I remember that my mom had squeezed my hand so hard while we sat on the couch, my dad in the recliner across from us, leaning forward with his hands gripping his knees so that his knuckles were pasty and white.
Liam took the wine glass and handed it to me. I took a nervous swallow. It was good wine, sweet, but not sickly so. Probably expensive. But I couldn’t bring myself to try and sort through all the little hints within the wine.
“He was always buying me books and magazines about Rome and Italy. He knew I loved it… At the start, his prognosis was good. But then the chemo stopped working… I remember one morning when I saw him, it was like he was a different person. He used to be big and strong but he could barely sit up. His wrists… they were thinner than mine.”
Liam held me close again when a sob wracked me.
I’d gotten this far, I had to finish. Somehow, if I could just finish, I could tell that it would feel better. No matter how much it hurt to get it out, it was better than keeping it bottled in. I could tell that, then.
“It was this past February when we all knew he wasn’t going to make it. He chose to stay at home for the end… He did always hate hospitals. One day, about a week before… He wanted to talk to me alone. He told me that he’d been setting aside a little bit of money ever since I was little. It was for a trip to Italy.”
Liam nodded slightly, as though seeing a difficult puzzle come together. I didn’t tell him how the previous semester at school I’d applied to do a semester abroad in Italy and been accepted. All I had to do was pay the exorbitant tuition and travel fees.
That was when I learned that serendipity could be cruel.
I continued, forcing my way through the rest even though it felt like cold fingers had begun closing around my throat. “He smiled at me, thinking I’d be happy. But I wasn’t. I wasn’t happy at all. It just felt ridiculous and unfair to me, like I was trading his life for a vacation. It was stupid and irrational, I know. But it was how I felt. Then he made me promise I’d take the money and go to Rome with it. He even called my mom in to hear me make the promise. God, I was so angry.
“He must have seen it in my face. It hurt him. I could see how much it hurt him. He thought I’d be happy, and instead I got angry and left. He didn’t know I wanted to come here with him, but now he’s gone and it’s only me. Don’t you see? Does that make any sense?” I said, wondering if I was just babbling, rambling on, sounding crazy.
But Liam didn’t let go. He didn’t say anything either, he just nodded.
“So I got here a couple months ago. Rome. The place I’ve wanted to visit since I can remember. And I hate it here. And I hate that I hate it. I’m supposed to enjoy myself, have fun, learn. But I can’t, not knowing how I could afford to be here. And that makes it worse! Like a spiral… I don’t want to be here. It hurts too much. I just want my dad back. I just want my dad…” Then I couldn’t say anything else.
Liam held me close again. I did feel lighter, having that weight taken off me. But there was also worry. How would Liam take it?
After my dad had died, the two words I’d heard the most were, “I’m sorry.” Everyone said it. And I hated that, too. I hated their pity and I hated their worthless I’m Sorrys. They just said it because that’s what you’re supposed to say. Like when someone asks you how you’re doing and if you say anything other than “Good” they don’t know how to react.
I steeled myself, waiting for Liam to say those two meaningless words.
“It doesn’t go away,” he said instead, “The hurt never goes away. But you will get used to it, as much as you can. I saw you be happy today. Let yourself be happy. I think if you do, you’ll really believe that you didn’t trade him for this.”
“Just hold me,” I said. I know it sounds ridiculous, seeing as I was already sat naked next to him in that tub, but I felt as though I’d just been stripped bare. But that’s the only way I can describe it.
I’d shown him what was behind my eyes, and he didn’t shrink away or retreat. He held me, just like I asked him to.
Chapter 8
Two blissful days passed after my confession. It felt like I walked everywhere on a cloud. Food tasted better. Colors were brighter. Despite the age of the city around me, everything felt fresh and new.
Liam had taken me to see the Sistine Chapel, and I’d been so inspired after seeing the Creation of Adam in person that after I got back to my flat I’d completed my essay days ahead of schedule.
