Beauty and the Barracuda

by Winter, Nikki

  “Goddammit!” His hands slapped the tiles as he stuck his face under the steadily streaming water, making an effort to get the suds out of his corneas.

  Full-on irritated now, he grabbed the correct bottle and washed himself down sufficiently. Climbing out, Sansone almost slipped on a bath puff that had fallen and caught himself by grabbing hold of the bar near the soap nook. He growled and placed his feet on the rugs outside, bypassing the magenta-colored towel on the rack and grabbed a manly solid black one, wiping himself down as he went for the double sinks.

  A lavender-colored electronic toothbrush sat on the left side and he gave in to the childish urge to tip it over as he took hold of his own and got rid of the bitter taste of gin on his tongue. From the bathroom he went into his bedroom and yanked at drawers, looking for his sweatpants and T-shirts, but found only lacey underthings, nighties and something he was pretty sure he and Nyssa weren’t permitted to use in the U.S.

  Sansone finally got hold of some of his own clothes and found himself sitting on the side of his bed wondering how fucking stupid he had to be to not see how hard Nyssa was really trying. She had things in every part of his room, for God’s sake! That didn’t exactly scream, “Hey! I’m running from your love!” Sighing, Sansone tugged at his hair and took a deep breath until the need to start throwing things passed. He’d learned a long time ago that women didn’t just leave things at a man’s place. They secured spots and planted their flags there for all to see.

  He’d offered her a drawer and closet space, and she’d taken over half his dresser. He was certain that if he opened the double doors to his walk-in right now there’d be a slew of Prada, Dolce, and Manolo Blahnik shoes taking up half the space.

  She’d slept here without argument, had him sleep over without a word and never cared about riding to work together. The only thing she’d asked was that they keep things quiet. That was it. If he called, she answered. If he wanted dinner she asked if he preferred home cooked or take-out. Even if she only held his hand under the table—because she somehow sensed he was anxious about something—the gentle squeeze of her fingers gave him calming reassurance. Her actions in private spoke way louder, right? And yes, many men had made many different comments about the way Nyssa looked but the other night hadn’t been the first time she’d been incredibly adept at telling them to fuck off without saying the actual words.

  In the light of day, Nyssa hadn’t been hiding them. She was simply terrified and had done everything in her power to show him behind closed doors exactly how much he meant to her. How many socialite, paparazzi-obsessed, opportunistic couples had they seen fail time and time again because their relationships were built on the assumption they were perfect for one another when, in all reality, they looked good for each other’s portfolios? And when you had a very public, extremely embarrassing demise to your relationship the way she had, how were you supposed to react when someone else came along claiming to love you? From day one she’d been honest about the length of time she’d harbored the desire to be with him, and in his oblivious state, Sansone hadn’t seen it. Why? Because he hadn’t been looking. Just like last night. He hadn’t been looking.

  He flopped back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. “I am the biggest twat on the planet.” Self-loathing seemed like a comfortable place to reside until he began to hear Luciano rifling around in his kitchen. Then he thought to himself that self-loathing on an empty stomach would do him no good. If he was going to point out deprecating facts about his personality, he may as well do it while filled with pancakes.

  Getting up, he made the slow trek downstairs and found his brother in his kitchen.A half hour later, Luciano said something about Nyssa and how she glowed when she’d just gotten laid and before Sansone knew it, he was giving his brother a right cross to the jaw. Of course the bastard swung back and Sansone ducked.

  “Taking swings at me isn’t gonna make it better, Sunny,” Luciano breathed, his shoulders squared, his fists up in a defensive stance as he imitated Sansone’s steps.

  “No, but at least I can abuse something and make it cry.”

  Luciano snorted. “It was one tear, one time, you big-haired bastard, and it only happened because you broke my nose.”

  Sansone smirked. “Let’s see if I can repeat that action.”

  ***

  “He’s fired me six times today, Nyssa. I swear to God I’m a few seconds away from going for his coffee cup and he’d be lucky if all I use on it is under-boob.”

