Dante’s Girl (16 page)

Dummy.

I stumble into a long quiet corridor.  There is no one here and there aren’t even that many windows.  It’s quiet in a disturbing, unnerving way.  I can’t explain it and I want to turn around and go back the other way, but I don’t. 

I open the first door to my right and take a step inside. 

And gasp.

It’s a huge studio. 

And it’s filled with a hundred different pictures of me. 

Chapter Sixteen

I take a trembling step inside and stop dead in my tracks as I look around in wonder.

Oh.

My.

Word.

Pictures of me, in black and white, hang from various clips, wires and easels around the room.  There are dozens of other pictures too, older pictures of scenery and pictures of another woman, but at least half of all of these prints are of me. 

Light slants in from a wall of windows.  There is a desk, several easels, a wall of art supplies.  Overall, it’s a cheerful room.  But that doesn’t take away from the fact that my face is plastered all over it.

“I see you found my lair,” Dante murmurs from behind me. 

I whirl around.

“Your lair?  What is this?” I demand.  “Why are there so many pictures of me?”

He looks abashed.  Guilty. Caught.  My heart flutters a little. Why does he look so guilty?

“I’m sorry,” he answers quietly, his face impassive.  Guarded.  “I know it seems strange.”

“Strange doesn’t begin to cover it,” I tell him.  “More like criminally insane.  Please tell me that you don’t have a cat-suit made from human skin in one of these closets.”

Dante smiles slightly as he skirts around me and enters the room.  He picks up a camera lying on a nearby table.

“It’s a guilty pleasure,” he shrugs his shoulders.  “I love photography.  I always have.  Life is so interesting from behind the lens. People seem more real, somehow.  I take pictures of pretty much everything.  See those cabinets over there?” He motions toward the opposite wall filled with shelves and cabinets.  “Those are filled with stacks of photos that I have taken over the years.”

He aims the camera at me and I hear it snap a picture.  I stride across the room and yank it from his hands.  I want to throw it, but I don’t.

“What are you doing?” I hiss, ignoring the pain in my temple.  “I’m trying to ascertain that you are, in fact, sane.  And you’re just standing there taking a picture of me.  Which, I might add, is not helping your cause.  I think you’ve got quite enough pictures of me already.  Who is the other woman in the pictures?”

“That’s my mother,” he answers softly.  “She loved photography too or so I’m told.  I found those old pictures in a box that my father had packed away.  I didn’t think they should be hidden, so I’ve kept them in my studio.  My father hates this hobby.  He thinks it’s a waste of time.  But it also just reminds him of my mom.  So I never have to worry about him coming in here, into my space.”

I felt instantly bad for snapping at him.

Honestly, sometimes he seems like a vulnerable little boy.  A vulnerable little boy without a mother.  My heart breaks a little bit and I look at him.

“Your mother was very beautiful.  Look, I’m sorry for being angry. But I don’t feel well, there are enough pictures of me here to wallpaper a room with and I’m grumpy.  What happened last night, well, it was embarrassing.”

Dante nods, takes the camera from my hands and puts it back on the table.

“I know.  I’m really sorry.”  He motions to a loveseat on the far wall.  “Would you like to sit down?  Can we talk now?”

A boy who actually wants to talk?  Dante is definitely different from most.

I walk woodenly across the room and take a seat. 

Dante slides the desk chair over and situates it next to me.  So, he doesn’t want to share the loveseat.  Interesting. 

I thrust the white box into his hands.  

“The bracelet is beautiful,” I tell him.  “But I can’t accept it.  I’m upset with you for not being straight with me about Elena.  I can’t take gifts from you.”

He all but smiles.

“That makes no sense,” he tells me.  “I want you to have it as an apology.  I feel horribly about last night.  And I saw the bracelet and thought immediately of you. Please keep it.  It shouldn’t be on anyone else’s arm but yours.”

Lord, but Dante has a way with words.

“I want to be mad at you right now,” I announce.  “You’re playing with my emotions.  And that’s not cool.”

He looks shocked.  “I’m definitely not playing with your emotions,” he says.  “Not on purpose.  Look, Reece.  My life-“

“Is complicated,” I interrupt. “Yeah, I know.  You told me already.”

I start to get up but he reaches over and puts his hand on my arm.

