Ache for You (Slow Burn Book 3)

by J. T. Geissinger

  What’s so funny? Am I supposed to address them as “your royal highnesses” or something?

  The mystery is quickly solved, however, when Lorenzo puts two fingers between his lips, then produces a whistle of such piercing volume I cringe.

  The sound of nails clacking rapidly against wood grows closer and closer, until the huge black dog I saw earlier rounds the corner of the kitchen, tongue lolling. It bounds toward Lorenzo. Halfway there, it catches sight of me, skids to a comical stop, then runs and hides behind the marchesa’s legs.

  “Cornelia!” laughs Lorenzo. “Come now, silly girl, don’t be afraid!”

  My mouth drops open in shock. This is my stepsister? My stepsister is a dog?

  Visibly worried, Cornelia timidly peers out from behind the marchesa’s skirts and looks at me. The marchesa reaches down and reassuringly strokes a hand over the dog’s massive head.

  I shout, “You gave a dog my bedroom?”

  With a whimper, Cornelia ducks back into hiding.

  The marchesa looks at me sharply but gets distracted by the sight of a tiny peach-colored furball marching imperiously into the room, nose lifted high in the air, plumed tail quivering with pride. The pink studded collar it wears probably weighs more than it does. It parks itself next to the marchesa’s right foot and glares at me with small black eyes that glitter with malice.

  “Let me guess,” I say flatly. “This must be Beans.”

  At the sound of its name, the tiny peach furball bares its teeth and growls.

  “Yeah,” I say, glaring back at it. “I know the feeling, sister.”

  SEVEN

  “You’re shitting me.”

  “I shit you not. They each have a bedroom of their own, and they eat their meals at the table. The big one’s tall enough that it doesn’t need a chair, it just sits on the floor and gobbles its food right off the plate, but the tiny evil one has a booster seat like they give kids at restaurants—only it’s made of silk.”

  “Dear God,” says Jenner. I hear his shudder through the phone. “Dogs at the dining table? How obscene.”

  “What’s really obscene are the dogs’ wardrobes.”

  “Don’t tell me. Your wicked stepmother has them wear dresses.”

  “I’ll do you one better: my wicked stepmother has them wear dresses that my poor father sewed by hand.”

  After a short silence, Jenner says, “Oh, honey. She must have a magical hoo-ha to be able to get a man to do that.”

  I mutter, “I’d like to kick her right in her magical hoo-ha, I’ll tell you what.”

  After our disastrous meeting at breakfast, the marchesa and I retreated to opposite corners of the house. She and the dogs appeared again for lunch, this time in matching outfits. The four of us ate at the long oak table in the formal dining room in silence interrupted only by the sloppy chomping of Cornelia. The marchesa and Beans consumed their food with the same delicate manners, exuding the same royal disdain.

  When Lorenzo came in to inform us that my father’s attorney would be arriving later in the day to discuss some financial matters and read the will, I took the opportunity to excuse myself. I’d already researched local hotels and had booked one nearby so I didn’t have to spend another night on the sofa.

  Or near the WS, as I’d begun referring to my wicked stepmother in my head.

  “So when’s the funeral?”

  “In three days. I made the arrangements this morning.” With the help of Lorenzo, because I don’t speak Italian and my father’s doting widow retired to her bedroom at the mention of the funeral. Probably to do a happy dance at the thought of what she’d inherit.

  Il Sogno may be old and crumbling, but the land is valuable. The view of the Duomo alone is priceless. I’m sure the WS has plans to sell it to the highest bidder the minute the funeral ends. I don’t know anything about community property laws in this country, but judging by the way my father spoke of her, the WS will get everything, right down to the doormat.

  Not that I care. Without Papa, this is just another old villa in the hills. He was the one who made it special. I didn’t grow up here. I only visited once a year—there’s nothing left to tie me to it except painful memories, and I’ve had enough of those to last a lifetime.

  “And how are you holding up, Poppins?” Jenner asks gently. “This has been one hell of a week for you.”

