I pressed my lips together but didn’t say anything. Since I’d never seen or met their kids—or heard Saleem mention them by name, come to think of it—I had no idea how they’d handle his sudden death. Maybe it would be like the way Celeste and I had handled our own father’s. Mourning the loss of the parent you never really had.
She took my hand in hers. “Talk to me. This seems to have really hit you hard. I know you looked up to him. Respected him.”
I stretched my shoulders, tilting my head from side to side. “I’m okay.” This was mostly true. I thought I’d known Saleembecause of the pretty words he’d said. But his actions showed how wrong I’d been. “Tell me about your trip,” I said, attempting to change the subject.
She went along with it, launching into the story of her trip to the Caribbean, a man she shared a clandestine kiss with there, and the tired refrain of how much one of her friends wanted Celeste to set the two of us up.
I was happy to see she hadn’t held on to her anger at me over our last phone call.
Her food arrived, and she shoveled in bites between stories. I, on the other hand, couldn’t stomach any of it. My gut was twisted with worry and loss.
All of it centered on the man I’d fallen for. The man whose real name I didn’t even know.
“You going to tell me what’s really going on?” she finally asked. “Because Minnie called me. She’s even more worried about you than Concetta is.”
I glanced out at the water. At the turquoise pool below, where Jett had challenged me to a cannonball contest and then wrestled with me like a kid. I hadn’t laughed that hard since Celeste and I had celebrated her twenty-first birthday at a Magic Mike show in Vegas.
I closed my eyes and remembered the male bodies on display, none of them nearly as sexy as Jett’s.
Why him? Whyfuckinghim of all men?
“Talk to me, Johnny,” she murmured.
“I’m in love with someone,” I said, not shocking myself at all, even though the confession itself was a surprise. I’d already admitted it to myself a million times since he’d left.
“Who? And why do you sound so miserable about it? Is she married or something? Is that it?”
Concetta kept her eyes down as she gathered our plates, but I felt the empathy and understanding in her body languagenonetheless. She knew. The entire household staff knew. And they missed him almost as much as I did.
“His name is Jett. Or… at least that’s the name he gave me.”
“The name he gave you—Locke, what the hell?”
I started telling her the story, beginning with the Candy Bar lap dance, the way he intrigued me, the attraction I felt—although I kept that part free of details—and how I came to bring him to Italy. I didn’t mention the job proposition, only the invitation to help me out. To be with me physically at night and help host the event during the day.
“As your boyfriend?” she asked in surprise.
“No.” I inhaled and exhaled, thrusting my fingers into my hair. “I wanted to keep it a secret. It was… I don’t know. Like an experiment at first. I wasn’t ready for it to change my life or anything.” I huffed out a laugh. “How fucking ironic.”
“What makes you think he’s not who he says he is?”
This part was hard to explain without breaking confidences—both his and the Paxis Council’s.
“Because I had HR run a background check on the name he gave me,” I said shortly. “That’s not the man I knew.”
She nodded slowly. “Well, maybe you didn’t know him as well as you thought you did.”
“Maybe.” I pushed back my chair and gazed out over the water.
In a way, Celeste was right. I didn’t know Jett’s real name or his address. I didn’t know his birthday or who his mother was.
But I knew he loved seashells, and that his blue eyes glowed when he teased me. I knew how it felt when he chided me to eat healthy salad and forced me to take a break from the stress of my job. I knew how his mind worked when he assessed a Paxis board, and that he was equally kind to everyone, from my gardeners to the British king’s cousin. I knew that when I’d been floundering under the weight of responsibility, he’d remindedme that I wasn’t alone. I knew he could communicate in a million languages, includingmine.
And I knew that he’d tried to take me with him when he left.
If I were judging the man by his actions…
“Mmm,” Celeste said, watching my face.
