MATTEO
Two days later, she still hasn’t called me.
Forty-eight hours. Two thousand eight hundred and eighty minutes. One hundred seventy-two thousand eight hundred seconds. That kiss replays in my mind’s eye the entire time. My erection has become a cliché.
By Wednesday afternoon I’m wound so tight I could snap.
“What’s wrong with you?” scolds Antonio, frowning at me over the rims of his glasses. “You’ve been pacing like a caged tiger since yesterday!”
We’re in the atelier, working on the new collection. Scratch that. One hundred full-time master sewers and technical staff are working on the new collection—I’m wearing grooves in the floor. “I have a lot on my mind.”
Antonio watches me execute three more agitated passes in front of his desk. He’s dressed in his never-changing outfit of black turtleneck, black slacks, and snowy-white athletic shoes. A measuring tape dangles from his neck, curling at the ends. An elastic pincushion bristling with needles hugs his wrist. He leans back in his chair, lights a cigarette, and exhales a cloud of smoke.
“What’s her name?”
I don’t bother asking how he knows my mood is due to a woman. His sixth sense is uncanny. His mother was a gypsy fortune-teller. I think it runs in the genes.
“Kimber.”
He squints at me through the coils of gray fumes wafting around his head. “As in, ly?”
“She shortened it.”
The squint deepens.
“There were five Kimberlys in her kindergarten class.”
Her father told me the story over dinner one night of how his six-year-old daughter had informed her startled teacher she was to be addressed as Kimber from that day forward. Kims were everywhere, she’d said, and she was only willing to give up two letters in the name of distinctness.
I’d chuckled at the precociousness of it, never guessing I’d find myself on the other end of that formidable will soon enough.
Smoking thoughtfully, Antonio lets me make another few passes in front of his desk. Then he removes his glasses and folds his arms over his chest. “The woman in the bar the other night.”
“Yes.”
He murmurs, “Very beautiful.” Then he waits, knowing silence is the most effective way to get me to speak.
I stop, prop my hands on my hips, and look up at the ceiling. I listen to sewing machines whirr and technicians conferring in hushed voice for a few moments before saying, “The new designs are hers.”
He snaps his fingers, excited at the news. “Ah! Good! I need to ask her about the feathers on look number twenty. Valentina has ordered the bleached peacock, but there’s a delicate floating accent on the hem that could either be ostrich or . . . what is this face you’re making? You look like you ate a plate of bad clams.”
I gaze at him meaningfully. “The designs are hers.”
He jolts upright in his chair, staring at me with wide eyes. “You didn’t buy them from her?”
“No.”
“She hasn’t given you permission to use them?”
“No.”
Astonished, he gapes at me. His face drains of color. “That’s theft! She’ll sue! She’ll ruin your name!”
“Not when I’m done with her, she won’t.”
He barks out a disbelieving laugh. “You’re going to put her in a sex coma, is that it?”
Hopefully. “I’m going to convince her it’s better to have me as a friend than an enemy.”
That throws Antonio for a loop. His face goes through a series of interesting expressions, including confusion and suspicion, until finally it settles on dismay.
“You’ve threatened this poor woman?”
He says that too loud. Several people at workstations nearby stop sewing, lift their heads, and glance over at us. I glower at them, and they quickly go back to work.
“Of course not! You know me better than that.”
“Then I don’t understand what you mean.”
“It’s complicated.”
Antonio takes a long drag from his cigarette. He’s so agitated he doesn’t notice when a fat clump of ash falls onto the middle of his chest and rolls down his shirt, bouncing off his belly and scattering. Then, as he does, he turns practical.
“Stealing isn’t the way to compensate for the designs that snake Riccardo destroyed when he left. This is beneath the House of Moretti. This is beneath you. We’ll scale down the show—”
“There has to be fifty pieces,” I interrupt, starting to pace again. “We always show fifty new looks!”
“Of our own,” he replies, his tone bone-dry.
I don’t want to tell him exactly what I have planned, so I wave a hand dismissively in the air. “Think of it as a collaboration.”
“I’ll do no such thing!” he says, indignant. “We don’t collaborate with anyone!”
