Page 11

C ontessa

I finish my stretches, reach into my gym bag and lift a bottle of water to my lips. In the corner of my eye I can see Antonio looking all animated as he gushes over Kelly’s performance just now.

“They’re fucking.” Paige, one of the other dance students, glares sideways at them as she collapses back against the wall. “It’s so obvious.”

I almost spit out my water. “I thought he was gay.”

“Bi,” she clarifies. “I’ve been stalking his socials.”

I chuckle quietly. I like Paige. She didn’t go to the same high school as me and therefore knows nothing of my family history and the fact I lost my mama a few years ago. She’s always been friendly and I’ve begun to enjoy having a bit of banter with a female who isn’t blood-related.

I drop the bottle into my bag and pull a sweater over my leotard. “You have way too much time on your hands.”

“True.” She grins then her gaze drops to where I’m unstrapping the silver heels on my feet. “I don’t understand how you manage to wear those, let alone dance in them.”

I wiggle my toes and relish the feeling of freedom as I pack the heels in question into my bag. “Years of practice. And also, the unadulterated fear of breaking an ankle,” I smile. “That works a treat.”

“Well, you seem to be getting better at the routine.” She sighs and stretches out her legs. “Meanwhile, I believe it’s secretly trying to kill me.”

“So, channel your inner zombie,” I say with a giggle. “You’ve already got the moaning down.”

She scowls and playfully smacks me on the arm, then her gaze diverts over my shoulder and she straightens. “Ooh look, new neighbors,” she says, nodding to the window. I turn to see what she’s looking at and sure enough, there’s a U-Haul truck outside and a couple of guys passing boxes between them. I refrain from rolling my eyes. I guess Bernadi was serious when he said he was going to use the space upstairs as his office.

“Wait…” Paige rests a hand on my arm. “They’re going upstairs… with a bed…”

What? I spin around to confirm that the men really are carrying a bed. And a clothes rail. And several boxes that have the words ‘kitchen’ and ‘bathroom’ written across them.

“I thought the space upstairs was just an office,” Paige says, tilting her chin upward at the faint sound of male voices.

“Yeah.” I think back to the last time I was up there—with Fed. It was a sparse and barren unit—definitely not apartment material. “Me too.”

“You think it’s got anything to do with the barbershop over there?” Paige says.

My chest contracts in tandem with my heart sinking. Bernadi’s barbershop. Yes, I do. Not least because upstairs is where Bernadi he’s planning on stationing himself—with the sole aim of becoming a major irritant in my life.

“Possibly,” I reply.

Paige gets to her feet. “I might head out later. My friend’s just started working at some cool bar in the city. Do you want to join me?”

She turns away to pick up her bag and I stare at her back wide-eyed. It takes me a second or two to process the fact I’ve just been invited to something that isn’t a wedding, funeral or other family gathering. The invitation has come as such a surprise, my instant reaction is to decline. I knit my lips together. “I’d love to but I promised I’d do some stuff with my aunt. Maybe next time.”

She sighs and shrugs. “Yeah, okay. Well, I need to run. I’ll catch you in a couple days?”

“Definitely. Night Paige. ”

As I watch her leave, something twists inside my chest, making me feel oddly sick. I would have loved to go out with a friend, but friendships for me simply don’t last. In fact, in my experience, friendships leave nothing but scars.

The ‘friends’ I had at school dropped me the second I lost my mom and became ‘different,’ and the ‘friend’ I later grew to rely on, took my virginity then fled, never to be heard from again. I’ve only ever been burned by ‘friends’ and I’m simply not willing to take my chances on them again.

So, it’s with this resolution in mind I finish packing my own bag and silently leave.

I wait around the corner until the removals truck has rolled past and the street is quiet but for the indiscreet presence of black vehicles with faceless drivers spaced down one side. I walk back toward the studio. I tried to fight against the idea but an inexplicable need to know if and why Benito Bernadi has actually moved into the office upstairs, drives me on.

