Page 51 of Out of Control

I blow out an unsteady breath and muster a smile.

“It’s okay. You don’t have to answer,” Rossi whispers, somehow reading my non answer as a sufficient answer.

“Thank you.” I blink away the tears that threaten and the sudden rush of sadness edged in anger.

“Don’t thank me. You’re allowed to feel whatever way you need to feel . . . but you don’t need to be embarrassed by it. You should be thrilled. Ecstatic. Shouting about it from the rooftops. Keeping the gallery quiet isn’t doing you any favors. Not in this city. Not with these citizens who love their glitz and talking about discovering the next great thing.” He takes a sip of coffee. “Use your name even if you don’t want to. Use it to create the buzz. Then capitalize on it with your expertise.”

“I know, but . . .”

“But nothing. Use your name to your advantage.”

But why do I feel like he’d look differently, negatively, on me if I did? And why do I care so much if it did?

“I know. I am. I guess I just don’t want to be too optimistic in case it doesn’t pan out the way I’d like it to.”

“You need to stop owning the person that people expect you to be and own the person you are, Sofia.” He angles his head to the side and simply holds my gaze, and the conflict no doubt evident in my eyes. “Making someone see someone/something else’s beauty is admirable.”

How can he say something like that and not expect me to respond? To be able to speak when those words just spoke to my soul more than he ever could have imagined.

I rise from my chair and move about his great room, taking it all in as a means of distraction from this unexpectedly poignant conversation. It was dark last night, I was drunk, and I didn’t get a chance to see this side of Rossi. The racing magazines piled on top of art books. The framed pictures on tan walls. A leather couch that looks well used and very comfortable. The few pictures on the shelves that depict friends but not too many.

“Do you like art, Rossi?” I ask as I lean over and open one of the books on the coffee table and thumb through it. Pictures of paintings enrich each page and draw me in to look and study. The pieces shown are from artists unknown to me and are fascinating.

But when there’s no response to my question, I look up to find him on the edge of his own family room. He looks as if he wants to say something but doesn’t. Instead, he gives a tight smile with a quick shake of his head—almost as if he thinks better than to say whatever he was going to say. “Not really.”

“Why all the books then?”

“Interior designers love that shit.”

I close the book and look at the spines of the rest of them spaced around. “Whoever it was has good taste. A good eye.”

“I’ll let her know if I ever see her again,” he says.

“This one has . . .” I pause when I flip through the next book to find notes next to images. Dates and locations in chicken scratch beside photographs of famous paintings and sculptures.

“Some are my nonna’s books too. She was the art lover,” he murmurs but there’s peculiarity about his expression that I can’t read.

“Then I like her already.”

“Mm,” he says and rests his ass against the back of the chair as he crosses his arms over his chest and watches me move about his space.

I’m keenly aware of his eyes on me. On my bare legs beneath his T-shirt. On my braless breasts beneath the fabric.

There’s something real, something honest, about this conversation that I don’t want it to stop.

It’s that Rossi’s a real person. Someone beyond that nonchalant, ruthless persona he wears like a shield at the track. There are stories behind his hesitant responses, truths I have a feeling he keeps close to the vest, and I’m utterly curious about every single one of them.

The question is, will he let me see them? Or will the real Oliver Rossi step back into the shadows?

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Rossi

She’s in my shirt.

In my house.

Her hair is a mess. Her face naked with a little of last night’s mascara smudged beneath her eyes. Her tan legs look a mile long.