5. Sebastian
5
SEBASTIAN
M y four roommates didn’t ask me where I was moving so abruptly, and I almost wished they had. Maybe then I would have hesitated over my answer enough to second-guess my impulsive decision to move in with an incredibly high-profile married couple I knew next to nothing about in order to be their driver and boy toy. But they didn’t.
In fact, the only two in residence as I crossed the living room with my leather duffel bag of meager belongings barely glanced up as I passed through. It reminded me of the deeper reason I’d agreed to Adam and Savannah’s indecent proposal.
Obviously, it was about the money and the chance to see my dreams come true.
But honestly, I would have agreed without any of that.
I would have agreed just for the intimacy I so lacked in London.
For someone(s) to care about where I went and when I would come home. For shared space that went beyond five adult men struggling to share a dingy toilet in Shoreditch because the rent was dirt cheap. These desperate men did not have the desire or means to indulge in the intimacy I’d grown up with, the kind I couldn’t shake the desire for.
They struggled merely to exist, while I yearned to be moved as the tides by the moon, by a power and feeling greater than myself.
I craved the familiarity of truly knowing a person; of understanding instinctively when to speak and when to listen, of reacting to a subtle cue a loved one didn’t even know they were projecting, and you didn’t even consciously know you were reacting to.
Of a person’s very fragrance feeling like home and a pair of arms to hold you tight whenever you had need of it.
I had my family, the four women who tethered me to the earth like gravity, but they were so far away. Italy might as well have been a different planet, and I didn’t have the means to draw it closer with frequent visits.
Still, I had them, and they made sure I knew it. Even my eldest sister Elena, who was not prone to wasting time and was not effusive, made a point to talk to me once a week on my calls home.
Christmas in London had been a lonely affair, but we’d all video conferenced for most of the morning, and on New Year’s Eve, when I went out with the lads, I’d found someone pretty to kiss at midnight without any hassle just as I never had to work hard for female attention.
So why was I so desperate for more?
And not just the body and mind of Savannah Meyers, beautiful, whimsical waif though she was.
But for him .
The dangerous temptation of a man with eyes greener than a verdant forest canopy and hands I couldn’t stop from imagining moving firm and domineering over my flesh like a horse breeder checking the quality of his livestock.
I wanted him physically in a way that made me sweat, but what shocked me most was the fact that I wanted his mind too. Just as I wanted Savvy’s.
I’d spent the past ten years of my life wishing for a life exactly like Adam’s. He was my idol, the light at the end of the dark tunnel of my adolescence. The fact that he was actually there now, a tangible figure who wanted a very prurient part of my life was too surreal, too tremendous to truly comprehend.
How was I supposed to resist the draw of that?
Maybe a different man could have, but I was too hot-blooded to scorn a chance at sex and intimacy even though I knew in my bones it would all end in tragedy.
How could it not?
“I’m out, lads,” I called to Johnny and Ben, who sat on our sunken, creaky green couch playing Call of Duty on the television.
“See ya, mate,” they said in unison without looking away from the set.
“Won’t be back,” I reminded them as my hand closed around the doorknob. “I told you last week I was moving out.”
“Right-o.” Ben nodded, his tongue tucked between his teeth as he jammed his thumb repeatedly at the controller. “Break a leg!”
They weren’t listening, but then they never did when they were fixed on a video game. I gave up, knowing that Russ would probably have a roommate in to take my place within a fortnight. He was the only semi-organized lad of the lot of them, an administrator at Finborough Theatre who collected strays like an old lady with cats. He’d taken one look at me the day I pulled up to the theatre to begin rehearsals for Bury the Dead after being scouted for it at a theatre house in Rome and asked me if I needed a place to crash. He was the one true friend I’d take away from my days in this flat.
“All right,” I said to no one as I opened the door and stepped into the hall. From outside the apartment, I peered in one last time, breathing deep the stale scent of ramen that permeated the walls from the take-out place downstairs, counting the discarded beer bottles on the kitchen table from last night’s gaff about town. “Goodbye,” I whispered, allowing myself to feel nostalgic and oddly bereft that this chapter of my life was drawing to such an unceremonious close.
When I closed the door on the apartment, though, I didn’t look back.
I walked down the four stories to the street, dodging a biking deliveryman outside the ramen place, and set off along the wind-swept, sleeting streets toward the other side of the train tracks.
