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“I do,” I replied. “What you’re telling me is that you murdered Jude, chopped him up, and put him in this soup.”
Owen laughed, which made me grin. It was good to know I could catch him off guard.
“No, your metaphor is very obvious,” I said. “I’m the soup. If you can share that, you can share me.”
“I hope so,” he said. “It’s a dumb analogy, I know. But the soup is good, and I hadn’t made it in a while. Now hurry up and finish it so we can get to dessert.”
“Oh? What did you make for dessert?”
He grinned lustily, which made me wolf down the soup faster.
52
Amber
When Owen made me that pot of soup and told me his story, I was still skeptical that we could make things work. Sharing a girlfriend was not like sharing food. And the way Owen threw me into bed and ravaged me that night, hungry and possessive, showed just how much he wanted me to himself.
But as time went on, things reallydidseem to work out. I spent one night with Jude, then the next with Owen. Each of them pretended like the other didn’t exist, except when it came to work. Neither of them appeared to be bothered by the situation.
Near the end of that first week of everything being out in the open, I got a call on my cell phone in the middle of the day. It was my sister.
“You got something,” she said. “A lot of somethings.”
“You’re going to have to be more specific than that.”
“Come home tonight and you’ll see. They’re waiting in the kitchen.”
Curious about what it might be, I told Jude and Owen that I needed to spend some time with my sister, especially since I hadn’t told her about the church in that little Italian town with the priest who had met our family. I took the CalTrain home that evening and walked inside. I didn’t have to ask what Michelle was talking about, because it was obvious the minute I walked inside.
Sitting on the kitchen counter were at least twenty bouquets of roses in ceramic vases. Each vase was practically bursting with them; there must have been four dozen to a vase, all deep red and perfect. They covered every surface in the kitchen to the point that I couldn’t see the countertop at all.
Owen wasn’t acting smug about this at work, I thought.And Jude didn’t give any hint about it.
“Who,” my sister said as she came down the stairs, “is Furio?”
I looked at the vases with new eyes. “Furio sent these?”
“Amber!” she exclaimed. “Please tell me that Furio is a nickname you have for Owen or Jude!”
I sat down at the rose-covered table and beckoned for her to join me. “You know that trip to Italy? Well, I was invited by Furio Rossi. He’s working with us on some stuff…”
I caught up my sister on everything that had happened, although I referred to Furio as acolleaguerather than explaining that he was a billionaire who now owned thirty percent of ACS. I explained the sexy flirting between Furio and me when he was in San Francisco. Then our time together in Rome. The tension every single night when we went to our separate beds. And then the trip out into the countryside, to the town of Arcevia, and the church where our father had visited. When I pulled out the photograph, Michelle began sobbing. I hugged her and joined in, tears of renewed grief and a spark of happy remembrance.
“Is that all it takes?” she asked while wiping away her tears. “A visit to a church and you spread your legs?” She grinned at me.
“Everything else, too!” I protested. “I literally told you about all the other sexual tension from the trip! The church was just the icing on the cake.”
“I’m just teasing you.” She blew her nose, then looked around at all the roses. “You must have made an impression on him.”
“Apparently so.”
“I’m just happy you’re finally acting like the hot slice of cake you are,” she said. “When you’re not sitting at your computer playing Diablo all day.”
“Shut up!” I said. “Or I’ll smash one of these vases over your head.”
The two of us laughed, and then I began moving roses to other parts of the house so we had enough room to make dinner. One of the vases had an envelope taped to it. I opened it and read the contents.
I saw no mortal beauty with these eyes
