Simone placed her hand to her chest, her wedding and engagement rings sparkling in the soft candlelight.
‘Always about business. On your wedding day too. Such a romantic, my husband.’
Husband. That word whispered through him. The real surprise was that if someone had told Leo a year ago that today he’d be married, he would have said they were deluded. Yet here he was, with a gold ring on his finger, sitting in the opulent ballroom of the finest hotel in New York,The City That Never Slept.
He flexed his hand. He’d always thought of a wedding ring as something akin to a noose, but this one sat comfortably snug, gleaming against his skin. To his relief, it was barely noticeable once Simone had slipped it on with cool yet unsteady fingers earlier in the day.
Their MC moved to the microphone. Given Leo had planned the running sheet for today to the last, obsessive detail, he knew this was the announcement of their first dance as husband and wife.
‘Let me show you how romantic I can be,’ he murmured.
People were listening, after all. Whilst everyone here were supporters, he still needed the talk about this wedding to be the right sort. How Leo Zanetti and Simone Taylor fit together perfectly, not that they presented as a discordant picture. It had been a whirlwind ever since their engagement only a few months before. There’d been no time to display themselves as a ‘loving’ couple, what with organising New York’s wedding of the year, dealing with his concerns in Rome and the long hours trying to secure Tessitore.
The true illusion of their coupledom had meant to start today, and he was already failing. Their conversation seemed stilted, because people were watching and listening, and he was trying to play an unfamiliar part of the doting partner, rather than a casual lover. Leo stood and held out his hand palm up. Simone placed hers in his. Her flesh still cool, but solid and sure. No hint of a tremor now, which he took as a good sign. He led her towards the dance floor to scattered applause, as the band struck up a suitably romantic song.
Leo took Simone into his arms, trying to remember that he should hold her as if she was something precious. Then he gazed down at her as intently as he could and the pupils in her shale-grey eyes flared.
‘You look beautiful,’ he said. Finally, a truth he could admit. The vintage satin of her one-of-a-kind 1930’s wedding gown, like warm liquid underneath his palms. Slipping over her body, slick as oil, teasing his fingertips. When he’d been sleeping rough on the streets of Rome in frigid winters, all he’d dreamt of was silk and softness. Of warm perfumed bodies that would chase away the cold, make him forget the scent of rot and rubbish in the alleyways he’d kept to. Leo pushed away the memory from that time long past. Focusing instead on Simone, because praising your bride’s appearance and giving her your undivided attention was the sort of thing youshoulddo on her wedding day.
‘Thank you. You chose everything, after all.’
Her voice struck him, soft and low. A little more raw than normal. He’d heard her speak a thousand times and yet her tone in this moment shot right through his gut with the punch of an arrow.
From Cupid’s bow, some might say.
Not him.
Cupid be damned. He’d seen what love had done to his mother. How she’d beenrobbed.First of her ideas, then ofeverythingby his father who’d left them for a woman who could afford to fund him as he chased his stolen dreams. As he took Leo’s mother’s furniture designs and opened his own business selling her ideas as his own. As he’d cast off his old life like a worn coat and started afresh with a new, wealthier woman.
‘I welcomed your involvement,’ he said, as they executed a spiral turn. He reeled her back in as he continued. ‘Some might even say,encouragedit.’
Simone’s body pressed against him, even closer than before. They’d had some practice with a dance instructor to ensure they’d look seamless. In those few, short classes everything had felt stiff. Stilted. Yet something about today seemed to have transformed them both. Leo noticed for the first time how Simone fit into his arms like a puzzle piece. Her scent the citrus blossom of an Italian spring. Perhaps it was a leftover from her bouquet of the same flowers? Leo could almost close his eyes and imagine being immersed in it, so intoxicating and achingly familiar.
Instead he took a slight step back, to give them both distance.
‘Welcomed? Really? Mr Zanetti giving up his famed control? I don’t believe it for a second.’ She laughed, yet the sound was a little sharp, tinged with cynicism. He knew that sentiment well, being one of the greatest cynics of them all.
‘Surely marriage is all about compromise. Myfamed controlwasn’t so tight that I didn’t offer you any choices.’
He’d been surprised at Simone’s strange disinterest in her dress or in any of the plans for the wedding itself. She’d allowed him to have the final decision on everything, including the stylist who did her hair and makeup for the day because, in Simone’s words,that’s what you do, Leo.
‘I’m sure each choice was offered through gritted teeth with a firm view on what you saw as the right one,’ she said. ‘Given that, it seemed easier to allow you to win from the beginning. I prefer to pick my battles. Because as you say, marriage is about compromise.’
There it was again, that spike of sensation at the realisation Simone could read him only too well. When his engagement had been announced, the rumour mill ran riot at his ‘surprising’ choice of bride. There’d been talk of him marrying just about every one of the many women who had graced his arm at one time or another in the past. Whether they’d been lovers or mere acquaintances, it didn’t matter. Socialites, models, movie stars. All polished and perfect when they stepped out with him in public. Never once any mention of the person who was at his side in all ways.
Simone Taylor.
As he’d explained in the inevitable media storm that followed, the woman who he’d worked with closely for two years as his executive assistant, knew him better than any living human on earth. She was, therefore, a natural and inevitable choice. Throw out talk of Simone keeping him ‘grounded’ and the press lapped up the story of love blossoming in the heady environment of the boardroom like stray cats to milk.
That was the story they’d presented to the world and everyone had believed it, even staff at Circolo who’d been surprisingly happy about the news. The truth was far more practical.
‘Youallowedme? Did I get anything wrong?’ he asked.
Most of the time he wouldn’t have cared, because heknewhis choices were right. Even when he offered options, to give the illusion of choice to some of the few clients he still dealt with personally, they always went with his first selection. As Simone had done. Yet with her, there was a strange sensation like a fishbone stuck in his gullet, that drove him to seek her answer.
‘You know perfectly well you didn’t. They don’t call you the Sultan of Style for nothing.’
He’d been called something else, in his youth in Rome. The Handsome Viper. Sent in to ‘encourage’ small business owners to pay money for protection from imagined enemies, when the true enemy was him and those he worked with. If they didn’t pay up? Then others in the gang would be unleashed. In the end, his looks, size and the gang’s reputation got the job done and most capitulated.
