Chapter 8
Thankfully, the moon stayed hidden behind the clouds as we dined. I think if I had seen Dylan bathed in moonlight, I would have climbed into his lap and begged him to slip his talented hands beneath my skirt and inside my panties.
It was as if he held a key to a door inside my mind that I never opened. I thought I knew desire before. I understood the difference between a good kiss and a bad kiss, but I had never looked at a man and craved the touch of his lips, his hands, his tongue, his cock like this.
I understood that men needed sex. Everyone knew they thought about sex a ridiculous number of times a day. It never occurred to me that my own desire could ever feel this strong.
The waiter took our orders. I was relieved to think about food instead of sex and destiny for a few moments. We ordered bruschetta to share. I ordered an arugula salad followed by lasagna while Dylan chose Spaghetti Bolognese. We finished the champagne, so Dylan ordered a bottle of red wine for us to share with our meal.
The waiter delivered our bruschetta. I glanced across the piazza and stiffened. Roberto strode in our direction from the Mia Sorella. Seeing him snapped me out of the fantasy that my life was uncomplicated, and the warm feeling of being on a date with a beautiful man vanished.
“Are you all, right?” Dylan said. He reached across the table and touched my arm as if it were natural to do so.
The trust between us shifted into overdrive, or maybe it was my need for him. I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t want it to slow down. I certainly did not want Roberto ruining whatever this was with his arrogance and judgement.
“It’s my ex,” I whispered, my stomach turning.
“Ahhhhh,” Dylan said, discreetly glancing over his shoulder at the piazza. “And is this ex around because Venice is a small town, or is he stalking you?”
“Stalking me, no,” I said. “He works with my family, for my father.”
“Awkward,” Dylan said, eyes narrowing. “And was he at the board meeting this morning?”
“Yes, he knew all about the acquisition before I did.”
“I suppose he may assume that I am James Street, as well.” Dylan reached out and placed his warm hand over mine.
As Roberto approached, he glanced at the table and flinched. “Good evening,” he said, his eyes darting between us, nostrils flaring ever so slightly.
Roberto had done due diligence on Street Entertainment, which meant he knew Dylan existed. Did he know which brother was holding my hand?
“Good to see you again,” Dylan said. “Today’s meeting was quite productive.” He surreptitiously winked at me.
“I did not realize you made separate dinner plans, James,” Roberto said, giving away his hand. “Umberto asked me to make sure you and your team dined with him this evening. I’m afraid you must have missed this comment at the end of today’s meeting. A three-course meal is being served in the main dining room. It’s been prepared.”
“I apologize,” Dylan said, reaching to pick up a bruschetta. “I don’t always remember to follow itineraries. I’ve been talking to Bella tonight about some of her ideas around Bella Baci.”
“Is that so?” Roberto said. His jaw clenched and the vein in his forehead throbbed.
“Please tell Alberto,” Dylan said.
“Umberto,” I said, my smile strained.
“Yes, tell Umberto that I will take a rain check,” Dylan said, emphasizing my father’s first name.
“I see,” Roberto said.
“Also, please tell Umberto know that Bella is bringing me up to speed on the details of the business.” He was modeling himself after his more linear and structured brother. It was uncanny the way a small shift transformed him.
“She really knows a lot about the industry, and her ideas about attracting new customers are good.”
“She has been in the family business her whole life.” Roberto’s voice was clipped.
“For now, we would prefer to stay here,” Dylan said, emphasizing the word “we.” He looked Roberto squarely in the face. “I am sure you understand.”
“Tell Papa, thank you for the invitation,” I said.
The heat lamps bathed one side of Roberto’s face in light, the other shadowed in darkness. It was hard to read his expression, but the tension in his voice was undeniable.
A gust of wind blew across the campo, stirring up a few leaves. I wrapped my shawl tighter around my shoulders. I didn’t care if I froze to death while sitting across from the hottest man in the world. Sex was better, but watching Dylan dress down Roberto was very satisfying.
As if on cue, the waiter approached with our main courses. Behind him, Lissa held two blankets. She gave me a wide-eyed smile, her look telegraphing a thousand questions. Roberto stepped aside. Our waiter placed our main courses in front of us. Steam rose off of the white plates.
“Enjoy,” he said, topping off our wine glasses and exiting.
Lissa stepped forward. “I thought you two might enjoy some blankets to make your evening a bit cozier.” As she placed a blanket in my lap, she leaned down to whisper in my ear. “I could see you from the ballroom. Why is there another James Street upstairs right now?”