  Nyssa’s lips curved slightly; the first semblance of a smile she’d had in days. “You’re my assistant, Alana. He can’t fire you.”

  There was a rustling noise on the other side of the line before the younger woman grumbled, “I don’t get paid enough for this.”

  “I promise when I come back that you can have two weeks of vacation with pay.” God only knew what torment Alana had experienced at the hands of Sansone. When he was on a mission, the man was demonic, and since he currently couldn’t find Nyssa because she’d adamantly instructed everyone not to tell him where she’d run off to, she could only guess how far the insanity had gone this week. Over the last four days she’d collected at least thirty different messages in her voicemail. All by the same man with the same distraught note in his voice. There were apologies, coaxing lilts, low growls and Italian murmurs. She’d ignored each and every one of them.

  Every time Nyssa’s phone had rung—the screen lighting with his face—the sight of his dark eyes and bright smile tempted her to pick it up. Each plea on the other end weakened her resolve just the tiniest bit, eating at her need to think and breathe without him near. If she were being honest, which she wasn’t, she’d admit she wasn’t punishing him but herself. He’d walked away, even though it was temporary, and she’d let him. Exactly what brand of bitch did that make her? And why, for all that was holy, did Sansone keep sticking around just to come second to her own sordid terror?

  “I can only hold him off for so long.” Alana said. “Eventually he’s going to start digging around for himself, and I mean it with all my heart when I tell you that, I am not getting in the middle of it.”

  Sighing, Nyssa took a quick glance around the restaurant she was currently seated in and cast her gaze toward the windows. The wall-sized glass revealed the bustling streets of New York City, where’d she’d found her reprieve. The best and worst decision she could’ve made was renting a car and driving up from Philly this morning. She couldn’t spend another day in her own bed. Washing the sheets hadn’t helped, nor had flipping the mattress. There was only one solution to her recent restlessness, and calling him would have only sent their already raw emotions into a tailspin. So, in essence, she ran.

  The same way she was always running. Closing her eyes, she leaned her forehead against her free hand and quietly replied to Alana, “Inevitably, he will find me before I come home on my own. I know it. He knows it. So there’s really no point in all the fighting, but I’m not ready to lie down and wave the flag just yet, ’kay?”

  There was a hard exhale. “I’ll keep the war going.”

  Amusement licked at her jumbled feelings. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, and one more thing.” Alana sounded hesitant. “James called again.”

  Whatever humor she’d had died. He was the last person she wanted to talk to right now. “Delete the messages and throw away anything he’s sent me.”

  “Saw that coming,” she retorted. “Which is why I had everything redirected to the morgue. If he doesn’t stop, he’ll find himself there also. I heard Sansone murmuring about decapitation, and I’m not saying he has a katana and bleach in his trunk…but he kinda might.”

  Alana ended the call and Nyssa swallowed down the inclination to listen to her voicemail again. She was here to do business, not go through several stages of angst over a man she wasn’t sure she deserved. A rookie was up for his first commercial deal, and Nyssa had been the one to suggest that she come to him. The notion of escaping for just a bit h
ad appealed to the underlying urgency to put some distance between herself and the need for Sansone’s touch. God, she was really fucked up.

  After her meeting with the kid, she’d have to find something else to do with her time aside from lying in her hotel suite and staring at the ceiling. She glanced at her watch, and a mental calculation told her that her sister was probably in the middle of broadcasting on her famed morning show “Choice Words” for WKZ radio—which meant she could spend time shopping or invade said sister’s space and badger her about why she’d been missing in action the last few weeks. She’d called her this morning but there was no answer. It wasn’t like Samara to skip out on work, and their conversation nights ago had given Nyssa the impression that something was definitely wrong. Albeit, at the time she’d been completely and totally rocked off after drinking a third of a bottle of Jack to drown her gaping loneliness, but she could still tell, fuzzy edges of psyche or no.

