Page 49 of Forced Arrangement

I look at Justine, who shrugs. She’s not in the loop about whatever he has planned either, apparently.

Franco shows back up a moment later with a bouquet for each of us. To my surprise, my eyes fill with tears at the thoughtful gesture. I take the flowers and breathe deeply of their scent.

“Thank you,” I manage to say around the tightness in my throat.

“You can’t get married without flowers,” Franco says. “Or at least, that’s what my mother always said.” He clears his throat again, looking a little uncomfortable at having revealed so much about himself. Justine tucks herself in next to him, looping her arm through his.

“You look gorgeous,Tesoro mio,”Angelo says to me as I join him by the huge windows on the other side of the room.

“So do you,” I say, then I laugh.

He smiles at me. “I’m glad to see you smiling.”

“Shall we begin?” the priest asks.

I look at Angelo, and nod. He tilts his head to the priest and the man begins reading the words of the wedding ceremony to us.

The sound of his voice washes over me, my mind busy with questions about the future, my fingers tingling at Angelo’s touch. The past month has been a whirlwind. I barely know how to feel about any of it.

But something about all of this has felt right, from the first moment that I saw Angelo standing by my mother’s grave in his black suit and those glasses. From the first moment that I met his glade-green gaze, I knew that I belonged with him. Getting married just feels natural, inevitable, and right.

I realize I’m supposed to be repeating my part of the vows, and I quickly say my part, looking at Angelo steadily.

He holds his hand out to Franco, who passes him a ring. I realize with a jolt that it’s a different ring. It’s not the same ring I have been wearing for a couple of weeks since we publicly announced our engagement at the meeting with Guiseppe and the other men.

“How...?” I start to ask.

Angelo looks over at Justine with a smile.

I grin at my friend. “Oh…I see,” I say. Bless Justine for knowing me so well. The ring is beautiful and exactly what I would have chosen for myself. It makes this all feel so much more like the real thing. I’m grateful to her and to Angelo for knowing that she could help make this part of the ceremony much more special for me.

“You may kiss the bride,” the priest says to us.

I look up at Angelo through my lashes, suddenly shy. Always before we have kissed in the cover of darkness, or in the wildness of emotion after something dangerous has happened. There have been few interactions between us that anyone would think of as normal. I realize that I don’t quite know how to kiss Angeloin front of other people like it’s the most natural thing in the world.

He seems to be feeling the same reservations, or maybe he’s just reacting to my own shyness. He reaches out and lifts my chin with his finger, smiling crookedly at me as he looks down at me from his greater height. He looks very young in this moment, his eyes sparkling behind his glasses and his well-cut mouth begging to be kissed.

“Shall we?” he asks me teasingly, bringing his mouth close to mine.

I look at his lips as they get closer, then close my eyes, surrendering to him, to this moment. His lips are soft at first, just barely touching mine, but then they move more insistently, and suddenly, he’s the Angelo that I know, the Angelo who plunders my body in a fit of emotion, hurting and pleasing me in equal measure.

I kiss him back for a moment, already wet for him, feeling my heart racing in my chest. There’s a small cough beside us and we jump apart abruptly as though we have been caught doing something wildly inappropriate, which maybe is what we were doing after all.

The priest winks at us, then walks away, gesturing to Franco. He takes Justine’s hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to the back of it, before getting into the elevator with the priest to take him back home.

“That was hot,” Justine says to us in her best Paris Hilton imitation. It’s an old joke between us and I dissolve into immediate giggles.

Angelo shakes his head a little. “Come along, you two. Let’s have some champagne to celebrate.”

“Do you feel married?” Justine asks me as we wander into the kitchen.

I step out of my shoes and just leave them in the middle of the marble floor. I pad into the kitchen, which is spotless again, but my mind keeps seeing the red of Gianni’s blood spreading over the white counter, spilling onto the starkly white floor. I blink a little to remove the vision from before my eyes and manage a smile.

“I don’t know,” I admit. “Everything has been moving so fast.”

“You just need the wedding night to make it real,” Justine says with certainty, nodding to herself as she pounds the first glass of champagne she was poured. “More please,” she says, offering up her glass to Angelo again.

He lifts a brow at her, but fills her glass again. “Mind that you don’t get in too much of a hurry,” he says to her. “That stuff isn’t cheap.”

---