Then he’d taken me on a boat cruise of the Tiber river. And then we’d retired back to his hotel. Not only was I truly happy, I was also sore. But I loved it.
I felt fresh and new, too. I did think of my dad a few times, and it hurt still. But in a different way. Like a bone that you know is healing. It was a pain I knew I could bear.
“What is it? Why are you so happy suddenly?” Isabella said. She’d bought a small Mediterranean-style salad from the stall at the food court. I’d gotten one, too.
After buying our food, we’d went and joined Carlotta and Maria at the table in the hall, where they ate their lunches.
Maria shared two courses with me, and we traded notes on occasion. Carlotta was a grad student like Isabella, and was her friend. They liked to come and practice their conversational English with me, and I my Italian with them.
Today it was English day.
Together, the four of us formed a small social circle.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, the heat already rising to my cheeks.
“It is Liam, isn’t it?” Isabella said, her lovely eyes taking on a feline cast, “He is the cause of all this joy.”
Carlotta and Maria both asked who Liam was, also curious about my shift in personality.
So I pulled out my phone and showed them a picture I’d taken of the two of us sharing a plate of spaghetti at a restaurant he’d taken me to when we’d visited the Forum.
“Oh!” Carlotta said, taking my phone. She and Maria fawned over the photo, talking about how handsome Liam was and how it was no wonder I looked so happy.
They mooned over him so much that jealousy flashed across my mind. “Okay, that’s enough. Hand it back.”
When I got the phone back, I stuffed it back into my pocket quickly before Isabella could ask to see it. All three of them were quite beautiful, and I have to admit that it would be for the best if I didn’t introduce them to Liam.
Not that I didn’t trust him. It was them I didn’t trust.
“Tell us about Liam,” Carlotta said, my jealousy again flashing at the lyrical way his name sounded in her accent. She flicked her glossy black hair back behind her ears, “A man like this, I cannot believe you found one. Usually they are all… what is the idiom? Taken. They are always taken.”
Maria leaned in, “Perhaps he is already taken? A handsome man like this, he could have many mistresses.” The way she said it made it sound like she wouldn’t mind being one of them.
However, when she saw the way I blanched at that she continued, “It is just the way of things here. You shouldn’t be upset. It is like being upset that the sun rises in the east instead of the west.”
“Maybe,” I said, “But Liam isn’t Italian. He’s American, like me.”
Maria shrugged. “Perhaps.” The way she said it irritated me so much that I began losing that happy buzz I’d had the past couple of days.
I also decided to hold back on that bit of information about him receiving calls from a woman. They’d surely tell me it was his mistress or girlfriend or wife, no matter if I said I trusted him when he told me she was a colleague. They didn’t know Liam like I did.
It bothered me so much that I decided to cut lunch short.
I got up, telling them that I had Dr. Aretino’s course next and that I had some studying to do before the lecture that I’d been putting off.
It wasn’t exactly a lie. I did have to go to his lecture in a couple of hours. And it was probably a good idea to go over the readings for it again. Reall
y I just wanted to get away from Maria and Carlotta and their accusations.
Soon thereafter I arrived back at my flat, taking the stairs two at a time, eager to get inside. I wondered if maybe I could pull Liam away from his business so he could come over and make me forget about everything that those awful women had said.
Except, when I reached the door I found it wasn’t locked. I distinctly remembered locking it before leaving for the campus, too. The deadbolt made a distinct click when it slid into place, and I’d heard it that morning.
I looked at the brass latch for a while, trying to decide what to do, trying to tell myself that I’d actually forgotten to lock it. That someone hadn’t broken into my one room flat and made off with my laptop and the essay on it that I had quite stupidly forgotten to back up to my email yet.
So I opened the door, expecting to find my bed tossed, my old desk smashed to splinters, and all my expensive textbooks and my laptop missing.
