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“Poison.” It was the only one that didn’t turn my stomach when I pictured it.
“Hacking it is. Thanks, Viv. You’re the best.”
I sighed.
Isabella sat in her room, her pet snake Monty draped over her shoulders while she typed furiously on her laptop. Behind her, a mountain of clothes covered her bed and half-obscured the oil portrait of Monty that Sloane and I had commissioned as a joke for her birthday last year.
Most writers preferred silence and solitude, but Isabella worked best surrounded by chaos. She said growing up with four older brothers had conditioned her to thrive in mayhem.
“Anyway,” she said after several minutes of hacking her poor characters to pieces on the page. “Back to the topic at hand. You need to take the sex for a test drive before you commit. You don’t want to be stuck with someone bad in bed. Notthat I think Dante would have that problem,” she added. “I bet he fucks like—”
“Stop.” I held up a hand. “We arenotdiscussing my fiancé’s sexual prowess over the phone. Or ever.”
“There’s nothingtodiscuss. You haven’t had sex yet.” Isabella’s cheeks dimpled while Monty forked his tongue as if in agreement. “You’ll have to do it eventually. If not before the wedding, then on the wedding night and honeymoon…unless you both plan on being celibate for the rest of your lives.” She wrinkled her nose.
I put on my earrings in silence, but a flutter of nerves cascaded through my stomach.
She made a good point. I’d been so focused on planning the actual wedding I hadn’t given much thought to what would happenafter.
The marriage bed. The honeymoon. The heat of Dante’s naked torso against mine and his mouth—
My throat dried, and I banished the X-rated mental image to the darkest recesses of my mind before it took root.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get there,” I said in a hopefully convincing tone. “We barely know each other.”
My truce with Dante had held up surprisingly well since our late-night snack rendezvous last week, but despite the occasional conversation when we were both home—a rare occurrence given our busy schedules—my future husband remained an enigma.
“No better night to get to know each other than tonight.” Isabella leaned back and stretched her arms over her head. A mischievous glint lit her eyes. “There are plenty of sexy nooks and crannies at the club.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve taken advantage of those already. It’s only been…” I mentally calculated how long she’d been working at Valhalla. “Three weeks.”
“Of course not.” She dropped her arms. “It’s against the rules to fraternize with members. I’m all for rule-breaking, but this is the best job I’ve had in years. I’m not losing it so I can be a notch in some rich guy’s bedpost, no matter how hot he is.”
Her expression flickered before it brightened again. “Fucking or no fucking, I can’t wait for you to see the place. It’s absolutely bonkers. The entry hall floor is inlaid with solid twenty-four karat gold, and there’s a rooftop helipad with a helicopter rental service that’ll fly you anywhere within the tristate area for lunch…”
She continued describing Valhalla’s amenities in detail.
I smiled at Isabella’s enthusiasm even as nerves invaded my stomach.
Tonight was my official society debut as Dante Russo’s fiancée.
Our engagement party didn’t count; that had been a private affair attended by friends and family. The annual fall costume gala at the Valhalla Club, on the other hand, was a different matter.
I’d attended dozens of high-society events before, but I’d never been invited to Valhalla since my family weren’t members.
I was more on edge than I cared to admit, but at least Isabella would be there. She was working the second half of the gala, which meant one guaranteed friendly face.
I stayed on the phone with her for another few minutes until she left for her shift.
After I hung up, I took a deep breath, double-checked my reflection, and applied a second coat of red lipstick for extra confidence before I exited my room.
The faint sounds of Greta’s favorite Italian game show drifted from the kitchen as I walked to the foyer. She liked watching TV while cooking and said Dante had installed the kitchen’s small flat-screen for her when she started working for him. He’d threatened to remove it if any of her meals weren’t up to par, but no one took his threats seriously.
He was ruthless with outsiders, but he treated his staff like family, albeit one he kept at an arm’s length and had extremely high expectations of.
My stomach dipped when he came into view.
Dante waited in the foyer, his head bent over his phone. He’d adhered to the gala’s 1920s theme with his trademark precision: sleek three-piece charcoal tweed suit, matching newsboy cap, signature frown.
