“Olivia,” he says, softly. My name again. The way he says it blasts through me like a heat wave, leaving me aching inside.
“Roberto,” I whisper, because I don’t know what else to do.
He doesn’t kiss me. He doesn’t even pull me closer. He lifts the hand holding mine and brings it to his mouth. He presses his lips to my knuckles, soft and quick. It is somehow more intimate than anything else we’ve done.
I forget to breathe for two heartbeats. When I remember, my inhale sounds like I’ve been running.
His hand tightens once at my waist. His head dips a little. Mine tilts up.
Fast footsteps clomp down the hall.
We come apart like we were never touching, two polite people testing fit and length. He steps back one pace. I smooth the bodice, though it doesn’t need it.
The beaded curtain clatters. The seamstress’s shoes click into the room, brisk and efficient.
“Sorry about that,” she says brightly. “I had to take care of a customer.” She turns to Roberto, taking in his tux with a sharp eye. “Mr. Conti, don’t go far. Your sleeves aren’t done.”
He nods politely. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll be nearby,” he says, meeting my eyes in the mirror for a fraction of a second before he goes. It’s enough to nearly knock me off my feet. It’s a miracle I manage to get back on the riser.
The seamstress hums again, pleased.
Chapter Sixteen
Roberto
I don’t plan this.
I tell myself that twice between the garage and the elevator, and a third time when the doors open on the admin floor and the hall is quiet like a church after hours. I should go home, spend some time in the gym. Work off whatever it is that’s building up inside me.
I should do anything but this.
The building is mostly dark. Emergency strips glow low along the baseboards. Exit signs float orange above doors. Offices sit with their glass panes blacked out, a neat row of empty fish tanks. One light is on at the end of the corridor. A square of warm gold spilling into the hall.
Hers.
I knew it would be. She said she was finishing the last-minute pieces for opening night. A week. Seven days and this place will open its doors to the world. I could list the items that need my hand. I could leave and start on my own list, be useful.
I set offdown the hall.
I shouldn’t. I know that in my bones the way I know where every camera will go when the system is live. I keep moving anyway. I could stop. I don’t. Each step shortens the distance and feeds the thing I keep trying to starve.
She was a picture I can’t shake. I haven’t been able to think of anything else since that day I took her in my arms and danced with her under the bright lights of a formal wear shop.
In a dress of a color that made her eyes look like an endless pool you could fall into and not mind drowning. The bare skin at her back rose in little prickles that made her shiver when I ran my fingers over it. The way the fabric fluttered and settled around her legs like they were one.
Those legs around my hips in an elevator caught between floors.
I close my jaw before my mouth betrays me and say it again: stop. Turn around. Be a man with sense.
I keep walking.
The light from her office cuts across the carpet like a path put there for me. Moth, flame. Child, bonfire. I feel ridiculous thinking it, and still I keep moving because the truth is not pretty, but it is still the truth—I want her.
Want as verb, not idea. Want as memory. Want as prophecy. My body remembers the way she said my name with desirein it and the way she said it with fear in it. Both live in me now.
I can’t dance with her at the ball. I know it. The right people might pretend to be blind. The wrong people would sit up and pay attention. Roberto Conti dancing with the new woman in town.
