Chapter 2 #2
I rest my chin on my fist and gaze up at Rory, a soppy smile tugging on my lips. “Tell me the story of how you and Angelo met.”
She shifts in her seat, letting out a light laugh. “I’ve told you a million times, Wren. You must be sick of it by now.”
“You could tell me a million more times, and I still wouldn’t be sick of it.” I stick out my bottom lip. “Please?”
She waves a dismissive hand. “The music’s too loud.”
“I can hear you just fine.”
She grabs a cream cheese and cucumber sandwich off a platter and crams the whole thing in her mouth. “Yeah, but I’m eating,” she mumbles, spraying the glittery tablecloth with crumbs.
Rolling my eyes, I tuck a pink napkin into the neckline of her dress. “Next time, then.”
“Next time,” she agrees.
Rory doesn’t share my love of hyperbolic statements—she probably has told me the story a million times.
But I wasn’t being dramatic when I said I could hear it a million more either.
I’ll never tire of hearing how their eyes found each other across a busy bar and the world fell silent.
Or how later, they reached for the same champagne flute on a passing tray, and the brush of his thumb against hers made sparks fly.
Their meet-cute isn’t even the best part of the story.
She’d left the bar without telling Angelo her name, and for the next week, he couldn’t rest until he knew it.
In the day, he’d scour the length of the coast, trawling sidewalks and knocking on doors, and at night, he’d wait at the bar they met in, in the hope she’d show up again.
Their first date—a moonlit dinner on the beach—was magic.
For their second, he whisked her off to New York, where they had their first kiss atop the Empire State Building, the wind roaring in their ears.
They made love for the first time under the stars in Paris, then he declared his love for her as they wandered, hand in hand, through the cobbled streets of Rome.
The courting was a whirlwind so strong and intense that I didn’t see her for three whole months. Only when she breezed into The Rusty Anchor, a handsome Visconti in her shadow, did I get the full story.
As she scarfs down another sandwich, I grab her free hand and rub my thumb over her ring. It’s a sweet, sparkly diamond that fits both her finger and personality like a glove. “You’re getting married!”
Her hand curls over mine. “I’m getting married!” she squeals, treating me to a view of the mushy cucumber in her mouth. Then her gaze snags on something in the crowd, and she stops chewing.
For a split second, the air pulls taut, but then Rory breaks into a grin and clambers to her feet. “I’m getting married to that man!”
I follow the point of her finger, to the imposing figure slicing through the dance floor. With every stride he takes toward us, dancers slow, torsos twist, and jaws drop open.
Although Angelo Visconti hasn’t lived on the coast for nearly a decade, he has the same hypnotic hold over the women here as his more well-known brother and cousins do.
It’d be naive to pretend a large part of his appeal isn’t all the money lining his pockets, but he also benefits from the signature Visconti good looks.
He’s a tall, dark, and handsome stereotype poured into a bespoke black suit, And I just know that underneath it, he’s built like a man who could pick you up with one arm without grunting.
From the moment I looked up, Angelo hasn’t taken his eyes off of his fiancée, nor has that satisfied smirk left his lips. As he steps off the dance floor and reaches our booth, my heart skips a beat.
Is this how he looked at her the night they met? Because, sweet Lord, if a man looked at me like that, I’d fall—no, jump—off the face of the earth with him for three months too.
“What are you doing here?” Rory laughs, wrapping her arms around his neck.
He slides his hands up her sides, breaking eye contact long enough to drink in her dress. “We had a meeting nearby.”
“We absolutely did not have a meeting nearby,” a velvet voice drawls.
I turn to find its owner. Raphael Visconti steps out of the crowd, casts an amused glance at the table spread, then winks at me.
Angelo’s brother is a stereotype in his own right—he embodies every cliché male lead in the straight-to-TV movies I make Uncle Finn binge-watch with me around this time of year.
Handsome and ridiculously charming billionaire who made his fortune under the bright lights of Las Vegas moves back to his sleepy hometown to help with the family empire. There, he meets …
Well, I don’t know who he meets. Lots of women, actually, because every time I see him in Devil’s Cove, he has his hand on the small of a different brunette’s back, guiding her through the door of a swanky restaurant, then later guiding her into the passenger seat of his car.
Serial dating habits aside, he really is the perfect Hallmark hero.
Sharp suit, silver tongue, and he’s mastered the type of intense eye contact that makes a girl feel dizzy with importance.
He’s got that amused half smirk down too.
