KIMBER
I feel sick. I’m going to be sick all over my shoes, the floor, the front of Dominic’s white linen shirt.
How could I have been so stupid?
Again?
“That’s really upsetting to hear,” I tell Dominic, my voice shaking. “I don’t want to believe it.”
His expression softens. He clucks in sympathy, patting my shoulder. “I know. You have a good heart, like your father. It’s hard to hear such awful things about people. Believe me, tesoro, I hate to have to tell you. But you’re like a daughter to me, and now that your father’s gone, it’s my job to look after you, yes? So. This is what you do.” He turns businesslike, folding his arms over his chest. “First thing, you turn the marchesa out of the house.”
“No.”
We’re both surprised by that. I had no idea it would come out so forcefully, and Dominic’s rapid blinking tells me he didn’t, either. I hurry on, talking over the pathetic groaning of my heart.
“My father specified in his will that she stays in the house until she dies. I have to honor that. It’s what he wanted.”
Dominic sputters, “But she cannot be trusted!”
“He loved her,” I say firmly. “He was alone for almost thirty years after my mother died, and for whatever reason, the marchesa made him happy. I won’t throw her out.”
I can’t believe I’m saying the words, but they feel right. The marchesa might be a snooty unlikeable witch, but she gave me a dress to wear to my father’s funeral, and she gave birth to the god who made me understand what sex was really supposed to feel like, even if he is a lying jerk.
I know it’s too soon, and I know it’s ridiculous, and I know I’m in love with you.
I wonder if his mother coached him to say those words. How to say them, with such sincerity shining in his eyes. I wonder how soon he planned on bringing up the sale of the business again.
I wonder if he was eventually going to ask me to marry him, get everything squared away legally, get all the paperwork out of the way so he and Mumsy-Wumsy could have everything they wanted. My breath catches—returning the sketch pad was such a clever move.
“The longer she lives there, the better her case to make a claim of ownership on the property.” Dominic is beside himself. He’s not the only one who can’t believe I’m taking the marchesa’s side. “And the more she’ll try to win you over with her wiles!”
“Trust me, she’s not trying to win me over.”
“No? She hasn’t given you any gifts? Done anything special for you to make you like her?”
The dress. And she said Brad should be shot.
God, please just kill me now.
I squeeze the bridge of my nose, but it doesn’t help the stabbing pain in my forehead. “Matteo’s rich. He lives in a castle, for God’s sake. Their family owns a castle. They can’t be that hard up for money!”
Dominic looks at me as if I’m incredibly dim-witted. “Castello di Moretti is owned by the family only in name. The government has a lien on the property. Back taxes, my dear. The upkeep on the place is astronomical.”
The wind has been knocked out of me. I should sit down before I fall. But first I have to ask one final question before I abandon all hope. “Lorenzo has such a high opinion of her. He seems like such a smart guy, and he’s been with her for so long, how could he not see what she’s really like?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Dominic says gently. “He’s in love with her.”
Yes, now that you mention it. It’s as obvious as day. I had it pegged right from the beginning. I had everything pegged on the nose.
“Right,” I whisper as the world crashes down around me.
I barely make it to the trash can under the register before my lunch comes back up in a Technicolor stream.
Dominic exclaims in surprise, hurrying over to hover over me like a mother hen. I wave him away as I retch, embarrassed and humiliated, wanting to get rid of him, Clara, and the other ladies as quickly as possible.
I need to be alone with Matteo. I need to look into his eyes when he comes out of that dressing room. I need to make him tell me the truth to my face.
“Sit, sit, you’re as pale as a ghost!”
Gripping my arm, Dominic helps me onto the stool behind the counter. I collapse onto it, gasping and faint, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. The peperoncini in the salad I had for lunch tasted much better going down. Now they’re searing my throat and the inside of my nose and making my eyes water.
Yeah, that’s it. The water in my eyes is from the peppers.