  I close my eyes and turn my face to the hot afternoon sun. I’d come out to the overgrown back gardens to be with the butterflies and the hummingbirds, hoping I could head off my pending mental breakdown with a quiet stroll, but the heat is as oppressive as my jet lag, and the hummingbirds are nowhere to be seen.

  The WS must’ve boiled them in her cauldron.

  “I’m surviving.” My sigh is heavy. “Actually, I think I’m in shock. It still doesn’t seem real. Any of it. Brad, the wedding, my father, my father’s secret wife . . . it all feels like a dream.”

  “Nightmare, more like,” says Jenner with empathy.

  “Enough about my problems.” I wave a hand in the air to dispel the somber mood. “How are you doing? What’s new in the modeling world?”

  “You know, the usual: cocaine, bulimia, fake friends. I can hardly wait until I start to wrinkle so I can retire and do something meaningful with my life.”

  I know for a fact that he doesn’t do drugs, have an eating disorder, or have fake friends. I’ve met all of them, and they’re almost as awesome as he is. The stereotypes about models are depressingly wrong. You’d think the beautiful people would be more fucked-up than the rest of us, but as far as I’ve seen, that’s not true. Jenner just enjoys pretending it is.

  “You’re too pretty to wrinkle. You’ve only gotten better looking since I met you.”

  He sighs as if his beauty is a terrible problem that’s been vexing him for years. “I know. Let’s talk about something else. Oh—tell me about all the gorgeous Italian men!”

  Smiling, I walk deeper into the garden, meandering down the gravel path toward the stone fountain. After all these years in the elements, it’s still beautiful, and still one of my favorite things. It depicts Aphrodite and her lover, Ares, in a passionate embrace. It was my father’s wedding present to my mother. It’s been dry since the day she died, twenty-nine years ago.

  “I’ve only met one gorgeous Italian, but that was in New York. But damn, he was a doozy.”

  “I can hear the drool in your mouth, Poppins! Tell me everything!”

  I give him a shortened version of the story, concentrating the details on what Euro Hunk looked like and what he wore, the two things I know are required. Jenner gasps and exclaims in all the right places, then asks excitedly when I’ll be seeing him again.

  “I didn’t give him my real number, dummy.”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “Because, hello, I was just dumped at the altar! I’m not exactly in a man-loving mood!”

  “Who said anything about loving? Have revenge sex with him, silly! Hell, have revenge sex with every Italian stud you meet! What better way to get Brad out of your system? Seriously, you’re swimming in an ocean of testosterone over there, darling, dip your vadge in that beautiful sea!”

  I say drily, “I think the saying is ‘Dip your toe.’”

  He scoffs. “Toe, vadge, whatever. Get it in there! Swim in it! Drown in it! Good God, if it were me, I’d be running naked through the streets!”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen the pictures.”

  His tone turns snippy. “Don’t be judgey, darling. It was my first show in Paris. I was seventeen.”

  “Really? What’s your excuse for what happened last year at the Issey Miyake show in Tokyo?”

  Jenner says innocently, “It was my first time in Japan!”

  “I see. Remind me not to go with you anywhere you haven’t been before.”

  “It’s not like you haven’t seen me nude.”

  “The amount of people who haven’t seen you nude is a very small number, my friend.”

  �
��Well,” he says airily, “one does what one can to spread beauty into the lives of the less fortunate.”

  I laugh at that because I know he means it. “Have I told you lately that I love you?”

  “You tell me alarmingly often, darling. For such a sharp, ball-busting businesswoman, you’re awfully mushy.”

  He’s trying to be condescending, but I know him too well. “Pfft. You adore it and you know it.”

  His chuckle is low and warm. “I adore you, Poppins.”

  I swallow, tears gathering in the corners of my eyes. My chest tight, I whisper, “You’re the only family I have left now.”

  He sounds alarmed. “Oh God. Don’t cry. You’ll make me cry, and I’ve just applied a forty-dollar mascara.”

  I start to laugh. He makes it impossible not to.

  “That’s better. Now listen to me carefully, darling.” His voice turns firm. “You’re the baddest bitch I’ve ever known. You will get through this. All of it. And you’ll come out stronger on the other side. Do you hear me?”

