Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Valentino
The hotel lobby glows with that fake gold light all expensive places use. I scan the faces until I find Elio.
He sits in a low chair near the elevators, dark suit, hands folded, watching the doors. His jaw tightens when he sees me. I give him a single nod and tilt my head toward the street.
He follows me out.
"I'm taking her to the palazzo," I tell him. "You bring your own car. You'll be inside tonight too."
His eyes narrow. "I thought you wanted me on the street."
"I did. Tonight's different. Too many faces in that room. I need more eyes, and yours are the ones I've got."
He considers it. He's not stupid; he knows this is also me keeping him close enough to watch. But he nods, because he can't argue. "Fine."
"Front of the room, by the bar. You see anything unusual, you do nothing. You find me."
"I know how to do my job, Conti." He wants to say more, but chooses the smart option and walks away.
I light a cigarette. The first drag fills my chest, slow and bitter, and I lean against the cool stone of the hotel front and wait. I tell myself it's just like waiting for anyone else.
Then the glass doors slide open and she walks out. The cigarette nearly falls out of my mouth.
She's in pink. The dress is long and it moves with her, sliding around her legs with each step. Her hair is up, off her neck, pinned high so the line of her throat runs clean from her jaw to her collarbone. I think about my hand there, then quickly shake the thought away.
As she gets closer, I see her face properly under the streetlight. Light makeup. Two small gold earrings, round. The whole effect is simple, and yet, on her it's exquisite. Which is so much worse. She's a knock out, and she is trying to kill me.
"You're early," she says, with a smile starting at the corner of her mouth, that quick clever smile she uses to take control of a moment. "And smoking. Very on-brand."
"Get in the car."
"Romantic." She rolls her eyes, but her cheeks color.
I drop the cigarette and crush it under my heel. She's two steps from me, close enough that I catch her perfume. Vanilla and something darker under it, like she's hiding heat behind sweetness.
Then a voice calls from behind her.
"Scusi, signorina. I think something fell."
An older woman comes out of the hotel with a small gold earring back pinched between her fingers
Amanda turns.
My world fucking stops.
Nothing in my life has prepared me for the back of that dress. And life has prepared me for many things.
There is no back to it. Nothing. The fabric clings to her shoulders and then it's just gone, a cut that runs all the way down, past her shoulder blades, past the small valley of her spine, to the base of it, where the pink finally remembers itself and gathers again low on her hips.
Her back is smooth, golden, unmarked, and her muscles shift as she reaches for the earring.
I lose the ability to do anything but look.
"Oh, thank you," she says to the woman. She fixes the earring back with two fingers, tilting her head, and the movement makes the muscles along her spine move with elegance. "I keep losing these."
The woman says something kind and walks on. Amanda turns back toward me, and she catches the look on my face before I can smooth it away.
I have spent decades learning and ensuring my face shows nothing. Tonight I might as well be made of glass.
Her lips part.
"You're staring, Conti," she says. The smile is back, but her voice has dropped, gone softer, less sure.
"I'm not."
"You are." She steps closer, like now she's the one in control. "You're staring like I'm something you want and can't have. It's a good look on you." She tilts her chin. "Better than the one you gave Elio."
I want the cigarette I just put out. I want, God help me, to lay my hand flat against the bare skin of her back. To feel the silky skin there. To feel her breathe.
I force both hands at my sides.
"The car," I say again. "We'll be late."
"We're not going to be late, Valentino." She's smiling fully now, delighted, because she's found the crack. She's pressing her thumb into it the way I pressed mine to her throat.
I open the passenger door. The interior light spills out over her, over that long line of her, and she slides in past me, close enough that her bare shoulder brushes my chest. The heat of her skin goes straight through the wool of my suit like the fabric isn't even there.
She settles into the seat and looks up at me through her lashes. "Are you going to buckle me in again?" she asks softly. "Or is that only for special occasions?"
I shut the door without answering, then stand on the curb for one second longer than I should, breathing the night air, telling myself the only thing I can.
It's only work.
Amanda
I keep my eyes on the window. The wet streets of Milan slide by in smears of gold and red, headlights bleeding across the glass, and I tell myself the knot in my stomach is excitement.
