I tried to focus on my breathing, to steady myself, but I was panting hard.

“I see,” he said at last. “I didn’t know.”

I shrugged, feeling deflated. “I guess I should have been more careful.”

He scrunched his nose in disgust. “And he should have been a lot more respectful, regardless of what state you were in.”

I felt a lump form at the bottom of my throat, but I had been keeping it at bay for the last two days and I wasn’t about to give in to my tears now, especially not in front of Luca. “I don’t remember anything,” I said, setting my jaw and looking at the patch of grass behind him. “I’m still struggling to.”

“Don’t.” Luca stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Some memories hurt when they hit you.”

“Are you saying it will hurt me to know what Robbie did?”

He shook his head. “He didn’t hurt you, OK? He was just some idiotic drunk guy trying his luck with a pretty girl.”

My eyes widened at the inadvertent compliment.

“I was just making a point about that guy,” Luca went on quickly. “He was dumb, OK? He shouldn’t have tried to take advantage of you.”

“Wh-Where was it? Where were we?” I hadn’t imagined talking about the night would be this difficult — and I definitely never thought I’d be talking about it with the obnoxious Luca Priestly — but I had to know.

“A couple of blocks away. I saw him with you sometime before …” He stopped abruptly and changed the direction of the sentence. “I didn’t like the look of him, so I drove around to make sure he wasn’t doing anything he shouldn’t be doing. And when I found you guys, I could see you were pretty out of it, so I decided to intervene.”

“What happened to him?”

“You don’t remember?”

“No.”

“I just asked him to leave, and he did,” Luca said simply. “He was very obliging.”

“So he just walked away in the middle of the night and left me with you, a person he barely knows?”

I studied Luca carefully, waiting for him to elaborate. The sun was making his blue eyes shine, so that he seemed almost friendly, but there was nothing friendly about the edge in his voice when he answered me. “When I ask someone to do something, I usually don’t have to ask twice.”

“That almost sounds like a threat.”

Luca just rolled his eyes and shrugged. “Do you know who roofied you?”

“No.”

“I’d be interested to know, if that information comes to light.”

“Why?” I asked, feeling a bout of uneasiness.

“You’re asking why I want to know the identity of someone who thinks it’s acceptable to poison girls’ drinks at neighborhood parties?” His reply conveyed the duh sentiment.

“I don’t see what difference it would make to you,” I told him plainly.

“No,” he said. “You wouldn’t.”

I could sense the hostility again, the chill I had gotten the night he ordered Nic away from me, and I couldn’t stand it. He was so infuriating. “What have you said to turn your brother against me?”

He shook his head. “I’m not getting into this.”

“I deserve an explanation.”

“You should leave now. I think I’ve done enough for you, Gracewell,” he returned evenly. “I’m not interested in helping you walk off into the sunset with my brother.”

Gracewell? So I wasn’t even worthy of my first name now. “What have I done to make you hate me so much?”

He rolled his eyes again. “I don’t hate you. I nothing you.”

His retort stung more than I thought it would. “You’re horrible, do you know that?”

He didn’t even flinch.

“And arrogant,” I muttered. “And smug.”

“Are you done now?” In an instant he had pinned me between his arms against the SUV. “Let’s get one thing straight, OK?” There was a savagery in his eyes. “This is the last time I want to see you anywhere near this house, got it? When you walk home from work, cross the road. Don’t look inside. Don’t come in this direction. Don’t even breathe in this direction. I told you I don’t ask twice. If I see you around Nic again, even if you’re just saying hi or trailing after him like a lost puppy, then I’ll come for you, that chatterbox British best friend of yours, and your mother, and believe me, you’re not going to like it. Do you understand me?”

I felt the horror infiltrate my features. Now I saw it. I finally saw the danger that Jack and Mrs. Bailey had been warning me about. Not to mention the kind of attitude that must have put blood on Luca’s shirt before. Maybe my paranoid uncle and the old busybody had been right about this family all along — certainly about Luca, at least. I wanted to say something defiant and witty, but he was looking at me like he was going to eat me, so instead I nodded like a zombie.

“From here on out, we go our separate ways. Capisce?”

My voice shook with anger and fear. “You can’t talk to people like that.”

He moved his hands away from the car and stepped back from me again. “Do you understand everything I just said, Gracewell?”

I wrapped my arms around myself and nodded.

“So we are clear?”

“Crystal.”