“Elle.Is that the name I’ll find on your visa?” I ask impatiently.
Her eyes dart to the sidewalk, then back to me, like she’s looking for an escape route. “Wh-why does it matter?”
I sigh. “What’s yourfullname?”
After a beat of silence, I move like I’m going to drag her back inside the club, straight to the office. She jolts, and some of that hard exterior crumbles.
“Isabel,” she answers through gritted teeth. She knows she’s lost, but she doesn’t want to hand me the win easily.
“Why are you going by Elle, then?”
She scowls. “Why do you care?”
I tease her with an arched brow. “Isabel De Vere is a pretty enough name. I think you should use it.”
With this revelation, her expression turns menacing once again. “I see you already looked through my file in Hugo’s office. You could have just said that and saved us both the trouble of having this conversation.”
I bristle at the accusation. I don’t snoop around on my employees. They’re not usually that important.
“You look just like your grandmother,” I admit drily, throwing her a bone.
Shock steals her annoyance in an instant. Anger morphs into intrigue. “You know Caterina?” Her gaze roves over my face asshe studies me with fresh wonder. Then her eyes snap back to mine and her dark eyebrows pinch together. “How?”
I don’t feel like answering her question yet, not until she answers mine.
“Why the nickname?”
She’s disappointed that I won’t make it easier for her. She looks away, preparing a lie, I’m sure. “I don’t want people to know who I am while I’m here for the summer.”
“Why?”
“What does it matter to you? Does it affect my job at Aura?” She looks back to me with fire in her eyes. “Are people not allowed nicknames?”
I can feel the tension rising between us before I take another step toward her, forcing her back up against the wall.
“How’d you get a job here last minute?” I demand.
Her hands curl into mutinous fists. “Why don’t you take three steps back and I’ll tell you? You’re pretty tall, you know that? You shouldn’t try to intimidate people with your size. It’s rude.” She points her finger past me to some distant point on the sidewalk. “Better yet, stand over there. That way I can actually think.”
This isn’t going the way it’s supposed to. I rake a hand through my hair and turn away, drawing in a deep breath.
“Tell me how you know my grandmother,” she insists.
I glance at her over my shoulder. “Cristiano Moreno Winthrop.Ring a bell?”
Recognition lights up her features. “You’re Dolores’s son?”
“Son?”I bark out a laugh. “I’m her grandson. How old do you think I am?”
“Sorry,” she says, shaking her head, chancing a quick glancedown my body. “You have me flustered. Of course you’re her grandson. I can see it now. Your coloring and your eyes. Although she was polite, so maybe that trait failed to get passed down…”
I’m helpless but to laugh, surprised by her wit, even if it is at my expense.
“Plenty of people say I’m polite,” I counter.
She arches one fine brow. “Under duress?”
This girl.