I've charmed editors who eat junior marketers for breakfast. I once talked a Vogue stylist out of a tantrum using nothing but a compliment and a perfectly timed joke. Working the room is my home court.
So why are my palms damp?
"You're quiet," Valentino says.
"I'm conserving my charm for the people who matter," I say, but the joke lands flat even to me.
He glances over. His eyes catch the streetlight and go from coal-black to something warmer for half a second, then he's watching the road again. "The people who matter."
"The Casa Aurelia board. The European retail buyers.
There's a woman coming tonight named Francesca Renaud who can make or break the entire spring rollout with one phone call.
" I twist the strap of my clutch around my finger.
"I've been building toward this for two years. So yes. The people who matter."
He doesn't answer. He just pulls the car up to the curb where the palazzo glows like something out of a fairy tale. Valets in black move like shadows. Somewhere inside, the future of my career is drinking champagne and forming opinions.
A man opens my door before I can step out. My heel slips on the wet stone, and for one humiliating second, the whole world tilts.
Then Valentino's hand is on the small of my back.
His palm presses flat against my bare skin, calluses catching slightly against my skin. A current shoots straight up my spine and scatters every thought I've ever had.
I forget all the names that should matter, including my own.
"Okay?" he asks, low, just for me.
"Fine," I manage. "These shoes are a war crime."
He doesn't smile, but something near it twitches at the corner.
He doesn't take his hand away. Instead, he guides me up the steps, his touch steady, and I am hyperaware of every inch of contact.
Of the way his fingers spread to cover more of me.
How my body leans into the pressure like I've been waiting my whole life for this.
The problem is, I have.
I straighten my spine, putting on a professional smile.
The one I've practiced in a thousand mirrors.
The look that says I belong here, I built this, watch me own it.
But underneath it my heart is hammering like I'm nineteen again, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why tonight, of all nights, my armor feels thin.
Maybe it's his hand. The way it rests against my spine, almost protective. Almost possessive.
Or maybe it's earlier outside the hotel, when he saw the back of my dress and forgot that seasoned control.
I've been chasing that look since I was fifteen. And tonight I finally got it, but instead of feeling triumphant, my stomach flips and my legs feel unsteady.
Light pours over us when we reach the doors. The quartet swells into something bright and Italian, and the crowd inside is a glittering wall of people I need to impress. My stomach drops like an elevator with cut cables.
Get it together. You've done this a hundred times.
Valentino leans down. His mouth comes close to my ear. Close enough that I feel the warmth of his breath against my skin.
"You don't have to be nervous," he says so quietly no one else can hear.
I freeze.
How does he know? I am pretending to be calm, and I know I am doing it with the expertise of a seasoned actress. My smile hasn't slipped. My hands aren't shaking. I have spent my entire life perfecting this act so it gives nothing away, and yet this man saw straight through without me.
I turn my head, realizing we are inches apart now. His eyes are on mine, steady and dark, and there's no mockery in them. No challenge.
"I'm not nervous," I say.
"You stopped talking, which—" The corner of his mouth moves a fraction. "—I'm told it is unusual."
"Wow. Funny. Did you practice that?"
"Your pulse." His gaze drops to my throat. "I can see racing."
Heat floods my face, my chest, everywhere his eyes have been. I should say something cutting.
But the words don't come.
Because nobody has ever looked at me in my element, working the room with poise and a smile, and saw the cracks beneath the fac?de. Men see the dress clinging to curves and the pretty face. Women see the perfect hair, the smile, and the curated, Instagram-ready surface I give them.
"That's—" I start and stop, hating that my voice has gone soft. "You don't know me well enough to know when I'm nervous."
"No," he agrees. His hand presses a little firmer against my back, warm and grounding, steering me forward through the doors into all that light and noise. "But I'm learning."
And then we're inside, and the room turns toward us. Francesca Renaud is lifting a glass in greeting from across the marble floor and I cannot acknowledge any of it. Not the eyes or the music or the two years of work waiting to be won or lost.
But I am acutely aware of his hand on my bare skin, and the terrifying, traitorous certainty that he meant exactly what he said.
He's learning me.