I stand rooted to the spot, sick with disbelief, a high-pitched scream ricocheting inside my skull. My files, my computer, all the dresses I spent countless hours crafting so carefully are gone? My entire business has disappeared overnight?
This can’t be happening.
“Under the terms of your lease, you’re responsible for your rent until you’ve been cleared of any liability. I have no idea how long it’ll take the authorities to determine what happened, so”—he laughs uncomfortably—“I’m still gonna need another check on the first.”
And the hits just keep on coming.
EIGHT
MATTEO
I don’t believe in fate, but when I see her walk into the hotel bar, I can’t help but think something more than coincidence is at play.
She looks angry. Angry, fierce, and beautiful, like a vengeful goddess. All that black hair I’d like to wrap around my wrist spills over her shoulders in tangles. Her cheeks are red. Her eyes are wild. She exudes a dangerous, frantic energy, as if she recently escaped from prison.
“Matteo? Are you listening?”
“Excuse me for a moment, Antonio.”
Without another word, I rise from the table—the one I always sit at, the best one, in the back of the room—and stroll toward the bar.
She’s taken a seat at the end. Her back is to me. She drags her hands through her hair, props her elbows on the bar, then drops her head into her hands.
I stop beside her, admiring the way the lights glint blue in her hair. “You’re upset.”
She jerks her head up. When she sees me, her eyes widen. She stares at me with her lips parted and a look of disbelief on her face.
It quickly turns to fury.
“You,” she says, as if it’s a curse.
I smile down at her, enjoying everything about this moment, including how much she’d obviously like to stab me in the eye with a cocktail fork. “Buonasera, Miss Bobbitt. Cut off anyone’s cock since I last saw you?”
She narrows her gorgeous green eyes at me. “The night’s still young.”
Stifling my laughter, I take the seat next to hers.
“What’re you doing here?”
“I live here.”
“In this bar?”
“In this city. But I do come here often for drinks.”
She exhales slowly, then says with quiet sarcasm, “Get a little lonely up in your castle, do you?”
“I’m never lonely,” I lie, holding her fierce gaze.
It’s unsettling how easily she pegged that, and how uncomfortable I am that she might think me weak. I can’t remember the last time I gave a damn about what someone else thought.
Until right now.
Moistening her lips, she looks me over like a warlord might look over a kingdom he’s about to invade. It’s electrifying.
“I want my sketch pad back.”
I smile at her. “Too bad you already traded it for a plane ticket.” Then I remember why she was so desperate to get on that flight. “How is your father?”
All the color drains from her face. She winces and turns away.
“I’m so sorry.” Moved by her pain, I’m overwhelmed by the sudden urge to take her in my arms. I have to fight to keep my hands by my sides. “If there’s anything I can do—”
She whips her head around. “You can give me back my damn sketch pad!” she says loudly, causing the bartender to turn and squint at us. When he sees it’s me she’s shouting at, he smiles, nods, and turns away.
“What will you give me in return?” I smile. “Since you enjoy bartering so much.”
Through gritted teeth, she says, “You know what—never mind.” She folds her arms over her chest and shakes her head, muttering darkly about people with stupid titles and men with oversize egos and various other things until I interrupt her.
“How long will you be in Florence?”
“None of your business.”
Dio mio, this attitude makes me hard. “I want to take you to dinner.”
She snorts. Somehow it sounds elegant. “No.”
That shocks me. Not only the finality of it, but the word itself: no.
Women don’t say no to me.
Ever.
My dick throbs and lengthens, straining to get free from my trousers.
“Breakfast?”
“No.”
“Hmm. I suppose lunch is also out of the question?”
“I’m not interested in eating food with you, Count Egotistico.”
“I’ve already told you I’m not a count.”
“Yeah, I heard. Whoop-dee-do.”
I drop my voice and lean toward her. “So if you’re not interested in eating food with me, bella, what are you interested in doing with me?”