He said it was just going to be an office. There was a WC up there, so that would explain the box of bathroom items, and maybe he needs a few plates and cups for lunches and drinks throughout the day, so ‘kitchen’ items would make sense too. But a clothes rail? A bed ?

I push through the door then bypass the second door to my right—the one I’d normally take into the studio— and head on up the stairs. At the top is a third door and I rap my knuckles sharply against it.

Heavy footsteps sound on the other side and I hold my breath, suddenly unsure of why I’m even standing here. When the door draws inwards and I come face-to-face with Benito Bernadi, the man I resolutely despise, I’m even less sure.

His gaze lowers over me like hot latte over ice, melting my outer edges. My lips part as I take in his upper body. He’s shirtless, and in stark contrast to his scarred face and sharp facial structure, his shoulders graduate with rounded muscle, his chest is smooth and his skin pristine, even where it is decorated with black ink.

My focus dips to the artwork displayed across his torso. Stunningly intricate depictions of everything barbarian—poisoned thorns, scorpion tails and snake tongues, as though the most lethal of defenses has been painted across his skin.

My shocked breaths pump the air as I try to get my eyeballs under control, but they’ve never been confronted before by such a brazen display of masculinity. The only other naked chest I’ve seen on a male belonged to Federico, ironically within about five feet of where I’m standing, but his was the build of a boy. The chest bearing down on me, making me feel more claustrophobic with each passing second, is all man .

“Do you have something to say to me Castellano, or are you just going to stand on my doorstep and stare? ”

His words send a rupture of fire across my collarbone and flames lick at my face, dousing them in burns.

“I… um, I just came to, um…” Blood rushes into my cheeks and I feel so hot I might faint. I have absolutely no explanation as to why I’m here, other than a shallow desire to nose into Bernadi’s private business.

His brow up until now has been furrowed in a half-bemused, half-annoyed kind of way, but when nothing comes out of my mouth apart from useless stutters, it falls away and he looks… concerned.

“Are you okay? Is someone following you?”

I shake my head briskly. “No one’s following me. I’m fine.” I look back over my shoulder, wishing I hadn’t come this far, because I have a foreboding feeling I won’t ever be able to turn back. It feels like the bottom just fell out of my foundation and I have no idea why.

He looks past me and down the stairs. Through the glass half of the door at the bottom, I can see that daylight is thinning.

“Come inside. You’re shivering.”

I look up into deadly serious eyes and hug my arms around myself. He’s right—I’m shaking like a leaf. Which is odd because I feel several degrees hotter than normal, not colder.

I follow him inside and almost gasp. The place looks completely different to the last time I saw it, which, admittedly, was three years ago. There’s a Turkish rug on the whitewashed floor, a neat office set-up in the corner, a spotless white sofa next to a brass cocktail trolley topped with several bottles of liquor. To my left is a small kitchen and beyond it a shower room, and right in front of me, visible through a partially open door, is a bedroom.

“I thought this was just your office,” I say, glancing around.

“Me too. But recent events have required me to rethink my living arrangements. Temporarily, at least.”

I side-eye him, not because I’m skeptical of anything he says, because that’s a given, but because I feel like facing him will leave a permanent imprint on my irises.

“What recent events?”

“Someone thought it would be a great idea to burn down my house.” He punctuates that statement with a shrug, then follows it with, “Would you like some coffee?”

My jaw falls but he doesn’t see it because he’s walking the short distance to the kitchen and is now fiddling with a coffee machine.

I stay rooted to the spot. “Why did someone burn down your house?”

He pauses briefly, then continues to yank at machine parts like they’re not doing as they’ve been told.

Several minutes pass while I stand here feeling awkward at his lack of reply and his growing frustration with the hunk of obscenely expensive metal on his counter. In the end I sigh and walk up behind him. I try not to brush against him when I reach around his solid back. I pop open the overlooked box of capsules and select something strong, then I flip the lid on the machine, slot the capsule in and press the ‘start’ button.

