“That was before I knew about Barry.” He leaned toward her. “Francesca. You have an enemy like Barry Anthon and you don’t have a cell phone to call 911 if he catches up with you?” His voice was pitched low. Velvet soft. Totally menacing. “It should be your first priority.”

Her heart pounded. “I couldn’t afford one, let alone pay for a plan. In any case, the police don’t believe me, Stefano. No one does. If he catches up with me . . .”

“I’ll be standing in front of you. I told you, I’m coming up with a plan. Just give me a few days. In the meantime, I want to know that you’re safe.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got shit to do this morning, but Emilio will be watching over you. I’ll send a cell to the store. Use it. My number will be programmed in, and I want to know where you are at all times. I’m not being controlling. I need to know you’re safe.”

“You’re controlling,” she corrected.

“True,” he agreed, sounding completely unremorseful. “But I still need to know you’re safe.”

There wasn’t any sense in arguing. Stefano was a law unto himself, and he would get her the phone and Emilio would be waiting right outside the store no matter what she said. She’d wanted his protection and now that she had it, she couldn’t exactly throw a tantrum over how he chose to give it to her.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

She smiled at him. “I see no reason to argue when you’re just going to get your way. The food is delicious. I didn’t realize hotel food could be really good.”

“Our hotel provides the best of everything. Our chefs are amazing. The pastry chefs are as well. Tonight, after work, you’ll have to sample some of the desserts.”

“I can see if I stick around here for too long I’ll end up gaining weight. Pizza, pastries and amazing food.”

“You could use a few pounds. I don’t like that you weren’t eating. Dina told me you didn’t have anything to eat for a couple of days.”

“Dina? You talked to Dina?”

“Why wouldn’t I? She lives in our neighborhood. She’s part of us. She prefers to live on the street so we make her as comfortable as possible. She has a small wooden lean-to we built for her in the alley behind the hardware store, which she can go into at night. When the nights are too cold, she comes to the main house and sleeps in the garage. There’s radiant heating through the floor. She has a bathroom there and warm blankets. It’s the most she’ll let us do for her, other than new warm boots once a year and sometimes clothing. I don’t know what happened to her coat. She had a nice one.”

She leaned her chin on the heel of her hand and tried not to devour him with her eyes. She loved that he took care of the homeless woman in their neighborhood. She’d so misjudged him. “That’s amazing.”

“Not really. She’s a human being with a few problems. Her entire family was killed in a car accident. Her husband, three boys and a daughter. She was the only survivor. No relatives. She just gave up. We’ve tried to get her help. She used to teach school. High school. She had all kinds of awards and her students loved her. After the accident she turned to alcohol to dull the pain. She left her home, just walked out of her house one day and drifted. She ended up here.”

There was an underlying sadness that fascinated her in his tone. He genuinely cared about Dina, she realized, and that took her breath away. Stefano Ferraro was many things, and most of them were amazing, sexy and wonderful. She liked him. He might be bossy and arrogant and controlling, but that was only one small part of who he was.

“How do you know all that? Dina barely spoke to me.”

“I prefer to know everything there is to know about those in our neighborhood. Especially a woman who is living alone on the streets. It’s freezing here at times and I certainly didn’t want anything to happen to her. It took some persuading for her to use the garage, but she knows where the key is and now she’ll go there. We see to it that she’s fed, but we have to be careful how we do that. She doesn’t like too much attention.”

She noticed he used the term we a lot. She presumed he referred to his family. “You’re very close to your family, aren’t you?”

“My siblings and cousins, yes. I suppose my aunts and uncles as well.”

He didn’t name his parents; in fact, he’d been very specific about those he was close to and he’d left them out. She wanted to ask but decided she’d better not.