Ache For You

22

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 i***t,” 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.”