“Cup?” I ask, blinking up at him.

“Um, yeah. Here.” He keeps his gaze on me as he passes me a plain white cup. I push it beneath the canopy just in time. Bubbles spit from the pipe, then a steady stream of dark liquid pours out, the smell of fresh Brazilian coffee filling the small room. We both stare at the machine until the cup is full, then Bernadi passes it to me. I wave it away. “I don’t drink caffeine after midday.”

His jaw grinds. Leaning back against the short counter, he wraps his hand around the cup and lets his gaze rest on me with one brow slightly raised.

“When was the last time you had to make yourself coffee?” I say, biting back a smirk.

“About four years ago, right before I got a housekeeper.”

“So, where’s your housekeeper now?”

“I gave her a few weeks off. This place is too small to justify having help.”

I resist rolling my eyes. “How gallant of you.”

I step backward until my spine hits the wall and we’re standing opposite each other, about six feet between us. “So, who burned down your house?”

His gaze penetrates me as he takes a sip of the scorching hot coffee. He doesn’t bat an eyelid. “I don’t know the specific individual. ”

“Does it have anything to do with the blood you were washing off your hands the night before?”

His gaze narrows on me until I feel like I’m the only thing he’s seeing. “What do you know about that?” His words sound accusatory but his delivery is soft.

“I saw you,” I say, swallowing. “Through a gap in the door.”

His gaze drops to the cup in his hand giving me a brief reprieve from the weight of his attention.

“Seems to be a thing of yours,” he says, then slowly lifts his lids until I feel like I’m suffocating beneath his scrutiny.

I wonder where my breath’s gone. “What does?”

“Watching people through gaps in doors.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Last night wasn’t the first time you watched me through a gap in a door, was it?”

My heart thumps erratically as an image of him standing in the dining room of Federico’s house flashes through my mind. He remembers?

“No,” I whisper.

He stares at me until my skin burns so intensely I have to look away.

“I suggest the next time you see me through a gap in a door…” He waits until I look back at him. “You keep walking.”

I gulp a mouthful of air. “Why?”

“Because I might start to think you want something.”

I blink and his jaw grinds. My chest rises and falls with labored breaths and it takes some effort to push myself away from the wall. “I think I’d better go.”

“There’s a car waiting down the street. I’ll have him drive you home.”

“There no need—” I start but there’s a fire in his eyes that stops me.

He places the cup on the counter and I glance around the place one last time. “How long do you think you’ll be living here?” I ask, in an attempt to bring the room temperature down.

“As long as it takes to rebuild my house.”

“Could be a while then,” I mutter, heading for the door.

I hear his grin behind me. “Could be.”

“Well you know what you have to do, don’t you?” I say, lightly. His bare arm brushes against me and his thick, inked fingers curl around the door handle.

His voice is rough and warm across the nape of my neck. “What’s that?”

The door opens and I step onto the staircase and say cheerily, “Make like a vacuum and suck it up.”

I practically hear his eyebrows shoot up, though I can’t see them. I turn just in time to watch his response leave his lips.

“You’re such a brat.”

Something warm and liquid oozes from my head to my toes and I skip down the rest of the stairs.

When I look back over my shoulder he’s filling his doorway, bending slightly so it accommodates his height. His hands are now shoved into his pockets and he’s wearing an expression I can’t read. All I see is a lowered brow, hooded dark eyes and a bottom lip caught between his teeth.

I give him one last, timid, smile and let myself out onto the street. Sure enough, there’s a black car waiting, its headlamps illuminating the sidewalk. As I make my way toward it, his words play on repeat.

They should have felt condescending, disrespectful… Rude, even. They could have implied that I was juvenile—a child. They should have sent me reeling back to when Mama died and I was suddenly treated like the baby of the family—something I’ve worked hard to shake ever since.

He called me the one name I would normally have hated more than anything.

You’re such a brat .

But he said it with a smile. And I liked it.