If I had any doubts before, they were multiplied tenfold when I arrived at the Meyers’s elite address in Chelsea. Their gorgeous yellow stone mansion was a hive of frenetic activity, the top door and basement entrance open to admit streams of people going in and out. A smartly dressed man with shoulders like a linebacker checked me in before he let me through the gate, but I was surprised he was able to keep track of everyone in the chaos.
“ Scusi ,” I said when a small ginger-haired woman carrying a truly enormous display of flowers bumped into me on our way to the stairs. “Can I give you a hand with that?”
Her smile was weak with relief. “I promise I go to the gym, but these flowers must weigh about forty pounds.”
I laughed as I slung my duffel crosswise over my shoulder and assumed her load. It wasn’t bad, but then, I was six foot four and built like a giant compared to her tiny form.
She glared at me, fisting her hands on her hips. “Well, you don’t have to make it look too easy.”
I shot her a wink. “Lead the way. I’d be helpless without you.”
She shook her head at me, and I had the sense she was used to men much more handsome and charming than myself.
“I’m Chaucer Williams,” she offered as she pushed the open door even wider to allow me entry. “And before you start, yes, it’s a tragic name for a girl, and yes, my mother is a literature professor at Oxford, and she wrote her dissertation on Chaucer when she was pregnant with me. Let’s just call her cruel error a result of crazy pregnancy brain, shall we?”
“‘The greatest scholars are not usually the wisest people,’” I quoted.
She blinked wide brown eyes at me as we paused in the foyer. “I’m sorry, did you actually just quote Chaucer to me?”
“Overdone?”
“No, not at all. I mean, not with this crowd.” She waved her hand around the chaos happening in the Meyers’s home, the beautiful clutch of people collected around a coffee table through the open archway to the right and a striking man wearing a muscle shirt and pink stiletto heels even though it was winter assembling what looked like a champagne tower in a room to the left. “They can quote anything from the silver screen, but most wouldn’t read a book, even if they were the lead in its adaptation.”
“Ooof, I sense you don’t have a lot of love for actors.”
Chaucer shrugged, but her grin was impish as she moved again to lead me deeper into the house. “You work for them long enough, the fascination tarnishes.”
“Mmm,” I hummed, noncommittal, as we moved down a panelled cream hall with towering ceilings into a large kitchen at the back right of the house.
It was all done in variations of white, but everything was textured and complicated, from the pink veins in the massive marble island to the paint strokes on the plaster walls that saved it from being austere and instead became warm and vibrant. A man and woman bustled in the space, the clear directors for the three young people diligently assembling a collection of finger foods for platters laid out on a palatial wood dining table at the back of the room near a wall of windows.
“What’s going on?” I asked my guide as she directed me to leave the flowers on a credenza already filled with them.
“Oh, honey, clearly you’re new to the team. Adam and Savannah host parties the way some people attend church. It’s a monthly occurrence, if not biweekly.” She frowned at me. “Who did you say you were again?”
“I didn’t,” I started to introduce myself when a heavy hand dropped to my shoulder, startling me so badly I stepped back into the person who’d touched me.
This resulted in my back pressed tight to the torso of a man tall enough to lean forward and whisper, “Careful,” in my ear as he steadied me with another hand at my hip.
Adam gave me a subtle squeeze before releasing me and stepping up in line with me to address Chaucer. “This, Chaucey, is our new driver, Sebastian Lombardi.”
“What happened to Albert?” she asked, suddenly glaring at me. “He was my favorite! Much better than that nitwit, Oscar.”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” a familiar American voice spoke coolly from behind me, and a moment later, Savannah appeared beside Adam in all her refined beauty. “But Albert decided to retire. Happily, I was more than satisfied with my service at Luxury Regent Car Services, and we were able to steal young Mr. Lombardi away from them.”
She turned her back on Chaucer in a deliberate way that illustrated her irritation with the young woman and offered her delicate hand to me as though she were a queen at court with peasants. I raised it to my mouth and brushed a barely-there kiss over her knuckles. Chaucer couldn’t see the red stain that bloomed in Savannah’s cheeks, but Adam and I could. I looked at her husband for signs of jealousy, but he only shot me a satisfied sidelong look and squeezed me where he still clasped my shoulder.
“Sebastian’s more than that,” he offered Chaucer warmly, flashing his movie star grin. For a moment, the bottom dropped out of my stomach, and I wondered, horrified, if Adam was going to tell her I was their new boy toy.
Instead, he smoothly continued, “He’s a very talented screenwriter and actor.”
Chaucer cocked an eyebrow at me. “Is that so? An actor .”
I shrugged at her helplessly. “When God gives you good looks like mine, it’s practically blasphemous not to take advantage of them.”
