by C. L. Donley
“It’s too good to be true,” she said. And it wasn’t a compliment. He rested his big hand on one of her delicate feet, the undertones of their skin dueling.
“Hardly,” he said looking into her eyes. “In fact, I would ask you what I want to ask you, but you seem so skittish. Like you are waiting for the shoe to drop. Isn’t that the saying?”
“More or less.”
“Why does English have this saying? Do Americans go around throwing their shoes in the air?”
“Yes,” she replied, rolling her eyes. She knew he was trying to put her at ease with corny second language humor.
“If I ask you, you will run away. Like you are doing now.”
She sighed without contradicting him.
“A dinner then, perhaps,” she conceded, “but not a party.”
“What is the difference?” he smiled.
Dario took Lark to his house. The grand entrance was three stories of stairs decorated with the greenest topiary on each side. The balconies were made of carved fat pillars of old stone. And it looked like a large museum.
Dario introduced Lark to his son Gino, who looked like a scrawnier version of Dario, except his eyes were large and dark, presumably like his mother’s.
“Gino, you are staring,” Dario said.
“She is beautiful.”
“She is standing right here and can hear you. Tell her yourself.”
“You are beautiful.”
“Thank you, Gino.”
“Are you to be my new stepmother?”
“No,” she smirked.
“We’ll see,” Dario lovingly corrected her. “But she will be staying here. With us.”
“For how long?”
“For now,” he answered cryptically when Lark only looked at him.
When they went to his room to settle in, Lark looked around in awe. His room had tall ceilings, frescoes on the walls and an intimidating bookcase complete with scaffolding. Elegant, but devoid of any feminine traces. Clearly, it was a room that he did not share.
“I think Gino might have a crush on you,” he grinned.
Lark gave him a giggle.
“You don’t find that to be… awkward?”
“According to you, he would not have to worry.”
“And if you had your way? You would make him suffer?”
“He would not suffer long. After graduation, he cannot wait to leave us. Besides, I believe he has a girlfriend he has not yet told us about.”
“I think he and I may be closer in age than you and I.”
Dario thought for a moment.
“You are precisely in the middle of us. He will be 18 this year.”
“One day he will take over Di Rossi Textiles?”
“Si.”
“Would you ever consider hiring an outsider?”
“Perhaps, if everyone in my immediate family died. Otherwise it would probably kill them.”
“So that’s still non-negotiable I see.”
“Every Di Rossi runs things differently. Some better than others. Whatever strengths they have tend to outweigh the weaknesses, even if the weaknesses are indeed very weak.”
“The world changes with each passing generation, Dario. Who’s to say business will even run the same by the time Gino comes of age?”
“So far so good. Things are much more competitive than they were 100 years ago, certo. Which is why I fight to adapt the company for our preservation. Then I will hand it to Gino. If Gino decides to sell, I will not object, but he will try his hand at running it.”
“What does he want to study?”
“Fashion Design.”
“Convenient.”
“He wants to be competent.”
“He wants to please you.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
Lark simply rolled her eyes.
“Nothing, I suppose. Running a textile company is perhaps the best way to find out whether or not you’re cut out for it.”
“Indeed. Come, I want to show you something.”
Dario led Lark through the cavernous rooms of the house until they made it outside across a beautiful courtyard to another smaller cottage on the property, one that was more her style of living space.
Lark was stunned when he led her through the door and she found a modest, bustling design studio, complete with a large work table, mannequins, fabrics, and works in progress hanging on racks.
“Is this Gino’s?”
“No,” he scoffed, “it’s mine.”
“Yours?” she marveled, “since when are you a designer?”
“I have several degrees, one of them in design. You did not know this?”
“I confess, I didn’t do nearly enough homework on you before I started work, Signorino Di Rossi.”
“Sit,” he said. He searched around for measuring tape then he changed his mind, making her stand. Meticulously he took her measurements. He laughed quietly to himself.
“What?”
“I made something. For you. And I think it will fit.”
“For me? When was this?”
“The day after we met.”
“You must’ve been… inspired,” she said provocatively.
“I was.”
He revealed a simple provencial-looking dress on the dress form, with blue and white stripes and big blue buttons, the stripes changing directions in a tiered pattern along the skirt.
“It’s very ‘Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.’”
“But modern.”
“Indeed,” she smiled.
“Do you like it?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“I want you to wear it tonight,” he commanded. Her nipples tightened against her blouse. She couldn’t turn down a request from Dario. She took her time unbuttoning her shirt.
“Shall I try it on first?”
“Certo.”
“How long until your family arrives?”
“Long enough to make love, if that’s what you’re thinking,” he replied, watching her remove her bra. He feasted his eyes on her dainty cleavage.
“You were thinking it too, admit it,” she smiled. He returned it.
“I am always thinking it,” he whispered.
Thirteen
Chapter 13
Lark spent the evening falling in love with Dario.
