Chapter 9 Megan
MEGAN
I wish I hadn’t agreed to Enzo coming along with us to the zoo.
It’s obvious now that he was only trying to cause trouble for his brother.
I know that I should give Gio the benefit of the doubt and the opportunity to give me his side of the story, but I can’t suddenly forget that he was once engaged to be married.
Back at the apartment, Amber sits in front of the cinema-sized TV screen with a bowl of popcorn and a carton of apple juice, and I head straight to the kitchen.
I pull all the ingredients I need to make chocolate brownies from the well-stocked cupboards, and I bake while I try to reassemble my thoughts.
The logical explanation is that I’ve only known Gio for three days, nowhere near enough time to reveal all our secrets. Not that I expected him to tell me everything just because we fucked on our first date. Almost-date. If that’s what it could even be called.
Oh God. My face feels like a furnace. We fucked on our first date, and now he has no reason to even stick around.
“Whatever happened to holding back, Meg?” I mutter under my breath.
I don’t know why the news of Gio’s fiancée has affected me so badly. It was a long time ago, and the poor woman died in a car crash. I should feel sad for him. He lost the woman he wanted to spend the rest of his life with, and in such tragic circumstances.
But instead, I’m thinking about myself. I created this fairy tale image in my head of the perfect man with the perfect history.
I convinced myself that he’d never been in love before, that no other woman had ever captured his heart enough for him to propose to her and plan a wedding.
I’m not angry with him for not telling me about Elisabetta; I’m angry at myself for thinking that I might mean something to him.
As if someone who looks like Giovanni Sabatelli would have saved himself for a would-be baker from East London with a sister to look after.
What else have I been fooling myself about?
I peer at the baking trays in front of me. While I’ve been unpacking my thoughts, I’ve made plain brownies, blondie-brownies, and peanut butter brownies with chunks of Reese’s Pieces smothered in caramel on top. But for once, the sight of them doesn’t inflate me the way I’d hoped.
What if Gio just told me to believe in myself so that he could get inside my panties?
I slide the trays into the oven and close the door.
I lean against the counter and stare into space. It’s a moot point. I’d already let him inside my panties. I mean, I took them off for him, so he didn’t exactly have to try that hard. I didn’t even make him work for it, so perhaps he was trying to help when he told me to believe in myself.
Or maybe it was his way of letting me down gently.
I load the dishwasher, spray the counters with anti-bac, wipe them clean, and wash my hands. Then I switch on the coffee machine and slide my phone from my pocket.
Nikki would tell me to chill the fuck out if she was here.
Scratch that. She’d sit me down with a bottle of wine, make me recount every last detail of what we did to each other, and then tell me to chill the fuck out.
It takes me three attempts to type a text message and hit send.
Hey, Nik, sorry I’ve been so quiet. I know I’m supposed to be spending this vacation with you, but, well, I’ve got so much to tell you, I don’t even know where to begin.
I realize the instant the message reads ‘delivered’, that I didn’t even ask if she was okay.
What if Amber’s father has found her. Would he kidnap her to get to me?
It sounds like the plot of a Hollywood movie, but if the last few days have proved anything to me, it’s that life sometimes throws a curveball right at you. I send another text.
Let me know you’re okay, Nic.
Please.
She doesn’t like it when I send multiple messages when one would suffice, but that’s currently at the bottom of my list of things to worry about.
“Everything okay?” Ric is watching me from the other side of the breakfast island.
I would guess his age as mid-fifties. His hair is still thick, and he obviously works out in the gym. He’s still good looking in a George Clooney kind of way, with kind eyes, and a smile that makes other people smile back at him.
“Fine.” I force a smile. It’s what I would do if Amber caught me stressing over something, and I react on muscle memory. “Coffee?”
I never see the guy eat or drink or sleep. I have no idea where he stays or even if he has a family to go home to between keeping Gio safe and babysitting me and Amber.
He pulls out a stool and sits down. “Don’t let Mr. Sabatelli’s brother get to you. They don’t exactly see eye to eye.”
“They don’t?”
It occurs to me then that Ric probably knows more about Gio than anyone else. The font of information on Sicilian demi-gods is sitting right in front of me, and there are brownies in the oven. It’s a match made in heaven.
“What happened between them?”
