Chapter 6 #2
"Why would I be jealous?" Angelo shot back. "You said it wasn't a date."
"So you would be if it was?"
That muscle in his jaw flared again. His nostrils, too. "Maybe I'm feeling sorry for the guy. You're a nightmare to be in the presence of, and I can only imagine what it'd be like to lock you down. You would eat him alive."
My skin flushed. The creep of heat rose in my chest, working its way up my neck. He was so rude. So flagrantly unnerving, but it did something foreign to my body. Something I hadn't felt before.
"The primary bedroom is right through here.
" I cleared my throat, moving quickly into the connecting hallway and then the main bedroom on the first floor with its elevated ceilings and large windows.
"There's another three upstairs, three full bathrooms in total, and a half bath right outside the kitchen near the laundry room. We'll look at that next."
Angelo rested his shoulder on the doorframe, leaning uninterestedly while his eyes followed me circling the bedroom. "So he is your type? Maybe I’ve been reading you wrong this entire time."
My hands found my hips and I stared at the ceiling. Anywhere but back into his narrowed eyes, his dark brows leveling me with more seriousness than I'd ever seen from him. I replied with more bitterness than intended.
"And what if I said he was? Hm? What does that matter to you?"
"Well then I'd tell you that you're a fucking liar, Mia."
"Excuse me?"
"That's not the guy you're into. That's the guy you’re using to try to throw me off. But it's not going your way.”
"Is it not?" I offered, cheerily. "It seems like that’s the only thing you can think about and the only thing you care to talk about, while you try to convince me that I'm the one with a grade-school crush."
Angelo pushed off the door frame and stepped in my direction. I was pinned in the corner of the room. Naturally, my eyes darted for a window or an exit strategy, but as far as I was concerned, the only way out was through him, and I'd tried that before. Unsuccessfully.
"I know girls like you. You were all over New York City. Trying to convince yourself that what you want is the Suit, the office guy, the one that’s nice to you.
But then there’s a man like me that doesn’t want to be nice to you, Mia.
I don’t want to roll over, I don’t want to make it easy, and that makes you think you hate me. Maybe you do. Maybe I hate you, too.”
My heart was pounding in my ears. I crossed my arms over my chest as if Angelo might be able to see it hammering behind my ribcage.
“I’m going to let you in on something,” he continued, matter-of-factly. “It’s not hate.”
“It is,” I said.
“So we’ll pretend you weren't putting me on in Vegas, testing the waters, tiptoeing around something we knew we shouldn't be, until it became inconvenient for you? Too real?"
"I was drunk ninety percent of the time we were there.
" Which was true, but I still remembered that brush of electricity between us.
That forbidden, untouchable pull. Our siblings were getting married.
He was a no one, a mess, a guy I would never go for.
Our lives weren't even remotely compatible.
It was the booze, and the proximity, and the weird taboo of hooking up with a near stranger.
Who could have known that having Scott drop me off would be stirring up so many buried feelings?
"You teased me in Vegas the same way you're teasing me now," Angelo said bluntly. "But now, you're without an audience, so what's the play?"
I swallowed a lump in my throat. It felt like syrup dripping into my stomach cavity.
Whatever was happening needed to end before I called Natalia and surrendered her brother-in-law back to his rightful owners.
He wouldn’t make me do it, I told myself, and I had promised to see this through. I had it under control.
"My play? Putting you in a house so that we can get past this frankly inappropriate work relationship. I've been burying myself in listings for two days to find something you might actually look twice at, but as we can see, I've failed, again. All you want to do is make a move on me."
"If I ever try to make a move on you, Mia, trust me, you'll know it."
There was an honesty to Angelo that made his words sound like a promise. Like I should believe everything he said without question. Like maybe not today, but someday, both of us might be on the same page.
"Can you at least let me finish the tour of the home so I don't feel like a complete and total flop?" I asked. "You can tell me everything you hated at the end, I'll take notes, and then we can go back to trading insulting innuendos and I can go back to my drawing board.”
The facade cracked briefly, and a lightness came over Angelo’s sun-kissed cheeks. "You're not a flop, Mia,” he said softly. “You're getting closer."
“I am?” My voice lifted in surprise. “You actually like this one?"
He let out a loaded breath that sounded like it had been building in his body all afternoon and stretched a hand toward the hallway, signaling me to lead the way. "Give me the rest of the tour."
I was able to work us through each turn and passage of the home, skillfully addressing the architecture and the design elements.
Giving my opinions on things like water treatment and the electrical grid in the area, the land and access to all major roads, shopping centers, the beaches in Pompano, airports.
I was in a flow state of selling. Angelo shockingly followed along silently, providing nothing but thoughtful tilts of his head or impressed hums. It was a complete 180 from the beginning of the showing.