Dario’s kitchen was vast. A mix of stainless modernity and neutral stone-colored, old-world wealth, containing several islands and lit with long pendants hanging from the endlessly high ceiling.
There was another side to him when he was among family. She knew that he cooked, but he appeared to be the culinary wunderkind of the family. Even while he was dressed impeccably in a blue pinstripe dress shirt and navy slacks, the sleeves rolled high and his brow furrowed in concentration over the raw meats, vegetables, and the steaming contents of pots.
He minded all ages of nieces and nephews, from infant to young adulthood. He smiled. He laughed. Lark sat in the kitchen nook’s corner seat, trying to be invisible so that she could watch him undisturbed. But that was impossible since he was stealing glances at her just as often.
“Where’s nonna?” a random nephew asked in Italian while stealing a meatball.
“Running late,” Dario rattled off while adding herbs to his sauce.
“In English, we have a guest,” his nephew corrected as he gestured to Lark.
“Her Italian is better than yours, Ernesto, get out of my kitchen!” Dario scolded him as he scarfed down another meatball.
The sense of family was palpable. There wasn’t a branch missing on the De Rossi family tree. Other than the feeling that she got when she watched the same thing on TV or in movies, the sensation was completely foreign to her, except for the part where she was on the outside looking in.
Whenever she was sent to a new home, she tried to make herself a model foster kid. One of her foster mothers, Roxy, used to make her clean the whole house and even watch her children. She was very young and had been a fo
ster kid herself. Lark never saw a single dime of the allowance every household was allotted, so she had to assume Roxy was running off with that. Lark didn’t once complain, however. But when Roxy had her re-assigned, Lark felt a betrayal she couldn’t describe. The confidence she had in the value system she’d set up for herself was irreparably shaken.
Still, she kept trying to earn her way into someone’s family. Well into adulthood and she still couldn’t imagine not trying to earn her place into any family. She would spend a lifetime trying to earn her way into this one.
Just then, she caught his eye. He was dropping freshly made pasta into a boiling pot. He looked at her with a look of contentment she had never seen and it stopped her heart.
She doubted her ability to ever get used to any of it, but she couldn’t stop the familiar tinge of hope from driving her mind into pictures of the future. Her breath became fractured with panic. She needed some air.
Lark walked out onto the vast terrace overlooking the estate, where the evening air was warm and breezy. She looked out to the impossibly beautiful grounds as the sun took its time setting.
She nursed her wine glass as she turned to observe Dario who was still in her line of sight from the open back doors. She watched Dario handling meat, holding his hands up like a surgeon as he chased ingredients down around the grand marble island.
“He is beautiful, no?” An older woman sharply dressed in black slowly took her place beside her on the terrace. She seemed to already know who Lark was, but Lark herself was in the dark.
“He is,” Lark agreed.
“He would make any woman a fine husband,” the woman cordially asserted.
“Certo.”
“But not every woman would make him a fine wife.”
Ah. Lark knew where this was going. And who the woman must be.
“That is true,” Lark took no offense to the jab she knew was aimed directly at her. It seemed to catch the woman off guard. She asked a more direct question.
“Tell me, besides your beauty, what do you have to offer him?”
“Very little,” Lark didn’t hesitate.
“You are not good enough for Roberto and you know this. You exude it,” the woman continued her tirade. She seemed so adamant to scare Lark off that she was completely willing to skip introductions.
“You must be his mother,” Lark deduced anyway.
“I am. What gave it away?”
“Signore Di Rossi told me a bit about you. You fit the description. Dario hasn’t mentioned you all that much,” Lark replied with a tinge of shade.
“Ah. And how is Luca these days?” Dario’s mother asked.
“Unburdened,” was Lark’s answer, getting shadier by the second.
“Spent an evening with him as well, did you?” his mother answered, she too being a card-carrying shade member.
“You are very much like your son. He also likes verbal sparring.”
“Is this a sensible way to start a relationship with me?”
“I have no intentions of talking to you beyond tonight,” Lark answered truthfully. “I spent my life trying to win my mother’s love. And she was a loving person. The last thing I would want is to have you in that role.”
Signora Bennetto gave her an icy stare brimming with class and condescension.
“You look very poised in the expensive dress my son bought for you, but you have the manners of a street urchin. No one in this city would dare talk to me the way you have.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me to discover that you have insulted enough people in this city to know that for a fact, Signora Bennetto,” Lark maintained her professional air.
“It must be blissful to be as ignorant as you are of your surroundings, Signorina Chambers.”
“I must admit, it is,” Lark chuckled, enjoying herself just a little too much. “One minute I’m interpreting for the senior executive of Di Rossi Textiles, the next I’m sitting in his kitchen, insulting his mother and drinking wine in the dress that he made for me.”
“Li mortacci tua!” she exclaimed as she laughed. “It is the American in you, I presume. You must think all wealth comes from hard work and bright ideas. You must find us deplorable.”
