KIMBER
A fact I’ve recently come to understand: Womanizers are all alike. They’re arrogant, selfish, and convinced they’re doing you a favor when they throw their pretty peen in your direction.
I’m so over it.
When I get back to my room, I get the water hot for a bath and raid the minibar while the tub is filling. Fortified with a hefty rum and Coke, I strip, wind my hair into a messy bun, and slip into the hot water with a groan of pleasure.
What a shit day. Week.
I close my eyes and let my mind drift, taking the occasional sip from my drink. How could Papa have married that woman? That heartless ice cube of a woman? I start to get angry thinking about it and chug the rest of my drink. Then my mind wanders into Euro Hunk territory, and I get even angrier.
So he’s beautiful. So what? He’s obviously a letch. If he acts that aggressively with me, I’m sure he acts that way with every woman he encounters. And hell if I’ll ever be so naive again the way I was with Brad.
I don’t know who’s in room 412, but I hope it’s someone with a short temper and a fondness for fistfights.
Imagining Euro Hunk getting punched in the face by a surly hotel guest upset at being disturbed makes a bitter smile curve my lips. Then I feel guilty because without him, I wouldn’t have made it to the hospital in time to hear my father’s last words.
Then, without warning, I burst into tears.
I lie in the tub and let the pain wash over me. There’s so much of it I feel as if I’m suffocating. I have to set the glass on the edge of the tub because my hand is shaking so hard I can’t hold it. I sit up, wrap my arms around my knees, and ugly cry until I’ve wrung myself out and the water has grown cold.
Then I dry off and make myself another drink.
Then the phone rings.
“Hello?”
“Buonasera,” says a husky voice I’d recognize anywhere.
“How did you get this number?” I demand, my face going hot.
A chuckle, even sexier than the voice. “I have friends at the front desk. Apparently you made quite an impression when you checked in. All I had to say was ‘Beautiful American,’ and they connected me to your room straightaway. Speaking of rooms, the lady in four-twelve was very nice, but I prefer my women to have their real teeth and be able to walk without a cane.”
Apparently the privacy laws in this country are as lax as the traffic laws. I say tartly, “Really? I’d have thought as long as a woman was breathing, you’d be good to go.”
“You’d have thought wrong. I’m very particular. My last serious relationship was three years ago.”
I roll my eyes. “Sure. Listen—I’m grateful to you for that ticket. Sincerely, I am. And if you’ll give me your address, I swear I’ll find a way to pay you back. But I’m not interested in sleeping with you.” Okay, that’s a teeny lie, but whatever. “I’m burying my father in a few days—I’m not in the mood for . . . whatever this is.” Why am I explaining this to him? Hang up!
But I can’t hang up, because I’m conflicted. Giving me his ticket was an incredible gesture of generosity. Even if he was hoping for a blowie in the men’s room, it was still generous.
Even though I had to surrender my sketch pad with my entire spring collection, it was still generous.
Also, he’s incredibly hot, and my uterus is shrieking at me that she’ll never forgive me if I hang up on him first.
So I don’t hang up. I wait, breathing shallowly, listening to static crackle over the line. After a long pause, Euro Hunk speaks again. “I understand. And I’m sorry about your father. I know how hard it is to lose someone you love.”
With a soft click the line goes dead.
I stand frowning at the receiver in my hand, wondering why that felt weird. Like, wrong weird.
Like a mistake.
“Because you’re an idiot,” I say aloud to the empty room. Then I get ready for bed and put the whole thing out of my mind.
I toss and turn all night, dreaming of boiling cauldrons and cackling witches and handsome princes riding white steeds. When I wake up, I’m disoriented. It takes a good thirty seconds of staring blankly around the hotel room until I realize where I am. Then I get so depressed I lie there staring at the ceiling, mentally sifting through the shambles of my life.
Where am I going to live? What am I going to do for money? How did I lose my fiancé, my father, and my business within the space of a few days?
I enjoy a good solid ten minutes of imagining throwing the WS and her ridiculous dogs out on their asses and living at Il Sogno myself, but I can’t keep up the anger for long and end up crying again.
My pity party is interrupted by the arrival of a text.
We really need to talk. Please call me.
I text Brad back that I’ll break his jaw next time if he tries to contact me again, then block his number.
I sit there seething until I can’t stand it anymore, then drag myself out of bed and take a shower. I’m supposed to be back at the house at noon to meet with the potential buyer of DiSanto Couture who the marchesa set a meeting with, so though I’d love nothing more than to lie in bed and wallow, I’m forced into adulting. On the cab ride to Il Sogno, I check my bank account, choking out a sick laugh when I see the balance.
By the time I arrive at the house, my mood is black. The WS better watch out because this morning, I’m capable of murder.
“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.
The marchesa says, “Ciao, Matteo. Come in, son.”
Oh, dear God in heaven, you are one sick mofo.
Because not only is the man standing in the doorway the man who took the inspiration for my entire spring collection. Not only is he the man who gave me his ticket so I could get to this country before my father died. Not only is he the man who propositioned me—twice—and inspired lust in me the likes of which I’ve never felt.
He’s also my stepbrother.
Why does God hate me?