Hidden Worthiness Page 11

  “Donnie, I—”

  He cut her off. “Do you know what a comare is?”

  “I do. I’ve seen The Sopranos—also, my uncle is connected. Fuck, Donnie. Are you married?”

  He ignored her question for the more important thing she’d said. “Connected how? To who? Who’s your uncle?”

  “Carmelo Luciano. He’s a shylock with the Romanos in New York. Are you married?”

  Again, much more interested in this new development, Donnie didn’t answer. If she had connected family, then she understood his life in a way few other women could. “Are you close to your uncle? Is he made?”

  She shrugged. “He’s made. He’s my father’s only sibling. They married sisters. My mom died when I was a kid, and my aunt did the mom stuff after that. So yeah, we’re close. I only see them once or twice a year now, though. I’m not answering another question until you answer mine. Are you married?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Then why are you talking about comares?”

  “It doesn’t just mean a woman on the side. It means a woman a man like me has an arrangement with.”

  “What kind of arrangement?”

  “A woman I want to spend time with, who understands what that means.”

  “Isn’t that just a relationship?”

  “No. I don’t have relationships. I have arrangements.”

  While she stared at him, eyes and mouth wide open, the room phone rang. Donnie got up and answered it. “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Goretti, but we’ve got a room service order here, and the privacy tag is on your door. Would you like to reschedule breakfast?”

  “Right. No, I’ll let you in.”

  A minute later, two servers pushed two large room service carts in, laden with food. They began to set the table, but Donnie signed the receipt, wrote in a big tip, and got them gone.

  Arianna was still staring silently when they were alone again.

  He indicated the carts with a wave. “I didn’t know what you ate for breakfast, so I got it all. Come, we’ll talk while we eat.”

  Watching him like he’d sprouted fangs, she rose and followed him to the carts, keeping a noticeable distance. He helped himself to pancakes and sausage, a couple eggs over easy, and a cup of black coffee. Arianna chose fruit and yogurt, a few strips of bacon, and coffee with cream.

  She sat across from him. Donnie noticed a twinge flicker over her face as her ass hit the seat. He’d been a little rough last night, but she’d wanted it. She’d liked it. Of that, he was certain.

  She mixed blueberries and raspberries into Greek yogurt and had a spoonful. “You’re asking me to be your comare?”

  “I am, yes.” He started with his eggs, adding salt and pepper and a dash of Tabasco.

  “I’m afraid to ask, but what’s the difference between a relationship and an arrangement? For you, I mean.”

  “I have rules. They’re not negotiable. Break one, and we’re done.”

  “Such as?”

  “You never touch my head. Nothing above the shoulders, ever. And I won’t ever put my mouth on you, anywhere. What you did for me just now, I won’t reciprocate, and I won’t kiss you. On the mouth or anywhere else.”

  “But—”

  “I said it’s not negotiable. I’ll take care of you, make sure you’re satisfied. Several times a night, if you want it. And I don’t expect you to give me head unless you want to.”

  “The oral sex isn’t as important as kissing. You won’t kiss me? At all?”

  “No.”

  “A kiss is the seed of a romance.”

  “This wouldn’t be a romance. That’s another rule. I will treat you well. For as long as we’re together, I’ll take care of you. I’ll keep you safe and comfortable. I’ll take you to the finest restaurants and events. I’ll buy you nice things. We’ll travel, first class. Sometimes we’ll stay in. I’ll enjoy your company and be good company. I’ll support you in what you do. But I will not love you, and I won’t tolerate lies about your feelings for me. Don’t ever use that word.”

  Dropping her spoon in her barely touched yogurt, she pushed the bowl aside. “Not that it’s feeling all that likely right now, but what if I were to fall in love with you?”

  They always asked that question. Was he supposed to believe that they actually thought they might someday? He gave the same answer he always gave, but this time the stakes felt higher. Her shock at his rules, her obvious offense, felt different. Less calm. More real. More pained. A hot flare of shame had kindled in his gut.

  He ignored it and kept to what he knew. The truth. “I won’t believe you, because it will be a lie.”