  My voice is small when I answer, “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that. Is there a mouse on the other end of the line?”

  “I said yes!”

  He sounds satisfied by my shout and chuckles again. “Good. Stiff upper lip, Poppins. Tears are undignified. And remember—revenge sex is good for the complexion.”

  He hangs up before I can tell him again that I love him, because there’s nothing Jenner hates more than having to admit there’s a real heart in his chest, instead of the shard of ice he pretends sits in its place.

  When the attorney arrives a few hours later, the marchesa invites him into the library and asks Lorenzo to look after Cornelia. Beans, however, isn’t banished from the meeting, and sits glaring at me from the marchesa’s lap as the lawyer removes sheaves of papers from his briefcase and gets himself organized.

  Muttering to himself, the attorney pats his coat pockets. He finds the pair of glasses he was looking for, settles them on his aquiline nose, then sits across from us on a leather sofa. Gesturing to the papers on the coffee table between us, he launches into a rapid-fire speech in Italian.

  “Wait.” I hold up a hand. The attorney peers at me over his glasses. “In English, please.” When he squints at me, I get a bad feeling. “You do speak English?”

  “Of course I speak English. But why would I, when Italian is so superior?”

  Petting Beans as if the dog were a bag of diamonds, the marchesa smiles.

  Heat crawls up my neck. Reminding myself murder is a capital crime, I say, “Because I don’t speak Italian.”

  Now the attorney looks confused. He glances at the marchesa, then at me, as if he can’t believe his ears.

  “But you were born in this country, no? And your parents were both Italian. Why would you not know your mother tongue?”

  There’s a lead crystal paperweight on the table between us that would make a very nice dent in this idiot’s skull. “Yes, I was born here, but I grew up in the States. I moved there when I was three years old and only came back for summer breaks from school.”

  When the attorney keeps right on gazing at me as if I’m making no sense whatsoever, I sigh heavily. “When I went to live with my aunt, my father wanted me to be a ‘real’ American, okay? He wanted me to fit in with all my friends, not be picked on for being a foreigner. He never spoke Italian to me.”

  The attorney looks as if I’ve informed him I shot his mother point-blank in the face. “Never spoke Italian to you?” Scandalized, he stares at the marchesa. “But this is child abuse!”

  “Oh, for God’s sake, just get on with it!”

  Beans doesn’t like my aggravated tone and growls deep in her throat.

  I cut her a withering look. “One more peep out of you, dog, and I’ll make you into a purse.”

  “Per favore, Signor Rossi, continue in English,” says the marchesa, icy calm. She doesn’t glance at me, but Beans looks as if she’s about to explode with fury. I might not speak Italian, but apparently the dog understands English. If it weren’t for the marchesa’s hand on her back, I’d have a peach furball chewing off my nose.

  I narrow my eyes at Beans, she bares her teeth at me, and Signor Rossi grunts in disbelief at my horrible shortcoming.

  “Very well. In English, then,” he says, sounding aggrieved. “Let us begin.” He picks up a sheaf of stapled papers and launches into a long and terrifically boring outline of my father’s business holdings, bank accounts, and various other financial instruments and the value thereof, all of which amount to a pittance.

  This isn’t news. Though he was an exceptional designer, Papa’s business acumen was for shit. He was constantly lending cash to people who’d never pay it back, forgetting to pay taxes on time so the fines would be astronomical, and generally failing at managing his money. All he wanted to do was sketch, sew, and design. And though his creations were truly beautiful, he didn’t price them correctly. He felt guilty for making a profit. He was an artist, not a businessman.

  Then Signor Rossi says something that almost makes me fall out of my chair.

  “Now, turning to the real estate. The house and property were recently assessed at fifteen million euro—”

  “Whoa! Back up—did you say fifteen million euro?”

  “That’s roughly eighteen million dollars in your American money,” sniffs the attorney.

  I make a sound like a cat trying to expel a hairball and look at the marchesa. She gazes back at me in inscrutable silence, the smallest of smiles hovering over her lips.

