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“Well,” I murmur. “We’d better get back out there.”
* * *
We haven’t been gonethatlong, though when we return, no one will meet my eyes.
On the other hand, the people sitting around the table rarely meet my eyes anyway, so maybe I’m imagining it.
Leo shovels down the rest of his plate, and then goes for seconds, and the conversation continues. But I can’t keep my mind on what everyone else is saying. I can only think about Leo.
At one point, the conversation goes quiet, and this time, everyoneislooking at me. “I’m sorry,” I say, after a long pause. “I wasn’t listening.”
There’s a burst of laughter, which suggests that my response fit the question perhaps a little too aptly, but I smile along with everyone else.
Teddy begins clearing the table, and Leo stands up to help. I grab him and pull him back down into his seat, scolding him, “You need your rest. I’ll help clear.”
“You?” Sandro snorts.
I lift my chin and say with dignity, “Not all of us need servants chasing after us all day, Alessandro.”
It earns me another laugh as I take Leo’s plate and follow Teddy to the kitchen area.
Somehow, the dinner is going well. I didn’t really expect that.
“You don’t really have to help,” Teddy squeaks at me.
“I don’t mind.” I actually don’t, and that’s the strange thing. I quite like being able to look back at the table. Observe the other four as they interact with each other. Leo is telling them the story of how he once crashed into the back of a police cruiser on his motorbike, and the laughs he gets suggests it’s quite the tale.
Teddy looks at me, a soft smile on his face. “You really like him, don’t you?”
I don’t mind Sandro and Jack knowing these things, but Teddy MacCallum is a different matter. “You wash. I’ll dry,” I tell him.
“Well, we have a dishwasher, so—“
“Youwash. I’lldry.”
“Okay,” Teddy says, but he’s still smiling. “And Julian?”
“What?”
“I think it’s nice.”
But I wasn’t made to feel nice things. That, as I pat ineffectively at wet dishes, is the thought that plagues me, as Teddy MacCallum chatters on.
How long will thesenicefeelings really last?
CHAPTER42
LEO
“Let’s go outside,”Sandro suggests, as Miller and Jacopo sink into a flirtatious conversation right there at the dinner table. And that’s when I realize this whole thing has been a setup.
A setup for Don Castellani to get me alone.
That’s fair. It was always going to happen. So I follow him out to the patio, which holds a pool, a spa, an area for grilling out. There’s a mass of gears and chains in one corner, which I guess is a sculpture, since it doesn’t seem to actuallydoanything. Everything is concrete and metal, and it’s paved with stone tiles. The pool has several lounge chairs on one side, each with its own sun sail and small table.
We’re high above the city here, looking down on it like it’s nothing but a toy set. And I wonder if that’s how the new Don Castellani sees things.
Sandro says nothing at first, merely offering me a cigar while his dark eyes take me in. I take the cigar, not because I want it, but because this is the kind of ritual I know something about. My father thinks cigars are a vital part of business, and I guess Don Castellani does, too.