  Her confusion and resistance became anger. She leaned back in the chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “This whole Pretty Woman thing you’re doing here is impressive and all, but I’m not a whore.”

  That was where the offense always originated: image. Women didn’t like things spelled out so starkly. They liked the manipulation, the pretense, the lies. They wanted him to pretend with them that they’d be with him for any other reason than the life he offered. Donnie saw things far too clearly to pretend.

  When he laid out his terms, they often thought he was implying they were whores. But a contract with a whore was a simple thing: payment for services rendered. Now, he was merely setting his boundaries. Not a contract. Not a service. An arrangement.

  “Of course you’re not. We would be having a different conversation if you were.”

  An ugly cackle erupted from her pretty mouth. “Seriously, have you seen that movie? Because you’re channeling Richard Gere really hard right now. Are you just taking me on a tour of all the toxic romantic clichés about damaged men? First the monster in a mask, now the ice-cold executive who makes contracts instead of love. What’s next? I guess it’ll have to be the stone-cold killer with the secret heart of gold. Or maybe not. Apparently you don’t have a heart at all.”

  Donnie shouldered aside his keen disappointment in her reaction. The odds hadn’t been on his side, anyway. He kept his voice calm and reasonable. “I’m being straight with you. I like you. I enjoyed last night very much. I’d like to see you again. But only if we have an arrangement.”

  “We don’t.”

  Abruptly, she stood up. Donnie stood, too. For a moment, they stared at each other. Donnie could see that she wanted to say something, but nothing came. Finally, she stormed around the table and crossed the wide room to the window, where her clothes were in the same pile she’d shed them into. She grabbed them in a bundle and hurried to the small bathroom where he’d put lotion on his scars not long ago.

  The door slammed. The lock turned.

  Fuck.

  It was hardly the first time a woman had been offended by the terms of his offer—not this outraged, but pissed enough. Donnie usually took it in stride. A woman who couldn’t handle his boundaries was a woman who couldn’t handle him. But he felt a powerful urge to convince Arianna, to explain, to make her see, to make her say yes.

  Hearing strange sounds from the bathroom, Donnie went to the door. Before he got there, he understood what he was hearing: retching. She was throwing up.

  That flare of shame shot up higher.

  The toilet flushed. The tap ran. A few seconds later, she came out, dressed, and looking pale and sad. She seemed diminished somehow. Dimmer. Donnie clamped his jaw down on the apology in his mouth.

  She went back to the window and picked up her little sneakers.

  “Give me a minute to get my clothes back together and call my driver, and I’ll take you home.”

  Facing the window, right in front of the smear her body had made, she said, “No. I’ll call a cab.”

  The defeated tone in her voice was tinder for his shame. He was burning from the inside out, but he kept his voice calm. “That’s silly. Just wait a sec.”

  “Fuck you, Donnie.” She spun around. Tears flowed down her cheeks. “Fuck you. You just made me feel small and ..
. and dirty. You took last night and twisted it until all the good bled out. I really liked you, but you’re so broken you can’t feel it. You’re pathetic.”

  Fury quashed the shame and impelled him forward. He grabbed her arms and snatched her close. “Watch how you talk to me.”

  He’d scared her, he could see the fear, but she sneered defiance at him. “Why? Because you’ll hurt me? You already did.”

  When she squirmed hard in his grasp, he let her go. Rooted in place, he watched her run to the door on her graceful legs, even now floating like the ballerina she was, and escape him. She hadn’t bothered to put her sneakers on.

  The crystal vase of orange roses mocked him from the desk. He recalled the night before, just hours ago. Finding her note. Seeing her on the stage, sharing a connection in a look. Calling the florist and explaining what he wanted to say, doing everything he had to do to get the order delivered with his own note before the final curtain. Seeing her come for him, gliding to him, dressed like a waif in a flowing, flowery skirt. Their delightful dinner. Their intense sex. Her trusting sleep.

  She’d left here in tears. Running from him. Fleeing. And now all his dark feelings were loose in the light.

