Page 34 of Italian Weddings

S ALVATORE SPENT THE REST OF THE night pretending he had no idea Emilia existed.

Even when he wanted to sit there and stare at her, marveling at the way she looked so completely put together again, just like she had when she’d strolled into this thing ten minutes after it started, and his whole body had zinged with the force of a thousand electric shocks.

When he’d gone to get his jacket back, he’d found a ‘nice’ little surprise—she’d left a perfect lipstick kiss mark on the front lapel, so he’d had to spend a little time himself in the men’s room, seeing to that.

But the whole time he’d wiped the lipstick off, he’d been laughing on the inside at her retaliatory mood.

He’d spent his whole life in a fight with the Valentinos, but actively fighting with Emilia Valentino was the most fun he’d had in a long time. Especially with the added advantage of getting to sleep with her.

Not that it would necessarily happen again.

They both knew it shouldn’t. It was stupid—and had the potential to be hugely harmful to both of their families if they were caught.

Maybe that was part of the appeal, though?

Perhaps for a man like Salvatore, who’d never had any trouble getting women—from when he was eighteen and shared a wild weekend with his first lover—the challenge just wasn’t there.

And that sometimes meant the fun, too. While he liked being free to be with and go wherever he wanted, he realised now that he was looking for something more.

Something that sparked and zinged. And if that just happened to be the animosity between him and Emilia, so be it.

“I hate them so much.” Beside him, Salvatore’s cousin Raf’s voice was little more than a dark grumble. It was the first time he’d been out with the family since his marriage breakdown—Salvatore couldn’t say he blamed him. “Though in other circumstances, I wouldn’t mind getting to know her better.”

Salvatore sat up a little straighter as he followed Raf’s gaze, over to Emilia—and his pledge of not looking at her went right out the window.

She was in conversation with the woman two seats over, talking a mile a minute, her hands moving animatedly as she explained something then laughed.

Not only was he failing to pretend she didn’t exist, he was finding it almost impossible to look away.

“Maybe she’d help me get over Marcia,” Raf said, so a prickle of distaste ran the length of Salvatore’s spine.

Raf wasn’t a one-night stand kind of guy.

In fact, he was Salvatore’s direct opposite.

Where Salvatore had made a habit out of short, casual flings, Raf had been dating Marcia for years before they finally married.

While their relationship had ended disastrously, thanks to her lying about being pregnant, then lying about miscarrying, all so Raf would propose, Salvatore had no doubt that deep down, Raf was still the ‘happily ever after’ kind of guy.

Despite his messed up upbringing and all the issues that had undoubtedly left him with.

“You’re not over Marcia?” Salvatore asked, unconsciously reaching into his pocket and twisting his fingers around Emilia’s delicate lace thong, reminding himself that if she was going home with anyone that night, it would be him.

“You know what I mean,” Raf said. “Get her out of my mind. She’d hate the thought of me hooking up with her.”

“Because she’s a Valentino?”

“Because she’s a knockout. Marcia always had a wildly jealous streak—it didn’t matter that I never looked at another woman while we were together.”

At first it had been a throwaway remark, but something in Raf’s tone was grinding Salvatore’s gears. “Need I remind you they’re our sworn enemy?” He tried to keep his voice light, casual, like it was no big deal, but the whole conversation was flooding him with distaste.

He might hate the Valentino family but he wasn’t comfortable with Emilia being discussed like this. Not after what they’d just done. That protective instinct surprised him, and mostly, he wished he didn’t feel it, because it brought with it the hint of complications he didn’t want to navigate.

“So? Maybe I could kill two birds with one stone. Make her want me, break her heart, and hurt Marcia in the process.”

Salvatore looked sharply at Raf, appalled by the dark threat in his cousin’s tone. “Raf, come on, bro. That’s not like you.”

“No?” he turned to face Salvatore, a look in his eyes that was sheer anger. “Maybe you don’t know me as well as you think. Maybe no one does. Or maybe I’ve finally grown up.”

Salvatore frowned. Dante had convinced Raf to come to this thing, but it had quite possibly been a mistake.

