I wrung my hands, watching him squirm in Giada’s arms. “Um,” I came to smooth the backs of my fingers down his arm. He was softer than cashmere and smelled sweeter than heaven. “As long as you don’t mind.”
She handed him over, completely open to it.
Little Flavio favors his father in appearance but has Giada’s lips. His warmth against my chest unlatched a door I keep locked down tight. If Jules had survived, she would be this size. I fixated on the blue-gray eyes that blinked up at me, lips forming an ‘O’, while fussing sounds filtered out. His hair was thin, just a dark patch resembling a mohawk.
I tried not to cry.
Angela came and set her chin on my shoulder, rubbing my arm. I needed the support.
“It’s okay,” Angela wiped my tear for me.
Giada leaned on my other side, letting me get my fill, as if I really could, of holding a little one.
When they were leaving, Angela stayed in my doorway as the girls loaded into their van. “I want you to know, it gets easier,” she said.
I wrinkled my nose. “Says the woman with two of those.”
“They weren’t easy to come by. I had my share of loss first.”
“I’m leaving Noah,” I looked at my shoe. “I don’t know how much Lorenzo tells you, but once my financial ducks are in a row, I’m leaving. Once I do, I’m throwing away my opportunity for a baby in the near future.”
“You aren’t eighty, Lydia,” she laughed a little. “I had mine late. I was thirty-one.”
“But I’ve been married and trying for almost six years. If it’s difficult for my body now, every year that passes…”
“It might not happen for you,” she agreed. “I’m not Mother Nature, I don’t know. The best thing you can do is live in the moment and try to let it go. The minute you aren’t expecting it…”
I nodded, not feeling confident.
“Right now, you’ve got lots of babies. You got your work, your hobbies, us, that fugly ass cat—”
My laugh interrupted her.
She grinned. “And you got our babies too. You’re an auntie, now. Like it or not, that’s what you are. And on Saturday, you’re gonna be a hot Auntie.”
We hugged.
Mia honked the horn, telling Angela to get a move on.
LORENZO
Lydia wouldn’t stop talking about this coming Saturday. She was nervous and excited. My sisters had completely monopolized her time this week, getting ready.
I didn’t always listen when Lydia told me all the things they planned to do. In her hyper joy, she even talked during our morning coffee. But I was miles away, trying to understand the tidal wave of new questions in my head.
Chance made it sound simple.
If there was chemistry between myself and Lydia, he felt I should act on it. That I was free to do so.
And if it was my conscience in the way, his answer was to get a divorce.
But there lie all the complications.
What’s worse? Now that I’m aware of the subtle need in me for Lydia, the need that may have resided in me all this time, it’s grown. It’s more than lust. It’s something stronger and harder to ignore. I need her occupying my living space. I need to hear her breathing in a quiet room, I need her shoulder to shoulder with me when I’m walking, I need the color of her flushed skin when a foul word slips past my lips, the innocence in her eyes when the sin of the flesh is mentioned.
I sense that this torture is mutual, but she’s careful, protected, disciplined, and loyal.
That’s what makes me want her even more.
Saturday finally comes around, and I’ve thrown myself into the restaurant. Cooking, running the back, the busy of it all keeps my troubles outside the glass windows.
At five, I went home, showered, dressed.
“Where are you headed?” Ruby asked, her excuse to walk the bedroom, is folding her laundry.
“Rebel Vision.”
“How’s Chance and Adam? Is marriage agreeing with them?” I can feel her eyes on me. She’s critically looking over my attire, deciding if there’s something to accuse me of.
“I think so,” I said, tying my leather cuffs on.
“Are you going alone?” she prods.
“My sisters are coming.”
She’s thinking. “You look great.” She comes and caresses my bicep. “You’re a beautiful man,” she steps on the toes of her feet to kiss my neck, and I lean away, buttoning my vest. I know what she’s doing. Red lipstick on, she’s trying to mark me before I go out.
And what can be worse? She’s tried to be physical with me since our fight. She’s made attempts to be intimate, but I’ve refused her. I don’t know what she’s up to, but I’m over the games.
Her eyes cooled. “Are we still fighting?”
“Fighting would mean I have something to say. I don’t.”
Ruby watched my hands as I buckle my belt. “Um… okay. Right.” She sighed. “I’ll be going out tonight too. A girlfriend from work wants to grab drinks, I might crash with her. Give you the space you seem to want.”
I find it funny how little her words affect me. I stop and look down at her. “He can keep you as long as he wants,” I bit back, knowing damn well the girlfriend from work is Noah. Since their little weekend trip, they’ve been even closer than before. It must have gone well, because every chance they get, they’re meeting up.
She sent daggers with her eyes then left to finish her laundry.
LYDIA
As I finish dressing at Lorenzo’s mother’s house, my cell rings.
Noah’s name lights up my phone.
With nerves of steel and confidence I’ve never felt, I answer. Standing in their spare bedroom, I take a deep breath. “Hey, what’s up?”
“Where are you?” he sounds angry.
“Why?”
“Well, tonight is your women’s Bible study. You forgot your Bible, so I ran by to drop it off, and they said you haven’t been there in three weeks. Three weeks.”
