Italian Kisses: A Billionaire Love Story Part 10

But somehow I knew that this wasn't a robbery. No, this, I could sense, was something much worse than that.

"...Hi?" I said, feeling self-conscious at my lack of makeup that day, the frizzy hair, the comfy pants and shoes I wore.

Her opinion of me showed itself with a slight sniff and a rolling of the eyes. "You're the one?" She spoke clearly, her red lips shaping each syllable with perfect clarity. This was a woman used to no small portion of power.

"The one what?" I replied, even though I also sensed that her question was at least partly rhetorical. The tone she said it in made me feel self conscious once more, and I had the urge to grab my brush and run it through my hair until it was silky smooth and straight.

"You are Emma Weston, correct?" she said.

She rubbed me the wrong way. Everything about her. Her overly perfect face. Her expensive clothes. The look of superiority in her eyes. And that got my back up, helped me regain some of my own composure.

"I am. Can I get your name, so that I can tell the police when I call them?" I pulled my phone out of my pocket. Unlike back home, you didn't dial 911 here. Instead, you got the police after punching 113 into your phone. I thumbed the 1 key on the pad twice, my finger hovering over the 3.

She gave me a tight smile of restrained irritation and amus.e.m.e.nt. It had the effect of thinning her lips, making them paler, bloodless despite the red lipstick. "No need for that."

I realized why I didn't like her. Well, one of several reasons. But it had been bugging me since we'd first dressed each other down.

She was perfect. Too perfect. It was the difference between a masterwork and just another painting or sculpture. Too often, artists sought to eliminate those little flaws that make someone human.

They'd give us works of art without flaws, without humanity. They were nice to look at, but depthless. Shallow and sterile.

And then there were her eyes. They were cold and green, like pine needles in winter. They were a shark's eyes. Hungry and predatory and somehow dead.

She had all the beauty of a statue and nothing to temper it and make her human.

"What, then?" All I needed to do to complete the call was to hit the little green b.u.t.ton.

"You are the one Liam has been seeing, are you not?"

I went rigid at that.

The woman nodded. "I found your address on a piece of paper in his jacket." She reached into her pocket and pulled out the carefully folded note, unfolding it in her lap and smoothing it out.

From where I stood, I could see my hastily scrawled address.

My heart dropped into my stomach. Coming fresh from that awful lunch, I could see no other conclusion than the one I reached when I'd heard her say Liam's name.

"Are you his wife? His girlfriend?"

The beautiful woman seated in my chair stared at me for a second, then barked a harsh, ugly laugh. "Wife? Hardly. I'm his secretary. Of course, I would love to be more, what with Liam being who he is. Until last week, I thought I was well on my way to more, too." Her lips perked up in an awful, mirthless smile, "Until about a week and a half ago."

A rush of opposing sensations left me alternately hot and cold. Relief was first. Relief that Liam hadn't lied, that he wasn't seeing anyone else. Then worry. She was his secretary, but she talked like she'd been more. Besides, what young executive could afford to bring his secretary along on a business trip?

"You see," she said, "He went to a fundraiser one night. And after that night, he never touched me again. When I asked him why, he said that it had never been serious between us. That he'd found someone else he thought he could feel something more for. I just had to see for myself. And this is what I find? You?"

My teeth ground together, my eyes searching my tiny flat for some answers but not finding any. "He never said anything about you."

"That doesn't surprise me one bit," she said, "You have no idea what you've gotten yourself into, have you?"

"I want you to leave. Now." My stomach wouldn't stop churning, and there was no way in h.e.l.l I would let this woman see me sick.

She laughed that mirthless laugh again. "Do you even know who Liam is?"

Why isn't she leaving? I thought. I wanted her to leave. I needed her to leave. To leave before all the strength left my knees and I crumpled to the floor.

"Of course I do," I snapped, "He's Liam Montgomery."

She shook her head, her ponytail whipping back and forth behind her head. Those shark's eyes had something like pity in them. Pity and contempt. "That's his name. That's not who he is."

I did my best to keep my body in check. I flexed my thighs and calves, trying to hide the tremble in my legs. I fought back against the angry pressure behind my eyes. I suppressed the lump lifting slowly up my throat.