The tension was still evident, but it had simmered to something bearable.
We could, in fact, act like adults around each other—a pleasant, peaceful discovery.
That didn’t mean that with every quiet moment as we moved from room to room I wasn’t replaying our conversation or weighing the implications of it.
I assumed Angelo was in a similar state of thought.
"Have I finally cracked you?" I joked, locking the front door again, returning the key to the lock box as Angelo stepped out onto the sunny driveway. The sky was a dreamy red-orange, clouds shifting in cotton-candy formations.
"You're very good at your job, you know,” he admitted. "It's easy to get sucked in when you start talking. I was wondering if real estate was actually something you liked to do or if it was just something that paid the bills, but after a full Mia Russo showing, I understand."
"Well, was construction something you loved to do or something that paid the bills?"
"Both, in a way. Something I was born to do, maybe. But I think that happens with any trade skill. I don't like staying in one place. There's a hundred different avenues in construction, and I got good at all of them. Now I'm getting good at something else. Jack of all trades."
"I interned for Branting in college. My dad has bought many properties over the years from my boss, so it was a bit of nepotism there, sure.
But he couldn't buy me my position. That was back breaking, getting people to trust me, especially wealthy people in a place like South Florida where there's already a built-in hierarchy.
I had to get really good at selling things.
Really good at connecting with people, even if I didn't feel any type of connection at all.
I can usually tell exactly how I should treat a client, to schmooze them into giving me their faith in homebuying.
Well, most clients." I laughed at myself.
"I do trust you," Angelo replied. "I'm just stubborn like my mother and picky like my father."
"So what's the verdict on the house, then? Hit me with it, give me your worst."
"Come here." Angelo beckoned me toward him. I hesitated, sinking my teeth into the fleshy inside of my bottom lip, and then decided to go without struggle.
Angelo steered me gently by the shoulders until we were at the edge of the driveway, his chest against my back. A cold whisper of something static made me close my eyes with his voice behind my ear.
"Do you see that house down there? The white one, blue mailbox at the road?" Angelo's arm came over my shoulder to point and I stupidly noticed every sinewed vein flowing down his skin, overlapping at his wrist, disappearing into his palm.
"Yes." It was about a block away on the curve of the road. "There's no for-sale sign."
"No, because it was bought a few months ago."
I turned toward him, realizing too late he was much closer than I anticipated. Close enough to see the tinge of sunburn underneath the neckline of his shirt, realize there were several beauty marks over his Adam’s apple.
"How do you know that?"
"Because my parents bought it," he said. "Good old David and Anna."
I deflated. "And let me guess," I said, "the man who's been living with his parents for three decades is suddenly worried about being too close to home?"
"I'm ready to fly the coop. Check out the other nests, spread my wings into a new age of independence."
"You could still go on long walks together."
"I want a place I can walk around naked without worrying my mother is going to knock on the door."
"Thanks for that mental picture." It should have repulsed me, but it didn't. It really didn't.
Angelo's sweet laugh echoed against my ears and made me crack a smile. I hid it horribly, twisting away from him. "So you're two hundred yards away from home but drove your truck here? It's not that hot outside."
He swiped a hand down his face, scratching the hair on his chin. "Well, I figured after last time, you might need a ride home. The least I could do."
"Wait, is that…a conscience I sense? Color me absolutely shocked. Angelo Duran, offering to do something kind? What's the catch? Where are the cameras?"
If it weren't golden hour, I might say I caught a sheen of blush coloring his ears.
"That was until you showed up with the other guy and I figured that the Catholic guilt I was feeling was actually deep internal penance I'd already answered for.
Rosaries counted. I'm sure he'd love to come back and get you, so I'll just head down the old beaten path… " Angelo started toward his truck.
"Did you really drive here just to take me home?" I asked.
"I really did, and now I'm feeling like that was a beast of an undertaking, all things considered.”
I hoisted my bag higher onto my shoulder.
I was either about to make the biggest mistake of my life or just enough of a good one to neutralize the arrangement.
It was getting chilly anyhow, sun dipping faster by the minute, and if I didn't take the ride I'd be standing idly in the driveway, binoculars watching me amusedly from the Duran house until some random man in a Tesla came to pick me up.
"Don’t get any ideas." I stabbed my finger in his direction and made my way toward the passenger door of his truck. "Or I’ll let myself out on the side of the highway."
"Are you into Steely Dan?" He followed me, opening the door like he had with Scott's car while I pulled myself up onto the seat.
"Is that the homeless guy who hangs out on the junction by the college?"
A resigned sigh tumbled out of him. "Maybe I'll let myself out on the side of the highway instead."