I add cream to a cup of black coffee and slide it across the counter towards him. It feels like I’m trying to bribe him with coffee and cake, but he’s a grown man and if, through loyalty to his boss, he doesn’t want to talk, then he won’t.
“They didn’t fight.” He sips the coffee and glances over his shoulder at Amber.
His job must be a whole lot easier when we’re inside a guarded penthouse apartment accessible only by the private elevator.
“After their parents died, Mr. Sabatelli threw himself into the family business. His brother and sister wanted to help, but—”
“Gio has a sister?” I interrupt him before I can stop myself. My brain feels like cotton candy with this latest piece of information thrown into the mix.
“Bianca.”
His eyes twitch as if debating whether to continue or cut the conversation short before he says too much. In the end, he must decide that this is all common knowledge to anyone who has access to the Internet.
“Mr. Sabatelli was always in line to take over the family business. But he believed that it was in everyone’s best interests if he shouldered the responsibility so that they didn’t have to.”
That’s one way of looking at it. Another way might be that he wanted to keep all the profits for himself. But this assumption doesn’t sit right with me. It doesn’t quite marry with the Gio I spent the last few days with, especially after meeting Enzo.
“I guess it didn’t go down too well with them.” It explains Enzo’s determination to cause trouble between me and Gio.
“I don’t get involved in the family business.” Ric drains his coffee cup, and I haven’t even touched mine. “But Mr. Sabatelli works harder than anyone else I know. He has dedicated his whole life to keeping the business running because he’s proud of his legacy.”
Warmth spreads through my chest when I think of Gio devoting his life to this hotel.
I want to fold him into my arms and tell him that I’m proud of him for what he has achieved, because he didn’t only lose his fiancée in that car crash, he lost his parents too.
Some people might have given up, but not Gio.
Perhaps we’re more alike than either of us realized.
“Did you know his fiancée?” I ask.
He stands up, refills his cup, checks that mine is still full, and then sits back down. “Yes, I knew Elisabetta. They grew up together. Everyone knew that they would get married one day. Her death, well, it rocked both families.”
I can understand that. “It must’ve been hard for Gio losing his parents at the same time.”
“He blamed himself. He was supposed to meet Elisabetta in Sicily to finalize wedding arrangements.”
“Why didn’t he?”
“Something came up here in New York. A meeting that he couldn’t get out of. He never forgave himself for being in a boardroom when it happened.”
I’m painting a picture in my head of the real Giovanni Sabatelli.
When he kissed me on the movie set, my initial reaction was that he was an arrogant asshole who believed that he was irresistible.
But there is so much more to him than that.
Mind-blowing orgasms aside, he’s caring and loyal and protective.
But more importantly, he is damaged goods, just like me.
“Something smells good.” Rik gestures to the oven behind me.
I check the brownies are cooked and tip them onto cooling trays while Amber comes and joins us. We sit and eat cake until the sugar rush makes my head spin, and then Amber and I head upstairs to the rooftop pool.
I’m more excited than ever about Gio’s return.
Enzo might’ve come here with the intention of making me go away, but telling me about Elisabetta has had the opposite effect.
No one understands better than I do why people shut themselves down after they’ve been hurt; all Gio needs is someone to coax him into opening up again.
Someone like me.
Because he has been gone for less than a day, and I can’t imagine filling the Gio-shaped hole in my life with anyone else.
That night, when I tuck Amber into bed in the guest room, she settles her new dolls under the comforter and peers up at me with huge eyes.
“Meggie, can we get a dog when we go home? Please?”
I feel a stab of anxiety in my chest when I think of home. I don’t even know where that is right now, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it’s back in our crappy apartment in London.
“I’ll think about it.”
Her smile tells me that’s good enough for now.
I fill a glass with wine and head upstairs to the rooftop. I feel closer to Gio up here, and I wonder what he is doing right now. Can he see the same stars that I see?
My phone vibrates. A message from Nikki.
Oh my God, you fucked him, you little floozy. Tell me everything!
I’m still smiling when I wake up in Gio’s bed the following morning.
It is the most comfortable bed I’ve ever slept in, like sleeping on a cloud, and I have no idea how Gio drags himself out of it each morning to go to work.
If this was my bed, I’d be chaining myself to the bedposts and refusing to budge.