I gripped the strap of my messenger bag hard enough for the nylon to bite into my palm. The pain helped.

"Please enlighten me and then kindly get the h.e.l.l out of my apartment," I said.

"You've heard of Ma.s.s Systems, haven't you?" The LLC was implied.

"Of course," I snapped. It was a huge corporation, always mentioned in the news acquiring this company or that, funding tech start-ups that went public often to the tune of a dollar sign with nine zeroes behind it. They apparently owned half the social media sites on the net.

"Liam Montgomery is that Liam Montgomery. He owns it," she said.

I shook my head, my brain refusing to wrap around the idea. "That's impossible." Liam was too young. There was no way he owned a company that outpaced the GDP of several countries.

"Now you're being obtuse. It is him. You know it. Now can you see what you cost me? Now can you see that you're way in over your frizzy little head?"

"Get out now, or I call the police. I mean it," I spat, raising my cell like it was a weapon.

She stood up, smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt and tugging her blazer back into place. She wore a pair of high heels that arched her back, emphasizing her perfect figure and her perfect a.s.s.

I had to step aside so she could get to the door. When she did, she stopped and looked at me again. I didn't look at her; seeing her in my peripheral vision was enough.

"He doesn't love you, you know. He's not that sort of man. He'll dump you when he's done with you, like he dumped me. Like he dumped all the ones before me." She paused, waiting for my reply. When it didn't come, she smiled again and let herself out without closing the door.

My eyes had fixed on the window looking out onto the street. Little motes of dust floated in the bars of sunlight stabbing in. There were some smudges and imperfections in the gla.s.s.

I don't know how long I stood there, my mind ticking over what she'd told me. Ma.s.s Systems was in the news a lot, all right. But so was its owner. I'd never really been into the stock market or celebrity gossip. Despite that, I still knew more than I wanted.

I still knew that the CEO of Ma.s.s Systems went through women like a machine gun went through ammunition. A lot of noise and commotion, the spent cases quickly discarded.

In my head, whenever I heard a story about him I always pictured him as this rich older man with too much money and no sense of decency.

I looked at my laptop, my fingers itching to tap his name into a search engine. I knew it would come up with plenty of pictures taken of him with his various flings. Lots of tabloid reports of the trail of shattered hearts he left in his wake. Actresses, models, probably a princess or two. High caliber women, if we continue the guns and ammo thing.

And then there was me, the n.o.body girl from St. Louis.

Except that clashed with the man I'd known. The man whose eyes didn't lie. The Liam that awful secretary talked about, the one mentioned in the news as a heartthrob playboy and heartbreaker, wasn't the man who'd tried to finding meaning staring into the bronze eyes of Marcus Aurelius.

Sudden rage seized me. Snarling, I grabbed my door and slammed it so that the frame rattled.

Hugging myself tightly, I went over to the window and stared down at the quaint scene below me. I hated Rome, then. Hated it more than I had before I'd met Liam. It was old and decrepit and I didn't know how I'd ever thought there'd be something of value or something beautiful here.

For the first time since it had happened, I actually felt a strain of happiness that my dad couldn't be here to experience the disappointment of Rome firsthand.

What hurt the most, though, was the thought of losing him. I just couldn't reconcile the man the world made Liam out to be with the one who'd held me in the tub while I bared my soul to him.

I'd known that this was something special. Something I'd never quite had before in my life. That Liam and I clicked and fit together in a way I don't think I could ever find again if I spent the rest of my life searching.

And now it felt like it had to end. I'd shared myself with him, but he had never fully opened up to me. I'd known that, too. I'd even been okay with it. Except what I'd thought had been a molehill turned out to be a mountain.

I'd just been looking at it, at him, as though from very far away, the perspective skewed. And now I'd had that image corrected for me.

But if breaking this whole thing off was the right thing, why then did it feel like I would be cutting off a part of myself in the act?

"Emma? Are you all right?" Mrs. Rosselini asked, in Italiono, from the other side of the door. She must have heard the slam, I knew.

