But after that night in Giaco’s favorite room in his house in Rome—his personal library that he doubted he would ever enter again without remembering the little noises that Ivy made in the back of her throat right before she came—Giaco decided that the timeline needed to be accelerated.
He could have discussed this with everyone involved. He could have called a meeting, solicited opinions, and taken notes, but he didn’t.
Instead, he allowed himself to be captured by a group of reporters as he was enjoying an excessively priced espresso in a famous café that sat not far from the Spanish Steps. Not a place anyone went for privacy.
“Don’t you think that you and your stepsister are moving too fast?” one of the reporters shouted at him as he left the café and presented himself on the busy Via dei Condotti, bustling with foot traffic and thick with tourists.
Giaco laughed. “I don’t,” he told them.
Then he shrugged and made sure he lookedrueful. Not a look they were used to seeing from him, so the pack of them quieted down immediately.
“I never expected to fall in love,” he said simply. “But now that I have, I naturally wish to be with her. Always. I want forever, immediately.” He smiled. “I’m still the same man I ever was, my friends. Instant gratification has always taken too long for me.”
So it was that Umberto, who no doubt would have ordered him to stick to the original itinerary if he’d suggested any changes to it, called Giaco the very next day and demanded that the wedding be held as soon as possible.
The old man was entirely too predictable.
Giaco and Ivy were both at home that night and he opted not to dwell too much on how using that word—home—to mean the place where both of them lived…got to him. Because he didn’t think that it should have. It should not matter to him at all. After all, she had her own set of rooms and they barely saw each other.
He made certain of that, in fact. Ever since that night in his study—
But he tried not to think about that.
Which was to say, he woke in the night, broken out in a full sweat and his cock so hard it hurt, wondering why the hell he’d walked away from her.
“We decided to accelerate the wedding timeline,” he told her, in as dry a voice as possible. As if they both worked on a factory line somewhere and he was discussing something as arid and unemotional as the mechanics of the machines they used.
He’d come upon her on one of the laps she took around the open-air gallery that looked down on the courtyard. He knew her routine by now. She woke in the morning and had a light breakfast. Sometimes she visited the gym tucked away in the corner of his house. Other times, there was a certain thumping from her room that made him think that she did the sort of workout videos he knew were available everywhere now. She spent much of her day taking calls and sending emails. And then in the evenings, she liked to walk. They didn’t walk out into the city unless it was planned out in advanced, so she did it here.
He stood in one corner and watched her as she moved. And he knew that she saw him and had heard him, but she didn’t say anything until she came back around. She stopped then, a few feet away from him. “Why?” she asked. She studied him. “I thought the itinerary was an immutable document, inerrant and inflexible.”
“You object?”
“I have no feelings on it one way or the other,” she said, and Giaco felt extremely virtuous that he did not call her out on her emotions. Or the fact that she was lying. He could see it written all over her, though he kept that to himself. Besides, she kept going. “Obviously the sooner we’re in, the sooner we’re out, and that works for me. But since this is an enterprise that we’re both engaged in, I think you should probably update me on what’s really happening.”
“Love,” he said, because it turned out he couldn’t help himself. Not really. Especially when she frowned. “Everyone loves a love story, my little saint. I think it might be best to strike while the iron is hot. And while so many people remain this deeply interested in us.”
“You haven’t told me why you’re really doing this,” she said then, surprising him. He decoded that he already regretted this interaction. Her skin was glowing from her walk in the sultry evening heat and he didn’t need further reminders that she was, by far, the most irresistible woman he’d ever encountered. “It can’t only be money.”
“Whyever not? Isn’t that why you’re doing this?” He didn’t wait for her to answer that. “We leave for the castle tomorrow. The wedding will be this weekend. It will seem the obvious conclusion to this glorious whirlwind we’re caught up in. I can’t wait to read all about it.”
“Me neither,” she said, that blue gaze of hers a little too intent on his. “After all, you can find the truth of things in the strangest places, can’t you?”
He opted not to answer that, either.
Though being subjected to Ivy’s entirely too all-seeing, all-knowing gaze seemed like a far better option than finding himself seated at an extremely awkward family dinner later that week.
It was the night before their hastily arranged wedding. Umberto had been complaining bitterly for days about the extremely powerful people whose schedules he’d had to ask them to rearrange in order to attend.
I suppose we’ll find out how powerful you really are, Giaco had said with an excessively insolent shrug, lounging about bonelessly in his father’s office. He’d been trying his best not to remember the last time he had been in his father’s office, mesmerized by his former stepsister’s shocking beauty. Proving to her that there was chemistry in the pictures he’d taken when he’d already known that there was chemistry. He’d felt it immediately.
It had taken an effort to concentrate on his father’s sneering, profane response. He’d only shrugged again.If you are as omnipresent as you believe, surely they will all drop everything to dance attendance upon you, he’d said.How clarifying it all will be.
All you need to do, his father had growled at him,is get married tomorrow and keep doing whatever it is you’re doing to convince the world that you had a beautiful, virtuous change of heart. The love of a good woman and all that shit.Buon lavoro,and so on.
Giaco had found himself having the entirely uncharacteristic urge to argue with his father. To tell him that, in fact, he would be lucky indeed if a woman like Ivy loved him. And he had been so appalled that the idea of saying such a thing to his father had even occurred to him that he was still recovering from it now.
His father had insisted that the family gather together. Giaco couldn’t say he understood why. As far as he knew, Umberto was as disinterested in his children as he was, historically, in his wives.
