by Sam Mariano
My family, we’re traditionalists.
Mateo is a soulless, power-hungry monster.
Which I don’t make my problem—but my dad’s old-school, and Mateo’s lack of respect for his own father, the actual boss of that family, rubs mine the wrong way.
Long story short, if my father ever found out I wanted to bang Francesca Morelli, he’d probably pistol-whip me right upside the head.
He would also never allow it. Not in a million years.
To be honest, he’d probably kill her if it came down to it.
Just that thought flitting through my head sours my mood. Brings up feelings and impulses I don’t like and I’m damn sure not comfortable with.
My doorbell rings.
I’m in the kitchen, off-guard like an idiot, lost in all the thoughts about how badly this could go—and so easily, all anyone would have to do would be find out. Francesca’s probably right. This probably isn’t worth it, and I’m a crazy fuck for trying.
Then I open the door, and Francesca’s standing there in a strapless nude dress that blends well enough with her skin color to turn me hard. A cute little smile’s on her face, and her hair’s down and fluffy the way I like it.
The way I like it?
Fuck it.
“Hi,” she says, shyly looking down at the cupcake box in her hands.
“Hi,” I murmur back, lost for words as my eyes travel over her body again. Damn, Francesca. If this is what she wore to work today, I’m gonna have to tell Mark to mean-mug any half-attractive asshole who walks in the doors.
Biting down on her lower lip briefly, she gives me a little roll of her eyes. “Are you gonna invite me in?”
Leaning against the door frame, I shake my head. “Nope. I’m just gonna stand here and stare at you all night long.”
Her cheeks flush and she laughs, lightly shoving me. I catch her around her tiny little waist and pull her close, the scent of her washing over me and going straight to my groin. Somehow this goddamn woman has trained me to become aroused at the scent, sight, or thought of her.
“This dress….”
“I figured I should change for dinner.”
I glance down at myself—I’m in jeans and a casual black button-down, nothing fancy.
For some reason, the sight of my jeans makes her light up. “You dress like this for dinner?”
“I can change,” I say, pointing toward the hall.
“No,” she says, eyes widening in alarm. Then she smiles, relaxing, and lets her free hand come to rest lightly on my chest. “No, don’t change. This is perfect. I’m overdressed. I should’ve left on the jeans.”
“I’m really glad you didn’t,” I tell her, my eyes drifting to her perfect cleavage. Dear God in Heaven, this woman is going to be the death of me. “Really, really glad. You look incredible.”
“I have lots of pretty dresses,” she tells me.
“I want to see you in all of them.”
Rolling her eyes, she says, “No, trust me, it’s a lot. That would take like a year.”
“Then I guess you have to keep me around for a least a year.”
Scoffing lightly, she says, “Yeah, right.”
I shake my head as she pulls away from me and walks into my house like she owns it. I follow after her, shaking my head. “You’re so mean to me.”
Glancing back at me over her shoulder, she slows down, since she’s just realized she has no idea where anything is. “Where should I put these cupcakes?”
“In my mouth,” I say.
“Both?”
“We were talking about your breasts, right?”
Francesca rolls her eyes at me again. “Where’s your kitchen, Romeo?”
I smile and walk ahead to show her. “Follow me, Juliet.”
Glancing around at my living room—spacious by the standards of ordinary people, but since she lives in a museum, it probably feels small—she says, “I like this.”
“Yeah?”
She nods, appraising the walls. “You need some art work. Pictures of people you love. A softer touch. But I like it.”
“Good.”
“Do you have a maid?” she asks, like that’s a normal thing to expect.
Grinning, I shake my head. “I don’t.”
Her eyes light up. “Do you cook and clean?”
It’s a little amusing how this delights her. “I’m capable of both. I don’t want to set your panties on fire or anything, but I also do my own laundry.”
Playfully fanning herself, she says, “Too late.”
When we got to the kitchen, I realize I left her flowers lying on the counter. I’d been lost in thought when she got here and I forgot to grab them.
