by Mandy Rosko
Unless what he wanted her to do didn’t have everything to do with sex. It partly had to do with it, that’s what this entire thing was about, but there was clearly something else she’d missed. Was it even in this contract?
Isla’s phone buzzed. She heard the vibration and looked up. She’d left her cell on the vanity. She got to her feet and chased after the thing before it could vibrate itself off the wood and smash on the floor.
Luckily, she caught it.
A phone call from Jane. Her heart warmed up at the picture of her friend, wearing her tacky heart sunglasses, sticking her tongue out to the camera, and making a peace sign.
Isla slid her thumb over to the ignore option. She didn’t completely want to leave her friend hanging, though, but she wasn’t in a mood to talk, not when she had more questions than answers.
She shot off a quick text so Jane wouldn’t think she was dead though.
Hey, sorry, just did the deed w Arturo. Can’t talk. Can we just txt?
There was a pause before the reply came back. Sure. How u feeling?
Isla smiled and went back to her bed, texting all the way. Jane was good like that. She knew that just because she might not want to talk on the phone, it didn’t mean they couldn’t text all night. Sometimes it was easier to text than to actually talk.
Feeling fine. It was good, just confused. Not in a bad way.
Not really, at any rate.
Another pause. She could practically see Janey trying to think about what she needed to say.
Let me know if I should kill him.
Isla laughed out loud when she read that. Too funny.
No. It’s all fine. He’s just a wang.
Um. lol okay?
WEIRD!!!
Fucking autocorrect.
Ahahahaha. LOL. Thought you were spilling the fun details ;)
Isla was smiling again. Autocorrect was half the fun of texting. She spent the next half an hour texting back and forth while simultaneously going over her contract, searching, once again, for anything, big or small, that she might’ve missed.
She couldn’t find anything, and she didn’t want to worry Jane with it either. Not yet. She told her friend about the dinner, about Martina and Sam and the other people who were in Arturo’s huge mansion. She also mentioned meeting two of the man’s three brothers already in one night, though she decided to keep her real thoughts about Sebastian to herself.
The confidentiality clause probably didn’t allow for her talking to her best friend about what an angry creep Sebastian was, even if it looked like Arturo didn’t like him, but she did mention that Orlando seemed like a nice guy, and he had been checking in on her. She had yet to meet the third Calendri brother. Though, considering how things had gone today, she knew that was in her future.
Ask if any of them are single!!
She’d asked Orlando, maybe, but definitely not Sebastian.
Isla sent off a couple more texts, claiming she was tired and needed to look over the rest of her schedule for tomorrow. She didn’t have a schedule, but she just wanted to reread her contract for the hundredth time.
Jane didn’t take the low-hanging fruit by teasing Isla on how tired she really must be after so much good sex. Instead, she brought up something else that Isla hadn’t even thought about until Jane mentioned it.
You think he wants you because his dad and your grandfather knew each other?
That question made her pause. She hadn’t even thought of that until just now.
How do you mean?
They’re both bus men, right?
Yeah, Isla typed, knowing Jane had meant the words ‘business men.’
What if Arturo’s dad tried to do business with your grandfather and he said no? Then he got mad and tried to take over. Is that possible?
She thought about it and at first told herself it wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be. Baciami Boutique wasn’t big enough, not rich enough, to warrant the notice from a billionaire.
But business was business. Who was she to say Vincenzio Calendri hadn’t seen something in the boutique and wanted to get it before it got too big and was more expensive to buy out?
Isla’s grandfather was a strict businessman who had no patience for the sharks of the business world. She could just imagine the telling off he would give to Vincenzio had the two ever met. It might also explain why Vincenzio had gone on the warpath to take over a company that wasn’t worth much of his notice.
It gave her a lot more to think about after she and Jane talked it out tonight.
18
Isla woke up the next day ready and raring to go. She practically hopped out of bed and to the connecting bathroom to shower, brush her teeth, and make sure her makeup looked sufficiently sexy. She was on a mission now, and she was determined to see it through.
She’d spent hours and hours last night doing Google searches and looking for any connection her grandfather might have to Vincenzio Calendri. She’d come across nothing other than news articles about the takeover and a few little things here and there about each man individually.
Of course, there was more about Vincenzio and how he’d murdered his wife. The trial had been huge. So huge that Isla was shocked she hadn’t paid more attention to it at the time. She wasn’t much for courtroom drama and didn’t have an interest in turning a real-life murder case into a television drama, but there had been a huge crowd outside of the courtroom the day he’d been sentenced.
The fact that Vincenzio had stolen her grandfather’s company might’ve also had something to do with it. Isla hadn’t wanted to get sucked into the anger and hate of the whole thing. She’d thought he was getting what he deserved, sure, but gloating hadn’t seemed right. Someone had been murdered.
That, and her main problem at the time was seeing if she could get her jewelry made on schedule to meet the dwindling demand, not the murder of a wife by her billionaire husband and the trial that had followed.
