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Not to mention I’m actually a dick occasionally—like yesterday, after hearing about the bullying.
Bella steps out of my arms. “Well, that would be because mean is what she’s used to from everyone except her family. She’s on the defensive. Here, anyway. In England, she’s less prickly.”
Interesting.
“Why?”
“Because no one hurt her there, I guess? But withyourtrack record, honestly, I’m not sure anything short of a grand gesture would work.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “That gives me an idea.”
“Kidnapping is not a grand gesture, Alessandro,” Bella rushes to point out.
I huff. “I’m not that desperate.” After a second, I add, “At least, not yet.”
TWENTY-FOUR
Ivy
I grumble all morning, annoyed with the entire universe. Less, for obvious reasons. The raging storm, for keeping me here. My family, for dragging me back to Anderia in the first place. But most of all, me. How the hell could I let myself fall for his stupid shit?
But blaming myself isn’t quite fair. He really has changed the game. He would never have been that devious in high school. Playing my parents so they’d believe he was the picture-perfect prince charming right before doing things that would be illegal in several countries? Of course. Fucking me so hard I forgot my own name in an empty classroom then ignoring me in public? Sure. Though I now have his point of view on that reality, and it doesn’t feel like a lie. But denying me an orgasm?Never. I was under the impression he took a certain level of pride in always managing to make me explode around him, whether I wanted to or not.
The kitchen plies me with biscotti, panettone, and coffee, and I take my loot back to my room, where I camp out with my new e-reader. I buy ebooks at ten to fifteen bucks apiece, the ones I’d never purchase digitally, based on the fact that the paper copies are cheaper.
I’m taking this well-stocked baby home. Lessowesit to me, damn him. Merry Christmas to me.
Of course, I know the two-hundred-buck bill I rack up in under an hour is nothing to Alessandro—although it represents a tenth of my salary after tax—but it makes me feel better.
I’m halfway through a fantasy book that got me solely based on the cover, mostly refusing to give up on it because it was too expensive for me to drop it, when someone knocks at the door.
“Come in,” I call, eyes narrowing as I ready for another battle, but it’s just my sister poking her head through the opening.
“Hey. I was wondering if you were sleeping in.”
“Nope, just immersing myself in a fictional world.”
Bella’s not much of a reader, but she pushes into the room and politely asks, “Any good?”
I wrinkle my nose. “Not really. It’s taking itself too seriously, acting like the world is ending, all without introducing the characters, so I don’t really know why I should care.”
“Ouch. You’ve always been such a harsh critic.”
“Guilty as charged,” I admit unapologetically.
My boss says I have a knack for figuring out why the story doesn’t work—a skill that I’ve learned to trust now that I’m editing, but it ends up making me frustrated when authors make such blatant oversights. Why didn’t the editor point it out? Great battles and grand speeches don’t work without a proper introduction to the characters and the stakes they face—especially when the book is labelled as a romance.
“I wonder…” Bella stops herself, shaking her head. “Never mind.”
I sit up on the bed, one eyebrow lifting up. “You can’t leave it at that.”
She sighs. “Don’t take it the wrong way. But I do wonder if you might analyze that sort of thing a little too closely in real life, too, you know? If something’s not perfect, you usually tend to reject it.”
I frown. I don’t think I do that, do I?
“I mean, look at what happened with Less…”
“You have no idea what happened between Alessandro and I,” I snap, harsher than intended.