When she snaps her head around and glares at me, I look directly into her eyes. “Because we both know you’re interested in something. And so am I.”
A flush darkens her cheeks. She chews the inside of her lip. Something crackles in the air, as sharp as danger.
“I don’t do one-night stands.”
“How many nights will you be here?”
Our gazes hold. A vein throbs in the hollow of her throat. Her breath quickens, and my erection is so hard there must be no blood left anywhere else in my body.
As if she’s not sure she should be answering, she says, “Five. Maybe six.”
The heat that flashes over me is intense. I can’t remember the last time I’ve wanted a woman so much. “Plenty of time to show me exactly how much you dislike men with oversize . . . egos.”
Silence stretches between us, not long but cavernously wide, filled with tension and unspoken need. Then, in a throaty voice, she says, “I dislike them a lot.”
It’s so blatantly sexual I almost groan. I lean closer, so close I can smell her skin. She smells like sunshine. Like the outdoors. Like honeysuckle and citrus and something else indefinable I want very badly to eat. Into her ear, I say, “Then you’re really going to hate me. You’ll hate me over and over and over. I’ll make sure, bella, that you’ll hate me more than any other man you’ll ever meet.”
She inhales against my throat. Resting on my arm, her fingers tremble. She takes a breath, then slowly blows it out. “Okay, fancypants, you’re on. I’m in room four-twelve. Give me ten minutes.”
She pulls away and meets my eyes. In the candlelight, her skin is flushed and rosy, her eyes shine, and her lips are darkest red against that pale skin.
I’ve never seen anything so lovely.
When I nod, she rises and walks away without looking back. It isn’t until she’s gone that I realize I still don’t know her name.
I take a moment to gather myself, then head back to my table. Antonio has obviously been watching our interaction, because he asks, “Someone you know?”
I smile, thinking of all the ways I’m about to get to know that gorgeous creature. All the delicious, dirty ways. “Let’s call it a night. Something came up.”
Antonio looks at the bulge straining the front of my trousers and lifts his brows. “Evidently.”
Without another word, I pull money from my wallet, leave it on the table, nod a farewell to Antonio, then head to the lobby, because even though she said ten minutes, that’s nine-and-a-half minutes too long to wait.
NINE
KIMBER
A fact I’ve recently come to understand: Womanizers are all alike. They’re arrogant, selfish, and convinced they’re doing you a favor when they throw their pretty peen in your direction.
I’m so over it.
When I get back to my room, I get the water hot for a bath and raid the minibar while the tub is filling. Fortified with a hefty rum and Coke, I strip, wind my hair into a messy bun, and slip into the hot water with a groan of pleasure.
What a shit day. Week.
I close my eyes and let my mind drift, taking the occasional sip from my drink. How could Papa have married that woman? That heartless ice cube of a woman? I start to get angry thinkin
g about it and chug the rest of my drink. Then my mind wanders into Euro Hunk territory, and I get even angrier.
So he’s beautiful. So what? He’s obviously a letch. If he acts that aggressively with me, I’m sure he acts that way with every woman he encounters. And hell if I’ll ever be so naive again the way I was with Brad.
I don’t know who’s in room 412, but I hope it’s someone with a short temper and a fondness for fistfights.
Imagining Euro Hunk getting punched in the face by a surly hotel guest upset at being disturbed makes a bitter smile curve my lips. Then I feel guilty because without him, I wouldn’t have made it to the hospital in time to hear my father’s last words.
Then, without warning, I burst into tears.
I lie in the tub and let the pain wash over me. There’s so much of it I feel as if I’m suffocating. I have to set the glass on the edge of the tub because my hand is shaking so hard I can’t hold it. I sit up, wrap my arms around my knees, and ugly cry until I’ve wrung myself out and the water has grown cold.
Then I dry off and make myself another drink.
Then the phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Buonasera,” says a husky voice I’d recognize anywhere.
