Page 30 of Ache for You (Slow Burn 3)
“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.