She blinked at me, then gave in to a reluctant giggle. “I can see why Savannah was taken with you.”
“Can you see that I’m currently rather vexed that nothing seems ready for the soiree tonight?” Savannah asked as she fingered the petals on a massive peony in one of the arrangements on the sideboard.
I still couldn’t believe I knew a woman who said things like “vexed” and “soiree” or that I was so attracted to her for exactly her haughtiness and sleek grandeur. She wore a tidy little skirt suit in some kind of tweed material in pinks and pale lavenders. With her hair gathered into a loose twist at the nape of her neck and a pair of ridiculous yet sexy schoolgirl shoes with heels on her feet, she was almost impossibly alluring. A prim, proper little miss in need of educating from someone with more experience.
The irony of our significant age difference compared to our burgeoning sexual dynamic wasn’t lost on me, but it wasn’t important either. It was exactly the contrast between Savvy’s maturity and grace, and her almost childlike wonder and vulnerability that hooked me through the gut and dragged me inexorably toward her.
Sensing my gaze, she smiled just slightly without looking at me.
Adam’s tight grip on my shoulder drew me back into his conversation with Chaucer.
“He’s got the run of Albert’s carriage house,” he explained. “You’ll be happy to show him the place? I’m afraid I have to run to a meeting, and Savannah has to finish setting up for tonight.”
“I’m happy to make myself useful,” I offered. “If there is anything I can do to help.”
Savannah’s eyes sparkled, but her mouth remained unsmiling as she studied me critically. “Well, you do look like you can carry a heavy load.”
I resisted the childish urge to flex for her, but just barely. Instead, my smile stretched wider between my cheeks, and I had the satisfaction of watching her blush as my eyes traced her small figure. “I could throw you over my shoulder to demonstrate.”
“Caveman,” Chaucer shot back, not flirtatiously, not really. She was a woman numb to the glory of the limelight, but she was a woman all the same, and she enjoyed repartee as much as the rest of them.
I pouted, pressing a hand to my heart. “You’re objectifying me, and we’ve only just met. I’m wounded.”
She laughed, a high, yipping hiccough of a giggle that suited her diminutive stature and round curves.
“Enough,” Savannah said, and her voice was the west wind bringing winter to the sun-drenched kitchen. Now, her eyes sparkled like ice. “We are simply too busy for idle chitchat. Sebastian, do settle in and then find me to discuss my schedule for this week.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said somberly even though laughter lodged in my throat.
Her little nose wrinkled slightly with distaste at the moniker. I knew without having to be told that “ma’am” made her feel old.
Adam coughed to hide his own laughter and clapped me on the back. “Good man, I’ll see you shortly. This is your new home, so make yourself comfortable. Chaucer,” he said by way of goodbye before he brushed a swift, light kiss on Savannah’s cheek. “Sweetheart, I’ll see you tonight.”
“Don’t be late,” she reprimanded as though she could see into the future and knew he would disappoint.
Adam’s smile was a slow, closed-lip smirk that spoke of mussed bedsheets and late-night debauchery. I had the feeling he was often late, for very good and very wicked reasons.
After he swept from the room, the air seemed to flatten as though Adam had stripped the atoms of their current. It was so strange and wonderful to be in the presence of one of the greatest men in cinema, a man I’d admired for so long, that I doubted I’d ever become used to it.
A soft touch on my arm drew my attention to Savannah. Her wide eyes were so clear that staring into them was like looking into the bottom of a depthless lake.
“The enchantment fades,” she murmured, leaning close so that the words were a secret kept from Chaucer. “Remember, Sebastian, you’re here because I want you here. My husband… he is as transient as the tides.”
I studied the gorgeous, carefully cultivated woman before me, surprised by her transparent attempt to manipulate me. Not because I thought she was incapable of manipulation but because her words reeked of insecurity. For a woman with so much, I wondered how she could still feel so small. It awakened a tenderness in me I’d previously only ever felt with my mother and sisters. A tenderness based on the heart-aching idea that I could make this wealthy woman’s life a little richer in ways unique only to me.
The lasso around my heart caught in Savannah’s small hand tightened inexorably.
I traced the line of one of her fingers on my forearm out of sight of Chaucer. “Well, consider me the shore, hmm?”
Her nostrils flared delicately, and I knew she understood what I was implying.
In this fledgling liaison between Savannah, Adam, and myself, I understood that I was the only one who would remain steadfast. Of course, I was. I had little to offer the likes of the Meyerses, and they had everything to offer me.
