Page 34

But she gets to me first.

She crosses the floor fast, weaving between a group of laughing men and a waiter with a tray held high.

She comes straight to me. Not to him. She stops close. "Get me a drink," she says. "Please. Right now."

It isn't a request, even with the please tacked on the end. Her voice is steady, but her hands are not. They're moving, two fingers tapping against her thigh, the gesture small enough that no one else would catch it.

I do.

"What happened," I say. I keep my eyes on her face, trying to forget Elio, because if I look at him again, I will lose it. I'm going to cross the room and do something I can't undo. That's not an option here, not with so many witnesses and Basile somewhere in the crowd.

"Nothing happened." She plays with a piece of hair that's already perfectly in place. "Francesca just gave me some very generous career advice. The kind that comes with a smile and a knife. I'd love a drink while I process the experience. Wine. Or whiskey. Or both. I'm not picky."

I turn to the bar and lift two fingers and mouth wine. He pours a glass of white and slides it across without a word.

I put it in her hand. Her fingers close around the stem and brush mine, cool against warm, and I feel that touch all the way up my arm.

"Drink slow," I say.

"I make no promises." She takes a drink the exact opposite of slow. Over the rim of the glass her eyes flick once to the other bar, to Elio, and then snap back to me. Something in her face hardens. She knows he's watching. She shifts until my body blocks hers. She's using me as a wall.

I should be insulted but something in me wants to be the one she can hide behind. Wants it badly enough that an ache erupts in my jaw as I shove it down.

"She told me to stop asking questions," she says

"What questions, Amanda."

"There's a girl," she says quietly. "A model. At the shoot. She had a bruise on her jaw, and she flinched when I said her name. Her hands shook the whole time and nobody would talk about it. So I asked. Once. And the coordinator shut me down, and then Francesca just—" She stops, swallowing slowly, her throat moving as she does. "Francesca took me into a beautiful office and told me very kindly that if I want to keep working in this industry I should remember I'm in marketing, not casting, and that agencies handle their own. And then she held my hand, smiled and told me to enjoy the party."

My pulse slows to a cold, lethal tempo. The way it does before I…

A girl. A bruise. An agency that handles its own.

"What's the girl's name," I say.

"Why do you want to know her name?" Her eyes sharpen on me, and under the fear there's that quickness she has, that mind I keep underestimating. "Valentino. What is this? What are you actually doing in Milan, because I have asked you four times and you have avoided answering me four times. And now there's a terrified girl with bruises on her face and you want her name⁠—"

"Drink your wine." I shift, putting my body between her and the rest of the room, just slightly, just enough. "Smile while you do it. There are people watching us, and I need them to see two friends talking, not whatever this is becoming."

"That's not an answer."

"No," I agree. "It isn't."

Her jaw tightens. For a second I think she's going to throw the wine at me, and some reckless part of me almost wants her to. Wants to see her drop the polite, polished act and let the fury out. Instead she lifts the glass and smiles. A wide, brilliant, completely false smile, aimed somewhere over my shoulder for the benefit of anyone watching.

"You're infuriating," she says through spread lips and clenched teeth.

"I've been told."

"By people who lived to say it?"

The muscle at the corner of my mouth ticks, wanting to move. To smile in amusement. I don't let it. "Stay close to me tonight," I tell her, and I mean it as an order. It comes out as something rougher, something with an unusual undercurrent I'll think about later. "If someone you don't know asks you to step out of the room, you find me. Understand?"

The false smile fades. She searches my face, and whatever she finds there scares her more than Francesca's knife-smile did, because she stops fighting me.

Amanda

"I need the bathroom," I tell him.