The sight of Tessa minimizing herself in my shop maddens me. I want her overly opinionated, intoxicating stubbornness back, not this careful imitation of her. Not here, and never in front of me.
Daring her, I lean forward. “Don’t tell me you’re already second-guessing yourself. If you don’t care about your ideas, why should I?”
She pauses, then meets my gaze. Fury coats her face, and I can’t look away.
“You know what, Giovanni? Fine. A straight edge would cheapen the entire look.”
The corner of my mouth twitches with delight.There she is.
“The straight edge doesn’t work for this gown,” I agree. It’s a matter of fact, not opinion.
Her nose scrunches. “You don’t like the straight edge? But you said you didn’t want to do the scalloped.”
“I want to alter the appliqué as little as possible.”
Tessa mulls it over, chewing on her glossy lower lip. “What about an arc?”
“An arc?”
“Yeah. We’d soften the line to a curve, almost like a fan shape. You wouldn’t lose as much as you would with a scallop.”
Brilliant.“Fine.”
Tessa gives me a small, gentle smile. One I’m not used to receiving, and I immediately crave a bigger one.
She pulls a lip gloss out of her pocket, and I catch a whiff of the sugary scent.Cherry flavored.
“So… What do we do now?”
“I sit there.” I point to the seat in front of the tambour frame. “And you sit there.” I point to the chair about an arm’s length away from the frame.
“And do what?”
I smirk. “Wait for a whim.”
Chapter 3
Tessa
The past week and a half of waiting for Giovanni’swhimshas felt like a bespoke purgatory, curated just for me.
Carting myself over to his shop every day, I sit approximately twelve inches away from him as he silently beads for hours. I attempted to move my chair farther away on day two, but he dragged it closer, saying I couldn’t “oversee him” at that distance. Now, I’m practically in his lap.
Giovanni never asks me for anything. He never speaks while he works. Time passes at the speed of a shifting glacier in the middle of an ice age, which is just slow enough for me to overthink everything.
Overthink my design, overthink Milan, overthinkhim.
The only thing to distract me from all my overthinking is the bewitching way he works.
The tambour embroidery hook—slim and elegant—could almost be an extension of his hand. Threading fragile beads with the precision of a surgeon, he makes luneville beading look effortless. His fingers work with practiced focus. The hook dips, catches the beads, and pulls through the fabric.
But it’s not just his technique that distracts me… It’shim. I catalog the slight tick in his jaw, the furrow of his brow, the small shake of his head that nudges the curl hanging over his forehead a little to the left. Lately, thinking about him has become a habit that feels dangerously close to treason against my own mind.
Admiring the wood that brackets the tulle, I clear my throat and break our lengthy silence. “Is that maple?”
His attention remains on his embroidery. “It’s a rosewood frame. Sometimes I use beechwood for practicality, but my grandfather worked with rosewood, so I’m experienced with it,” he murmurs.
“Oh? I didn’t know your grandfather embroidered.”