Dominic hands me his hankie. “Are you sick?”
Heartsick. Soul sick. Sick of men and their endless supply of bullshit. “I think I ate some bad fish at lunch,” I say dully, though it was a vegetable salad. I can’t have Dominic thinking my projectile vomiting has anything to do with the story he told me. I might have terrible taste in men, but I still have a shred left of my pride.
God, he’d be so disappointed to know what I was doing before he walked in the door.
“Let me take you home, Kimber. You should rest.”
“I’m fine.” I’m desperate to be rid of him. I can feel the burning presence of Matteo behind the dressing room curtain. I have to get Dominic out of the shop before something bad happens. I’m surprised Matteo hasn’t burst out already, but that probably only means he’s buying time to formulate his response.
“You’re not fine,” he presses. “You vomited. That’s the opposite of fine.”
I have to spend another five minutes convincing him I’m well enough to be left alone. He doesn’t like the idea of me taking a taxi home, but I reassure him by saying Clara will drive me. After he extracts many promises from me that I’ll call him later, he finally leaves. When I close the shop door behind him, my hands are shaking.
When I turn around, Matteo is standing outside the dressing room door.
He looks as sick as I feel.
“You believe him.”
His voice is quiet, level, but an undercurrent of rage runs through it. That and his expression give me hope that everything that happened between us earlier was something more than a clinical business maneuver.
“I don’t want to.” I admit it openly, not trying to hide how upset I am, letting him see all the confusion and hurt I feel.
“But you do.”
I can’t deny it. Nor should I. Whatever’s really happening here, it’s best for everyone involved if we put all our cards on the table right now. “Put yourself in my shoes. How would you feel? What would you think?”
“Dominic has hated my mother for a very long time.”
“Why?”
“She married another man.”
That rocks me back on my heels. “They were together?”
“When they were very young. Before she met my father.”
I have a flashback to the marchesa’s reaction when I mentioned Dominic’s name the afternoon at the house when I first found out Matteo was her son. She was upset but tried to hide it.
Whenever I cried as a child, I’d get a beating, she’d told me the day of my father’s funeral. I was too distracted to think much of it at the time, but now that simple phrase seems to reveal so much about her personality.
Or is he making this up on the fly?
“What happened?”
He exhales a heavy breath. “Honestly, I don’t know the details. The only reason I know at all is because I overheard a discussion between her and your father, shortly before they were married.”
I jerk forward several steps, my heart beating faster. “And? What did they say?”
Matteo’s jaw works. He’s angry, obviously uncomfortable, disheveled from our incredible dressing room interlude, and so handsome it hurts.
It physically, painfully hurts to look at him.
“Your father wanted to lend Dominic money. Apparently it was a regular thing, but my mother insisted he’d been generous enough and should say no. When he asked why she didn’t like Dominic, she said it wasn’t that she didn’t like him, but that she knew his character. After your father pressed her, she admitted they had a brief ‘entanglement,’ as she called it, before she married my father. My grandfather didn’t approve of Dominic, so he intervened and separated them. Dominic never believed that it was her father. He blamed her. From then on he made it his mission to discredit her name whenever he could. He spread awful rumors. He never forgave her for breaking his heart.”
I digest all that for a moment, my mind spinning. Dominic and the marchesa? I try to picture them as young people, in love, but can’t.
“Dominic never married,” I say, thinking hard, sifting through memories. “I remember he used to tell my father he found the only woman in Italy who didn’t care about money.”
“Yes,” says Matteo sourly. “Dominic always makes a big deal about money. Who has it, who doesn’t, why he doesn’t have enough. Personally, I think the man never had feelings for my mother. I think he saw a paycheck. I think my grandfather realized it, too. My mother was his only child, and the light of his life. If he thought Dominic was a good man, he never would’ve separated them, no matter how small Dominic’s fortune.”
I stand staring at Matteo, feeling helpless and overwhelmed, unsure what to believe. “What about Castello di Moretti? Does the government really have a lien on it?”