“Interesting that’s your takeaway on the situation.”
He huffs and slumps down into his chair. “Eh, my takeaway. My takeaway is that you’ve lost your mind. I should look for a new job now, before word gets out that I work in a den of thieves and I’m unemployable.” He tsks, muttering to himself. “To think of all the years of dedicated service I’ve given you. My loyalty repaid like this.” He makes a resigned sweeping gesture with his arms, as if the polizia are closing in, guns drawn. “I’ll die in disgrace. Ah!”
He throws an arm over his eyes and whimpers.
I think he gets his sense of melodrama from his mother, too.
I pull up a chair across from his desk, sink into it, and drag my hands through my hair. “You asked what was wrong with me. I told you.”
“So accusing! You’d think I was the thief here!” he cries from behind his arm.
“I never said I stole the designs, you carping old woman. We traded.”
He peeks out from beneath his arm and eyes me suspiciously. “Traded?”
“For a plane ticket.”
“Well, why didn’t you say so?” Casting off his air of doom, he straightens and breaks into a grin. “A trade! This is business! This is good!”
He’s forgotten I told him I didn’t get permission, so I have to clarify. “But I promised her I wouldn’t use her designs in the show.”
His expression goes from glee to horror. “This is bad. This is very bad.”
“What if I said she’s my stepsister?”
He doesn’t react for a moment. Then I see him recall the state I was in when I returned to our table at the bar after I spoke to her, how the front of my trousers were tented, and he blanches. He makes the sign of the cross over his chest.
“Sorry—ex-stepsister.”
“But . . . you’re attracted to her.”
“Of course I’m attracted to her. A man would have to be blind not to be attracted to her.” And that sweet red strawberry mouth. Fuck.
I can tell Antonio is thinking hard because he always looks as if he’s about to have a stroke when he’s mulling over a problem.
Then he pronounces, “It still seems like a sin.”
“It’s not a sin,” I say angrily. “Why does everything have to be a sin?”
He looks at me as if I’m an idiot. “I don’t make the rules. Talk to the pope.”
Exasperated, I jump to my feet and start another round of pacing. “I don’t need to talk to the pope. It’s not a sin. It’s not illegal. It’s not anything.”
“If it’s not anything, why are you so worked up?”
Good question. My tie feels like a noose. I yank at it angrily, manage to loosen it enough to breathe, and keep pacing. “She’s ignoring me.”
After a moment, Antonio says, “Oh.”
I slide him a sideways look. There was more to that “oh” than simply “oh.”
“What?”
“Ha!” He cackles, slapping the arm of his chair. “Ha ha! I never thought I’d see the day!”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
He jumps to his feet, points his finger at me, and shouts, “You’re in love!”
As if an off switch has been thrown, everyone in the atelier stops what they’re doing and stares at me.
I’m going to kill him.
“Back to work!” I’m instantly obeyed, but looks are flying around the room like arrows. I have a terrible feeling this will be the subject of gossip for months to come.
Antonio turns to the room and throws his arms wide. “He’s in love with his stepsister!”
In unison, one hundred people swivel their heads and stare at me in unblinking silence, like an army of judgmental owls.
“Ex!” I shout, red-faced. I want to kick something. Especially Antonio’s fat rear end. “Ex-stepsister! And I’m not in love with her! No one is in love with anyone!”
No one dares to make a peep, except Antonio, who turns back to me with little red hearts in his eyes. Sighing, he clasps his hands together at his chest.
“Ah, Matteo. You make a very handsome couple. The children—oh! They’ll be beautiful. I’ve worried so long about you being alone. All you do is work, never taking time to meet a nice woman and settle down. I’m sure if you write the pope a letter explaining the entire situation, he won’t let your souls burn in the eternal lake of fire.”
I blow out a hard breath. “Jesus Christ.”
Antonio nods. “Exactly.”
I’m saved from the insanity of the conversation by my cell phone, which starts to ring. I yank it out of my pocket, hit “Answer,” and snap, “Pronto!”
“Uh . . . pronto yourself. I guess.”
There’s a strange sense of relief at hearing her voice that I don’t need to examine too closely. I already know what it means. “Kimber.”