“No. That’s not what I was going to say.  My life has been planned out from the moment that I was born.  My family owns Giliberti Olives. That’s what we do.  My dad wants me to get an MBA and run the business and then maybe enter politics like him. But that’s not me.  I don’t want anything to do with politics.  And I love the olive groves.  It’s not that.  It’s just that I’d like to be given a choice, for once in my life.  Just the choice to do what I want. And be who I want.  And to like who I want.”

Pregnant pause.

“Like me?” I ask, my breath hitching in my throat.

“Like you,” he confirms.  “I can’t stop thinking about you.  Every minute, every day.  I even see you when I’m sleeping.  My dreams are about you—we’re in the ocean, we’re on the beach, we’re under the stars at night, we’re dancing at dinner.  I know this sounds stupid and corny and dumb.  But you’ve taken over every thought that I have.  And I don’t know what to do about that, because you’re not in my plan.”

I stare at him incredulously.

“What am I supposed to do with that?  Was that speech supposed to make me feel better?  You like me but you can’t be with me?”

I feel suddenly hollow inside.  Like I’d lost my heart along the way somewhere.  But that can’t be right because it’s throbbing right now- worse than my head, even.

“No.  You don’t understand. I’m just trying to figure out what to do.  How to handle all of this.  Americans are different.  Here in Caberra, we… well, we don’t exercise our freedom to choose as often as you do.  My father wants a particular life for me.  I don’t know how to go against that.  It will devastate him and he’s been devastated enough already.  Our culture is polite to a fault, I think.”

Oh, sweet Heavens.  I can’t even be thoroughly disgusted with him because he’s so bleeding thoughtful even when he’s being frustrating.  He doesn’t want to hurt his father.  But that means he’ll have to hurt me instead.

“Should I just make it easy on you?” I ask, trying to swallow my heart.  “I’ll just leave.  As soon as the airports open back up, I’ll go back home.  You can go back to your life with Elena and back to doing things that are in your plan.”

“No!”

Dante cries out sharply, almost like he’s in pain.  And he grabs my arm.  I look at him, then look at his hand.  He removes it sheepishly. 

“I’m sorry,” he says.  “Please don’t go home.  I feel like I have this chance—this chance to do what I’d really like to do with someone who I really like.  I don’t know how to go about it, but I’d really like for you to show me.”

I stare at him again.

“And how can I show you that?  You’ll have to learn to make up your mind on your own.  That’s not something that I can do for you.”

“You’re American,” he explains.  “You’re already good at doing what you’d like to do.  I can learn a lot just from being around you.”  He smiles and I try to decide if he’s joking.

“Are you saying that Americans are good at being self-involved?” I ask, one eye-brow raised.  Does he really think insulting me is going to help the situation?

Dante rolls his eyes.

“I’m trying to be sweet here and bare my soul to you.  Seriously, Reece.  I feel like I’ve got an honest to God chance at finding my own path in life.  I’ve never felt the urge to deviate from my father’s plan before.  Not until I met you.  And now everything feels different.  Everything has changed.”

He sits quietly, his hands clasped in his lap, his eyes down.   His shoulders are even slumped.

I take pity on him. I can’t help it.

“All you have to do is talk to your father,” I tell him.  “Just tell him that you don’t want to go into politics and you aren’t even that thrilled with being in the family business.”

“It’s not the business so much,” Dante says.  “It’s the fact that he wants me to go to England to college to learn how to run the business.  And trust me, it isn’t so easy as simply talking to him.  This isn’t America.  Kids here aren’t just given free will over their own lives when we are teenagers.  Our lives are planned out from the beginning.  And we stick to those plans. Usually.”

Dante looks miserable.  And I find that I can’t really relate so I tell him that.

“You’re almost an adult,” I point out.  “You are almost of legal age to go to war and fight for your country.  Shouldn’t that make you old enough to plan out your own life?  I know that I’m not familiar with Caberran law, but you are free to make your own decisions, right?”

“Theoretically,” Dante admits.  “But it’s more difficult in practice than it is in theory.”

I look at him, at how the light glints off the honeyed streaks in his hair and how his dark blue eyes are glittering.  His mouth is drawn and tight and I know he is upset.  And a part of me, deep down, wants to cradle him in my arms and make everything better.  It’s like a piece of him, the little boy in him, is broken and I just want to fix it.

