Free The Widow by Anne Stuart

him an old goat is giving him the benefit of the doubt.”
    It was like a dash of ice water on a hot day. She opened her mouth to protest, then closed it again. “He slept with my mother,” she said abruptly. “She was hardly a little girl.”
    â€œDid he? He probably did it just to get back at you.”
    Why the hell had she told him that? At least he seemed almost bored by the information, and for some reason she couldn’t keep from talking. Maybe it was all that hot, damp flesh filling the doorway. She was babbling to keep her mind off it.
    â€œIt was before we…before he painted me.”
    â€œThen he slept with her to get to you. Your mother must have loved that once she figured it out.”
    It hadn’t taken Olivia long to realize Pompasse wasn’t interested in painting her mature charms—he was mainly focused on her seventeen-year-old daughter. Charlie still didn’t like to think about that horror scene in the hotel in Venice, when she told Olivia she was going to marry him.
    â€œMy mother was more concerned about me than about her own ego,” Charlie said smoothly. It was a good lie, the right lie, and she’d practiced it for the last thirteen years. It was even the same lie Olivia had told her, but Charlie had never been able to believe it.
    â€œYeah, sure,” Maguire said.
    â€œAnd what the hell business is it of yours? Why am I telling you these things?” She didn’t know who she was madder at—Maguire or herself.
    His grin was slow, wicked and devastating. She’d never had a good-looking, mostly naked man grin at her, and her stomach knotted. “Maybe I’m just a good listener,” he said.
    â€œCould you at least put some clothes on?” she said irritably.
    â€œSure thing, lady.” He reached for the knot of the towel, but she spun around before he could drop it.
    â€œAnd close the damned door.”
    â€œSure thing,” he said again. “Next time knock and you’ll preserve your maidenly blushes.”
    She waited until she heard the door close. Maidenly blushes, my ass, she thought. Just because she didn’t like muscle-bound men swaggering around in skimpy towels…
    Not that he was actually muscle-bound. He was definitely strong, but not like some of the men she’d seen on the beaches, with their carefully delineated muscles. Maguire just looked like a man who’d done hard, physical labor for a good portion of his life.
    She looked back at the bed. Why hadn’t Lauretta told her about Pompasse? That he’d ended up crawling into her bed, wrapped in her clothes, mourning her desertion? But then, what good would it have done? She was beyond feeling guilty. Pompasse had been like a huge, devouring spider, and most of the women who’d been caught in his web were still there, numbed, no longer struggling to break free.
    At least she had gotten away. Even if she was back now, she was no longer trapped. Pompasse was dead—he couldn’t reach out from beyond the grave.
    She sank down on the small wooden bench beneath the window, staring at the bed. She couldn’t wait until this was finished—until Pompasse’s ashes were buried in the gardens of the place he’d loved, until the will was read and the estate settled. If it was like America it would take forever for the financial details to be worked out, but once she could put it in the hands of the lawyers she could forget about it. Go back to Manhattan, to her East Side apartment and her lovely little restaurant. Go back to her safe, secure life where no one could hurt her, no one could break through her iron calm. She’d marry Henry eventually—though she was in no hurry. For now she just needed her safety back. The cocoon of a life she’d built for herself, which Pompasse’s death had ripped open once more.
    The sharp rap on her bedroom door tore her from her abstraction. “Bathroom’s