I sweep them up now and turn to face her, offering them. “For you.”
“You have spent way too much money on hydrangeas today,” she tells me, taking them and bringing the bouquet closer to her face. She closes her eyes as she breathes in their scent, then she sighs with pleasure. “Thank you,” she adds.
“You’re very welcome.”
“No one’s ever bought me flowers before,” she tells me, looking down at them, grinning. “And you’ve really set the standard today. I pity the fool who has to follow you.”
Yet again she mentions the asshole after me, and I like it even less this time. “You should pity him for more reasons than that.”
“Oh yeah?” she asks, moving closer to the center island where I’m leaning. “Why else should I pity him?”
“He’s moving up my hit list at an alarming speed. You mention him again, he’s hitting the top three.”
“You can’t be jealous of my imaginary next suitor,” she tells me. “That’s unreasonable.”
“Then I’m completely unreasonable, because I already want to beat his imaginary ass.”
That makes her laugh. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, he’s probably never going to exist. I don’t really date—ever.”
That actually doesn’t make me feel any better, because I don’t want her to be lonely, either.
Damn, what a weird mix of feelings.
“You shouldn’t deprive the populace of your company.”
“Or my cupcakes?” she teases.
My gaze drops to her cleavage again. “Definitely not your cupcakes.” Then I frown. “On reflection, the cupcakes are all mine. Maybe your next boyfriend can be a nice gay guy—in the closet, a lot in common with you, a great friend, but he doesn’t want to fuck you.”
Francesca laughs. “So you can? I’ll cheat on my beard boyfriend with you?”
“Hey, this plan has merit,” I tell her, only half-joking. “How do you feel about dating Mark? He’s not gay, but he wouldn’t fuck you, and I could have an excuse to bring you around all the time.”
“I’m definitely not dating Mark.” She rolls her eyes again, finally not about me. “He was talking about Entourage at the bakery today. What kind of douchebag did you send me?”
I roll my eyes, as if in agreement. Mark better not have left the movie case on my TV stand. “Yeah, gross. Who would ever watch that stupid show?”
She shakes her head like she can’t begin to guess, and I consider that this is the first time I’ve ever wanted to impress a woman.
“When was your last date?” I ask her.
“Ages ago,” she tells me, fiddling with the paper on her flowers. “You don’t have a vase I could put these in, do you?”
“I do not. Sorry. I should’ve thought of that.” Watching her face, I ask lightly, “Did your ex watch Entourage?”
Her eyes roll, but with real irritation, not the playful, indulgent way she usually rolls them at me. “No, he probably watches snuff films.”
“Jesus,” I mutter, raking a hand through my dark hair.
“He’s a psychopath. Like, people call my brother a sociopath, but he’s… there’s nothing human in him whatsoever. I sound like sour grapes, but I’m not exaggerating. He probably really does watch snuff films. He probably makes them hi
mself and gets off on them.”
I feel a little sweat break out on my forehead, just thinking of Francesca ever being with someone like that. Wouldn’t that have been dangerous? Didn’t Mateo know? What the fuck?
“Whatever happened to this guy?” I ask her, since I really want to know the story.
“I don’t want to talk about him,” she tells me, gently placing her bouquet down on the granite countertop of my center island. “I like your kitchen, did I mention that?”
I smile at her slick subject change. “You probably spend a lot of time in the kitchen, huh?”
“Not as much as I could,” she says, pulling out a stool and taking a seat. “We have maids.”
I had heard something along those lines. “Yeah, well, I like to slum it.”
“Clearly you’re struggling,” she states, nodding. Her gaze moves behind me, I assume checking out the place, then she barely misses a beat before she asks, “So, did you recently live with another woman?”
This startles the shit out of me. “What? God, no. No. I’ve never lived with a woman.”
Still focused on something behind me, she nods skeptically. “So, you collect Alice in Wonderland tea cups?”
