Axel was sittingat the desk in his office, talking on the phone. His laptop was open, and he was wearing a dark suit and a white dress shirt without a tie. His hair looked damp around the collar, like he had recently taken a shower.
I felt painfully self-conscious under his gaze, but I tried to pretend that this was an inconvenience and not a moment where I was looking for his validation.
Maybe it was the way his eyes widened before he hung up the phone without saying goodbye. Or the way his gaze traveled down my body, leisurely, before coming all the way back. And there was this moment when he swallowed just a bit too hard.
That was the moment I knew my dress had hit its mark. That was the moment I knew I had dressed for him, when his gaze was practically stripping me naked.
“Ready to go?” I asked, forcing lightness into my voice as his stare lingered.
“Remind me to invite you to more dinners.”
The business dinnerwas at the back of some elite Italian restaurant in the heart of downtown Little Italy. Five men stood up when I walked in beside Axel, and they pulled out one of the chairs for me at the big round table.
A huge glass of red wine appeared in front of me, and I noticed that everyone was drinking, including Axel. They all spoke Italian.
I sat quietly next to Axel and marveled at how, in some ways, they were almost playing to their own stereotype, with theirshouting and laughter in Italian, their exaggerated anger, and their dramatic dismissals when one party didn’t agree with the other.
To my amazement, Axel was conversing in Italian too. The only difference was that he laughed along but never shouted or showed emotion.
He leaned close to me. “How are you doing?”
“What are they talking about?”
Axel gave me a rare smile. “They’re debating the best olive groves in Italy.”
The man sitting next to me leaned over to join the conversation. “You’ll never know the heart of a man until he tells you which vineyard he’d save first in a fire.”
Two of the men were red in the face and yelling at each other, but when it came to a crescendo, they both broke into laugher and poured each other more wine.
Eventually a stream of waiters came by, carrying several big bowls of Italian food. They set everything down in the center of the table. We were to be served family style.
“Eat, eat,” someone encouraged me, while another man loaded my plate with pasta.
I couldn’t believe the amount of food they had put on my plate. I looked at Axel helplessly.
He leaned in. “What?”
I whispered back. “I can’t eat all of this.”
At that moment, someone tried to take his plate. He stopped them. “I’m going to help Mila eat first.”
All the men laughed.
Axel carried on their business conversation in Italian, while the two of us ate off my plate. Even though we had our own utensils, it was a strangely intimate dance to share food this way.
“Thank you,” I murmured when we were done.
He responded by putting his arm around my chair.
The table was cleared, coffee was served and the men continued to talk.
I was zoning out when suddenly the entire table fell silent. A beautiful woman was standing next to Axel, and then she put her hand on his shoulder. She was tall and blonde and had an almost perfect face. “Hello, Axel.”
The group of men looked between Axel and me.
Axel pushed back his chair and stood up to introduce the woman. “Everyone, this is Giselle Lavoie. As you already know, she was instrumental in helping us the other night with our incident with the Volkovs.”
The energy of the table shifted from suspicion to welcoming in a heartbeat.
