Chapter 20
CLEO
Ilooked down at my phone and saw three messages from Melody, each one escalating slightly in concern.
Melody: Hey, you okay?
Melody: You should be up by now right?
Melody: CLEO. TEXT ME BACK.
I winced and typed quickly.
Me: I’m so sorry! I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Just got caught up in breakfast.
Her response came back almost immediately.
Thank God. I was about to ask Austin to track your phone.
I glanced up at Cash, who watched me with mild amusement over the rim of his espresso cup.
Why are you even up right now? I typed. It’s like four in the morning there.
Baby likes to make mommy puke every morning at four. We’re on a schedule now.
Despite myself, I smiled.
Already training you. Smart kid.
The smartest. Now tell me what’s going on. What was the emergency?
I paused, trying to figure out how to explain this without making it sound completely insane. Which it was. But I needed to frame it in a way that didn’t have Melody calling Austin to rescue me from Cash’s alleged kidnapping scheme.
Cash needed help with a client situation. There’s a gala tonight and he needed someone who could work the room and help him read people. Professional thing.
I hit send and waited.
A gala? In ROME?
Yes.
And he called YOU specifically?
Apparently, I have skills he needed on short notice.
There was a longer pause this time. I could practically see Melody sitting in her beautiful apartment, phone in hand, trying to decide if she was buying this.
What kind of gala?
Black tie charity thing. Very fancy. I’m wearing a dress that probably costs more than my rent.
Send pics.
Obviously.
And this is just… professional?
I looked at Cash again. He was scrolling through something on his own phone now, giving me privacy for the conversation but clearly aware it was happening.
Yes, I typed. I’ll fill you in on all the details when I get home. I promise. But right now I need to eat this croissant before it gets cold and that would be a crime against pastry.
Melody texted, Fine. But I want details. All of them.
You’ll get them. Go back to bed. Or puke. Whatever the baby wants.
Love you.
Love you too. I put my phone down and picked up my fork again.
Cash was watching me. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“She was worried. I told her I’m fine.”
“And?”
“And she wants details when I get back.” I took another bite of my breakfast. “Which I will give her.”
I reached for my water glass, took a long sip, and used the act of drinking it to collect the thoughts that had scattered when I’d looked up and found him watching me with those gray eyes across a very small café table in Rome.
Rome. I’m in freaking Rome!
To really add the cherry on top is the fact I’m with Cash. Lurch. The guy I really didn’t like up until a week ago.
And dammit, Cash Bancroft was genuinely, objectively, almost offensively attractive. He was impossible to resist.
I’d obviously always known he was handsome. He was a fucking Bancroft. They didn’t do ugly.
But Rome was doing something to the context. The looser shirt, the slightly less controlled version of him that had emerged over breakfast. The way he’d watched me come out in dress after dress with an expression he’d mostly managed to keep neutral but not entirely.
I had definitely noticed the specific places where his eyes had gone when I stepped onto that platform in the black dress.
The slight pause before he’d found his professional composure.
I had made out with him and knew his excited face.
When he tried to say no to the dress, I almost would have listened to his opinion if his face wasn’t telling me something different.
He liked the dress. He liked me in the dress.
To be looked at like that by a man like him, who was selective and controlled and not given to impulsive reactions, was doing things to my equilibrium that I found mildly annoying. I would have loved to blame it on the jet lag, but he had my insides twisted up in the best way.
I was a badass woman who didn’t need a man’s attention to feel complete. I knew my worth independently of anyone’s gaze. And yet. Here I was in Rome, slightly warm at the back of my neck and in other lower regions because being looked at like that was so good.
Irking, I decided. Not good. It was irking me. I filed that under things to deal with later.
We paid and left the café, wandering through the streets around the hotel without any particular destination.
This part of the city was for people who lived here rather than visited.
There were small shops without English signage.
A flower vendor whose entire sidewalk display was color coordinated in a way that made me stop and take pictures. It was just too pretty to not document.
Cash waited, unhurried.
“Sorry,” I said.
“You keep apologizing for things you don’t need to apologize for.”
“Force of habit.”
“Break the habit.”
I took a picture of him instead. Just like that. Click. Done. No lighting. No staging. Just him in his usual way.
He looked startled, like I had just poked him in the forehead. “What was that for?”
“Documentary purposes.” I checked the shot. It was good. Candid and real and capturing something in his face I hadn’t been able to name yet. “You look like a person in this one.”
“As opposed to what?”
“As opposed to a corporate entity wearing a person.”
He gave me a look like he was deciding whether to be amused or offended. I was learning to read that particular expression, which felt like a small victory.
We wandered into a leather goods shop where I had absolutely no intention of buying anything and walked out twenty minutes later with a belt for myself and a wallet for Cash that he hadn’t asked for but that I insisted he get.
It was Italian leather. He said he always wore Italian leather.
