42. Lorenzo
CHAPTER 42
Lorenzo
M onday morning came way too quickly. I kept taking clothes out of the suitcase as Isabella was trying to pack. “Come on.” She snatched the pants that I’d grabbed and quickly refolded them. “You’re the one who has to go back to work.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Damian’s already called you twice,” she said, although there was a smile curving her pretty mouth.
She didn’t want to leave any more than I did. We had spent the last forty-eight hours wrapped up in one another, talking about the future. We talked about baby names and came up with a few possibilities. We walked around naked and didn’t worry about anyone walking in.
“Whatever you’re thinking about, stop it,” Isabella chastised.
I waggled my eyebrows in her direction, delighted when she laughed. “I’m just trying to decide if we have time for one more bath together.”
Isabella’s expression was full of mourning. “We don’t.”
“You know I could install a tub like that at home. It could be done by the end of next week.”
She blinked, surprised. “You love the shower though.”
I took her in my arms. The pair of jeans that she was folding was crushed between us. “I’ll build you a whole new bathroom, if you want,” I promised. “We can have a his and hers.”
“That’s for sinks, not whole bathrooms.”
I narrowed my eyes, studying her. “You have no idea how much money I have, do you?”
“I’m guessing it’s more than I thought.”
“Multiply whatever that number in your head is by twenty, and it would probably be closer to the real number.” More blinking, she was glitching now. “I told you that I could give you the world, dolcezza . I wasn’t joking.”
She nodded, still in a little bit of shock, and we finished packing. Hand-in-hand, I took her back down the elevator to where the car was parked. “What do you and Damian need to do today?” she asked as I maneuvered out of the parking garage.
We were going to start digging for Alfie. He was in the wind, apparently, and I needed to bring him back to heel. “Errands,” I told Isabella.
She frowned. “That sounds like you aren’t telling me the truth.”
“I’m not lying, dolcezza .”
“Omitting, then,” she said. “You aren’t telling me everything.”
I shrugged. “Sometimes you don’t need to know,” I said.
Isabella took a breath, as if she was going to argue, but then she let it out. “You’re right,” she said. “Sometimes I don’t need to know.”
I brought her hand up to my mouth, pressing kisses to her knuckles. “I promise if you need to know, you will.”
She hummed, and the rest of the drive was quiet, but not unpleasantly so. We opened the kitchen door to the sound of laughter, and I felt Isabella all but seize up by my side. It wasn’t hard to see why: Cristian and Gemma were running around the kitchen, laughing and throwing flour back and forth at each other.
“What are you doing?” Isabella asked.
Gemma stopped short and looked at her sister. “You’re back!” She came skipping over, kicking up flour into the air, and threw her arms around Isabella. It was the first hug that I had witnessed since I brought Gemma into the house. The switch-up was jarring.
Isabella patted Gemma’s back, somewhat dumbfounded. Flour was getting all over her clothes, but she didn’t seem to notice at all. “You’re in a good—” She caught herself. “How did the flour fight happen?”
Gemma laughed and looked back at Cristian with such warmth that it felt like a sucker punch to my gut. Especially when he looked at her with just as much fondness.
What the fuck was happening? Something ugly and mean bloomed in my chest. This woman had been an absolute thorn in my side, and now she was giving my brother bedroom eyes.
“Are you two fucking or something? We weren’t gone that long.”
The joy drained from the room. Cristian’s face turned bright red, and I watched as it hit him what this all looked like. “Enzo,” he started, shaking his head. “We’re not.” He floundered. “She’s practically a child.”
For a moment, Gemma was wounded; she clearly didn’t like the comparison. But that look melted off her face in favor of irritation aimed squarely at me. “Do you have to be so crude?” she spat. “Cris offered to make pancakes for breakfast, and we were being silly, so we have to be having sex?”
“In my experience? Yes.”
Gemma snarled at me, and Isabella sighed. She slipped her arm through her sister’s. “Come with me?” she asked, keeping her voice gentle. Gemma allowed herself to be pulled out of the room. Isabella shot me a look that said that we would talk later.
“Why did you do that?” Cristian asked.
“Do what? Ask a logical question?”
Cristian flushed again, and he reached for the paper towels. He crossed to the sink and got a few of them damp so that he could begin to clean up the mess. Flour was literally everywhere. After he didn’t say anything else, I moved to help him. We worked in silence for a while, but Cristian’s face remained bright red.
“You know it would be all right if you were attracted to her, right?” I asked. The idea of my brother getting involved with Isabella’s sister was repulsive to me, but I wasn’t one to refuse Cristian anything.
Cristian huffed and adamantly kept his head down gathering up the mess. “I’m not attracted to her,” he insisted.
Except for the fact that you are , I thought. “She’s a pretty girl.”
“Emphasis on the word girl, fratellone ,” he snapped back. “She’s sweet and absolutely broken. I pity her, that’s all.”
“Sure, Cris.”
He dropped the paper towel that he had been clinging to. “Jesus Christ, Enzo,” he muttered and stormed from the room.
I looked around at the mess that I had been left with. Vaffanculo .
Well, in the very least, it was quiet. I still had to talk to Damian and try to track down Alfie, but I wasn’t going to let my kitchen be left in such a state.