Too many women to count in France and Sicily.
All those eyes devouring what was mine.
And the same within this room.
It lit a fire inside of me that was hiding my other hurts in smoke. And the stares were starting to grate on my last fucking nerve. Even Carter’s girlfriend, or whoever the fuck she was, wouldn’t stop staring at Matteo. When she would take a drink, she kept her intense gaze on him over the rim of her glass, her blood red lips staining the crystal while her long-ass lashes kept fluttering like butterfly wings attached to her eyelids.
Noemi kept giving me sly looks, nodding toward Carter, as if to say,pay attention to what he has to say, but it was hard when the woman next to him kept making flirty eyes at my husband.
My husband’s temperature was rising, and I wasn’t sure why. I wasn’t the one getting eye fucked by Damon Carter. Matteo could win a gold medal for keeping his temper in check, but when it reached a limit, he turned into a dangerous creature. I called him a shark, but it was a playful term for what he could be.
He carried the spirt of a lion within him.
I just wasn’t sure why he was looking at Damon Carter the way he was. Like he might go in for the kill at any second, though on the surface, it seemed like he was casually drinking a glass ofbourbon. I was about to fling it in red lip’s face when she licked them as Matteo stood, pulling out my seat for me.
The entire meeting was a blur to me. Carter had done all the talking, but I honestly couldn’t focus on what he was saying, not when my focus was on blocking the flirt darts from across the table aimed at my husband.
“Tomorrow?” Noemi asked, looking hopeful.
“What?” I asked.
“Tomorrow,” she repeated. “For the meeting? Carter has some ideas.”
Before I could answer, Matteo nodded. “Tomorrow. Here. We’ll have a room. Though my wife hasn’t agreed to anything.”
Carter looked at me and smiled. “Of course she has. Who wouldn’t want this opportunity, right, Stella?”
“Mrs. Fausti,” Matteo corrected, finishing the last sip of his bourbon.
“Right,” Carter said.
Matteo rolled his lips, like he was rubbing the leftover alcohol in, but I didn’t think that was the entire purpose of it. It was a mad thing, like something no one would catch unless they knew him.
Other than that, though, I had no idea what the fuck was going on, but apparently, we were having another meeting the next day in the hotel. Whatever. As long as red lip wasn’t going to be there. But I also got a weird feeling about why Matteo had agreed to it. I was too incensed to even care, though. I didn’t get a warm feeling from Carter when we first arrived, and I didn’t care to work with him.
I wasn’t even sure about the entire situation. Becoming an actress in America, a well-known face all over the world, was what Noemi thought I should want. I liked the idea of being an actress in Italy, but this felt…not right. Like Uncle Tito had said, the weight of it was felt in my soul.
My husband and I were quiet the entire ride back to the house, even though we were stuck in traffic for what felt like hours. We held hands as we walked inside, but then separated to get undressed. He seemed to have an attitude, or I wasn’t sure what to call it. I know I had one. I couldn’t get the looks that woman kept sending my husband out of my mind. How blatant she was. How fucking disrespectful.
Matteo wasn’t looking back, but he had to have noticed. He missed nothing.
It wasn’t his fault—logic told me that—but I still couldn’t help how I felt. I wasn’t sure how to put the fire out. For the first time in days, I was feeling something other than a sense of sorrow so deep, it had a pulse.
I was at my vanity again, rubbing night cream on my face. Then I started on my body. It took me a second to realize Matteo had stuck his phone near my face. I pushed back from it and squinted at the screen.
“Is that our pool?”
He nodded, his face hard. His sharp features seemed even tighter, like they could cut glass. And those eyes? Deep, dark pools that had no depth, if I didn’t know better. When he got like this, his eyes were like an illusion.
“Why is there glass around it?” I asked.
“Thought it would be nice to be able to swim all year long.”
“We didn’t agree on that!” I stood in a rush and flung the cream down.
He stared at me before he flung the phone at the wall, shattering it. “Consider the glass around the pool fucking shattered like the glass on the phone,” he said.
It was so stupid, because the glass was a nice touch, but I couldn’t stop. It was like I was a starved animal with a bone.