Matteo doesn’t flinch or break eye contact when he answers. “No.”
I’m not sure if that’s true, either, but I can probably look it up on the internet. There has to be some kind of government property portal where you can research outstanding liens and such.
“Miss Kimber.” Clara stands in the doorway to the back room.
“Yes, Clara?”
“If you have a moment”—she sends Matteo a disgruntled glance—“we need you on look six.” She turns and disappears again, muttering under her breath, leaving Matteo and I gazing at each other in painful silence.
Finally he says, “Well. I tried.”
He crosses the room in a few long strides and winds his arms around me, giving me a hard squeeze. He kisses me on the temple, whispers gruffly, “I meant everything I said in the dressing room. At least believe that.” Then he releases me and walks out the door without looking back.
Twenty minutes later I’m sitting on the stool, staring into space and trying to untangle the knots of my thoughts, when a courier drops off a paper bag from a nearby drug store. Inside are antacids, a travel toothbrush and toothpaste kit, and a big bottle of water, along with a note that reads You didn’t ask Dominic why he called me vicious. Ask.
I groan. “My life is a Shakespearean drama!”
From behind me, Clara says, “Hopefully not the kind where everyone dies at the end. Are you coming, or should we all go home? We’re getting old back here. My husband wants stromboli for dinner tonight, and it’s not going to make itself.”
I turn and look at her. “You know my father’s friend, Dominic, right?”
“Yes.”
“What do you think of him?”
She snorts. “He’s a man. What’s there to think? They’re nothing but overgrown babies. If they don’t have a woman around to cook for them and coo at them and tell them what to do, they’re lost. But I don’t think it’s Dominic you need advice about.” She drills me with a look.
I suddenly feel like a kid caught sneaking out of the house at midnight or ditching school.
“You’re a smart girl, and your love life is none of my business. So I’ll say this, then I’ll say no more.” Her gaze grows intense and a little frightening. She says darkly, “The egg does not swim to the sperm. Never chase a man. It goes against nature. If you want him, let him chase you until you catch him.”
She pulls herself up to her full height of four-feet-eleven inches and sniffs. “And no more sex in the dressing rooms. Who do you think has to clean in there?”
She turns on her heel, calling over her shoulder, “If you want to meet a good man, read a book! Now let’s get back to work!”
When I get home that night, the house is eerily dark and quiet. I flick on the light in the kitchen and find a note from Lorenzo on the small white pad near the telephone. It says the marchesa has gone to Milan in advance of Fashion Week as she does every season. There’s a phone number where they can be reached in case of emergency and the name of a swanky hotel.
“The plot thickens,” I mutter. A few weeks in Milan isn’t cheap, especially with a butler and two dogs in tow. She’d need connecting suites in the hotel . . . Unless she and Lorenzo are sharing a room.
I realize with a jolt I never asked where Lorenzo sleeps. Probably because he never seems to. As far as I know, all the second-floor guest rooms are still closed off, as they have been for years. Does he sleep in the attic?
Ten minutes later, I have my answer. The second-floor rooms are still closed off, and no one has slept in the attic for years. There’s a layer of dust on top of the dresser, the bedcovers smell musty, and judging by the droppings on the floor, a family of rodents is the only resident.
I trudge downstairs to my bedroom, lost in thought and aching to talk to Matteo.
Instead, I spend an hour online playing amateur detective. I hit the mother lode when I find a website offering title reports on Italian properties, but the kicker is the cost for the report and the wait: two hundred bucks and two days.
I already maxed out my credit card for the plane ticket I didn’t use to get here, but there is one other option. From my purse, I pull out my shiny new Amex card in the name of Mrs. Bradley Hamilton Wingate III and stare at it.
“It’s stealing,” I say to the empty room. Or is it a small form of payback?