“Thank you, Lissa. I’m so much warmer.” I kissed her cheek and whispered. “I’ll find you later.”
She squeezed my arm, having heard me.
“Lissa, if you are here, who is running the back bar at the banquet?” Roberto said, voice barking. He stood a few feet away from our table, waiting for her. “Bella can get her own blankets.”
“I’ll go back upstairs, sir.” Lissa glanced over her shoulder and rolled her eyes at me before heading across the campo and back to the hotel. Roberto had authority, but he did not command respect. I was embarrassed again that I had thought I could marry him once upon a time.
“It is nice to see you, Bella,” Roberto said, forcing a disingenuous smile. “If it suits you, James, please join us later upstairs for dessert.”
Dylan inhaled loudly and took a big bite of pasta, clearly bored with the charade. Roberto finally exited the outdoor patio and walked briskly across the courtyard, arms crossed.
“Was he always a prick to you? Or is he a prick because you broke his heart?” Dylan said.
I shrugged.
“I see,” Dylan said. “You did break his heart.”
“I did.” I was so tired of being embarrassed, for apologizing for what I’d done. I decided to finally own my decision. “Truth?”
Dylan smiled. “Yes, truth.”
“I left him at the altar and I would do it again.”
“Well, that is a dramatic way to end a relationship.”
“Yes, very.”
Dylan looked at me, a slow smile crossing his face. “Well, I am sure you had your reasons, and have I told you how much I love a woman who eats?”
“You know women who don’t eat?”
“I have dated so many women, models, baronesses, debutantes. Beautiful, starving creatures. Nothing is less satisfying than being in a city like this and spending time with a woman who won’t actually eat any of the food.”
“A life without food -- ” I said, taking another bite.
“-- is a life without pleasure,” Dylan said. “And I love pleasure. As do you.”
We continued eating in an easy, familiar silence.
“When did you know you’d made a mistake?” Dylan asked.
“A mistake?”
“With your ex-fiancé, your old lover, Roberto.”
“Excuse me,” I said, almost spitting my lasagna onto the table. “He was my boyfriend, my fiancé. I never called him my lover, but I suppose he was.”
“Well, if you couldn’t call him your lover, then I hardly think you should have been giving your body and soul to him forever. It sounds like you made a wise choice.”
His comment stunned me. Who did he think he was, lecturing me about who I should give my body and soul, to? “Well, thank you for your approval, but it’s unnecessary. I came to my conclusions about Roberto all on my own.”
“And what conclusion was that?” His dark eyes looked at me as if they had the power to bore a hole into my head. The man moved from playful to intense with a breath.
I stopped for a moment. It was a personal question, a deeply personal one that I had wrestled with alone for so long. I knew Auntie Aurora’s dismal card reading had been the final nail in the coffin.
But if I were truthful, my doubts started long before. A thousand tiny cuts created a wound that I could never heal. “There were signs. I ignored them,” I said, quietly.
Dylan leaned in closer. “Signs? What kind of signs, clever Bella?”
I wondered what it was it about it him that made me want to talk, to share, to open up, not just with my body, but with my heart. I took a big gulp of wine, the liquid moving down my throat and warming me from the inside out.
“This last year, I worked very hard on my business. My family thought of it as a hobby, of course. Auntie Aurora and I had just convinced my father to let me use the Andiamo kitchen for production. I needed to arrive early or stay late, post-dinner rush. It isn’t easy to keep those hours in Venice.”
“Ah, the good Italian life. You eat at midnight.”
“It is uncivilized to eat before eight p.m.” I winked, enjoying the easy calm of our conversation. I wanted him to hear the truth. I had left Roberto for good reasons. It was time to speak those reasons aloud.
“So, your father granted you space in the kitchen.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’d outgrown the kitchen in the palazzo, and honestly, being in the professional kitchen made everything feel more real.”
“Did you scrub and clean like a scullery maid?”
“No, I wouldn’t say that,” I said, smiling at the memory of those long days. “I worked hard, I still work hard, and I don’t mind it. I rose early, and I went back late at night. I needed to cook and clean as if I was never there. And whatever it took, I did it.”
Dylan poured the last of the red wine into our glasses.
“So, tell me about the end, with Roberto,” he said. “When did you finally decide that man wasn’t enough, if you want to share?”
“About a month before our wedding,” I said, closing my eyes. I remembered every detail. “I went to Roberto’s palazzo. His family has an enormous home by the Rialto. Roberto and I were going to live in the top two floors.”