“Not at all, Signora.”
“Come now, let’s not pretend this began with your job. You disgraced yourself when you fucked Roberto in his mother’s own home.”
Lark went rigid. She went silent as she had no rebuttal, at least not one that wouldn’t require a complete return to her roots.
“This dress, he made it?” his mother asked.
“Si.”
She gave a little chuckle and shook her head.
“You must think me too intrusive, but I never would’ve known if he had not told me.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“You don’t have to. As long as you promise not to marry my son, I see no reason for us to not have a pleasant evening.”
Lark searched herself, looking for a reason to tell this woman to fuck off, that she was out of pocket and wrong. But there was none.
When Lark tried to imagine herself in this family, it was almost painful. Smiling, going along with their every expectation, drowning in children, in excess, in dinner parties. She’d likely be asked to give up her job and she would comply, out of perceived obligation. She would be trapped. She would eventually hate him for it. His loving gaze would repulse her.
“I promise,” Lark replied stoically.
“Va bene. I’m pleased that we understand each other, Allodola,” Signora Bennetto smiled.
“Don’t ever call me that,” Lark smiled back.
* * *
“I noticed my mother cornered you tonight,” Dario brought up as Lark emerged from the bathroom. She got into his large bed next to him as he read by the light of his end table lamp. “I am hoping it went as well as it looked.”
“…It did not,” replied Lark, without looking up.
“Merda,” he said, removing his reading glasses.
“Or perhaps it did, depending on how you look at it. I believe we understand each other fully.”
“What did she say to you?”
Lark merely shrugged, keeping the details of their frank dialogue vague.
“Nothing I haven’t heard from some old overbearing relative before, no offense,” she said, turning down the covers on her side of the bed, “I eat women like your mother for breakfast,” she said in Italian with an exaggerated gesture.
She looked over and noticed that Dario hadn’t moved. He was staring at her.
“What did she say?”
Lark sighed. She couldn’t lie. She tried to find the most diplomatic way of paraphrasing their conversation.
“She made me promise that I would not agree to marry you.”
“I see,” he slowly blinked with a faint grin. “And did you?”
“Yes,” she confessed.
“Why?”
“Your mother sees right through me, I’m afraid. I’m not good enough for you. She just wants to protect you, Dario.”
He grabbed her open hand and kissed her palm as he gazed deep in her eyes.
“Sei il mio cuore. She cannot protect me from my own heart.”
Oh. This must be what Signor De Rossi meant. If he tries to woo you, you will be powerless.
“Did you tell her about the cellar?”
“I did.”
“Why?”
“I merely confirmed what she already knew. Everyone saw the two of us retreat and never return.”
“Everyone?”
“Remember what I said about family being ‘inescapable’?”
“How did they find out that we worked together?”
“I never told them that your true identity was concealed that night. They assumed our relationship has always been a mix of business and pleasure. They simply did not expect that I would fall in love with you.”
Lark didn’t avert her gaze as he used the “L” word for the first time, an arbitrary disti
nction. She already knew as much. But she concealed her inner shame, as the word simply rolled off of her soul, unpenetrated by it.
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew what I said back to your mother,” she replied, her eyes glowing brown with hidden mischief. His grin widened.
“If you stood up to Violetta Di Rossi Benetto, then I must marry you,” he said, grinning. He watched her squirm at his declaration.
“I’m afraid I was a bit… aggressive. In my own defense,” she admitted sheepishly.
“Do not say another word until my father is also present,” he said. She laughed.
* * *
The one disadvantage to having Lark at his house was that he couldn’t take breaks in the middle of the day to meet her at his hotel, make love to her and grab a bite before heading back to work as he had so many times in the weeks before.
But that was the only disadvantage.
He loved waking up to her and loved going home to her. She helped Gino with his French. His mother stayed conspicuously absent, which was a reprieve he didn’t know he needed. They ate dinner, they made love, she refreshed her craft each day, brushing up on her catalog of languages.
After several weeks of this, he’d all but forgotten to guard himself against the lull. Lark seemed happy. So when he arrived home one day only to find every simple trace of her completely vanished, he was dumbstruck.
“Gino, dove Allodola?”
“Non lo so, I thought she was with you?”
He searched everywhere on his property but she was gone. She and her tiny little suitcase with the long handle.
He didn’t want to seem as possessive or as hurt as he felt. Her phone rang and rang, or sometimes went straight to voice mail.
Should he start to panic? Had something really happened to her? He couldn’t miss work to send out a search party. Besides, there was no need. He called the LIST agency under false pretenses, requesting her for another job, but she was already booked in London.
She wasn’t kidnapped. She was avoiding him. After few days, he called his father at headquarters, in case he had any information.
“Si, Miss Chambers came here to find you.”
“When?”
“Last week. She is flying to her homeland, I believe.”
“Why would she not come to the factory?”