"Fine, just fine," I replied, hoping she would just go away. I didn't want her to come in and start fawning over me, asking why I was upset. I didn't think there was a way I could explain my feelings in any way that made sense. Especially not in Italian.

"There are some extra rolls. Come down and take them if you like," she said.

"Thank you." I waited, listening to her retreat back down the steps.

I'd been planning on buying a few of those rolls and sharing them with Liam. He'd shared that amazing gelato place with me. It seemed only fair that I share this bakery with him.

Actually, I'd been planning to do that that same night. Except now I never wanted to see him again.

Even though, simultaneously, I wanted to see him more than anything. Like I said, there was no way I could explain myself that made sense. Not even to me.

The chiming of my phone sent my heart into my throat until I realized what it was. I yanked it out of my pocket.

A text from Liam. Probably asking about our plans that night. I didn't read it.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed. He knew I was between cla.s.ses. Another text came, and then another. I didn't look at any of them.

Part of me wanted to confront him right away, but that would be a bad idea. It would be nothing but lots of screaming and crying. Lots of emotion I didn't want to waste, that I couldn't afford to spend.

Let him worry, let him wonder, I thought.

Then I saw my textbooks and remembered that I had a cla.s.s coming up. The thought struck me like a thunderbolt.

Liam had been right about one thing. I needed to move on. Move on from my grief, and move on from him. And I could do that by fixing my grades, finally looking into the future instead of wallowing in the past.

I could still salvage my grades, and therefore my semester abroad and my undergrad degree as a whole.

With a renewed sense of purpose, I shoved the textbooks into my messenger bag, set my phone on silent, and left my flat. This time I triple-checked to make certain that I'd locked the door.

If I never saw that imperfectly perfect secretary in my chair again, it would be too soon. I tried to add an "Or Liam, For That Matter," clause to that thought, but I couldn't.

Chapter 9.

I don't know if it was a perfect combination of anger and determination, or desperation to avoid thinking about Liam's secretary had said, but that had to be my best lecture with Dr. Aretino ever.

Any time he asked a question, I raised my hand first. Not that it really mattered; Dr. Aretino would call on me even if I offered an answer in the middle of another student's explanation.

I got them all right, too. Even the hard one about the use of contraposto in late Etruscan sculpture.

I was on fire. The burn felt good. I liked it. I liked how it seared away my feelings. And if that fire started cooling to embers, all I had to do was bring Liam's face to mind to fan those flames back up high.

So it wasn't totally unexpected when Dr. Aretino asked me to stay after the lecture again.

I stood in front of his lectern, watching him file his notes away into his briefcase while the strap of my messenger bag big into my shoulder with the weight of all the books it held.

My phone vibrated in my pocket, buzzing at me like a fly that refused to be shooed away. He'd waited until cla.s.s was over to start bothering me, at least.

Still, I refused to answer it. I refused to even take the cell out of my pocket.

"You seem different, Emma," he said. His forehead looked particularly huge and shiny today.

"Just trying to pull my grades back up, professor."

"Giuseppe! Please, it is Giuseppe, remember."

That fire inside started heating up again, right in the center of my chest. If I wasn't careful, I knew, I'd end up letting loose on the professor. And I couldn't. Not if I wanted to salvage anything from this semester.

So I gave him a close-lipped smile, hoping he would drop it and let me go. His wasn't the only cla.s.s I had. And if I gave myself too much downtime, Liam was bound to surface in my thoughts.

He didn't, of course.

"Ragazza D'oro, I too would love to see your grades improve. You are as smart as you are beautiful. Which is, I think, smart enough to see what you must do gain that improvement."

He reached out and ran the back of his middle finger across my cheek. I flinched and pulled back. His hand wavered in the air in front of my face, uncertain whether to pursue me.

"I'll do whatever school work it takes... Giuseppe. But no more."

Dr. Aretino fanned his fingers and smiled. "Of course, of course. But soon I think you will come to see that there is only one way for this to work."

Then a wave of dej vu washed over me. The door to the lecture hall swung in, Dr. Aretino and me both turning to look.

Liam stepped inside. He wore a suit today, apparently having come from some business related function.

My stomach tightened, my body unable to decide how to react. It started with excitement, then fizzled over into anxiety.