“Dresses, shoes, all that shit, will be at our room in,” he checks his watch, “an hour. Pick whatever you want. You’ll be the most beautiful woman there even if you choose a burlap sack.”
“Are you serious?”
This is not my life, I work in a lab, or on car parts, with my hair pulled up and often safety glasses.
“Mm-hmm,” he nuzzles me. “But I’m going to make it up to you. After the race, we’ll be learning to make cheese in the Italian countryside.”
“No,” I push his shoulders back so I can see his eyes. They tell me he’s dead serious, about the dresses, the gala—the cheese!
“Yes,” he grins, “No Reservations, season nine, episode one-thirty-six.”
He slaps me on the ass, turns to leave, and while I stand there slack-jawed, he exclaims for everyone in the hallway to hear, “Wooing, Emily. Prepare yourself.”
“I want to find a man who looks at me like that,” Dante’s younger sister, Angelina, sighs. She points to Cole, who is sitting next to me at our banquet table.
Dante rolls his eyes, “Him? Absolutely not. He looks like he’s either going to drag her back to a cave or eat her alive.”
“Both,” Cole’s lips turn up around his glass, and he gives me that smoldering, panty-dropping grin that hooked me nearly a decade ago.
All night he’s not taken his eyes off me. Not when he was schmoozing the sponsors who put on this charity event. Not when he let Dante cut in and dance with me. And not even when I nearly tripped in the heels that I’m not accustomed to when Nova the Tennis Bitch strutted past us.
Apparently, she was nearby in Milan, though Cole couldn’t guess if it was because there was a sporting event or she’s here as someone else’s arm-candy.
Didn’t know, didn’t care, he’d said.
His eyes have stayed firmly on me, in a dress by a designer I can’t even pronounce that two Italian bombshells squished me into.
They spoke no English when they rolled a rack of dresses into our Shady Acres suite. But I was able to communicate ‘I have no idea, please help me’ and help me they did.
It’s floor-length, Ferrari red, which seemed appropriate, with a plunging neckline and a slit to the top of one thigh. This is a ‘fuck me dress’ if Klara has ever seen one. But classy, I was clear, I think, with the stylists who just kept clapping and exclaiming ‘si, si’ when I put it on.
They came with shoes, make-up, and even jewelry. The diamond earrings they mandated could probably have paid for my college degrees.
I can tell you all about Cole’s Brioni tuxedo, though, because holy shit, I don’t care what it costs—it’s well worth it.
Cole is right. Nice things are nice.
And, watching him command the room all night looking like 007, I am going to do very not-nice things to him tonight.
All the furniture is going down.
“Will you dance with me again, Cole?” Angelina begs. She’s fifteen and obviously smitten, not that I can blame her.
With Sophia Loren’s cheekbones and long, wavy black hair to her waist, she’s going to break hearts one day. Dante is already ready to lose his mind hovering around her like a guard dog. He likes to show it by slugging her in the arm and biting the head off anyone who looks at her, but the love Dante has for his sister is endearing.
And making her crazy.
Cole looks to me to ask if he can accommodate Angelina, and of course, I nod and smile because it wasn’t that long ago I was a teenager.
While I didn’t long to be at a ball like Cinderella, every girl dreamed of Prince Charming in a tuxedo.
“Stay away from my sister, asshole,” Dante tries to smack Cole’s shoulder as he helps her up.
Angelina stomps her foot and swats Dante’s hand away, so embarrassed by him.
I giggle because I’ve had umpteen glasses of champagne. Plus, it’s utterly adorable that Dante brought his little sister as his date since this is his home country.
Such tough guys, all of them.