The Kiss Thief

“Your point, Miss Rhys?” I asked.

“Why her?”

“Why not?”

“She’s nineteen!” Kristen roared again, kicking the leg of my bed. Her wince told me she’d just found out that, like my conviction, it was made of steel. I had quite the taste for expensive, unlikely furniture, something she’d know if she’d ever been invited to my house.

“May I ask how you became privy to my personal business?” I wiped at the speckles of saliva she’d left on my dress shirt. Humans, as a concept, were not among my ten favorite things in the world. Hysterical women were not even in the top thousand. Kristen was being highly emotional, considering the circumstances. She was therefore a liability in my way to the presidency and serving my country.

“My agency retrieved images of your young bride moving into your mansion, complete with pictures of her watching like a princess as your staff carried her many, many bags. I’m guessing she’s a soon-to-be trophy wife. Speaks five languages, looks like an angel, and probably fucks like a siren.” Kristen continued pacing, pushing the sleeves of her smart suit up her elbows.

Francesca, despite her many shortcomings, was not unpleasant on the eye. And she probably did have extensive sexual experience, considering her very strict daddy had been a continent away for most of her youth, leaving her to her frivolous ways. Which reminded me, I needed to arrange for her to get drug tested and checked for STDs. Slipups were not an option, and public disgrace would earn her a spot on my shit list, a place her father could confirm was less than picturesque.

“Are you here to ask questions and answer them yourself?” I shoved her shoulder lightly, and she fell to an upholstered cream seat below me. She growled, darting back up. So much for trying to calm her down.

“I’m here to tell you that I want an exclusive Bishop piece, or I will tell everyone who is willing to listen that your new blushing extremely young bride is also the daughter of the number-one mobster in Chicago. I’d hate for it to be tomorrow’s leading headline, but—as you must agree—gossip sells copies, right?”

I rubbed my chin.

“Do what you gotta do, Miss Rhys.”

“Are you serious?”

“As serious as someone can be without filing a restraining order against you for attempting to blackmail a member of the senate. Let me show you to the door.”

I had to give her some credit—Kristen wasn’t here to grieve the untimely death of our fling. She was all business. She wanted me to compromise the governor in order to save my own ass and give her a scoop that would likely get her an offer from CNN—or TMZ—the next day. Unfortunately for Kristen, I wasn’t much of a diplomat. I did not negotiate with terrorists—or worse, journalists. In fact, I would not even negotiate with the president himself. Francesca had pointed out at the masquerade that Nemesis had slayed Narcissus, teaching him a lesson about arrogance. She was about to find out that no one stomped on her husband-to-be’s pride.

The irony, of course, was that Francesca’s father was the very person to teach me that lesson.

“Huh?” Kristen huffed.

“Tell the world. I’ll just spin it as I’m saving my fiancée from the big, bad wolf.”

I was the big, bad wolf, but only Francesca and I needed to know that.

“You didn’t even like each other at the masquerade.” Kristen threw her arms in the air, trying another tactic. I carefully placed my fingers on the small of her back and led her to the doorway.

“Affection has nothing to do with a good marriage. We’re done here.”

As I rounded the corner to the entrance, I caught a glimpse of brown curls tossing in the hallway. Francesca had been roaming, and she most likely heard the conversation. I wasn’t worried. As I said before—she was as harmless as a declawed kitten. Whether I’d make her purr or not was entirely up to her. I wasn’t especially keen on her affection and had other places to find it in.

“So, just to be clear, this is over?” Kristen stumbled next to me as I led her downstairs and out of my premises.

“Sharp as a fucking spoon,” I muttered. I wasn’t against taking mistresses, but I could no longer risk a high-profile affair. And as Kristen was a hungry journalist, everything about her screamed scandal.

“You know, Wolfe, you think you’re so untouchable because you had a lucky streak. I’ve been in this business long enough to know you’re too conceited to get much further than you are today. You’re a real piece of work, and you think you can get away with even more.” She stopped in front of the door to my house. We both knew this was her last visit here.

I smirked, shooing her away with my hand.

“Write the piece, sweetheart.”

“This is bad publicity, Keaton.”

“A good Catholic summer wedding of two young, high-profile people? I’ll take my chances.”

“You’re not that young.”

“You’re not that smart, Kristen. Goodbye.”

After I got rid of Miss Rhys, I went back to my study to dismiss Bishop and White, before I made my way to the east wing to check on Francesca.