Without meaning to, she had started to search out Arturo’s pictures again. She couldn’t help but look at him. He’d looked younger in some of his photos, and in others, when the trial had been going on, about the same as he was now. It hadn’t been that many years ago, so she figured it made sense. His hair had been shorter in some of the pictures.
There was something she noticed that was different, however. Something she hadn’t caught before. It could’ve been the stress of the trial, but he looked smaller, paler in two of the photos.
Of course, he had to look like a complete sex God no matter how much weight he lost, how he kept his hair, or how much sun he avoided. The jerk.
Then, one older blog post told her why that was.
Vincenzio had attacked one of his sons with a knife. Everyone’s guess was that Arturo had confronted him when the heat was getting tight, and the older man had lashed out.
Isla remembered Arturo’s scar, looked again at the pictures of him, not as if he’d been avoiding the sun, but as though he was recovering.
God. That was… terrible.
All the same, she couldn’t help but feel for him. One of his quotes after his father had been convicted, years after the murder had taken place, had been, “The bastard had it coming.”
It made her shiver. Not the quote, not really. That she could understand, but the thing that really got to her had been thinking about him as a young man, still living with Vincenzio, the man who’d murdered his mother.
Isla suddenly remembered what she was doing. The very thing Arturo had asked her not to do, which was looking up the trial and old pictures of him. She clicked off her browser, deleted her Cookies, and then turned off the computer, feeling incredibly ashamed of herself as she sat in bed with her knees up.
She was never going to tell Arturo she knew how he’d gotten his scar. Maybe he thought she already knew anyway, but it wouldn’t feel right to bring it up to him.
Had he suspected? Had he known? If he had and hadn’t done anything about it, it was very likely the media would�
��ve skinned him alive for it, so it was probably safe to say he hadn’t known for sure.
But Arturo wasn’t dumb either. He was a very intelligent man. As much as Isla loathed to admit it, he was smart enough to run his father’s company after the man had gone away for the rest of his life. There was no way in hell a man like Arturo hadn’t suspected something.
That had to be hard. According to the articles she had read, he’d only continued to live with his father until Orlando was old enough to move out with him. Arturo had tried to take Orlando when he’d been fifteen, but because of his age, the courts wouldn’t allow it. The third brother, Silvio Calendri, had been a wild child, even more so than Arturo, and he hadn’t left until he’d turned nineteen.
Orlando hadn’t been able to leave with his brother until he’d been seventeen and a half. That meant Arturo had gone well into his twenties before finally moving out. He and Orlando had lived that long under the shadow of a man they highly suspected of murder for years.
The fact that Arturo had done that for his younger brother showed a softer, more protective side. She was determined to see only that, and not the grumpy, shady businessman who wanted to get back at her for telling him off.
Last night had been… something. It really had been something. Awesome, mind-blowing, fan-fucking-tastic sex kind of something. That had thrown her off. Despite Arturo’s prickly demeanor and his instance that, if she didn’t come, it would have to be her own fault, he’d been very generous with her.
So generous that even thinking about it this morning was enough to make her sex swell and moisten. Warmth pooled between her legs, and if she was going to get through the day, Isla at least needed a coffee before her body started acting up, in more ways than one.
She fixed her hair, adding in a few things that would, hopefully, make her look good without smelling like she’d dumped a ton of products in her hair and on her face. Checking over herself in the mirror, she made sure the jeans hugged her ass and thighs nicely without looking too graphic or inviting. Then she sent off a quick text to Jane to let her know everything was still all right before setting off.
She had no idea where to go. She only just realized that after leaving her room. Maybe to where she’d had dinner the night before? That sounded plausible.
Right. That was where she was going to go.
She started walking down the wide, spacious halls. She barely got ten feet before Martina appeared down the hall, holding a set of white sheets in her arms.
The woman’s dark eyes widened at the sight of her, as if she hadn’t expected Isla to be standing there at all.
Martina rushed over, not quit running, but clearly in a hurry to know what was going on. “Miss King, what are you doing in the halls by yourself?”
That genuinely threw her for a loop. “Am I not allowed to walk around the house?”
“You are, Miss King, but there should be someone with you.”
She didn’t get it. “To make sure I don’t go where I’m not supposed to? Really?”
“It’s not quite that simple, Miss King,” Martina said, smiling calmly. It was insanely impressive how she was able to keep the professional air about her, even while holding onto those sheets.
“Where are you bringing those?”
“To your room.”
Stunned again. “Really? I slept in that bed once. You have to change the sheets every day?”
“It’s how Mr. Calendri prefers it.”
That seemed kind of unfair and wasteful. But it wasn’t like Arturo wasn’t paying her. He had to be paying her very well, actually, considering she lived in the building where she worked.
“Do you want some help?”
Now Martina looked at her like she’d sprouted a second head and then cut it off just for good measure.
“That won’t be necessary,” Martina said. “Give me a moment and I will come back for you.”
She didn’t know if she wanted to stand around watching while Martina stripped Isla’s bed and remade it with fresh sheets. Not even Peggy had done that.
