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kandace
I didn’t recognize myself.
The woman reflected back at me in the shop window in Milan wore my face. Her blond hair was pulled into the same tight bun I’d styled my own hair in a few hours ago, and her violet dress was both elegant and understated, like the one I’d put on earlier tonight.
But the man at her side, the one more than a decade younger than my forty-five, with tattoos peeking above the collar of his shirt, and obvious where he’d rolled up his sleeves, looked more like he should be working for my brother’s old company than showing me fountains in the middle of the night.
As in, my brother’s internet porn company, second largest in the world, that he’d sold a few years ago.
Joystick even had a name like an adult film star.
“You okay?” he asked, his hand coming to rest at the small of my back.
I shook the random thought aside and yanked my gaze from our reflection. Maybe I had stepped into someone else’s life for the night, and I was going to enjoy the heck out of it. “I’m fantastic.”
“Good.” Joystick nudged me toward a looming iron gate, held up by tall stone pillars. “This is the place I was talking about. It’s beautiful this time of year. The summer flowers have faded, but there are fall blooms and the colors of the leaves… You have to see for yourself.”
Yes, my possible-porn-God wanted to show me a garden. At night. In Italy. The man who, for all I knew, actually was a cam-boy. I’d just met him tonight, at the pre-grand opening for a restaurant I was financing. He was friends with the owners, and I trusted their business sense enough to give them millions of my dollars.
That didn’t mean I knew anything about their taste in people, but they adored one of my favorite employees, and that spoke highly of them.
So the stranger I was strolling into a park with at ten at night was probably not dangerous.
Though the wicked, who-am-I part of me, the part who loved my racing pulse and the way my heart beat faster every time Joystick brushed a hand over my arm or back, hoped at least a little of him was.
He slipped his hand around mine, and there was the skip of my heart again. We strolled through the front gates.
Flowers and exotic grasses and trees lined the cobblestone pathways, vibrant even in the darkness. The soft scents drifted to tease us and wrap around us. There was no one else here, not this late, and it was like we’d stepped into a fantasy realm.
It was stunning.
I couldn’t think of anything to say beyond that, so I stopped in front of a neatly trimmed bush of wild roses. “The colors are so vibrant.” I cupped one of the blooms, careful to not touch the petals.
“That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”
It wasn’t the Shakespeare that caught me off-guard, it was that he knew more of the quote than most people. I turned to Joystick. “Did you just quote Romeo and Juliet at me?”
“Habit.” He shrugged. “I had those lines drilled into my head so much when… Weird, I know.” He grinned.
Wait. “When what?”
“When I played Romeo?”
Like, in a school play? In a porn? I studied him, which seemed odd, because I’d been staring at bits of him most of the night. But now I was looking at his face. “Oh.” Realization spread through me. “Oh.” He meant when he played Romeo in the modern adaptation that came out years ago. “You’re…oh. That’s why you look familiar. My son loved your show when it was in syndication.” I was standing in front of a teen movie star, but all grown up.
Was it weird that I’d been lusting after him all night? It wasn’t as though he was any younger now than when I met him, and it wasn’t like I ever looked at him on TV and saidI’d tap that.
Joystick smirked. “Wait. Who did you think I was?”
“It doesn’t matter.” I turned my attention back to the flowers. At least the darkness would hide any blush associated with the heat flooding my cheeks.
“No. It matters. Who did you think I was?” His tone was playful rather than insistent.
I strolled farther down the path, trying to focus on the stunning blooms around us. “Someone else.”
Joystick caught up to me, grabbed my wrist loosely, and spun me to face him. “I’m going to keep asking. It’s about me. I think it’s fair I know.”