Earlier this morning, her mother showed up at the gate holding some of her daughter’s possessions, screaming she wouldn’t leave until she saw her daughter was okay. Although I told Francesca that whatever she didn’t have time to pack would be left behind, pacifying her parents trumped teaching her a valuable lesson about life. Her mother was blameless in the situation. So was Francesca herself.

I pushed my bride’s bedroom door open and found that she had not returned from her wanderings. Stuffing my fists in my cigar pants’ pockets, I sauntered across her room to look out her window. I found her in the garden, crouching in a yellow summer dress, muttering to herself as she stabbed a trowel into a flowerpot, her small hands swimming inside a pair of oversized, green gardening gloves. I cracked the window open, half-interested in the nonsense she was spewing. Her voice seeped through the crack of the window. Her ramblings were throaty and feminine, not at all hysterical and teenager-y as I’d expected someone in her situation to be.

“Who does he think he is? He will pay for this. I’m not a pawn. I’m not the idiot he thinks I am. I’ll starve until I break him or die trying. Wouldn’t that be a fun headline to try to explain,” she huffed, shaking her head. “But what’s he gonna do—force-feed me? I will get out of here. Oh, P.S. Senator Keaton—you’re not even that good looking. Just tall. Angelo? Now he’s a gorgeous specimen, inside and out. He will forgive me for that silly kiss. Of course, he will. I’m going to make him…”

I closed the window. She was going on a hunger strike. Good. Her first lesson would be about my apathy. The blabbing about Bandini did not concern me, either. Puppy love could never threaten a wolf. I made my way back to her door when a carved wooden box sitting on her nightstand caught my attention. I ambled over to it, the echo of her words from the masquerade bouncing in my head. The box was locked, but I instinctively knew she’d taken out another note, desperate to change her fate. I flipped her pillows on a whim and found the note underneath them. My beautiful, predictable, stupid bride.

I unfolded it.

The next man to feed you chocolate will be the love of your life.

I felt the sneer carving on my face and wondered, briefly, when was the last time I smiled. It was about something silly Francesca had briefly told me on the landing at her house before I bent her father’s arm into giving her to me.

“Sterling!” I barked from my spot by my bride’s bed. The old maid rushed into the room, the frantic wandering of her erratic pupils telling me she expected the worst.

“Send Francesca the biggest Godiva chocolate basket available with a note from me. Leave it blank.”

“That’s a wonderful idea,” she squealed, slapping her knees. “She hasn’t eaten in almost twenty-four hours, so I will do that right away.” She dashed downstairs to the kitchen where she kept a Yellow Pages bigger than her frame.

I pushed the note back into place, rearranging the pillows in the same, messy heap I’d found them.

I cared more about fucking with Francesca Rossi’s head than I did her body.

Now that was my idea of foreplay.

TWO DAYS OF NOTHINGNESS TICKED by, soaking like blood on the walls of my room.

I refused to communicate with anyone. Even the in-desperate-need-for-love garden was left unattended, including the plants and vegetables I’d potted after Mama paid me a visit the day after Wolfe took me. She snuck seeds of begonias in the wooden box. “The most resilient flowers, Francesca. Just like you.” Then Ms. Sterling caught up with my hobby and brought me some radishes, carrot, and cherry tomato seeds, trying to lift my mood and perhaps encourage me to expend some energy and consume something more than tap water.

Sleep was short, tormented, and interrupted with a nightmare: a monster prowling in the shadows behind my bedroom door, baring his teeth in a wolfish grin every time I looked its way. The monster’s eyes were mesmerizing, but his smile was frightening. And when I tried to wake up, to unchain myself from the dream, my body was paralyzed to the mattress.

There were two things I wanted desperately—for Wolfe to understand we couldn’t get married and for Angelo to realize that the kiss was a misunderstanding.

Ms. Sterling brought food, water, and coffee to my bed every few hours, leaving silver trays filled with goodness on my nightstand. I drank the water to keep myself from fainting, but the rest remained untouched.

I especially ignored the huge basket of chocolate my future husband had sent to me. It sat in the corner of the room on the fancy desk, collecting dust. Even though the low sugar in my blood made white dots explode in my vision every time I made a sudden move, I still somehow knew that the expensive chocolate would taste of my own surrender. A flavor so bitter, no sugar could sweeten it.

Then there were the notes. The cursed, exasperating notes.

I’d opened two out of the three, and both pointed at Wolfe as the love of my life.