The Kiss Thief

Heat bubbled in my veins throughout the drive. The black Escalade pulled up to my parents’ curb, and Mama and Clara hurried outside, showering me with hugs and kisses as if I’d just returned from a warzone. My father was standing at the doorway in his sharp suit, frowning at my nearing figure as I laced my arms with the women of my former household as we walked in. I daren’t meet his eyes. When I took the four steps up to our entrance door, he merely moved aside to let me pass, not offering me a hug, a kiss, or even a pleasantry.

I looked the other way. Our shoulders brushed, and it felt like his sliced mine with its rigid, icy stance.

“You look beautiful, Vita Mia,” Mama breathed behind me, pulling at the hem of my dress.

“Freedom agrees with me,” I bit out bitterly, my back to Papa as I went to the dining room and poured myself a glass of wine before Wolfe arrived.

The next hour was spent making idle conversation with my mother while my father nursed a glass of brandy and stared me down from across the room. Clara came and went out of the salon, providing refreshments and zeppole to curb our hunger.

“Something smells.” I scrunched my nose.

“That would be your fiancé,” my father said, sitting back in his executive chair. My mother laughed off his words.

“We had a bit of an incident in the backyard. It’s fine now.”

Another hour vanished, washed away by a stream of words as my mother brought my father and me up to date with all the latest gossip regarding the desperate housewives of The Outfit. Who got married and who got divorced. Who was cheating and who was being cheated on. Angelo’s little brother wanted to propose to his girlfriend, but Mike Bandini, his father, thought it to be a problematic announcement, especially as Angelo didn’t have any prospects to marry anyone anytime soon. Thanks to me.

Mom bit her lower lip when she realized it sounded a lot like an accusation, fiddling with the hem of her sleeve. She did that a lot. I chucked it to her low self-esteem after years of being married to my father.

“Of course, Angelo will move on.” She swatted the air.

“Think before you speak, Sofia. It would serve you well,” he advised.

When the grandfather clock chimed for the second time that evening—announcing it was eight o’clock—we moved to the dining room and began to eat our starters. I did not make any excuses for Wolfe since all my text messages to him went unanswered. My heart was soggy with shame and drenched with disappointment at the humiliation of being stood up by the man who ripped me from my family.

The three of us ate with our heads bowed down. The clinking of the salt and pepper shakers and utensils unbearably loud against the silence in the room. My mind drifted back to the notes in the wooden box. I had decided that this was all a mistake. Senator Keaton couldn’t be the love of my life.

The hate of my life? Absolutely.

Anything more than that was a stretch.

When Clara served us the reheated entrees shortly before the doorbell rang, instead of feeling relieved, more dread poured into me, heavy like lead. The three of us put our forks down and exchanged glances. What now?

“Well, then! That’s a pleasant surprise.” Mama clapped her hands once.

“No more than cancer.” My father patted the sides of his mouth with a napkin.

Wolfe came in a short minute later in a tailored suit, black raven hair tousled to a fault, and a purposeful expression that flirted with menace.

“Senator Keaton,” Papa sneered, not looking up from his dish of homemade lasagna. “I see you finally decided to grace us with your presence.”

Wolfe dropped a casual kiss on the crown of my head, and I hated the way silken satin wrapped around my heart and squeezed it with delight. I despised him for being so late and careless and myself for foolishly melting just because of the way his lips felt on my hair. My father watched the scene from the corner of his eye, one side of his mouth upturned in amused satisfaction.

You’re miserable, Francesca, aren’t you? His eyes taunted.

Yes, Papa. Yes, I am. Good job.

“What took you so long?” I whisper-shouted, bumping Wolfe’s hard thigh with my own underneath the table as he took a seat.

“Business,” he clipped, flapping his napkin over his lap in a whip-sharp movement and taking a generous sip of his wine.

“So, not only do you work all day,” my father launched into the conversation in full swing, sitting back and knotting his fingers together on the table, “but you’re sending off my daughter to college now. Are you planning on providing us with grandchildren anytime this decade?” he inquired flatly, not giving a damn this way or the other. I saw through my father’s behavior and knew without a shadow of a doubt this was not only about my college education.