convenient.” He picked up the clipping, balled it in his fist then dropped it into the wastebasket. “I’ve no patience for this, Juliet.”
    He was to the door again before she spoke. “Carlo, wait.” With a polite veneer stretched thinly over fury he turned. “Damn.” Hands still in her pockets, she paced from one stack of books to the other. “I never intended to take this out on you. It’s totally out of line and I’m sorry, really. You might guess I’m not thinking very clearly right now.”
    “So it would seem.”
    Juliet let out a sigh, knowing she observed the cutting edge of his voice. “I don’t know how to explain, except to say that my career’s very important to me.”
    “I understand that.”
    “But it’s no more important to me than my privacy. I don’t want my personal life discussed around the office water cooler.”
    “People talk, Juliet. It’s natural and it’s meaningless.”
    “I can’t brush it off the way you do.” She picked up her briefcase by the strap then set it down again. “I’m used to staying in the background. I set things up, handle the details, do the legwork, and someone else’s picture gets in the paper. That’s the way I want it.”
    “You don’t always get what you want.” With his thumbs hooked in his pockets, he leaned back against the door and watched her. “Your anger goes deeper than a few lines in a paper people will have forgotten tomorrow.”
    She closed her eyes a moment, then turned back to him. “All right, yes, but it’s not a matter of being angry. Carlo, I’ve put myself in a delicate position with you.”
    Carefully, he weighed the phrase, tested it, judged it. “Delicate position?”
    “Please, don’t misunderstand. I’m here, with you, because of my job. It’s very important to me that that’s handled in the best, the most professional manner I can manage. What’s happened between us…”
    “What has happened between us?” he prompted when she trailed off.
    “Don’t make it difficult.”
    “All right, we’ll make it easy. We’re lovers.”
    She let out a long, unsteady breath, wondering if he really believed that was easy. For him it might be just another stroll through the moonlight. For her, it was a race through a hurricane. “I want to keep that aspect of our relationship completely separate from the professional area.”
    It surprised him he could find such a statement endearing. Perhaps the fact that she was half romanticist and half businesswoman was part of her appeal to him. “Juliet, my love, you sound as though you’re negotiating a contract.”
    “Maybe I do.” Nerves were beginning to run through her too quickly again. “Maybe I am, in a way.”
    His own anger had disappeared. Her eyes weren’t nearly as certain as her voice. Her hands, he noted, were twisting together. Slowly, he walked toward her, pleased that though she didn’t back away, the wariness was back. “Juliet…” He lifted a hand to brush through her hair. “You can negotiate terms and times, but not emotion.”
    “You can—regulate it.”
    He took both her hands, kissing them. “No.”
    “Carlo, please—”
    “You like me to touch you,” he murmured. “Whether we stand here alone, or we stand in a group of strangers. If I touch your hand, like this, you know what’s in my mind. It’s not always passion. There are times, I see you, I touch you, and I think only of being with you—talking, or sitting silently. Will you negotiate