I said, “Not Italian leather actually bought in Italy.”
And I won.
There was a shop three doors down that sold the kind of things you didn’t know you needed until you saw them.
All beautiful, impractical, and European.
Trinkets that were really just clutter, but they were so pretty.
I spent a thoroughly enjoyable forty minutes in there while Cash stood near the door with his hands in his pockets looking like a man who had made peace with waiting.
He paid for everything without being asked. Every time I took something to the counter, he materialized beside me and handled it before I could reach for my own card.
“You don’t have to,” I said.
“Shopping spree,” he said simply. “We established this.”
“I meant later. I meant clothes not trinkets.”
“You meant exactly this. Don’t negotiate yourself out of what you agreed to.”
I closed my mouth. He wasn’t wrong.
On the walk back, I let myself simply appreciate the moment. I inhaled the various smells. Listened to the people speaking Italian. I noted every little detail that was nothing like New York.
“Have you given more thought to breaking away from Melody? Building your own thing?”
I watched my sneakers on the cobblestones. “Some.”
“And?”
“And I’ve decided to wait. Until after the baby comes. Until Melody’s in a more stable, consistent place. Once everything settles and she’s got her footing as a mother, then I’ll—”
“Based on my experience with my sisters-in-law,” Cash said, with the tone of someone about to deliver information I hadn’t asked for, “Melody won’t be in what you’d describe as a stable or consistent place for approximately—” He paused and actually counted on his fingers and then looked like he was trying to solve a calculus problem. “Five years.”
I looked at him. He looked back and I could see he was being completely serious.
“Babies are destabilizing,” he said. “Significantly and for longer than anyone tells you going in. Then there’s the second one, potentially. And the child-rearing years, which require a lot of attention and almost zero sleep.”
“Stop,” I said.
He stopped talking.
Five years. I’d be thirty-three and heading into geriatric pregnancy territory. She’d have a family and I would still be waiting to start my life.
“It’s your life,” he said. “I’m just providing data.”
“I know it’s my life,” I said. “That’s a very helpful reminder, thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
We reached the hotel and crossed the courtyard. I still couldn’t believe the place was a hotel. It was like a palace behind walls where regular people would never dare to enter. He held the door, and we rode the elevator in silence.
“It’s time to put on a show,” he said.
I nodded slowly, suddenly just a little nervous. “Okay.”
“I’ll be in the other room.”
“I know where you’ll be.”
He almost smiled. We separated.
What followed was the most fun I had ever had getting ready for anything in recent memory.
Again, I was never the focus. I watched Melody get glammed up but never me.
I wasn’t envious or jealous because that wasn’t what I wanted.
I never cared to be in front of the camera.
I thrived on getting to find the perfect shot during the glam.
But now it was my turn.
Giulia had brought reinforcements. A makeup artist stared at me for an uncomfortable amount of time before nodding. “I know exactly what to do.”
I believed her. I didn’t really have a choice but to trust the people doctoring me up. I sat in the chair and I let myself be taken care of.
Someone was doing my eyeliner and someone else was doing something with my hair. I stared out the window, watching sunset descend over the city. I couldn’t stop thinking about what Cash had said.
Five years.
I thought about it and let myself actually feel the weight of it instead of filing it away for later. Five years of waiting for the right moment. Five years of being exactly where I was right now, talented and capable and ready and choosing to delay for someone else’s stability.
What if Melody decided to have four kids? And it wasn’t just the kids. It was everything. She didn’t really need me. The influencer thing wasn’t a permanent job. It would fade. Maybe she didn’t have five years of influencing left.
What if she called me in two years and said she was done? I’d be caught flat-footed and then what?
I needed a backup plan.
“Dress,” Giulia said.
I slid out of the chair and let them dress me.
The shoes went on. I wouldn’t have picked the heels for myself but Giulia knew things I didn’t about what worked with this particular silhouette. Then the jewelry. Always jewelry.
I glanced in the mirror. I looked like myself. Turned all the way up.
“Bellissima,” said the makeup artist, with the satisfied tone of someone who’d done their best work.
“Thank you,” I said. “Truly, you guys have magical powers.”
I took the small bag Giulia had found for the evening. It was absolutely impractical. Big enough for my phone and nothing else, but it was too pretty to leave behind. I thanked the team and walked out onto the main balcony for a breath of air.
Rome in the evening was a different city than Rome in the afternoon. I stood there with my hands on the iron railing and felt the warm air on my bare shoulder. I am standing on a balcony in Rome in a dress that was made for me.
I’d spent years making other people’s moments beautiful. This one was mine.
I took a breath of Roman evening air and let myself be, just for a minute, completely in it. No camera. No angles. No thinking about the content or the caption or who else might want to see this.
Just me.
I’d never felt more like a princess in my life, and I was completely, shamelessly obsessed with it.