“Let’s go get a drink,” Salvatore suggested, only to break up the ease with which Raf could stare across the room at Emilia.

He loved his cousin, but in that moment, he felt like shaking him just to loosen his interest.

“There’s wine on the table.”

“Something other than wine,” Salvatore suggested.

“Fine by me,” Raf conceded, standing in a way that was not quite steady, so Salvatore realised belatedly another drink was the last thing Raf needed. It might have been wishful thinking, but as they made their way to the bar, Salvatore was sure he felt the heat of Emilia’s gaze following him.

Salvatore and a man—she was pretty sure it was his brother or cousin, going by their shared features—left a short while after going to the bar.

She tried not to track Salvatore’s progress, but her eyes seemed to have developed a mind of their own, and followed him even when she was desperately trying not to.

And even though she hadn’t known he was going to be at this thing, once he’d left, she lost interest in being there altogether. Never mind that it was a cause close to her heart. Never mind that she’d been looking forward to it, and had flown back to the States specifically for this fundraiser.

It was only when she herself left that Emilia checked her phone once more and saw the text from him. It was straight to the point: his address.

She read and re-read the message several times, before deleting it and putting her phone away.

Randomly hooking up at some event was one thing, but going to his house, by pre-arrangement, quite another.

That’s not what they were—and they never could be.

There was way too much water under the bridge between their families, and she wasn’t about to pretend otherwise.

Two weeks later

The Fulham County Pediatric Hospital Fundraiser, New York.

“For you, ma’am,” a waiter said, as he buzzed close to Emilia. Midway through a conversation with a high school friend, Emilia paused, to study the cocktail held on a tray, a small frown tweaking her bright red lips.

“Is that—a French martini?”

“As the gentleman requested,” the waiter said. Emilia’s heart shifted up a notch, as she kept her focus on the cocktail for a beat, before saying, “I’m sorry, who ordered this for me?”

The waiter looked around, then turned back to Emilia. “He’s not there anymore,” he said, apologetically. “Tall guy, dark hair, wearing a grey suit.”

“That narrows it down,” she drawled, scanning the room and seeing at least ten men who fit that description, trying not to let her hopes get ahead of reality.

Trying not to have any hopes at all. After all, hadn’t she agreed that whatever she’d been doing with Salvatore had to stop?

The fact they’d slept together twice was bad enough, but she could put that down to stupidity and unpreparedness.

Looking for him now was a bridge too far.

But as she took her first sip, that’s exactly what she did, and only drew her focus back to her friend when she’d convinced herself he wasn’t here, after all.

Meaning the drink had been sent by someone else.

And that could be any number of people. She almost always had the same drink at this sort of thing, so any of the people she’d socialized with in this setting would know her preference.

Yet she couldn’t shift the feeling that Salvatore must be behind this.

Time passed, though, with no sight of him, and an hour later, well after she’d finished her drink, Emilia had given up even looking for him.

So when her eyes happened to shift sideways and land square on his face, it was impossible not to react.

Not to let out a small gush of air, a sound of surprise, so the group she was in conversation with paused to regard her, to wait for her to explain.

“Sorry, I just remembered something I was meant to do today,” she fumbled out a fib, scrunching her nose.

“Nothing important, I hope?”

“No. What were you saying?”

But Emilia was almost incapable of listening now.

There was a strange buzzing sound in her ears, like a persistent white noise, that crowded out almost everything else.

And that was it. For the rest of the night, where he moved, she looked.

Without intending to, she was aware of him in a way that drove her crazy.

This was a cocktail party format, so there was a lot of shifting around, groups moving and changing, and it was loud.

So loud she might have made her escape before this, had it not been for the fact she was finding it hard to look away from Salvatore.

Even when the sight of him made her blood boil from anger and rage, even when she knew she hated him, she still found herself looking after him as though he were her dying breath.

As though he were the sum total of what she wanted. Not in life, just for tonight.

The last text message he’d sent her was burned into her retinas—his address.

So even now, two weeks later and after she’d deleted it, she remembered it.

But she suspected the invitation had held an expiry date.

Hell, for all she knew, he’d taken someone else home that very night.

Maybe she hadn’t been the only one to receive a text.