I have no goddamn idea what she’s talking about. Spinning around to look where she’s looking, I remember Maddie merrily “sprucing” up my kitchen for me. I remember seeing she put five random tea cups on my unused corner shelves, but to be honest, I never even looked twice at them.
Now I walk over to grab one, and sure enough, they are frilly-ass Alice in Wonderland tea cups. I have to smile a little.
“Remember the sister I told you about? The favorite one? She does shit like this to people.”
Her smile relaxes, since I don’t have a secret girlfriend. “Oh, okay. Does she live here with you?”
“No, but she has a key. Sometimes she likes to pop over and leave me things. Sometimes good things, like food, sometimes things like this.”
“It sounds like you’re close to her.”
“We’re close, yeah,” I say with a nod. “She’d like you.”
“I’m sure I would like her, too. Anyone who sneakily plants girl décor around your house seems like a winner to me.”
“I wish you could meet her,” I say, glancing at the tea cup. I’m surprised to find it’s actually true, too. Maddie’s met a few girls over the years, but she’s never been impressed by a single one.
“Yeah, so do I,” she says, quietly. “I mean, not right now, obviously, but… it kind of sucks knowing it’s not an option at all.”
I replace the tea cup on the shelf and head back to the island. “Maybe it will be. Maybe I’ll invite her over for dinner with us one night.”
Glancing down at her hands on the countertop, she says, “You say that like we’re going to do this often.”
I shrug. “Maybe we will.”
Francesca doesn’t watch me, but her hands. “I was thinking about this,” she begins. It sounds like an intimidating beginning—I’m not sure for her or for me, but it’s like she’s trying to ramp up courage to spit it out, whatever it is.
“Okay,” I say, a bit cautiously.
“I wasn’t going to say this until the end,” she adds, fleetingly meeting my gaze. “I thought I would wait and see how this went first, to see if it’s even worth the headache. Because this is going to be a headache. I have to hide to send you texts, and even then I feel paranoid about it.”
“It’s not ideal,” I acknowledge.
“I felt like I was pulling a bank heist when I left to come here tonight,” she adds. “But I am attracted to you, and you’re obviously attracted to me… so, maybe we don’t have any kind of future together, but what if that’s okay?”
Now this is more the level of commitment I’m used to having with women. We have no future together, and that’s okay—but for some reason, it makes me feel empty when Francesca says it. “So, what does that mean?” I ask her, wanting to see where she’s at.
“It means as long as we can pull it off, and as long as want to keep seeing each other, we do. But it’s not a relationship, and as soon as one or the other of us is done, we stop and no one ever has to know it happened.”
“A secret relationship.”
“No,” she says, too firmly. I think it’s herself she’s trying to protect with this shit. “Not a relationship, just… fun.”
“Fun,” I repeat, bracing a hand against the countertop, wondering why this is making me so aggravated. This is literally my normal. There’s no reason on God’s green Earth I shouldn’t be jumping on board.
Nodding rather vigorously, she says, “All of the fun, none of the bullshit.”
“So, I’m free to see other women then?”
Her smile drops ever-so-slightly. “I suppose so.”
“And you’re free to see other men.”
“It’s not likely to come up, but… sure, I guess.”
“Nope.”
Her dark eyebrows pull together, as if confused. “Nope?”
I shake my head, crossing my arms over my chest. “Not interested.”
“In… me?”
“In the possibility of sharing you. In seeing other women. In any of that half-ass bullshit.”
Inexplicably, this annoys her. “Well, I’m trying to compromise here. We obviously can’t have a normal relationship. It isn’t possible given our circumstances. If we’re going to do this, I don’t want to just… I need to know what to expect. I don’t want to set myself up for disappointment.”
“Well, this idea sets me up for disappointment.”
Francesca rolls her eyes. “You’re the one who would benefit from it. You see how hard it is for me to date. I don’t have time for two secret boyfriends. This way if it starts to get tiring for you… you have an out.”
