Page 21 of Valentino

"Grab a cab," I tell him. "Go to Casa Aurelia. You sit on the street and you watch. When I bring her, you make yourself useful and invisible at the same time. Think you can manage that?"

His jaw flexes again. He wants to say something. Some part of him still thinks he's owed something here.

I know that hunger. The wanting of a person you have no right to.

"Yes," he says finally. Tight. Controlled. "I can manage that."

"Good."

I turn and head to the car. I'm three steps away when the rain starts, distorting her face behind the glass. She's been watching me.I keep my face expressionless as I open the door and climb in. The car door shuts behind me, sealing out the rain, and the quiet inside is sudden and close. I drop the keys into the cupholder and reach for the ignition.

"Where's Elio?"

I don't answer right away. I start the engine, and it wakes under us with a low growl. Rain taps the windshield, at first a drizzle, then faster, blurring the gray street outside into smears of light.

"He's meeting us there," I say.

"Meeting us where?"

"Casa Aurelia."

I feel her shift in the seat beside me. The fabric of her coat whispers against the leather.

"You sent him away."

"I gave him a job."

The hotel is twelve minutes from here. What I should do is put my eyes on the road and my hands at ten and two and keep them there.

Instead I turn and look at her.

A mistake. She's caught in the gray light coming through the wet windshield, and it softens her face making her look younger and more real than the polished version she carries around like armor. Her hair has come loose at one side, a pale wave falling across her cheek. She glares at me, and it undoes me, because her eyes aren't soft at all. They're blue-green and bright and furious, lit from the inside.

I know how to make a woman feel watched without ever giving her the satisfaction of being looked at, but I can't do it now. My eyes are only on her.

"You're not going to tell me," she says. Her voice has dropped, lost some of its edge. "Are you?"

"No."

"Of course not." She laughs, but it's thin, no joy in it. "God forbid anyone tell me anything. I'm just supposed to smile and not ask."

"Amanda."

"What did you say to him?"

"Nothing he didn't earn."

She makes a small sound and turns to face me fully, her knee bumping the gearshift, while the rain hammers the roof. "You scared me," she says. "Out there. The way you walked toward him. I've never—" She stops. Swallows. "You looked like you were going to kill him."

I don't tell her how close she is to right.

"He's fine," I say.

She's so close now. Her lips are parted, like there's a word stuck there, and she's deciding whether to let out.

I should fucking not be this close to her.

But I lean in anyway.