Instead I found a woman sitting at my desk chair, which she’d turned to face the door.
We took each other in in an instant. She was pretty. Really pretty. Cheekbones to embarrass a cat, incredible, soft eyes and red lips that begged to be kissed.
She was a strawberry blonde, and the tight ponytail she had her long hair pulled back into gave her angular face a sinister and severe cast.
She wore a grey blazer and a matching skirt, one pantyhose-clad leg crossed over the other. She had her hands folded in her lap, and I noticed then that she’d painted her nails the same red shade as her lipstick.
Despite all that, I got the impression that she was probably only a few years older than me. If this was a robbery, she was about as far from my idea of a robber as she could get.
But somehow I knew that this wasn’t a robbery. No, this, I could sense, was something much worse than that.
“…Hi?” I said, feeling self-conscious at my lack of makeup that day, the frizzy hair, the comfy pants and shoes I wore.
Her opinion of me showed itself with a slight sniff and a rolling of the eyes. “You’re the one?” She spoke clearly, her red lips shaping each syllable with perfect clarity. This was a woman used to no small portion of power.
“The one what?” I replied, even though I also sensed that her question was at least partly rhetorical. The tone she said it in made me feel self conscious once more, and I had the urge to grab my brush and run it through my hair until it was silky smooth and straight.
“You are Emma Weston, correct?” she said.
She rubbed me the wrong way. Everything about her. Her overly perfect face. Her expensive clothes. The look of superiority in her eyes. And that got my back up, helped me regain some of my own composure.
“I am. Can I get your name, so that I can tell the police when I call them?” I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Unlike back home, you didn’t dial 911 here. Instead, you got the police after punching 113 into your phone. I thumbed the 1 key on the pad twice, my finger hovering over the 3.
She gave me a tight smile of restrained irritation and amusement. It had the effect of thinning her lips, making them paler, bloodless despite the red lipstick. “No need for that.”
I realized why I didn’t like her. Well, one of several reasons. But it had been bugging me since we’d first dressed each other down.
She was perfect. Too perfect. It was the difference between a masterwork and just another painting or sculpture. Too often, artists sought to eliminate those little flaws that make someone human.
They’d give us works of art without flaws, without humanity. They were nice to look at, but depthless. Shallow and sterile.
And then there were her eyes. They were cold and green, like pine needles in winter. They were a shark’s eyes. Hungry and predatory and somehow dead.
She had all the beauty of a statue and nothing to temper it and make her human.
“What, then?” All I needed to do to complete the call was to hit the little green button.
“You are the one Liam has been seeing, are you not?”
I went rigid at that.
The woman nodded. “I found your address on a piece of paper in his jacket.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the carefully folded note, unfolding it in her lap and smoothing it out.
From where I stood, I could see my hastily scrawled address.
My heart dropped into my stomach. Coming fresh from that awful lunch, I could see no other conclusion than the one I reached when I’d heard her say Liam’s name.
“Are you his wife? His girlfriend?”
The beautiful woman seated in my chair stared at me for a second, then barked a harsh, ugly laugh. “Wife? Hardly. I’m his secretary. Of course, I would love to be more, what with Liam being who he is. Until last week, I thought I was well on my way to more, too.” Her lips perked up in an awful, mirthless smile, “Until about a week and a half ago.”
A rush of opposing sensations left me alternately hot and cold. Relief was first. Relief that Liam hadn’t lied, that he wasn’t seeing anyone else. Then worry. She was his secretary, but she talked like she’d been more. Besides, what young executive could afford to bring his secretary along on a business trip?
“You see,” she said, “He went to a fundraiser one night. And after that night, he never touched me again. When I asked him why, he said that it had never been serious between us. That he’d found someone else he thought he could feel something more for. I just had to see for myself. And this is what I find? You?”
My teeth ground together, my eyes searching my tiny flat for some answers but not finding any. “He never said anything about you.”