  Fuck, how had it all gone so wrong?

  Sonia’s voice rose up in his mind, speaking the words she’d said at the funeral home. Less than forty-eight hours earlier. Your scars are all you see. But your face isn’t the ugly part of you. It’s your fear that’s really ugly.

  That was bullshit. He could look in any goddamn mirror, any reflective surface, and see what was ugly about him. He’d lived the last twenty years seeing what was ugly about him in the obvious shock and horror of the people who had the misfortune of looking his way. In the fucking screams of children. Of his own child. It wasn’t his fear that told him no one would love him. The world told him that every single day.

  He wasn’t fucking afraid of any goddamn thing. His fear had been burned off him on a motherfucking commercial grill, while Nick Pagano’s woman, his friend Bev, screamed on the floor at his feet.

  Those vibrant roses mocked him. Orange for desire. How stupid he’d been.

  He grabbed the vase in both hands and hurled it. It flung water and long-stemmed blooms like blood spray before it crashed on the wall and shattered.

  ~ 10 ~

  It was still early, so early it had taken the doorman a few minutes to track down a cab for her, so early the city streets were quiet. When Ari went into her apartment, it had the quiet, cavernous gloom Julian preferred when he slept, with all their dark drapes pulled shut.

  She hung her purse on one of the hooks on the wall by the door and dropped her keys on the bar-height counter that separated their tiny kitchen from their slightly less tiny living room.

  There was a handbag on the papasan chair that wasn’t hers. Julian had company. Of course he did; the dancers had gone out as usual to celebrate the premiere performance of the ballet, and he always liked to hunt down a pretty to bring home.

  She went back to the door and took her purse down from the hook. She wasn’t going to leave it around for a stranger to paw through. That had happened once and only once.

  Then she ran out of drive. Shock and fury had gotten her this far in something that looked like calm. Out of that suite, to the elevator, through the hotel, to the cab, into the apartment, all in a thoughtless, hazy daze, but calmly. Intentionally. Now, closed up in her home, she could go no farther. She stood there in the narrow little hallway, her purse dangling from the strap in her hand, and couldn’t move. She felt sick and weak and hurt. She felt battered. Violated.

  Her body ached, but it wasn’t that. What he’d done last night, she’d wanted it. She’d loved it. He’d treated her like a princess. He’d swept her off her feet. Everything inside her had spun and sparkled, and it hadn’t been the wine. She’d been bewitched.

  And then this morning a cold-blooded monster had been wearing his clothes.

  He hadn’t forced himself on her, but she felt violated nonetheless. He’d taken that beautiful encounter, and the newborn feelings fluttering through her, and clawed it all to shreds. He’d sat there, expressionless and calm, cold, and told her he wanted to make her his whore.

  He’d made her feel stupid and small. Everything that had happened last night was now trashy and dangerous, and she should have known better. It was like he’d raped her heart.

  Shit, she was going to be sick again.

  Bolting for the bathroom, she didn’t bother to try to be quiet. She slammed the door and landed on her knees, gasping at the hot strike of pain between her legs. Trashy and dangerous. Not just rough—cruel. He’d been cruel and harsh, and her stupid brain had told itself a fairy tale about a sad man in pain. Told her that her fear was really desire.

  After she puked whatever was left in her stomach, she needed to wash. She needed to scrub every trace of that bastard from her body and her head. She stripped out of her clothes and stuffed everything into the trash, filling up the little plastic wastebasket. In water at the hottest temperature she could possibly stand, she scrubbed herself with a loofah everywhere he’d touched her, everywhere she could reach, except between her legs, which was too sore to scrub.

  God, she’d had him in her mouth! She’d licked up his semen like a fucking dog! The thought made her retch again, violently this time, desperately, and she didn’t have time to get out of the shower. She dropped to her hands and knees and puked at the drain. There was nothing left but acid, and it swirled down with the water.

  Ari was on her hands and knees in her shower, her hair hanging around her face, her body aching in its deepest core, her stomach and chest throbbing. She watched her vomit swirl down the drain, and it was all just too, too, too much. The sobs she’d been battling all morning finally won the war, and she let herself fall over. Curling up on the shower floor, the scalding spray beating down on her like needles, she gave up and bawled.

