Italian Kisses: A Billionaire Love Story (18 page)

I knew that she was jealous, that she just wanted to get a rise out of me, but I couldn't help getting angry with her. Her insinuations hurt. All my frustration had to come out somewhere.

"I trust Liam," I said, meaning it, "He doesn't want anyone else. Not her. Not you, either."

"A bit testy, aren't we?" Abigail replied, "I used to think he wanted me. Probably just like you think he wants you. But I'm just a secretary, and you're just a..." she waved at me in a dismissive fashion that had me bristling. "Oh, don't take offense. I'm just trying to make a point."

"Well, will you get to it, then?"

"Fine. We're who we are. Do you know who
she
is?" Abigail said, nodding towards the beauty sat across from Liam. The one who'd begun twirling her finger in her dark locks like a schoolgirl talking to her first crush.

I shrugged, "Some business contact, I'm guessing?"

Abigail gave me a patronizing smile like I was a country bumpkin and she some high-falutin' city slicker. "Her name is Lisa di Firenze."

"Is that supposed to mean something?"

That earned me another tight, patronizing smile. "She's not just some bimbo, which I know is hard to believe given her dog dish eyes at the moment. When she doesn't have Cupid's arrow lodged firmly between her shoulder blades, she is the head of the largest media conglomerate in Italy."

"Good for her."

Abigail shook her head. "I'm going to slow-walk you through this. Who do you think is going to win him over, when it really comes down to it? You, a nobody from Boring, USA, or a beauty who can match him in every respect? Wealth, culture, pedigree, future. She has all that. What can you offer him that she can't?"

"Me. I can offer him me," I said.

Abigail tilted her head, the sunlight catching in the coppery strands of her strawberry blonde locks. "Aren't you hearing me? Or is that liberal arts education still telling you that being a special snowflake is enough? You aren't good enough for him. And if you want to save yourself some heartache, you'll get that through your head before he comes to his senses and drops you like a bad investment."

A lump started pushing its way up my throat. I wanted to slap that sly little grin right off her pointy, too-perfect face. But that would just prove her point, and we both knew that.

Still, it was a Herculean Labor to resist that impulse.

"Oh, sweetie, don't worry. I'm sure there's a Joe Nobody waiting for you back home in Boringsville who'll love you for who you are. You just have to find someone who's on your same level of mediocrity."

She reached out as though to give me a reassuring pat and I jerked away.

"There, there," she said, closing the gap once more and patting my shoulder, "It can be hard to come to grips with."

"Don't ever touch me again," I said, my lips peeling back from my teeth. This time, she pulled away from me.

"Well, I do have a job to do," she said, hefting the briefcase, "Should I tell Mr. Montgomery that you're out here and that you'd like to see him?"

I did want to see him. I wanted to see him more badly than I had after the lecture from hell. Except I knew that would be selfish. He was clearly in an informal business meeting, and while I also thought that he would call it off right away, I wasn't going to put him in that position of choosing between me and his work.

"No thanks," I said.

The twitch in Abigail's plucked eyebrows told me that she thought I'd blindly follow my desires without thinking about them and I took more than a little satisfaction and pleasure in disappointing her.

"Don't forget our conversation," Abigail said, brushing past me.

"Don't worry, Abby, I already have."

I relished the way she bristled momentarily before yanking the door to the shop open, the little bell over it tinkling to announce her arrival.

Except that had been a lie. I couldn't forget what she'd told me. Not a single word of it.

I tore myself away from the window, wanting so badly to get a glimpse of Liam's face before I did, but not wanting him to see that I'd been there.

And I thought of what Abigail said all the way back to my flat, the conversation stuck in my head like a radio jingle.

I
sat in front of my laptop, trying to make myself do some school work when the text came.

I nearly dropped the phone in my hurry to check it, adrenaline leaving my hands and arms trembly and hot.

But it wasn't Liam. It was Isabella. She wanted to know if I'd like to go out with her and Maria for some supper.

My appetite had vanished entirely, my stomach having shrunk down to the size of a golf ball from some combination of anxiety, fear, and frustration.