Probably stealing. I text Brad that I’m going to charge two hundred dollars on the card. It isn’t a question. And I don’t think it can technically be considered theft if I tell him about it in advance.
He texts me back that there’s a fifty-thousand-dollar credit limit, so I should knock myself out.
That brings a dangerous smile to my face. Fifty thousand. Good to know.
I order the report, then call Dominic. He picks up after the first ring.
“Hello, tesoro. How are you feeling?”
Impatient to get to the point, I bypass a polite greeting. “I have to ask you something, and I need you to be completely honest with me.”
After a short pause, Dominic says, “Of course. Anything.”
“How much money did my father lend you?”
I was going to ask about the marchesa first, but decided at the last second to go with the money angle. I have an idea of what to say if he denies it.
Which he does. Vehemently.
“Your father never lent me money! Where did you get such an idea? Did that horrible woman tell you that?”
He sounds overly outraged and offended, the way guilty people do when charged with the truth. But his tone is proof of nothing. Unfortunately, there’s only one way to get to the bottom of this, and it’s with a white lie.
“I found a ledger my father kept.”
I leave it at that, trusting Dominic’s imagination to fill in the blanks.
I hold my breath, waiting for his answer with my heart in my throat. Finally he says, “I don’t know anything about that.”
Now his tone is flat and unequivocal, but there’s something off about it. Something that makes me want to dig a little more. “That’s very interesting because there’s a lot of information here about dates, loan amounts . . .”
Convince me, Dominic. Tell me it’s not true. Tell me you loved my father, you never took money from him, and I can trust you.
The moment I hear his heavy sigh, I know he’s giving up the ruse of innocence, and my stomach falls.
“There might have been a few times I needed help here and there over the years.”
“How many times?” I demand, my voice too loud. “How much money did he give you?”
“Doesn’t your ledger say?” he asks, hedging.
I hedge back. “I want you to tell me.”
Silence. Then another heavy sigh. Then he names a number so large I almost fall over in shock.
Then the jerk decides it’s time to change tactics. He says sternly, “This was between your father and me, Kimberly. It’s no business of yours. And it’s disrespectful of you to ask me. Your poor father—”
“Don’t you dare talk to me about my ‘poor’ father, or about disrespect! Not even two minutes ago you lied about never getting any money!”
He sniffs. “It’s beneath me to speak of.”
I swear, one of these days one of the men in my life is going to push me too far, and then my name will be in all the newspapers for a very different reason than being left at the altar: “The Cast-off Couturier Goes on a Murder Spree!”
“You’re stonewalling me now? Then I guess you won’t want to talk about your relationship with the marchesa.”
There’s a long icy pause. “She has poisoned you against me.”
“Are you denying it?”
“Whatever she told you is a lie.”
“Okay, then answer me this: Why did you say Matteo was vicious?”
Another pause, but this one is long and cavernous. I sense he’s carefully choosing his words. “He wouldn’t allow me to attend the wedding. I tried to go, but he blocked me at the door. He threatened to rip off my head. He’s an animal.”
An animal who goes into beast mode when someone he cares about is disrespected. I wonder what Dominic said about the marchesa to make Matteo threaten him.
I bet it wasn’t nice.
“At the hospital, you told me you weren’t invited to the wedding. That no one attended. That it was done in secret. This sounds like a much different story.”
Dominic decides he’s had enough of my interrogation and launches into a full-blown rant.
“Your father and I were friends for fifty years! I was the only one who came to the hospital when he was sick! I was the only one who stood by him after your mother died and he fell into the bottom of a bottle for so long you had to be sent away to live with your aunt in the States! I was the one who cared for him during his depression and made sure he ate, and showered, and his business didn’t go under! Me! If anything, I deserved the money he gave me! I earned it!”
My first thought is: you dick.
My next thought is: Matteo.
I already know the title search on Castello di Moretti will show no government lien.
I click end to disconnect with Dominic, then I make one more call, to the number Lorenzo left for the hotel in Milan.