“Matteo. Now that we’ve confirmed we know each other’s names, are you ready to talk? Or do you need a few minutes to finish skinning the cat or whatever you’re doing that’s got you so worked up?”
Through gritted teeth, I say, “I’m. Not. Worked. Up.”
“Really? Hmm. ’Cause you sound kinda worked up.”
I have to close my eyes and count to ten before I’m calm enough to answer. “Just dealing with some employee problems.” I open my eyes and send a lethal glare Antonio’s way.
He blows me a kiss and lights another cigarette.
“Okay. We’ll do this some other time.”
“Wait! Don’t hang up! I need to talk to you!”
From the corner of my eye, I see Antonio’s smile. It’s so big it can probably be seen from outer space. I turn on my heel and stalk off the production room floor and into my office, slamming the door behind me.
“What was that noise?” asks Kimber.
“I closed a door.”
“Closed? Sounded like you put some stank on it.”
“I have no idea what that means. What have you decided about my offer?”
When she hesitates, I feel like my chest might explode.
“Well . . .” she drawls, torturing me. Then she relents. “I suppose I can survive two dozen kisses from you if it means getting my designs back.”
I sink slowly into my desk chair. I loosen my tie another few inches, but still can’t breathe, so I rip it off and toss it on the desk.
“I have some free time tomorrow. Say, from five o’clock to five-oh-one?”
“No. Today. And I’ll need more than one minute.”
“You never said anything about timing,” she starts, sounding hostile, but I cut her off.
“A proper kiss takes more than one minute.”
“That sounds ominous. I think we need to discuss the particulars before we go any further.”
The particulars. My mind gifts me with a pornographic Technicolor show of each and every “particular” it wants. I open the top two buttons on my shirt, yanking aside the collar because it’s stifling. “So. Discuss.”
She’s irritated by my curt response. I can tell because she says, “That tone is pissing me off, Count Egotistico.”
I really hate it when she calls me that. I am a fucking marchese. “What doesn’t piss you off?”
“The list is long. It includes all kinds of fun things, like rainbows, puppies, nonassholey men . . .”
“Very funny. I’m not an asshole.”
She mutters, “That’s what they all say.”
I have to force myself to sound nonchalant and in control, though I’m anything but. “Let’s get back to the subject at hand.”
“Sure. One minute and not a second longer. That’s my final offer.”
“Five minutes.”
“What? Who kisses for five minutes straight?”
I growl, “I’d like to kiss you for five hours straight, but we have to start somewhere.”
That shuts her up for a while. Then she groans. “This is so weird.”
“Don’t forget you can tattle on me to my mother if I don’t hold up my end of the bargain.”
“Yeah, there is that.”
She’s imagining all the ways she’ll humiliate me to my mother, I can hear it in her voice. I take advantage of her distraction to press my case. “Four minutes.”
“Ugh. I can’t even look at your face for four minutes at a time, let alone suck on it.”
Remembering how she ogled me while I changed my shirt in my bedroom, I allow myself a smile. “Perhaps you’d rather look at my chest.”
A sound like a snake’s hiss comes over the line. “You know, every time I think you’re not a complete dick, you do something to prove me wrong.”
My smile grows larger. “And we’re back to my dick.”
“I never said anything about your dick!”
“You did. Just then.”
“No, I did not!”
Maybe she’s right. Maybe I am an asshole. Because winding this woman up is so much fun. “I distinctly heard you say the word—”
“Two minutes,” she spits out. “That’s it. Final, final offer.”
Two minutes. Twenty-four kisses. That means her beautiful strawberry mouth is all mine for a total of forty-eight minutes.
It’s more than I hoped.
If I were a supervillian, this is the part where I’d rub my hands together in glee and produce an evil laugh. “I accept your offer. I’ll see you at your shop at five o’clock sharp.”
“Not today! Matteo—”
I disconnect the call. Then I adjust my hard cock, grab my briefcase, and head out, the page I’d already removed from her sketch pad inside.
The full-color copy is pinned to the wall in the workroom, along with all the others.
Sometimes a man has to bend the truth in service of a greater cause.