“Yes, business,” he says. “Always.”
The waiter brings the starters: lobster frittata, which looks weird and smells weird, but is surprisingly tasty. “You don’t sound too pleased about your, um, dedication to business,” I comment, dabbing my lip with a napkin.
“It’s not that,” he sighs. He moves his finger around the edge of his champagne glass, making a soft whistling noise. He drives me so crazy, and maybe the champagne is making me a little dizzy, and I find myself imagining his finger moving around other places.
He sees me looking and grins.
“Business,” I repeat firmly. “You were saying something about business.”
He shrugs. “It’s nothing, really. I work with my father, and he is, let’s say, reluctant for me to fully take the reins. Even though I’ve demonstrated many times over that I’m capable. He thinks I’m too …” He pauses, searching for the right word.
“Brash?” I offer. “Cocky? A dick? A douche? An asshole?”
He laughs. “Thank you so much for the suggestions, mia moglie.” My wife is what that means, I think. Hearing the words from him feels oddly chilling. It feels—well, it feels real.
So I answer, “No problem, mio marito.”
The waiter swoops in to refill our champagne glasses and is gone just as suddenly. “He and I have different approaches to business,” Angelo says. “That is all.”
“Like what?” I ask. “Can’t decide what DJ to hire for ladies’ night? That sort of thing?”
His expression changes. I see something there, almost like he’s going to tell me … what? I don’t know, but I’m starting to get the sense that there’s more to Angelo’s business than he’s letting on. “Enough about me,” he announces. “Tell me about you, Dani. I know you’re an EMT. I know you love your brother. What else?”
“Hmm, that’s a very broad question.”
“Did you always want to be an EMT?” he offers.
“No,” I tell him. “I wanted to—still want to, really—be a emergency room doctor. But at the time, becoming an EMT was much quicker and easier, so I went that route instead. I still get to help people. So it’s awesome. But, yeah, ER doc was my number one choice. But I needed to take care of Wyatt—”
“Why?” he interrupts, sounding genuinely curious. “Where are your parents?”
I didn’t plan on telling him this, but now that he’s asked, I find I want to. I tell him about the crash, the ice, how Dad was a car fanatic and I’ve often wondered if he was driving recklessly. “I’ll never know,” I finish, realizing that, as I told the story, I took down another glass of champagne. “All I know is, Wyatt needed a parent and I was the best he had. Not that I did a great job or anything. You know, hence the drugs.”
I’m shocked when he puts his hand on top of mine, looking at me seriously. “You did the best you could,” he says. “And even if Wyatt has some problems, he’s still in college.”
“By the skin of his freaking teeth,” I smile. “But thank you, Angelo. Really.”
They bring the entrees—a pasta dish—and we eat in silence for a little while. Then Angelo says, “So you used to drive these race cars, too?”
I nod. “Yeah, ever since I was a kid. Well, not really cars back then. But go-karts, stuff like that. Why?”
“I’m just picturing you,” he says.
“Men are normally intimidated when I tell them about the driving.”
“Why?” he asks.
I shrug. “I guess driving is a manly thing, and they don’t want a woman to be better at it than them? I don’t know. I just know they don’t like it.”
He looks at me for a long time. It’s like he’s trying to decide whether or not he wants to say something. Finally, he says, “Those men sound like fucking pussies.”
I laugh, harder than I meant to. It’s the deadpan way he says it. It feels good to laugh, a relief after the stress of the past few days.
Angelo just watches me with an unreadable glimmer in his eyes. My face feels flushed as the laughter subsides. He’s doing—shit, I dunno, but he’s doing something with his eyes that’s getting me extremely hot and bothered.
“What?” I say uncomfortably. “Stop looking at me like that.”
He waits a beat before he smiles and raises his champagne glass. “To strong women,” he says. “May we never fear them.”
“To assholes,” I counter. “May we never marry them.”
“Too late for you, I think,” he fires back.
I laugh again. I’m starting to feel a little drunk, actually. How much champagne have I had? The stuff goes down way too easy. Because, with the alcohol bubbling in my system and the charm and raw sexual appeal rolling off Angelo in waves, it feels like I’m actually…having a good time? That can’t be right.
This is a business deal, nothing more. It doesn’t matter if he’s handsome. It doesn’t matter if he’s funny. It doesn’t matter that I can’t stop picturing him naked and wondering what his hands are doing beneath the tablecloth.
This is fake, Dani, I tell myself.
The problem is, it feels way, way too real.
20
Angelo
I need to calm the fuck down.
This dinner was intended to get our stories straight, to give this whole sordid deal some kind of plausibility. But by the end of it, I find myself making jokes about her favorite colors, inventing backstory memories about our imagined courtship just to see her laugh.
I feel like laughing at myself. It makes no sense. None of this does. Perhaps I’m drunk, too, which is rare for me. But then again, we did polish off a bottle of champagne and then some, plus several post-dinner whiskeys.
“So, my darling wife,” I drawl foolishly as I lead her on my arm toward the elevator, “did you have a good evening?”
She gives my arm a squeeze. “Hold up. Who said the night was over?”
I slide my hand down her back in the elevator, discreetly because there is an elderly man standing in the front, though he’s not looking at us. I palm her ass. It feels so good through the dress, so tight and curvy, that I almost devour her right here. Then the doors open and we walk out to the street.
“Do you really think I would take advantage of a drunk woman—shit.” I stumble into a potted plant, wondering who the hell put it there. I feel like kicking it.
“I’m the drunk one?” she teases, touching my arm. “You’re not driving, are you?”
“No, no,” I say, shaking my head. “I’ll call a car. But I need to collect something from my vehicle, first.”
“What is it?” she asks.
I don’t answer, because, oddly, I don’t want to lie to her. The truth is I have twenty grand in cash in the glovebox, which I’m not willing to leave here overnight. It’s not the money I’m scared about losing—the De Maggio empire will hardly fall to ruin over a measly few bundles of hundreds—but I don’t want word getting out that Angelo De Maggio was stupid enough to leave that kind of money lying around.