“That doesn’t surprise me one bit,” she said, “You have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into, have you?”
“I want you to leave. Now.” My stomach wouldn’t stop churning, and there was no way in hell I would let this woman see me sick.
She laughed that mirthless laugh again. “Do you even know who Liam is?”
Why isn’t she leaving? I thought. I wanted her to leave. I needed her to leave. To leave before all the strength left my knees and I crumpled to the floor.
“Of course I do,” I snapped, “He’s Liam Montgomery.”
She shook her head, her ponytail whipping back and forth behind her head. Those shark’s eyes had something like pity in them. Pity and contempt. “That’s his name. That’s not who he is.”
I did my best to keep my body in check. I flexed my thighs and calves, trying to hide the tremble in my legs. I fought back against the angry pressure behind my eyes. I suppressed the lump lifting slowly up my throat.
I gripped the strap of my messenger bag hard enough for the nylon to bite into my palm. The pain helped.
“Please enlighten me and then kindly get the hell out of my apartment,” I said.
“You’ve heard of Mass Systems, haven’t you?” The LLC was implied.
“Of course,” I snapped. It was a huge corporation, always mentioned in the news acquiring this company or that, funding tech start-ups that went public often to the tune of a dollar sign with nine zeroes behind it. They apparently owned half the social media sites on the net.
“Liam Montgomery is that Liam Montgomery. He owns it,” she said.
I shook my head, my brain refusing to wrap around the idea. “That’s impossible.” Liam was too young. There was no way he owned a company that outpaced the GDP of several countries.
“Now you’re being obtuse. It is him. You know it. Now can you see what you cost me? Now can you see that you’re way in over your frizzy little head?”
“Get out now, or I call the police. I mean it,” I spat, raising my cell like it was a weapon.
She stood up, smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt and tugging her blazer back into place. She wore a pair of high heels that arched her back, emphasizing her perfect figure and her perfect ass.
I had to step aside so she could get to the door. When she did, she stopped and looked at me again. I didn’t look at her; se
eing her in my peripheral vision was enough.
“He doesn’t love you, you know. He’s not that sort of man. He’ll dump you when he’s done with you, like he dumped me. Like he dumped all the ones before me.” She paused, waiting for my reply. When it didn’t come, she smiled again and let herself out without closing the door.
My eyes had fixed on the window looking out onto the street. Little motes of dust floated in the bars of sunlight stabbing in. There were some smudges and imperfections in the glass.
I don’t know how long I stood there, my mind ticking over what she’d told me. Mass Systems was in the news a lot, all right. But so was its owner. I’d never really been into the stock market or celebrity gossip. Despite that, I still knew more than I wanted.
I still knew that the CEO of Mass Systems went through women like a machine gun went through ammunition. A lot of noise and commotion, the spent cases quickly discarded.
In my head, whenever I heard a story about him I always pictured him as this rich older man with too much money and no sense of decency.
I looked at my laptop, my fingers itching to tap his name into a search engine. I knew it would come up with plenty of pictures taken of him with his various flings. Lots of tabloid reports of the trail of shattered hearts he left in his wake. Actresses, models, probably a princess or two. High caliber women, if we continue the guns and ammo thing.
And then there was me, the nobody girl from St. Louis.
Except that clashed with the man I’d known. The man whose eyes didn’t lie. The Liam that awful secretary talked about, the one mentioned in the news as a heartthrob playboy and heartbreaker, wasn’t the man who’d tried to finding meaning staring into the bronze eyes of Marcus Aurelius.
Sudden rage seized me. Snarling, I grabbed my door and slammed it so that the frame rattled.
Hugging myself tightly, I went over to the window and stared down at the quaint scene below me. I hated Rome, then. Hated it more than I had before I’d met Liam. It was old and decrepit and I didn’t know how I’d ever thought there’d be something of value or something beautiful here.
Italian Kisses: A Billionaire Love Story Page 9