If I wasn’t so in lust with Savannah (and frankly curious about Adam), the unbalanced nature of our agreement might have been enough to give me pause. Instead, I assured my traitorous, overly passionate heart that I was entering into the dynamic with eyes wide open and emotions warily closed off.
This was sex and power.
An exchange as old as time.
If it made me seem like a prostitute, well, gigolos weren’t ill-regarded in my home country, and now, I understood why.
“ I’m glad you’re here ,” Savannah mouthed, raspberry-painted lips cutting the air into words I could read with my eyes.
Behind her, Chaucer shifted on her feet and delicately cleared her throat.
It was enough to stir Savannah into remembering herself. She stepped away and glanced with studied boredom at her glittering diamond Cartier watch.
“Chaucer, hurry along with Sebastian and then see what is taking the caterers so long to set up the platters.” Without waiting for confirmation of her orders, she sailed out of the kitchen on elegant high heels.
I watched her go, noting the roundness of her pert ass beneath the skirt. When I turned back to Chaucer, she regarded me with a vaguely worried expression.
“I’m a hedonist,” I explained unabashedly as I adjusted the weight of my bag over my shoulder. “I enjoy beauty wherever I find it.”
She snorted indelicately, red curls shivering as she shook her head like a disappointed Italian mama at me. “You’re trouble is what you are.”
I shrugged because there was no use in refuting it.
She shook her head again and, without another word, turned to lead me through the open French doors at the back of the kitchen beside the breakfast nook. The flagstone patio extended from the house in an organic oval shape, then broke off into a pathway leading through surprisingly dense greenery.
“This is quite a garden,” I murmured as I took in the traditional English garden design and the antique-looking wrought iron furniture that made it feel like a fairy-tale kind of place. “Not what I would have imagined for the Meyerses.”
“Oh, Savannah wanted something a little ritzier. Trust me. But this was Adam’s mother’s house, and he refuses to live anywhere else while in town.”
Curiosity gripped me by the throat. “Oh? I think I read Adam’s mother was a countess?”
“The daughter of an earl who married a marquis,” she corrected automatically just as we burst through the garden into a small clearing where the flagstones encircled a beautiful oval swimming pool that was being decorated by three women with floating lanterns and bouquets of white flowers. “You needn’t worry about the titles or his parents, really. His mother passed away ages ago, and he doesn’t speak to his father and his new wife.”
I wanted to ask more. Pump Chaucer for information until all of Adam’s secrets spilled between us for me to dissect and pick at. I told myself my curiosity was purely professional, but that didn’t explain why my heart picked up into a gallop at the thought of the darkly golden-haired actor with the slight cleft in his chin.
She stopped mid-step, Converse sneaker posed in the air, to suddenly turn and shoot me a glance. “Don’t hope for it, okay? I like you so far, and I don’t want you to ruin that.”
“Don’t hope for what?” I echoed innocently even though her words found purchase in my chest.
I barely resisted the urge to rub the pain there.
Chaucer was smart, and she wasn’t having any of it. “Adam is a movie star. He doesn’t have time for friends, not even his lifelong ones or his wife most of the time. So you can get it out of your head right this minute that he’ll want to become chums with the likes of you. You’re his driver, end stop.”
“You’ve read me all wrong,” I promised as I stopped beside her. “If I was interested in a Meyers, it wouldn’t be the Oscar winner.”
“If you think Savannah didn’t have a part in getting him that Oscar, you need to think again,” she countered, suddenly angrier than she should have been.
I watched, bemused, as she stomped through the manicured shrubbery at the left of the pool and disappeared.
“I thought Brits were reserved,” I muttered as I tromped off after her.
The path was too narrow for my shoulders, the branches clutching at me like greedy lovers. I cursed as one scratched the vintage leather jacket I’d found in Camden Market for fifty pounds.
“ Cazzo! Where the hell are we going?” I demanded, but I didn’t need Chaucer to answer because I’d finally stumbled into the small clearing at the back right of the property.
Nestled like a fairy tale in some magical forest sat a white-shingled cottage with a deep green gabled roof and ivy climbing across its face. The windows were mullioned and steepled like something from one of the many Italian churches from my childhood. Those flagstones that led from the main house to the pool were almost haphazardly placed in a skipping pattern that led to the red-painted door.
It was fucking beautiful.
“Your house,” Chaucer offered unnecessarily, but she wasn’t looking at me so she couldn’t see how the small structure had affected me. “Albert thought it was just fine, so I won’t hear anything about how cramped or old-fashioned it is, you hear me? The chauffeur we had before old Albert was some young fop who thought he was too good…” She turned to face me and witnessed my wide eyes. “You like it?”
