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“I’d like these earrings, please.”
“For a smile from you, they come at a discount.”
I hesitate, caught off guard by the pointless flattery, but I do smile without meaning to. A reflex of my nerves and surprise. I hate that it happens so easily.
“There it is,” he smiles in return, as if I have played along. “Gorgeous. Would you trade?” he continues, stepping closer. “I’ll give you the discount number, you give me your number?” He laughs richly, as if it’s a joke. I know that it isn’t.
I glance over my shoulder to see Salvatore still on the phone. Of course. The one time he isn’t looming over me, watching me like a hawk.
“You must use that line on all the girls you want to get commission from.”
“Commission? I’m the owner. Though, if I were on commission, I’d still risk any job for a dinner with you.”
“My fiancé is here,” I say, the words leaving my lips for the first time. It has a certain power to it, invoking Salvatore like a demon I can summon to ward off unwanted attention. “And you’d be risking more than just a job with him. I’m sure you have plenty of other customers you can flirt with.”
The man lowers his voice, stepping in too close.
“But I only want to flirt with you.”
“I’m engaged,” I tell him again, in no uncertain terms.
He glances down to my hand.
“Are you sure about that?” he asks. “You can just tell me you’re out of my league. I already know it. But a woman like you should have a man who’ll put the moon on her finger.”
He reaches out, as if to touch my bare hand. “Of course, I would help with that.”
I take a sharp step back, running into something solid behind me. I know who it is without turning around. The percussion of my heart thumps like a horror soundtrack. When I glance up into Salvatore’s face, he has a certain look in his eye. I could almost mistake it for calmness, but I know better. This isn’t calm. It’s resolve.
The man takes one look at Salvatore’s towering figure and goes ashen.
His hand is outstretched toward mine still, frozen in the moment as if someone had snapped an incriminating picture.
“Your lovely fiancé and I were just discussing ring sizes,” he says, a hasty lie, but he delivers it smoothly, like a used car salesman, the grease dripping in his voice. His eyes land on me, silently begging me to back him in his lie. To spare him.
“We were,” I agree, to his visible relief. “He was discussing what size ring he’d like to put on my finger,” I elaborate coldly, “Even though I told him multiple times, I was engaged.”
The man’s confidence withers now that he is alone, his hand creeping back across the counter. I pull my hand back to myself, wrapping it instead around Salvatore’s arm—hoping it’s enough to keep him from jumping the counter and beating the man to death in broad daylight.
But I don’t have any pity for him.
“Take your eyes off my wife,” Salvatore says, so softly and calmly, it makes the hair on the back of my neck bristle, “or she will be the last thing you ever see.”
The man laughs, a nervous reflex, his eyes skittering down across the jewelry between us.
The word wife, the way Salvatore says it—it wraps itself around my heart and squeezes tight.
“I apologize,” he tries to smooth over. “It was a misunderstanding—”
Salvatore’s arm drapes around my shoulders, possessive and commanding.
“And when my wife tried to clarify—did you deliberately ignore her, or are you so stupid, you couldn’t comprehend what she was telling you?”
The man’s mouth works, his anger and stress a red, throbbing knot in his purpling forehead. Salvatore waits and waits, letting the awkward silence do its work.
“I suppose I’m just that stupid,” he finally says through his teeth, as Salvatore forces him to humiliate himself. “Please. Take the earrings as a gift. An apology.”
When Salvatore does not look appeased, the man finds the right words in a rush, “A wedding present.”