“How considerate,” I say, dryly. “I’m not an asshole, Francesca. I don’t want an out. You’re here right now even though this whole thing’s nothing but trouble because I want you. No one else.”
“Then what do you propose? If my idea is so terrible, give me a better alternative.”
“Well, no other fucking people. Cut that bullshit right out.”
Francesca rolls her eyes, as if I’m exasperating. “That was more for you than me.”
“Regardless, cut that bullshit right out. That’s the first thing. Any other guy comes sniffing around you, he can deal with me.”
She laughs, like this is funny.
I scowl, because that’s not fucking funny.
She gestures for me to go on. “Please, continue with your stipulations.”
“The second thing is you’re gonna stop acting like I’m gonna hurt you, because I’m not.”
“You’re getting bossy, and you can’t guarantee that.”
“Yes, I can,” I state, illogically. “And the third thing… I can’t remember the third thing, because you have me too riled with the first two.”
At this, she grins. “How can you guarantee that?”
“That I won’t hurt you?” She nods. “Simple—I already hate everyone who hurts you, and I’m pretty fucking fond of myself, so I’m not going to wind up on that list.” My eyebrows rise, like I have even a little bit of leverage here to demand things. “And I want to know what the last guy did to make you so goddamn skeptical, too.”
“I’m not just skeptical because of him,” she says. “I’m skeptical because I’ve only known you for a couple of days and I think your primary interest in me is that I make you chase me. So what happens if I stop?”
“I catch you,” I say easily.
“And get bored,” she continues, nodding once.
I shrug. “Maybe. Maybe not. That’s the risk you run anytime you start a relationship. I’m not going to damn the thing before we even get it off the ground by putting a bunch of stupid rules around it.”
“This relationship was damned before there was a ground,” she points out. “I can’t meet your family. You can’t meet mine. If your sist
er does meet me, that just means we have to rope her into the secrecy, too. What happens if someone finds out?”
“Depends who it is,” I say, vaguely. “I can probably deal with Mateo. I don’t see him being real happy about it, but… the idea is, no one finds out.”
“People always find out. Secrets can’t stay secret forever. And how long can we stay happy in a secret relationship? Maybe it would work for you; it keeps things strictly part-time, keeps the pressures low, but it doesn’t work for me. Ultimately, I want the things out of life that would probably scare you off so fast you’d be telling my brother yourself just to get him to break us up.”
I have to smile at that. “Things like what? See, this is what I want. Tell me about you. Tell me what you want out of life.”
“I want the whole normal nine yards. I want a husband. I want babies. Ideally with a normal man, not another fucking criminal.”
“Last guy was a criminal, then. You meet him through your brother?”
“Get scared about the marriage and babies,” she commands, as if annoyed that I’m gravitating back to this fucker.
I shrug. “I’m expected to do all that myself someday.”
“Not with me.”
“No. Not with you,” I admit. “But I don’t care. I’ve never let anyone control who I’m involved with, and I’m not about to start now.”
“I just…” She shakes her head, glancing down. “I don’t want to be a game to you.”
Since that’s just about dumbest thing she’s said in the time I’ve known her, I walk right over to her, drawing her attention, and I kiss her. Nothing intense, just a soft one like the one she gave me. Then I tell her seriously, “You aren’t a game to me. I won’t toy with you.”
“It’s not that I think you’re a mean person, or that you’d hurt me on purpose. You really don’t seem to be, at all. It’s just, I’ve been wrong before.”
“Well, you’re not wrong about me. I’m completely sincere here.”
I can tell she still doesn’t trust me, but I get the feeling she’d like to. Behind the brave, sometimes saucy, sometimes sweet eyes of Francesca Morelli there’s a glint of fear that never leaves, a deeply rooted sense of caution that obviously dictates how she lives her life. I can’t explain what it is that compels me to break through all that and wipe it away, but something does. I’m the last guy in the world who comes to the rescue of a woman I’m not responsible for, a woman who doesn’t share at least some of the blood running through my veins, but I wanna make an exception for this one.