“How did you get this number?” I demand, my face going hot.
A chuckle, even sexier than the voice. “I have friends at the front desk. Apparently you made quite an impression when you checked in. All I had to say was ‘Beautiful American,’ and they connected me to your room straightaway. Speaking of rooms, the lady in four-twelve was very nice, but I prefer my women to have their real teeth and be able to walk without a cane.”
Apparently the privacy laws in this country are as lax as the traffic laws. I say tartly, “Really? I’d have thought as long as a woman was breathing, you’d be good to go.”
“You’d have thought wrong. I’m very particular. My last serious relationship was three years ago.”
I roll my eyes. “Sure. Listen—I’m grateful to you for that ticket. Sincerely, I am. And if you’ll give me your address, I swear I’ll find a way to pay you back. But I’m not interested in sleeping with you.” Okay, that’s a teeny lie, but whatever. “I’m burying my father in a few days—I’m not in the mood for . . . whatever this is.” Why am I explaining this to him? Hang up!
But I can’t hang up, because I’m conflicted. Giving me his ticket was an incredible gesture of generosity. Even if he was hoping for a blowie in the men’s room, it was still generous.
Even though I had to surrender my sketch pad with my entire spring collection, it was still generous.
Also, he’s incredibly hot, and my uterus is shrieking at me that she’ll never forgive me if I hang up on him first.
So I don’t hang up. I wait, breathing shallowly, listening to static crackle over the line. After a long pause, Euro Hunk speaks again. “I understand. And I’m sorry about your father. I know how hard it is to lose someone you love.”
With a soft click the line goes dead.
I stand frowning at the receiver in my hand, wondering why that felt weird. Like, wrong weird.
Like a mistake.
“Because you’re an idiot,” I say aloud to the empty room. Then I get ready for bed and put the whole thing out of my mind.
I toss and turn all night, dreaming of boiling cauldrons and cackling witches and handsome princes riding white steeds. When I wake up, I’m disoriented. It takes a good thirty seconds of staring blankly around the hotel room until I realize where I am. Then I get so depressed I lie there staring at the ceiling, mentally sifting through the shambles of my life.
Where am I going to live? What am I going to do for money? How did I lose my fiancé, my father, and my business within the space of a few days?
I enjoy a good solid ten minutes of imagining throwing the WS and her ridiculous dogs out on their asses and living at Il Sogno myself, but I can’t keep up the anger for long and end up crying again.
My pity party is interrupted by the arrival of a text.
We really need to talk. Please call me.
I text Brad back that I’ll break his jaw next time if he tries to contact me again, then block his number.
I sit there seething until I can’t stand it anymore, then drag myself out of bed and take a shower. I’m supposed to be back at the house at noon to meet with the potential buyer of DiSanto Couture who the marchesa set a meeting with, so though I’d love nothing more than to lie in bed and wallow, I’m forced into adulting. On the cab ride to Il Sogno, I check my bank account, choking out a sick laugh when I see the balance.
By the time I arrive at the house, my mood is black. The WS better watch out because this morning, I’m capable of murder.
“Buongiorno,” says Lorenzo when he answers the door. “You look lovely this morning.”
I think I look like something a cat coughed up, but decide to be pleasant since he’s being so nice. “Thank you. And you look very dapper, as always.”
He smiles, pleased by the compliment. “Come in. Lady Moretti is waiting for you in the library.” He swings the door wide, allowing me to pass, then ushers me through the house to where the marchesa awaits. Wearing a gorgeous plum dress and matching lipstick, she’s immaculate.
She looks up when I come in. Setting aside the book she’d been reading, she greets me with a muted “Hello.”
I’m surprised she didn’t speak in Italian, but simply nod in response.
“Kimber, what can I offer you? Coffee? Water? Anything to eat?”
It’s so weird that I’m being treated as a guest in a house that belongs to me. But Lorenzo’s only doing his job. I can’t hold it against him. “Nothing, thank you.”
