Chapter 18: Tierney's Last Card

Livia woke with the lamp still burning and the curtains gray with morning.

Luca was lying beside her on his back with his eyes open.

His hand rested on her hip, and he seemed afraid to move it.

"Did you sleep?" she asked.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I was looking at you." He said it simply. "I never had the chance. You always left before I woke."

She turned her face into the pillow, because the answer was too much for seven in the morning.

Then she laughed, because she was warm, and nothing in the world had a right to be this easy.

His thumb moved once against her hip.

"Livia."

"What?"

"I'm not going to ask what this means."

"Good," she said. "I don't know yet."

"I'll wait."

"Waiting was never your strength."

His chest shook.

The television in the other room switched itself on.

They both lifted their heads.

Mirella had left it on a morning timer.

A show host was already talking in the bright voice of someone with an exclusive.

"... her first television interview since the night she says she was pushed from a terrace..."

Livia sat up.

She pulled a sheet around herself, found her robe on the chair, and went to the doorway.

Tierney filled the screen.

She sat in a white armchair in her Fifth Avenue apartment, in the sling, with a cup of tea in her lap.

She looked soft and tired and extremely brave.

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