  She’d Skyped Samara, looking for a distraction later that night, and could still recall the panic on her sibling’s face. Slowly, something else began to poke at Nyssa’s sluggish memory. They way her sister had stared down at something on her desk in unadulterated horror before hauling ass toward the bathroom suddenly clicked into place, and if Nyssa was remembering correctly, there had been distinct gagging noised echoing from the…

  Nyssa’s head jerked up, her eyes wide. “Holy shit. My sister’s pregnant.”

  “Miss Blackwell?”

  Her stare swiveled toward the source of her name being called, and she found the quarterback standing a few feet away, smile firmly in place. She could’ve excused herself then and told him she had an emergency, but she chose to rise and greet him instead before directing him to a seat across from her in the hotel restaurant of The W where she’d be staying. And even though they discussed his contract, talked about his future plans, all she could think about was the fact that her younger sister was knocked up and if she were doing her addition right then that would mean Luciano was the father.

  ***

  Hours later, Nyssa let herself into Samara’s apartment with grocery bags in hand and wrinkled her nose at the mess of clothes, tissue boxes, and papers thrown around. Normally she would’ve waited until she was sure her sibling was home before paying her a visit but at the moment, she felt as though that particular protocol was null and void.

  She avoided the demon that was her sibling’s cat and did her best to cleanse the place. By the time Samara got home Nyssa’s mind was off her own issues and onto her sister’s. Getting her to admit Luciano had been the one to plant the Cabbage Patch Kid wasn’t hard, nor was convincing her to tell him soon, but getting her younger, extremely noisy sibling off her ass about why she wasn’t talking to Sansone was another issue in itself.

  Samara called out behind Nyssa, telling her that she couldn’t mention the pregnancy to Sansone. .

  Nyssa wanted to spill her guts right then, tell Samara everything. But instead all she could come up with was, “I’m not even speaking to that prick!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s a prick! That’s why not! Stop questioning why I’m not speaking to the prick!”

  “You don’t have to bellow! It’s not my fault he’s a prick!”

  “It’s nobody’s fault he’s a prick! Well...except for Satan’s because I’m convinced that’s who he serves!” Nyssa sucked in a deep breath and decided her own anxieties could be put on hold for the moment. It seemed her sister’s were a lot bigger and growing by the minute.

  Chapter Ten

  Kicking around a ball and letting a tribe of wild, Philly-bred Lilliputians tackle him was usually the answer to any mental problem Sansone was experiencing, but today his heart just hadn’t been in it. No matter how many giggles he’d heard, or how many of the boys at Trenton Home had attached themselves to his legs, causing him to smile, he still found himself more than a little troubled.

  There was only one reason for that—Nyssa. He called and there was no answer; he texted and there was no response. She wouldn’t talk to him, and that frightened him more than anything else. If she were here railing at him, calling him all types of inappropriate names and threatening to shave his head bald while he slept, he’d have something to work with. This wasn’t the case. He knew she was out of town—he just couldn’t determine exactly where she’d wandered off to. She could be hiding in plain sight or in another country. One could never know with her. No one would tell him anything, and it was making him crazy! If he entered the office one more time just to spot another bouquet from that complete dick James, he was going to flip his shit.

  Sansone had decided a visit with Luciano and Luciano’s assistant, Brian, at the Trenton home was a necessary distraction but only found himself bombarded with, “Where’s Nyssa?”, “How come she didn’t show up, Sunny?”, and “She promised to finger paint with me.” The little ones had become quite attached to her and the pouting—my God, the pouting!—hadn’t done anything aside from put his mind firmly his own idiocy. By the time he, Luciano, and Brian had left, his thoughts were a million miles away. On the car ride home, he’d been drifting in and out of a ridiculous conversation his sibling was having about veal Parmesan and his obsession with Samara when Luciano called his name.

  “Yeah?”

  “You mind calling Nyssa for me?”

  “She’s still not speaking to me and I dunno if she’s back in town yet, but I can try.” Sansone took his eyes off the freeway to glance at Luciano in the rearview. “Need something in particular?”