I look at my reflection, feeling pleased and fully myself. “I quit going. I prefer studying by myself, and sometimes Sara comes over and studies with me. I think our church has a clique problem.”
“Where are you?” he doesn’t seem to hear any of what I’m saying.
“I’m going out with some friends.”
“No, you’re coming home so we can talk about your new habit of lying to me! I found a cat in your toy room, if that’s even what it is, it looks like it was a cat. It won’t let me near it. Since when do we have a cat?” He’s shouting now. Noah isn’t a shouter, but he’s shouting. “You need to come home and talk to me. I have to leave in a couple of hours, so get here and we’ll talk. What is wrong with you? Getting a cat? Really? I told you I’m allergic, you know I’m allergic, why would you deliberately try to cause my throat to close? And what friends are you going out with? Because the women we know would never let you act like this. They would hold you accountable. Is it Sara? Because everyone in the congregation knows that Sara is a slut that can’t keep a husband. Shocker that she’s gone through five! Are you with her? You know what this is? This is you acting out because of those damn books!”
I made myself listen.
“Those secular portals of garbage! And I told the elders. Yeah, I told them what you were reading, and they told me to take them from you, but I didn’t because I wanted you to be your own person. What kind of person are you being right now? You won’t tell me where you are, who you’re with. What is wrong with you?”
After his tirade, I waited.
The line was so quiet.
I looked myself in the eyes from the mirror and counted to three in my mind.
“Um, honey?” I tried.
He panted from his rant. “Yeah, what?”
I bit my lower lip, released it and parted my lips. “Fuck off.”
LORENZO
It was a busy dinner hour. So many reservations and lines.
The kitchen needed help, so d
ressed or not, I headed the cooking. There was order after order going through and it didn’t slow down until ten.
I checked my watch. The girls are supposed to meet here at ten, but I never expect my sisters to be on time. Half past ten is more likely. Maybe even eleven.
But I’m wrong.
While I’m helping to clear a table, I hear the undeniable giggling and loud conversations that are trademarked to the DiGregorio sisters.
I look and they are huddled around the hostess stand where Giada’s short-term replacement is conversing with them. I can’t see Lydia and figure she didn’t come in yet, or she’s somewhere behind the herd.
Doing a double-take, I realize Lydia is among the group, but she’s beyond recognition.
She’s changed drastically.
The Rapunzel hair is gone. It’s been chopped short to her shoulders, still rippling with waves. One side longer than the other to appear edgy, and it’s been dyed from light brown to cherry red, almost violet in this lighting.
Her dress is simple. A little black dress. But it fits her like a second skin, a low, square-necked bodice that push her small breasts together until they are up and out.
It’s short.
Dangerously short with a slit to the side so her long legs seem even longer. Amplified by high heeled stilettoes.
When she saw me, her eyes widened and her overexcited wave reminds me that no matter how different she looks, she’s still Lydia. Except now she’s a version of herself that’s causing me to battle a hard-on.
“Hey,” she glides my way and I resist the urge to back up. “Look!” She gestures down her body.
“I am.”
“No, look,” she points to her face. “I’m wearing makeup.”
What Angela’s done is not cake her in face paint, but she has made Lydia’s already stunning features stand out. Lining her eyes, painting her lips…
“And look,” she flipped her hair back on one side, then touched her ear. “Your mom pierced them.” Her earrings dangled against her long neck. “I’ve never worn a necklace that wasn’t my crucifix,” she touched the simple black choker at her neck. “Do you like the dress?” she looked down at herself and I did too. “It has the straps I like,” she went on. “The skinny little ones, you can’t see it now with this little jacket, I can show you at the club. Do you like it? You haven’t said.”
I put my head to the side and looked her over again.
“I look ridiculous, don’t I?” she grimaced.
“No,” I shook my head. “Unless ridiculous means bellissima.”
Her ears turned pink first, then her cheeks. “I feel good.”
“You look good.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“Really, really?” she narrowed one eye.
“What do you want?” I leaned one hand on the table I was clearing.
“Where’s all your Italian flare? Aren’t your people supposed to be the most poetic? Like, declarations of words toward beauty and love and romance, or is that the French?”
I snorted. “The French? No.”
She waited with a glint in her eyes, a challenge maybe. I’m surprised she wants more from me. If we are always careful, I’m surprised she’s baiting me this way.
“When I saw you come in, my heart stopped beating in my chest for an entire minute, and I should have been afraid, but instead, I felt glad… because I won’t see anything else in this world, that will match the look of you tonight. I forgot who I was, where I was, or that I belonged to someone else. That you belonged to someone else, and remembering, made you into a star. A glittering, spectacular, phenomenon, and something to gaze at for ages, but not to touch. Not to possess.”
And I said it all in Italian, so she wouldn’t understand a damn word.
But she was looking at me like she did.
As though she had played with fire, not expecting to catch ablaze.
She swallowed and then smiled. “Whatever you said, that was much better than what the French could manage.”
I smiled back.
“Are we ready?” asked Giada, coming to hang on Lydia. “Because Liam is loaded with formula and I need to be loaded with margaritas.”
