Page 31 of Valentino

Amanda

Valentino stands beside me like a wall someone propped against the marble column. He's barely moved in ten minutes. His eyes do the moving. Across the room, over the doors, back to me, away again.

"So," I say, because the silence is starting to itch. "Are you going to tell me what you're actually doing in Milan?"

"Business," he says.

"Right. Business." I take a sip, just to do something. The wine is dry and a little sour, and it does nothing to settle the buzzing under my skin. "You said that the other day. And the day before. I'm starting to think 'business' is an excuse for when you don't want to answer me."

His jaw shifts. Not a smile. Just movement.

"It's accurate," he says.

"It's a non-answer dressed up as an answer." I turn to face him properly, tilting my head. "Are you this chatty all the time, or am I getting the special treatment?"

He looks at me then. Fully. Those dark eyes trace my face. The attention lands somewhere low in my stomach and settles there.

"Have you ever seen me be talkative?" he asks.

I open my mouth to fire something back, and then I actually think about it.

"No," I admit. "I haven't."

"No." He shifts his weight, his shoulder almost brushing mine. I can feel the warmth of him radiating, reaching my bare skin before he ever does. "If I need something, I ask. If I have something to say, I say it. But I don't like talking much."

"Well." I laugh, and it comes out a little too high. "Good to know. Maybe I should stop, then. Save us both the trouble. God knows I've never met a silence I didn't want to fill."

I expect him to agree. To grunt, or nod, or go back to scanning the room and ignoring me, which is honestly what I deserve for talking this much to a man who clearly considers conversation a tactical inconvenience.

"No," he says.

I blink. "No?"

"I like hearing you talk."

He says it plainly, like he's reporting the weather, his accent rolling under the words and roughening them at the edges. He's not looking at me when he says it. He's looking at the doors. Which somehow makes it worse, because it means he didn't say it to get a reaction. He just said it because it's true.

And there it is. My stomach filling with warmth and butterflies, stupid and impossible to ignore. It feels too much like hope because that fifteen-year-old girl always dreamt of hearing something like that.

I have to get away from him.

"You're terrible at parties," I tell him, and my voice sounds almost normal. "Has anyone told you that?"

"Many people."

"They were right." I set the glass of wine on a passing tray and smooth my hands down the front of my dress, Something I do when I need to dispel nervous energy. I have a job to do tonight. One that has nothing to do with the man standing next to me. I would do well to remember that. "I need to find Francesca. That's what I'm here for. So. I'm going to go charm the people I'm here to charm. You can go stand against a column or something and look ominous."

"I'll stay close."

"I figured." I don't look at him when I say it. If I look at him, I'll feel it again.

I have spent years building a career on being the kind of woman who walks into a room and owns it. Coming undone in a room full of two hundred people by a broody Sicilian is unacceptable.

I walk into the crowd, smiling at strangers. Sharing polite hellos with people I don't know.

I can work a room like no other. Even when my mind is somewhere else. Like muscle memory. My spine straightens. My chin lifts. The smile arrives before I decide it's needed, easy and warm and ready. The same one that's gotten me through a thousand cocktail parties and product launches and dinners where nobody could remember my last name. A touch of an elbow here. A laugh at a joke there. I am exactly who everyone expects me to be.

And the whole time, I feel Valentino somewhere behind me. Not crowding. Just there. A presence at my back like the heat of a fire you've turned away from.