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“I thought we weren’t announcing anything until after my birthday in the summer,” she says. “When did that change?”
Oh. Right. Her engagement to that slimeball Dario Fabbri.
“Not your engagement,” I clarify. “Mine.”
She doesn’t try to hide her reaction this time. Her shiny lips part in surprise, her eyes going so wide that I can see white all around the cat-like golden brown of her irises.
“What the fuck?” she breathes. “Papà hasn’t mentioned anything! When did this happen?”
“Last night,” I reply. “And he didn’t mention anything because he doesn’t know yet.”
An oh, shit kind of look comes over her face.
“You’re engaged to someone and he doesn’t know about it,” she repeats, and I can practically hear the panicky grinding of the gears in her head. “Is it at least someone he’d approve of?”
I shrug my good shoulder.
“Unlikely. But I approve and that’s all that fucking matters.”
She takes out the clip on the top of her head, letting down hair made a much darker blonde by the moisture in it. She shakes her head while finger-combing the wet waves.
“You’re so fucking hard-headed, Elio,” she says. “You know as well as I do the marriage part means shit and a man like you can have whoever he actually wants outside of that. Just marry somebody Papà approves of and then have your goomah on the side. The way God intended,” she adds with a sardonic lift of her eyes heavenward.
A fucking goomah? She wants me to marry someone proper and then keep Deirdre on the side as my mistress?
Not happening.
There’s only one woman who could get me to stand at the end of that aisle and wait for her to walk down it. The thought of marrying someone else and keeping my Songbird as some sidepiece in a house I don’t even live in full-time makes my skin crawl and my stomach seize and, honestly, just fuck every possible version of that scenario.
“No.” The word comes out of my throat sounding kind of charred. Valentina must be able to see how pissed-the-fuck-off I am, because she immediately backs down.
“It’s OK. You don’t have to give me that look. I’m going to help you,” she says. “At least one of us is going to get to marry who we want, I guess.”
I know she doesn’t want to marry Dario. I wouldn’t either, in her alarmingly high-heeled shoes. But for the first time it occurs to me that there may actually be somebody else she’d had in mind.
“You got a boyfriend?” I ask. Curse cocks his head and peers closely at her from his place by the office door.
“Nope. Just a fiancé,” she retorts, rolling her eyes and flashing the garish pink diamond ring on her left hand. “You know Papà never let me date anybody. There’s no one else.”
I nod. As much as she may not show it with her sailor’s mouth, I know that she respects me. She wouldn’t lie to me.
“So, how about you, then? Who’s the lucky lady?” she asks, seating herself across from me. “Anyone I know?”
“Oh, you know her,” I say with a smirk. “Prettiest little Songbird you ever did see.”
She collapses against the back of the chair in astonishment, like my words have physically shoved her.
“No fucking way. Deirdre?” she breathes. “You seriously weren’t kidding when you said Papà wouldn’t approve!”
But Valentina’s always been one quick to recover. She sits up straight again, then leans forward.
“She’s got nothing, Elio. No money, no alliances, no assets. Nothing.”
“She won’t need any of that shit. She’s got me.”
“No, no, I know.” She raises her hands in a placating sort of gesture. “I’m not saying that in a disparaging way. I actually really like Deirdre and I’d way rather it be her than somebody like Nat Rizzo. I’m just kind of… examining the situation out loud.”
She goes quiet for a moment, then says, “Isn’t Darragh Gowan still trying to get to her?”