I swallowed the surge of emotion in my throat. It wasn’t what I would have picked for myself if I had a million pounds, no, but then, I’d never been much of an unrealistic dreamer. Growing up in Napoli’s slums meant I knew too much about the hard knocks of life to let my mind soar in the clouds.
But it wasn’t about what the house looked like.
It was the fact that I’d never had space to myself, and I was an eighteen-year-old man.
Cosima and I had shared a bedroom for most of our youth, and then I’d moved to London into an apartment with four other blokes.
This was paradise.
Better than a dream, just like Savannah.
“Yeah,” I said, my voice heavy with emotion. “Yeah, I like it just fine.”
Chaucer squinted at me as though she couldn’t quite understand me, and it irritated her. “Well, come on, then. You can put your bag down, and I’ll help you with the rest.”
“This is it.”
Her red brow carved lines into her forehead. “One bag?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “I like to travel light.”
She peered at me again, and I wondered if she’d missed her calling as a schoolmarm. Done with her scrutiny, I moved past her toward the house. A small gnome with a green hat and rosy cheeks peeked out from behind a copse of lavender.
I couldn’t believe such a place existed, let alone in Adam and Savannah’s backyard.
The unlocked door swung open soundlessly to reveal an open-concept interior consisting of a farmhouse kitchen, a tiny living room with a round, stone fireplace, and a desk set up toward the back wall of windows I could already picture myself writing at.
“ Bellissima ,” I declared softly.
“The bedroom and bath are upstairs.”
I ignored her as I moved into the house. A framed photo of a family was left on the mantel of an older gentleman I thought must have been Albert. It seemed like something he would have taken, and I wondered about the circumstances of his leaving.
But not enough to change anything.
Mama used to say to us all “take luck when it comes and know it is a rare gift. If you look too long at where it came from, it might pass you by.”
I was old enough to wonder how my mother had gained such wisdom and was seasoned enough to know what it meant. If you looked a gift horse in the mouth, you were bound to find motivations you didn’t like.
So I plucked the frame from the mantel and handed it over to Chaucer. “Make sure that finds its way back to Albert.”
She gave me another look, but I turned my back on her before she could examine me too hard. The stairs creaked under my feet, and the narrow walls were almost claustrophobic around my big body. However, I was used to being oversized in Europe, and it didn’t bother me. The ceiling upstairs was only seven and a half feet at best, even shorter where the gabled roof cut into the room, but I loved it instantly.
It was all done in heavy wood furniture with a quilt that had to have been handmade over the big bed. The bathroom was tiny, the shower so narrow I wondered how I would make it work, but I didn’t care.
It was all mine .
“Savannah won’t like what you’re wearing.” Chaucer had followed me up the stairs and perched on the edge of the bed while I explored. “She expects the help to dress well, or it reflects poorly on the family.”
I arched a brow and looked down at my white tee, dark jeans, and leather jacket. They were all cheap, of course, but I’d never been accused of being poorly dressed. Even if I’d wanted to change, there wasn’t much else in my closet better than this except for the suit I’d worn at the closing of Bury the Dead, and I wasn’t going to wear that to a house party. No matter that it was being held by a duchessa .
Chaucer laughed. “You look mortally offended.”
“I’ve been called beautiful one too many times,” I admitted with a good-natured shrug. “I’m not afraid to admit it’s gone to my head.”
She shook her head, red curls tumbling pleasantly over her shoulders. “You’re an interesting man. Actors usually have big egos.”
“I just told you I was beautiful.”
“No, you told me people say that. You don’t have the right bearing. You seem almost…” She tucked her tongue between her teeth. “Almost like you don’t want people to look at you for too long.”
My hands fisted spasmodically at my sides as her words hit just a little too close to the mark. I felt the vibration from the impact in my teeth. She had no idea what she was saying, just a shot in the dark. I was moving into this quaint house to begin a relationship with Savannah and her husband; if I had real intimacy issues, why would I seek out such a complicated emotional situation?
Because you know it’s going to fail, a little voice whispered in the back of my mind .
Because you know a poor boy from Napoli won’t succeed under the glittering spotlight of civilized pop culture for long.
Because your father didn’t love you and your best friend and twin left you, and you have no one left because you aren’t worthy.
I shoved the thoughts away through sheer force of will, fixed a grin to my features, and turned to change the topic and remind Chaucer why people in my hometown called me “ l’incantatore ,” the charmer.