I declined, saying that I had a lot of thinking to do. It was as close to a lie as I wanted to go, and even then my fingertip hovered over the send button while I fretted about it.

If I told Isabella what had happened, she'd want to come over and talk about it, and I just couldn't right then. Not with her, anyway.

Even though I didn't want her sympathy at that moment, the note of concern in her reply text warmed me a little.

No, don't worry about it. I'll be okay.
I shot back to her.

I just had too much to deal with. My professor pretty much calling me an imbecile in front of the entire class. Me feeling stuck with how to move forward with my academics.

And most of all, Abigail's overblown lost cause speech. I knew she was just trying to get under my skin. I knew how Liam felt about me. More, I knew why he felt that way.

Still, dear Abby had managed to plant the seed of an idea inside of me. Or perhaps she'd just been able to water and fertilize one that had already been there.

Either way, no matter how hard I tried to concentrate on my readings for class I couldn't escape the thoughts.

Even Mr. Drayton's present-moment exercise couldn't drag me away from it.

Soon enough, I had to face it head on. What if Abigail, in her own twisted way, was right? What if I wasn't who Liam was meant to be with?

Would he be better off without me? And if I did care about him as I knew I did, if I wanted to be honest and true to myself, shouldn't I let him go, let him flourish, even if it meant that he wouldn't be doing so with me?

***

I
t was just after 8 in the evening when Liam came over.

"Hey. Why's it so dark in here?" he flicked on the light and I flinched at the sudden brightness.

I smelled the food before I heard the crinkle of the takeout bag. It was a rich, spiced pasta sauce smell.

"I guess I forgot to turn the lamp on." My stomach had decided to relax a little, and saliva squirted into my mouth at the scent.

"I hope you haven't had supper yet."

"No." I smiled at him, doing my best to look happy and unconcerned, as though I'd just come off a hard day of school and studying. It wasn't so far from the truth to feel like a complete lie.

"It was just that your texts sounded really urgent. Well, as much as a text message can sound urgent. Did something happen today?" He laid the bag down. It was cream colored, with the name of the restaurant,
Ditirambo
, written in a stylized flourish along the side.

Then he pulled out a dark bottle of red wine, the cork sealed with wax, from his jacket. Two thin glasses wrapped in cloth followed, and finally a corkscrew.

These he spread out on my desk after closing my laptop and moving it to the window sill.

The food smelled so good. "Another favorite place of yours?" I said, nodding at the bag.

"I don't know. I've never tried it before. It comes highly recommended, though."

"It smells delicious," I said. And the wine. I couldn't believe that he'd actually stopped to get wine and glasses, too.

"Needs to breathe," he said, driving the corkscrew in, the wax seal fracturing and crumbling around the neck of the bottle, and then he grimaced slightly as he yanked it out. He held it under his nose, inhaling it, and I realized that I didn't know anything about wine other than that it came in white and red.

And that clearly he knew far more than that.

What can you offer him?
Abby's snide voice echoed.

He saw me watching him and mistook my expression for curiosity. He offered me the cork. "Would you like to? It's Vespolina. 2007. A good year. It should go nicely with the red sauce. I thought you'd appreciate something nice."

I took the cork and put it under my nose, imitating him. It smelled of alcoholic grape juice. I thought maybe I could maybe detect a tartness to it, and perhaps an earthiness below that. But it could very well have been my need to find something about it.

I pictured Abigail's cruel, mocking grin.

Apparently my consternation also showed itself and Liam smiled. "Don't worry. Just trust me that it will be good."

"I will."

Then he went about setting the table. The cloth he'd wrapped the wineglasses in was just wide and long enough to cover a stripe in the middle of the desk, its edges hanging off the front and back.

The doggie bag from the restaurant contained disposable plastic cutlery and plates, and the food itself had been parceled in plastic-topped Styrofoam containers currently clouded with steam.

"High dining at its best," I said. It was pretty funny to me, in a sad way, watching a man worth billions set the table and then eat using throw-away dishes.