  Her smile doesn’t falter when the attorney adds, “Of course, you can’t sell the property while Lady Moretti is still alive. Without her permission, that is.”

  I whip my head around so fast I’m surprised it doesn’t fly off my neck. “What? Me? Sell? Huh?”

  Signor Rossi gazes at me over the rim of his glasses and speaks very slowly, as if to someone with limited mental capacity. “Your father left everything to you, Kimber. The business, the investments, Il Sogno—everything. The only stipulation on any of that being that you allow Lady Moretti to stay in the house until she dies, if she so wishes.”

  I stare at him for a while, then at the marchesa, who remains undisturbed.

  Watching me with those frozen blue eyes, she says calmly, “I would prefer to stay in the house, but if my stepdaughter would prefer I did not, I will move.”

  She’s talking to him, but she’s looking at me. Looking right down into the bottom of my soul.

  Daring me.

  I whisper, “My father left me this house?”

  Signor Rossi says, “Yes.”

  “But . . . I can’t sell it until she dies?”

  “Unless Lady Moretti agrees to leave, which—if I understand her correctly—she will do if you ask her to.”

  The marchesa says, “That is correct.”

  In her cold smile, I think I see a checkmate.

  Damn. I have to hand it to her. That’s a ballsy move.

  She knows without my having to say so that I’d never disrespect my father’s wishes. No matter how much I might dislike her, no matter how much I could use the money—fifteen million euro!—I’d never ask her to leave, because he wanted her to stay.

  It’s an incredible gamble on her part, but this is one crafty woman. She probably had my number at first glance. She probably saw exactly how this would play out, right down to the next words that leave my mouth.

  “If my father wanted you to stay until you die, you’re staying until you die.”

  The marchesa’s small smile grows the tiniest bit wider.

  Not so fast, WS. “But I can’t guarantee you won’t meet with any unfortunate accidents that might reduce your lifespan by a few decades.”

  My feeling of satisfaction at watching her smug smile disappear is one of the highlights of my life to date.

  The attorney interrupts our stare-off with a rough throat clearing. “In regard to your father’s business, D
iSanto Couture has an excellent reputation for quality. However, based on a review of the books, it’s operating at a loss. It’s not sustainable at current levels of income versus debt, so the obvious course of action is to bring in a buyer.” Signor Rossi glances up from the paperwork. “Unless you’d like to try to take it over and turn it around.”

  “No. I’m not staying here. I’ve got to get back to the States.”

  He nods. “We’ll find a buyer. I recommend going through the inventory and repricing it to more competitive levels in order to boost the selling price. From what I can see, there’s substantial room for improvement there.”

  The marchesa says, “I know someone who will be interested.”

  I just bet you do, Cruella.

  “Bene,” says the attorney, nodding. Then he looks at me. “That means good.”

  “I know what it means.”

  He purses his lips as if he doesn’t believe me.

  I’m abruptly angry, because massive mood swings are my new normal. “Are we done here? Because I’d like to check into the hotel before dinner.”

  Before he can answer, my cell phone rings. I glance at the number, frowning when I see it’s my landlord. “Excuse me for a sec.” I rise, hitting the “Answer” button as I walk from the library into the hallway.

  “Hey, Mr. Drummond.”

  “Hello, Kimber.”

  The man I rent my tiny but horrifically expensive shop from in the Castro district sounds unusually somber, which sets off alarm bells in my head. What time is it in San Francisco, anyway? 6:00 a.m.? I check my watch, and sure enough, it’s just after dawn there.

  “Is everything okay? My rent check cleared, right?”

  “Yes, your check cleared. That’s not why I’m calling.”

  When he draws a breath, my heart leaps into my throat. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  I can tell by his heavy exhalation whatever he’s about to tell me won’t be good, but nothing can prepare me for the words that come out of his mouth.

  “There’s been a fire.”

  “A fire?” Panic like a chaos of wingbeats erupts inside my chest.

  “The cause hasn’t been determined yet, but it’s bad. The whole block went up. I’m standing across the street as we speak. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but your shop and everything in it is gone. There’s nothing left but ashes.”