  “Yes,” his sibling answered in a tone that made Sansone look up once more. “I need to talk to Samara.”

  “I thought we already established that you—”

  “Sunny,” Luciano cut in. “I need to talk to Samara.”

  Looking toward Brian, whose brows were winged in the same manner as his own, Sansone replied, “I’m sensing some angst.”

  “Turn around.”

  “Dude, I’m on the highway going sixty, that’s a little hard.”

  “Well then take a fucking detour to the airport.”

  “Do I have to pull over to the side of the road and beat you?” Sansone barked. “The fuck is your problem?”

  “Samara’s pregnant!” Luciano roared from the back seat. “She’s pregnant!”

  Silence followed that particular revelation as Sansone navigated over to the shoulder and slowed to a stop before turning off his engine. A deep inhale, followed by an even harder exhale, managed to balance his skewered equilibrium.

  He then mildly questioned, “I’m sorry, what was that?”

  “Samara. Is. Pregnant. She just announced it on air.” His brother repeated. Luciano had been listening to her daily broadcast and clearly more than pop culture had been discussed this time.

  Sansone blinked, stared out the windshield, gazed over at Brian and then looked to Luciano. “Let it be understood in totality that you are, without uncertainty, fucked beyond measure, my friend. You’re fucked harder than a virgin on prom night. You’re fucked harder than a porn star on third shift. You”—Sansone pointed to Luciano—“are fucked harder than that box of special toys a woman keeps under her bed for ‘break the glass’ emergencies.”

  “Those analogies,” Brian suddenly said. “Why do I feel as though you have them written down somewhere?”

  “I may or may not have a notepad or two but that is not the point right now, B! We’re discussing Luciano’s clear disregard of Mr. Waverly’s tenth-grade sex education and demonstrative videos on how to apply condoms!”

  “Firstly, don’t mention Mr. Waverly. He had those creepy spidery fingers and those beady little eyes,” Luciano retorted. “He reminded me of the guy who watches people through the bookshelves of the library and mouth breathes. I don’t want him being associated with my night with Samara. Secondly, I am well versed in the art of condom usage but clearly I missed a step here and I would really appreciate it if I, as a grown man, could have a moment to hyperve
ntilate and sob uncontrollably.”

  Sansone tucked in his lips. “You need us to leave the car or…?”

  “This is serious!”

  “In nine months Samara is going to have to produce an unholy sized child. I am well aware of how serious this just got!”

  “My baby will not be an unholy size!”

  “Sir, when you climbed into my vehicle I heard my back tires whisper a prayer to the Virgin mother so I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you.”

  Luciano reached forward and cuffed the side of Sansone’s head. “I’m a man on the edge, Sunny! A man on the edge!”

  “It’s not my fault you’re going around sharing your man juice! Should I be concerned about the eggs in my fridge also?”

  “You motherfu—”

  “And that’s the end of that conversation!” Brian interrupted, surprising them both. The man wasn’t a pushover, but he wasn’t exactly as abrasive as Sansone or Luciano. Then again, when you were married to one of the most infamous now-retired linebackers in the NFL, and controversy over your sexuality constantly arose because of your spouse’s previous profession, you tended to learn to be abrasive.

  Luciano’s P.A. looked between them and gestured to his boss. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that you want to be in New York by nightfall. Am I correct?”

  Sansone’s brother sighed. “As always.”

  Brian cast a glance at Sansone. “And you’ll be tagging along, will you not?”

  He nodded.

  The other man sat back and retrieved his phone. “Start the truck up, Mr. Sultana. I can find the quickest route to the airport and get reasonably priced tickets, but the bellowing stops or I get cranky. If I get cranky, ungodly things will take place. Are we understanding one another?”

  Reluctantly, Sansone smiled, remembering a similar line Nyssa had spoken to him not too long ago. “Yes, sir.”

  “Mr. Antonelli?” Brian encouraged.