It was nice though, him being there, showing concern for me.

"So what happened?" he said. He sat on the mattress, which, combined with the height of the desk put his plate and wineglass at chest level. He didn't seem to mind. He'd insisted that I take the chair.

"What?" I said, a few pieces of penne speared to my fork and halfway to my mouth, "Oh, yeah, school. It was just a hard lecture and I thought it would make me feel better to talk through it with you."

Then I ate the penne from my fork. It was good. And the wine really did bring out all the flavors in the red sauce.

"It really was important, what I had to go do today. You have no idea how badly I wanted to just curl up with you in bed for a few more hours."

That gave me my opening. My penne-bearing fork drifted back down to my plate, forgotten. "What was it? What did you have to do?"

He answered without hesitating. "I had to meet with someone regarding a potential merger that could really give Mass Systems a solid foothold in southern Europe."

"Sounds pretty tense... Probably lots of sterile board rooms and sweaty pitchers of ice water on the table?" I said.

Why did I want to catch him in a lie so badly? Because it would make all this so much easier, I knew. It would justify anything I chose to do.

"Not at all," he said, "Actually we went to that little gelato shop I showed you. Fratelli's. Although now I wished it had been in a boardroom. She was pretty handsy."

I'd been trying to think of some way to ask if it had been a man or woman that sounded natural, but he'd done my work for me. It also seemed that Abigail hadn't told him I'd been there after all.

Why do you have to be so perfect?
I thought. He wasn't giving me any way out here at all, no way to any sort of moral high ground.

"She?" I said.

"Lisa di Firenze. She's..."

"The head of the biggest media conglomerate in Italy," I finished for him.

He nodded, impressed. However, that made me feel worse. It was borrowed knowledge, stolen, even.

"That she is," he continued, "But like I said, handsy. I was glad when it was over and I could come see you. Actually, that reminds me. She wanted to meet again tomorrow, but I told her I had another important engagement."

"What?"

"You, me, and that wing of the Capitoline museum we missed. I didn't tell her that, of course."

I dropped my fork, splattering a bit of sauce on the white cloth. "Why did you do that?" It came out more intense than I'd intended. "You shouldn't have done that."

Liam took a serviette from the doggie bag and dabbed at the spilled sauce. It sopped up the excess, but left little dark splotches that looked like dried blood. "It's no big deal, really. Like I said, you gave me a great excuse. I intend to thank you properly for it later." His voice dripped with secret and sexy promises that had my body responding before I could stop it, the inside of my thighs throbbing and hot.

He slid his hand across the desk, intent on touching my fingertips with his. I pulled back. He moved faster, catching my hand, trapping it. It was so nice to touch him.

But was it only nice because I knew that I shouldn't?

"Liam, I don't want to get in your way here. I don't want to keep you from doing what you came here to do."

"There's something wrong here," he said, not letting go of my hand, "Something you're not telling me. And I mean more than a tough lecture."

"I hate how you do that."

"What?"

"See right through me. Read me like an open book. Whatever."

"I love that you're an open book, that you don't try and hide what and who you are." His thumb traced gently over my knuckles. It felt nice, so nice.

"That's nice... Look, I don't want to talk about it right now, okay?"

"Okay. I'll be there when you're ready," he said.

I knew he had to be at least partially right about me. Otherwise it wouldn't have been so hard to repress the urge to tell him that I'd seen him today at Fratelli's, to tell him what Abigail had said to me.

Because I knew if I did he would disagree. And that he'd have good reasons. Probably good enough to sway me away from the conclusion that I'd arrived at as soon as he came in with that doggie bag of delicious pasta and that bottle of red wine that tasted better than any wine I'd ever had before.

"You're too good for me," I said.

He squeezed my hand lightly. "Don't say that. Never say that. If anyone should say something like that, it's me."

I couldn't look at him anymore. "This is really good. I mean it. But... do you think that..."

"I could go?"

"It's just that if I want to fix this mess with school I really need to concentrate on it for now. Thank you for visiting. It was really sweet of you."