The one they all wear when the heroine does something adorably awkward, like leave the house with a pair of panties wrapped around the heel of her shoe.
Seriously. All he’s missing is a cable knit sweater and an English accent.
He presses his lips to my cheek. “Looking as beautiful as ever, Wren.”
He hasn’t so much as glanced south of my eyes, so I doubt he could even tell me what I’m wearing. Still, my face turns as pink as my dress. “I’m sure you say that to all the girls.”
“I do, but with you, I really mean it.” He tugs a champagne bottle from an ice bucket on the table, winces at the label, and puts it back without pouring himself a glass. “How are you?”
Before I can answer, his gaze darts left and mine follows, landing on Tayce. She’s elbowing her way through the crowd toward us, thunder clapping under her stilettos.
Rafe stretches his arms out. “Tayce. Looking as beautiful as—”
“Shut it, asshole. You and him”—she jabs a finger toward Angelo—“aren’t supposed to be here.”
She yells Angelo’s name and snaps her fingers.
Patience has never been one of Tayce’s virtues though, so when he doesn’t immediately stop eating Rory’s face, she barks a little louder.
When that doesn’t work either, she squeezes herself into the tiny gap between them.
I’ve seen her do this many times when a drunken fight spills out of a club and onto the doorstep of her tattoo parlor, but breaking up a couple in love appears to be much harder than diffusing an argument between two steroid-fueled men hell-bent on putting the other in hospital.
Rory unsticks herself from her fiancé long enough to flick Tayce a disinterested look. “They had a meeting nearby.”
“My ass they did.”
Angelo wipes amusement and secondhand lip gloss off his mouth with the back of his hand. When his gaze drifts from Rory to Tayce, it hardens.
“You’ve pissed me off. You know that?”
Tayce pauses. “Uh, is this about the pin-the-dildo-on-Angelo-Visconti’s-forehead game? If so, that was all Wren’s idea.”
It wasn’t my idea. My idea was a singalong Disney marathon and to be in bed by 10:00 p.m. so Rory gets enough sleep for the big day tomorrow. Anything mildly X-rated comes from Tayce’s filthy imagination and ridiculously high sex drive.
All eyes come to me, all three pairs flecked with disbelief. I resist the urge to tug on Tayce’s hair and instead, gaze up at Angelo with my best wounded-puppy impression.
“Please don’t shout at me, I cry easily.”
“So fucking easily,” Tayce mutters.
I bite my tongue, but only because we have this unspoken pact: she pisses people off, and I take the blame. It’s a win-win, because not only am I much harder to get mad at, I get to emotionally blackmail her about it for the next month.
“Yeah. Somehow, I don’t think the male stripper was Wren’s idea.” Angelo wraps a possessive arm around Rory. “A cop? How original.”
Tayce frowns at him, and in turn, I frown at her. A stripper? First, ew. Second, I made her pinky swear that all the penises making an appearance tonight would be plastic or, at the very least, not have a muscular man with loose hips attached to them.
She licks her lips. “Uh, a stripping cop?”
“Mm. The one hanging around in the parking lot.” Angelo flexes his fist. “Yeah. He can’t make it anymore.”
Rafe drags a hand over his mouth to hide his smirk.
“I didn’t …” Tayce turns to me, looking as confused as I feel. “Did you …?”
“What do you think?” I huff, standing straighter. Jesus, I wouldn’t even know what to Google to find one.
Several beats pass. Awkward and dense, out of sync with the bubblegum pop song pumping out from the DJ booth.
Rafe locks eyes with his brother, then slowly puts down the pink fluffy handcuffs he was inspecting.
A disco light sweeps over a tight muscle in his jaw, then down to his clenched fist, but by the time he looks up, he’s all teeth and charm, then I think I imagined it.
He smooths down the placket of his shirt and disarms me with a mega-watt smile. “If you’ll excuse me for a moment, ladies.”
He slips into the crowd.
A fleeting unease skates over me. A feeling that something important has passed me by and I wasn’t quick enough to grab it and stay in its loop.
I look to Rory for answers, but apparently, she’s looking for them too, in the bottom of a champagne flute.
I glance to Angelo instead, but he’s now glaring at his cell, its screen lighting up the hard planes of his face.
Weird.
For the second time tonight, Tayce grabs my arm and tugs me sideways.
“Shit.” She glances at the elevator doors closing on Rafe and snatches her purse up off the table. “Cover for me.”
“Huh?”
“Just while I call him and tell him not to come.”
A second passes before the realization hits me. “You hired a stripping cop? After you promised me that—”