“Fancy,” Dylan said, swirling his wine glass.
“So fancy,” I said, smiling. “I ran up the marble stairs to Roberto’s office. I had a bag filled with boxes of caramel samples. I had been working on new flavors, Earl Grey, lavender, and the queen of all caramels, jalape?o.”
“Jalape?o,” Dylan said, wrinkling his nose. “You are serious.”
“Very serious. I was exhausted. I’d been up for two days straight, obsessed with perfecting the ratio between the chocolate, the caramel, and that spike of flavor. Roberto was at his desk doing email, so I lay down on a couch and stretched my legs out.
He immediately started talking about how hard his day was. He’d been disrespected by Paolo while in a meeting with my father, and he intended to show him that he was going to be the new boss.”
I inhaled, feeling a small sting as I remembered my disappointment as Roberto’s self-absorbed rant continued. “I was with him for almost three years,” I said, my voice trailing off.
“That is a long time.”
“And he never asked me how my day was. He pretended to care about my business, but he couldn’t be bothered to even ask me a single question.”
“I see,” Dylan said.
“I grew up hearing about him. Roberto’s twelve years older than me and was away at boarding school for most years. My sister, Sara, died at eighteen. She would be the same age as him if she’d lived. I don’t wish him harm. I wish him happiness. I just wish I hadn’t let it go so far.”
“The altar is pretty far, clever Bella.”
“I know, right?” I took another big drink of my wine and laughed.
“And you probably wish he would get out of your family business?”
“Yes,” I said, my laughter dying down. “You know I do. My parents are furious with me.”
“Ah, they both wanted you to marry him?”
“Well, as James told you in that brief you finally read, the Uzano portfolio is in need of a cash infusion. Roberto was an easy solution.”
“So, you walked away from more than just a careless husband.”
“Little known fact, one of the fastest ways to alienate yourself from your entire family is to leave a Venetian prince at the altar,” I said.
“I have also heard being an identical twin with a secret identity as a moderately successful musician is also a good way to add tension to every Christmas dinner,” said Dylan.
“I think Strand is more than moderately successful,” I said.
“But he doesn’t really exist, does he?” Dylan said.
I took a sip of my red wine and smiled. We were making fun of ourselves, but I loved the thrill and intimacy of sharing secrets with this beautiful man.
“You know your brother is probably upstairs,” I said, nodding toward the windows.
“Nonsense. James Street is having dinner with you.” He winked.
“Seriously, when are you going to let everyone know there are two of you?”
“I would encourage the Uzano team to do their due diligence on Street Entertainment. You should have a brief on us.” Dylan leaned across the table. “It’s motherfucking cold out here, clever Bella.”
“Would you like to go upstairs and have dessert? If two of you show up in the ballroom, think of the scandal,” I said.
“No,” he said. “What I’d really like to do is tear your clothes off and explore the few inches of your body that I neglected to touch last night.”
I couldn’t speak. Silence stretched between us. The sexual tension felt so thick I wondered if I could reach out and hold it in the air. Could I use it like a cord to pull Dylan’s body closer to mine?
“Oh,” I finally managed to say, breathless. I wanted this, but I didn’t want to want it. My brain went into overdrive. I wasn’t ready to say ‘yes,’ but I also wasn’t ready to say ‘no.’
“I have an idea,” I said. “How about we walk? I’d like to show you something. But first, isn’t this against the rules?”
“Ah, yes, we have done a shit job at having a one-night-stand.”
“Truth?” I asked.
“I like this,” he said. “Truth.”
“I’ve never had one before this. You are my first one-night-stand.”
He smiled mischievously.
“I am guessing I am not your first,” I said.
“No, you are not,” he said, cocking his head to the side. “You are full of surprises, clever Bella. And since we have broken the rules, we are now a one-night-stand plus dinner.”
I laughed. “What if we are now a one-night-stand plus dinner, plus a very special tour?”
I stood and adjusted my wrap. I noticed how Dylan’s eyes moved up and down my legs, lingering on the gap of skin between the hem of my black dress and the top of my red boots.
“I did offer to be your tour guide,” I said.
“Tour away, clever Bella.”
I held out my hand and Dylan took it.
“Follow me,” I said.
“Please,” he whispered, his warm hand wrapped around mine.
We wove through the outdoor tables at Andiamo into the open air of the campo. I led him back toward San Marco, away from the Mia Sorella.
And that is how I ended up walking hand-in-hand with a lying billionaire twin with a secret identity one moonlit night in Venice.