Aida thought this answer was odd—and, like her own response, seemed to be an obfuscation. What were the chances that neither of them specialized in some specific historical era like most historians did? Aida decided to probe a little.
“What era of French history have you found to be the most fascinating?”
He took a sip of his drink. “All of them! But I have beenspending considerable time in the Baroque and Renaissance lately, with the châteaus of the Loire Valley. Have you been to the Château de Chambord?”
Aida shook her head. “No, but I hear it is magnificent.”
“There is a staircase there they think da Vinci might have designed!” Luciano began to describe the château in earnest, drawing Aida in with his passion. As he spoke, Aida noticed that he often referenced other recent trips—the spa town of Aix-les-Bains, the vineyards of Château Margaux, the beautiful carousel in Montmartre at the foot of Sacré-Coeur. The things and places he spoke of were found throughout the country, of various eras, and seemed to have no common thread.Unless...She made sure the bartender was out of earshot, then said, “It sounds like a job where you’re always encountering happiness.”
Luciano was lifting his glass to his mouth but paused midair. “It’s a funny thing you should say that.”
“Is it?” Aida said, realizing that she had guessed right. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and showed him she was turning it off. She indicated with a nod that he should do the same.
He raised an eyebrow, but reached into his pocket, removed his phone, and pressed the button to its side.
Once it was off, she asked him in a low voice, “Might it be accurate to say that you work for someone who iscollectinghappiness?”
Luciano gave a soft snort, then took a big swig of the cocktail. He lowered his voice a bit. “I suppose that is accurate. Yes, it’s true. I like that. AHappiness Collector. But you ask this as though you too might be one.”
“I haven’t described myself that way, but yes, that sounds right.” She knew she was in dangerous territory even having this conversation with her employers only a few floors away. She pulled a pen out of her bag and took up the napkin before her. On it she wrote a single word in tiny letters:MODA.
Luciano laid a hand on her arm. Their eyes locked. He nodded his head. Then his hand went to the napkin. He placed his glass on it, tipping some liquid across the napkin. The ink blurred. Aida took the napkin and wadded it up.
Her arm tingled where his hand had touched her. “I need to take a trip to the ladies’ room. Will you be here when I return?” She hoped he would understand she was making the trip to flush the napkin into the depths of the London sewer.
He looked at his watch. “If you’re not gone long.”
She reached a hand to his shoulder and squeezed—a message, she hoped, that he should stay. And maybe a message of something more. “I promise.”
She took her phone from the bar and turned it back on. Then she made her way to the bathroom and ensconced herself in a stall. She dumped the napkin into the bowl and flushed it down, then took a piece of paper from the little notebook she always carried and hastily scribbled her name, a note that Luciano should download Signal if he didn’t have it, and her number.
She returned to the bar, relieved to see he was still there, his glass empty before him. When he saw her, he got up and stood next to his chair. “I paid the bill,” he told her. “I have to go—an important quarterly meeting.” His tone and the look in his eyes suggested he was about to head up that same elevator from which she had just come down.
Reaching out to take his hands, she slipped the paper between them. She hoped he wouldn’t notice her hands were shaking. “I am glad to have met you, Luciano.”
He hesitated, then leaned forward and gave her a peck on each cheek. “And I you, Aida,” he whispered in her ear.
She watched him go, her heart swelling, euphoria at the touch of his lips against her skin surging through her.
Aida climbed back up on the barstool, her mind a whirlwind. She downed her drink in one, seeking clarity in the burn of the alcohol, and ordered a gin and tonic. As the cool glass touched her lips, a shadow of Graham’s memory momentarily darkened her thoughts. She was only a couple of months removed fromthe raw wound of leaving him; was she ready for what was stirring inside her now?
Happiness Collectors. She turned the title over in her mind, thinking about how apt it was.
She had thought she was the only one, working on behalf of a miserable, eccentric billionaire. Yet here was Luciano, a mirror to her own secretive existence. And the thought of that—of not being alone in this peculiar vocation—brought both comfort and a new kind of longing. To feel such emotion was a shock, yes, but also an intrigue that was hard to ignore.
How many people she saw at the hotel on the days she visited were there also giving reports to MODA? How many hearts were collecting happiness while nursing their own hidden sorrows?
And more importantly, what did it mean that she wasn’t the only one?
Later, Aida left her MODA phone in her room, then snuck out of the hotel using the stairwell to take a walk to a nearby park. Trista hadn’t scolded her in the last few weeks, and she hoped, in this case, that they would assume she’d stayed in her room. She settled in on a bench to video call Yumi on her personal phone. Her friend squealed with delight when she mentioned she had met a handsome man at the bar.
“Okay, tell me everything. Is he single?”
Aida paused. It wasn’t something she had considered, but a little anxiety crept in now that the question had been proposed. She’d assumed he was single. More importantly, shewantedhim to be single. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“We didn’t talk about that. But I found out something else even more important.”