We laughed and I shooed them before dealing final instructions to the staff.
I saw my sisters and Lydia into a cab and followed shortly after.
Chapter Twenty-Three
LYDIA
The loud music in Rebel Vision revived my soul. It’s grungy, but clean, dark, but sparkling. Everything is reminiscent of a 20’s warehouse.
The dancing was erotic and high-energy, the bar is enormous.
Coming down the winding stairs into the lowest level where all the action is, a tall man with ebony skin greeted us.
“Ladies,” he was kissed on both cheeks by each sister and pauses when he sees me. “Lorenzo got a new sister he didn’t tell me about?”
“Nah, that’s Lydia,” Donna says. “She’s our girl, she’s never been.”
“Well if she’s with you, she’s more than welcome, and with style like that, she gets the same discount you four do.”
They hugged him again and I thanked him.
“The name’s Zeus,” he told me. “Named after the Greek god of thunder. I bring that thunder everywhere I go.”
I laughed. “You own the club, now?”
“That’s right,” he took my arm and walks behind the girls to the bar. “The original owner is here tonight, and trust me, he’ll always own the place. Ain’t nobody compares to the Urban Legend of the streets.”
I sat at a swiveling stool beside Mia, and Zeus left to keep greeting people as they came. Lorenzo was supposed to be behind us, but I kept looking for him. I’m still excited, but my bravado is waning without him here.
I felt the seat beside me become occupied, and thinking it’s Lorenzo, I turn my head from the girls to the empty stool on my other side.
It was not Lorenzo; it was a tall Viking of a man with blonde hair and eyes like microscopes. He was gorgeous, almost too much to look at. “You must be Lydia,” he guessed.
I find my tongue somewhere in my mouth. “That’s me, but I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are.”
“Chance,” he proclaimed.
“Oh!” I turn to face him and let down my fences. “Lorenzo’s told me a lot about you, your family too. Your ancestor was in my scrapbook.”
He tilted his head, not asking, but I still heard a question.
“I made Lorenzo’s mom a scrapbook— a few, with their family story dating back to Italy and in the ones closer to the 20’s, your ancestor is in some of the pictures.”
His slow nod told me he understood now.
“His mom says, your family used to buck prohibition pretty hard,” I said.
He offered a sly smile. “They were bootleggers. This was a Speak Easy once.” His eyes flicked to the bar, then back to me, offering no reprieve. “This place and Cibo Degli Dei are about the same age.”
“How do you know Lorenzo?”
“He didn’t tell you?” When I shake my head, he went on. “When I was a kid, his dad would leave plates of food in the back for me and my boyfriend at the time. Food was hard to come by then.”
I felt a ping at the thought. It was also weird to hear a guy say ‘my boyfriend’ but Lorenzo told me Chance was gay and that he recently married a man he loved. My church and their strict rules to live by would never handle it.
“That’s very special,” I said.
“Lorenzo’s family and that place mean very much to me, his father helped raise me for the most part,” he said. “It’s one of the first places I took my husband out.”
I put my chin in my hand. “Congratulations, by the way. I heard you got married, and that you have a daughter. Lorenzo showed me a picture, she’s gorgeous.”
He studied me, a man of so few words, but I seem to hear him in the silences.
I saw Lorenzo coming down the stairs behind him. Chance watched me c
losely, then looked over his shoulder. When he saw Lorenzo, he looked back at me, adding and doing all kinds of math behind those eyes.
“Enjoy your night,” he said, getting up to go greet Lorenzo. I followed him with my eyes, as they locked wrists, and then Chance talked to him and I could feel that it was about me.
After a good five minutes, Lorenzo sat where Chance had been.
“How are you doing?” he asked me.
I spun slowly in my stool. “I’m amazing. This is amazing.”
“Have you had a drink?”
“Not yet. Do you do this often?”
“No,” he put his elbow on the bar. “I don’t like clubs.”
“Really?”
“I only come once in a blue moon.”
“Do I have to drink?” I whispered.
“No.”
“What did Chance say?” I had to ask. It was so obvious that something was said, and as good as I felt, there was an insecurity beneath it all.
Lorenzo’s body was too long for the stool, making his knee brush mine. “He said you were a good one.”
“A good one? What does that mean?”
“A good woman.”
“How does he know that? We hardly spoke.”
He lifted his shoulders. “Chance has a good sense of people. He’s never wrong.”
My heart pounded, seeing Lorenzo, having him close on the stool. “You look handsome tonight,” I changed the subject.
“Even with this,” he tapped the dimple in his chin.
I laughed at the memory, of once telling him that men with that feature were not my type. My petty way of getting him back for calling me too skinny. Now I know we were both lying. Both finding reasons not to feel what we do right now.
“I don’t know if this is my thing either,” I confided. “Clubbing. But I love this feeling and being all dressed up.”
“Clubs have a place. On occasion, like this, they’re fun and worth going. There’s also places to go when you’re dressed up that aren’t clubs. Or you get dressed up like this for one person, with no occasion at all.”
I frowned even though that last thought intrigued me. “Why?”
“So they can undress you.”
The Affair (The Relationship Quo Series Book 5) Page 27