  “Ari? Jesus! What happened! Jesus!” The shower door slammed open and Julian was there, in the shower, turning it off, grabbing her up.

  Ari sat up and fought the tears back again. She fought Julian off, too, getting to her feet on her own. She took the towel from his hands and wrapped it around her chest. “I’m okay.”

  “Bullshit! I haven’t seen you like this since—oh fuck, Ari. Oh, love. That son of a bitch.” He grabbed her arms and studied them, then took her chin in his hand and studied her face.

  He didn’t know whom she’d been with, only that she’d had a date. He’d already held forth on the dangers of Donnie Goretti, and she hadn’t wanted a lecture from him last night, while she was buzzing from the high of those orange roses.

  “No, Jule. No. Stop.” She knocked his fussing hands away. “Stop. It’s not—he didn’t—” Donnie hadn’t raped her. She’d wanted everything they’d done last night, even when she was afraid of it, even when it had hurt. She’d begged him for it. And he’d decided she made a good whore.

  Her stomach rolled, and she dived to her knees and dry heaved at the toilet.

  Julian hovered over her, holding her hair.

  A knock on the door, and a strange female voice. “Julian? Is everything okay?”

  “Fuck,” he muttered. “I’ve got a guest. Let me get rid of her, and then I’m all yours, love. I’m so sorry.” He kissed Ari’s head and got up.

  Ari stayed where she was. Short of ever laying eyes on Donato Goretti again, the last thing she wanted to do was come face to face with Julian’s random fuck.

  Hoping she finally had control over her stomach and her emotions, she flushed and stood. At the sink, ignoring her reflection, she brushed her teeth. Her robe hung on the back of the door. A black silk kimono. Nothing at all like the hotel robe besides the color. And yet when she put it on, the fresh memory of the morning bloomed fully. Waking naked in that bed, rested and content, hearing Donnie on the phone, ordering their breakfast. Getting up, smiling at the hot ache between her legs, putting the sumptuous hotel robe on, and
wandering out to see him standing there, dressed exactly as she’d last seen him. The first inkling of trouble had been then—when she’d understood that he’d left her alone in the bed most of the night, though she’d fallen asleep with her head on his chest. His beautiful chest. His strong arm around her shoulders.

  He’d fucking carried her into that bed. When she’d been too spent and stunned to move, he’d swept her into his arms like Richard fucking Gere and carried her to bed.

  What had happened while she’d slept to turn the prince into the beast?

  Nothing, of course. He was who he was. She’d simply been exactly the kind of woman she hated and fallen for all the clichés. She’d thought he was sad. She’d thought she was special. She’d thought he was broken and she could fix him. She’d thought she understood him.

  Wrong. On every count. She was just stupid, stupid, stupid.

  A knock on the door, and Julian peeked in, stretching his hand into the room. “Coast clear. Come talk to me.”

  Shaking off the echo of those same words in Donnie’s voice, Ari closed her kimono, finger-combed her wet hair, and took her best friend’s hand.

  He ensconced her on the futon, tucking her in under an afghan, and sat beside her. The smell of fresh coffee floated over from the kitchen; he must have started a pot before he’d come back to the bathroom.

  “I’m sorry you sent your girl away.”

  He waved that off with a flourish. “I got her number, and I think I got bonus points for taking care of my friend in need. Though I might have lost a couple because my friend in need is a beautiful ballerina.”

  “Sorry. Sounds like you like her.”

  “I do, maybe. We had a good time.” He shook his head briskly. “But who the fuck cares? What happened, Ari? Who was it, and what did he do? Should we call the cops? I know last time—”

  Among her growing list of things she absolutely did not want to do this morning was talk about ‘last time,’ five years ago, when she’d actually been raped, by a dancer in a visiting company, and going to the cops had been nothing but a new set of horrors and shames to contend with, until Baxter and the director of the other company had both leaned on her hard enough that she dropped the charges.