But the little girl in me learned a long time ago that kisses don’t make things better.

“I wish I could fix this for you,” I tell him gently.  “I truly do. But this is something that only you can do.  Standing up for yourself… that’s just a life skill that you have to learn. We all do. It’s part of growing up.”

He nods silently, his gaze meeting mine.

“I know,” he says finally.  “But it would be so much easier if my mom was still alive.  I wouldn’t worry so much about disappointing my dad.  I’m all he has now.  And that’s a lot of pressure. He’s got so many dreams for me.”

“But so do you,” I remind him.  “And you’ve only got one life.”

“Would it sound stupid if I told you that I think I met you for a reason?” Dante asks.  “Okay.  It does sound stupid. But I still think it’s true.  I don’t want you to go home yet.  Please tell me that you’ll stay.  Please be an intern for my father and we’ll see what happens.  I’m going to do my best to figure it out.”

“All you need to do is be true to yourself, Dante,” I tell him.  “It really is that simple.  You’re right.  I don’t know the culture here.  But I do know that your father is a good man. I can tell.  And I know that as a good man, he’ll want his only son to be happy in life.  Whether that means being with someone other than Elena or not becoming Prime Minister in twenty years or even if that means that you want to work on a commercial fishing boat.”

Dante smiles wryly.  “I haven’t lost my mind,” he tells me.  “So let’s not go overboard.”

“Okay.  So you don’t want to be a fisherman,” I smile.  “But if you just talk to your father, I’m sure he’ll understand.”

“Maybe,” Dante shrugs.  “But I have to work him up to it.  I can’t just drop it on him.”

“Fair enough,” I agree.  “I suppose you can’t change decades worth of tradition in one moment.  But be patient and no matter what, stay true to yourself.  If you don’t, who will?”

He looks at me, his gaze lucid and clear and nods.  “You’re right.  And that’s an excellent point. It’s so simple that it’s brilliant.”

I suddenly find it funny that I am sitting here in an old palace giving out life advice when my own life is sort of in a shambles.  I laugh and Dante looks at me quizzically. 

“What?”

I tell him.  I tell him all about Becca and my journal and Quinn. 

“So you’re not as pulled together as you seem, then,” he observes when I am finished.  He smiles at me now and I feel good because it’s his first real smile this morning.  My heart seems to have forgotten that I was angry with him because now all I feel is protective of him. 

Weird.

“I guess not,” I tell him.  “But in all fairness, that journal was private.  She didn’t ask to be in my room, in my clothes
or
in my journal.”

Dante holds up his hands.  “Hey, I didn’t say anything,” he yelps as I swat at him.  “I’m in full agreement with you.  Becca is clearly to blame for your crush on Quinn.  Not you.”

I squint my eyes and glare at him.

“I don’t have a crush on Quinn anymore.”

He raises a golden eyebrow. 

“No?”

I shake my head. “No.”

“Why is that?”

I stare at him long and hard, trying to decide what to say.  Should I be downright, painfully honest?  I’ve always found that the best way to be, so I nod.

“Two words.”

He waits.

“Dante. Giliberti.”

I hear him suck in his breath and I smile.  Sometimes, honesty is refreshing and so very worth it. 

“Me?” He sounds so surprised, as though he doesn’t know that he is practically a living breathing Adonis.  I nod.

“You.”

He studies me again and I fight the need to fidget as I wait for his reaction.

After a minute of nerve-wracking silence, he finally answers.

“So, will you keep the bracelet?”

I nod.

“Can I kiss you again?”

I nod. 

So he does.

Chapter Seventeen

My parents said yes.

I’m not surprised, I knew that they would if Dimitri called them himself.  And he did.  And they said that I could stay in Caberra for the summer to work for Giliberti Olives.  Dimitri decided that it would be best if I started out in the actual Giliberti olive groves somewhere, to learn the business from the ground up.  He does the same for all of his important employees, he says.  Including Dante.  Dante will be shadowing the foreman in the groves this summer.

It doesn’t matter to me that I won’t be with the marketing team.  In fact, as soon as Dimitri lumped me in with “important employees,” I was putty in his hands. Dante clearly gets his charm from his father.