Page 14 of Because I Need You
“Yes, Arielle, I’m positive.”
He barked out a laugh and looked as surprised by it as I felt. It was a genuine laugh and I felt myself smile, proud that SOMEONE FINALLY UNDERSTOOD THE REFERENCE. I’d quoted Disney movies to Will for five months and my students longer, but they were too young, and Will had been too preoccupied with boarding schools and the violin and never saw those movies growing up. Citizen Kane, he’d seen multiple times, though. Go figure.
“Look, Isabel. I can’t grant this divorce until I get what I need from this arrangement, and that’s going to take a little while. Are you staying here? Going back to Chicago to tie things up? Where will you be?”
“Where will I be when?”
“This summer,” he said. “School is out for the summer. Where will you be? Do you have to be in school all summer doing paperwork and shit?”
“I hate to be the one to break this to you, but teachers usually leave the premises after school and actually have lives outside of teaching.”
“I always wondered about that.”
“Now you know.” I shrugged a shoulder. Fuck. Was I still smiling? I got serious again. “How long do you think it’ll take to sort all of this out?”
“If you give me full access to everything your father left? Sooner rather than later.”
“Full access? Are you insane?” I blinked. I didn’t know what that even meant, but if my father wanted anyone to have full access he’d have granted it himself. “Just tell me what you want, and I’ll figure out how to get it to you.”
“That might actually be a possibility,” he said slowly. “If you leave me your contact information, I’ll let you know what I need.”
Contact information. As if I was merely leaving my email on a resume. I stared at him for a beat. “How ‘bout I give you my number like a regular person in the twenty-twenties?”
“That works,” he said, in a completely serious tone. “I’m getting tired of sending pigeons with my messages.”
I bit back a laugh and looked away. If I wasn’t dying to go back to my regular life, I might just be charmed by this interaction. I gave him my number. He gave me his in case I needed him for anything. I assured him I wouldn’t. And I left. It seemed painless enough.
4
GIO
Dean hadn’t given me all of the information on Isabel, and if I thought I wanted it before, I felt like I needed it now. She’d stumped me. I wasn’t expecting her to be drop dead fucking gorgeous, with golden skin, light brown hair that hit her at the elbows, and eyes that nearly matched the shade. I definitely wasn’t expecting her to be funny or sarcastic or a teacher. A fucking teacher. How could Nadia have left that part out of her one sentence pitch? That was my fucking fantasy growing up and my teachers looked nothing like Isabel Bonetti. This took my fantasy to a whole new level. I spent the rest of the night Googling her and wondering why she was dating William Hamilton. I just couldn’t picture it. She was all fiery and funny and he was…well, him. Out of all the douchebags in the world, why pick that one? I scrolled through pictures after picture of her idiot boyfriend just to get a glimpse of her in a few of them. She was never front and center, always a few steps behind him, smiling a polite fake as fuck smile. She looked the part in all of them, though. She looked beautiful in all of them.
Beyond that, there was very little I could find. All of her social media profiles were set to private, probably because she was a teacher and didn’t want her students to find her photos. Fuck, I wouldn’t blame them if they tried. I wanted to see them so bad. I laughed, shaking my thoughts away. I needed to stay married until further notice, but once it was all said and done, I’d definitely sign the divorce papers and forget Isabel existed. It would be better that way. Yes, she was beautiful and had an incredible body, and was obviously fun, but I wasn’t going to fuck her. She looked like the kind of woman who would want a relationship and thinking about being attached to another human being like that made my skin crawl. The only reason it worked with Natasha was because we didn’t see each other all the time. If she lived here full time, I’d probably broken up with her by now. I turned to look at the New York City skyline from my bed and laughed again. Old Charles Bonetti had a secret daughter he’d married off to me and she was a hot teacher. What were the chances of that?