He bows and retreats. I take a seat on the opposite side of the coffee table from the marchesa, and we commence gazing at each other in unblinking silence like it’s some kind of competition.
She breaks first. “I’m sorry your husband didn’t come with you. I would have liked to have met him.”
It’s a slap across the face. My cheeks sting exactly as if she’d cracked her open palm against them. “The wedding was called off.”
“Called off?”
When my only response is a freezing stare, she says, “I assume your father didn’t know, or he would have told me.”
It’s her way of letting me know Papa told her everything, that there were no secrets between them. Unlike the whopper of a secret he kept from me—namely, her.
It’s another checkmate for the marchesa. I swallow around the lump in my throat and look away. “It only happened a few days ago.”
The following pause is filled with tension. “You called off the wedding . . . because of . . .”
“No,” I say sharply, understanding that she thinks I dumped Brad because Papa was sick. “I wasn’t the one who called it off.”
As soon as it’s out of my mouth, I regret it. I clamp my lips together and wait for the smirk I’m sure is coming. But for whatever reason, the marchesa seems affected by this new piece of information. She goes very still.
She says slowly, “Your fiancé left you because your father was sick?”
Is she acting? Joking? What is this? It’s not like she cares! “It was before that. Brad didn’t know Papa was sick. I didn’t know Papa was sick. I got Dominic’s letter a few days after we broke up.”
At the mention of Dominic’s name, she clenches her hand into a fist, as if she wants to hit something. When she sees me notice it, she flexes the hand open and smooths it over her dress.
I watch all that with interest, wondering what it means. I guess the dislike Dominic feels for her is mutual. And why did she seem upset about Brad? What am I missing?
The mystery of the marchesa’s strange reactions will have to wait because Lorenzo has returned and is bowing again. It seems like a reflex, the way some people sneeze when they look at the sun.
He addresses the marchesa in Italian.
She replies, “Bene. Grazie.”
It doesn’t take a genius to know that the potential buyer has arrived. The faint blush of color rising in the marchesa’s marble-pale cheek gives proof of her excitement. There’s a gleam in her cyborg-blue eyes, too, the mercenary. If I didn’t already know my father left his business to me, I’d assume her sudden good mood had to do with the prospect of money. I’m confused and instantly on guard.
But then I figure it out. She must have made a deal with this buyer, whoever he or she is. Yes—that’s it! She made some kind of back-end deal where she’ll get a referral fee, or maybe even a percentage! I smile grimly. Not so fast, WS. You might think I’m a dumb American, but you’ve got another—
“Ciao, Mamma,” says a voice.
That voice.
Shocked, I whip my head around. And there he stands, all hunky, cocky six-and-a-hella-sexy-inches of him, dressed in a drop-dead gorgeous navy suit and his usual air of entitled superiority.
Euro Hunk. In the flesh.
The marchesa says, “Ciao, Matteo. Come in, son.”
Oh, dear God in heaven, you are one sick mofo.
Because not only is the man standing in the doorway the man who took the inspiration for my entire spring collection. Not only is he the man who gave me his ticket so I could get to this country before my father died. Not only is he the man who propositioned me—twice—and inspired lust in me the likes of which I’ve never felt.
He’s also my stepbrother.
Why does God hate me?
TEN
When those aquamarine eyes slice to mine, I can tell by the look in them that he’s as shocked as I am. He’s stunned speechless and simply stands staring at me with his lips parted and his eyes wide until the marchesa clears her throat.
“Matteo, this is Kimber. Luca’s daughter.”
After a beat, Matteo recovers his wits. “We’ve met.” He walks slowly toward me, his gaze trapping mine. When he’s a few feet away, close enough for me to smell his cologne, he stops. In a low voice, he says, “Your father was a wonderful man. I’m so sorry for your loss.”
Ache for You (Slow Burn Book 3) Page 7