Well, she had, but only after a week or so, and not when Isla had been around to watch. She had to make her own bed while growing up.
Fortunately, it looked as though Martina had just put the sheets down somewhere, because she returned quickly, ready to escort her to wherever she needed to go. “Where can I take you, Miss King?”
She smiled. She wasn’t about to let this annoy her. Okay, it was beyond weird to have someone walking around here with her, but Arturo didn’t know her, and with his past, it seemed very likely he wouldn’t trust a stranger walking around his house without someone there to oversee things.
“I was hoping to get some breakfast with Mr. Calendri. Is he around?”
“Ah, unfortunately Mr. Calendri is overseeing some business matters. He had his breakfast an hour ago.”
“Oh.” Fuck, of course a guy who ran his own company would wake up and already have eaten before seven thirty in the morning. She should’ve thought of that one.
“But I know he does wish to dine with you,” Martina said. “I will arrange something for you when he finishes with his business.”
“Great, thank you.” She was still disappointed with herself for not planning this out better. She kind of felt like an idiot for not having gotten up early, and only now realized that Martina’s arrival with the sheets was probably meant to also be her wake-up call of sorts.
“Maybe I should get back to my room then. I left my kit and my supplies there. I should get some work done before lunch, too.”
“No need,” Martina said. “Tell me which bags you require, and I’ll have Robert pick them up for you. You may come to the breakfast area and eat while you wait.”
“That’s very convenient. Thank you.”
Was she supposed to tip these people for good service? What if she was? What would happen if she didn’t?
She described her bags, the cases she would need and where she’d left them to Martina as they walked through the vast halls, coming into the brightly lit area of the house that had a broad sky light to let in the natural sunlight. It reflected off the crystal chandeliers that hung from the walls, casting more tiny lights like ripples in a clear pond. It gave her some pretty great inspiration for the next piece she wanted to work on.
“I made the jewelry for Baciami Boutique. I even had my own line,” she said.
Martina smiled and nodded, offering a token of interest. “I heard something to that effect. You make all of these jewels yourself?”
“Not the jewels specifically, some things needed to be ordered in, and others were just cheaper to buy at bead stores. I would buy the chains and sometimes play with the links, adding them to other chains, adding pearls or precious stones. It’s a lot of fun.”
“It sounds like a lot of fun,” Martina said, still not sounding overly interested, but also still smiling and nodding.
A lot of people didn’t understand why Isla had such an interest in jewelry, while others thought she’d picked an overly feminine occupation to be part of.
Then she had those who were happy for her, but still didn’t understand why she was so passionate about jewelry, because they only ever saw it in expensive diamond stores, while not realizing where those diamonds came from. They didn’t understand it could be made lovingly by someone who might never make that same piece twice, or that sense of Zen that could come with just sitting at a work table with her tools and trying to create something she’d seen in her head. Some people just didn’t understand, but were patient and able to listen when people did get passionate.
Martina seemed like she fell into that later category. She wasn’t able to understand what the fuss was about when it came to making or wearing jewelry, but she was polite enough to listen and take an interest for the five minutes it took to get to the breakfast nook.
The windows nearest to the round table were arched outward from floor to ceiling. Martina led her to sit in front of them. She even pu
lled out Isla’s chair. There was a square lace cover on the table in the middle beneath a vase that held what looked to be wild flowers.
“Did these come from your garden?” Isla asked.
Martina nodded. “They did. Mr. Calendri prefers them to anything purchased from the florist.”
Interesting.
Martina asked her what she wanted for breakfast, and Isla realized she had choices. She was assured she could have anything she wanted—pancakes, fresh waffles with cream, crepes with fruit or chocolate, bacon and eggs made any way she wanted with any kind of toast she could think of, or she could even have cereal.
Isla thought about her choices and how she wanted to work. As much as chocolate crepes sounded amazing, it was hard to work while she needed both hands to eat.
Martina hadn’t told her what sorts of cereals there where, but considering Arturo loved Dairy Queen and peanut butter ice cream, she had a good idea of what would be available to him.
“Does Mr. Calendri have peanut butter or chocolate cereal?”
Martina smiled and nodded. “Yes, he keeps a box with both of those flavors inside.”
“Can I have that?”
Martina nodded and quickly left to bring back her order.
Isla hadn’t even seen Martina give Robert a call, but shortly after she left, he arrived, carrying her bags and kits to the table.
She thanked him, but didn’t offer a tip. She’d decided it was probably not necessary and she’d only embarrass herself if she did that.
Jeffery, the man who had served her and Arturo’s dinner the night before, arrived with a trolley, just like the night before.
“Where’s Martina?”
He poured her an orange juice from a glass pitcher. “She had other matters to see to, miss.”
“Oh, right.” Like making her bed.
He proved to be a little less stiff right now than he was last night as he lifted the silver tray off the trolley, revealing something right out of a cereal commercial.
Reece’s Peanut Butter cereal and a pitcher of milk waited for her. The box was even there for show, along with a small plate of sliced fruit.
