Flopping on the couch in front of the TV, she decided she’d binge-watch every single episode of every sitcom she liked. If that meant she’d sit there with only kitchen and bathroom breaks for the next month, so be it.
By the fourth episode of her favorite show, she found herself actually watching and not replaying her confrontations with Antonio in a never-ending loop. Soon she was chuckling, then laughing, then reciting the lines that had become engraved in pop culture. She was singing a jingle alongside one of her favorite characters at the top of her lungs when the bell rang.
Her raucousness came to a halt as her eyes darted to the wall clock. At 1:00 p.m. on a Wednesday, the few neighbors in her gated community who ever came knocking knew she’d be at work.
It had to be one of them checking out the inexplicable noises. Or the mailman leaving something she’d forgotten she’d ordered online, as usual.
Coming to this conclusion, she turned the volume down, subdued her hair and tightened the belt of the two-sizes-too-big bathrobe. Failing to locate her slippers, she pattered barefoot to the door.
She pulled it open, eyes down looking for a package. Instead, they fell on a pair of big shoes. Polished, handmade ones.
Her eyes trailed up, over endless legs, a lean abdomen, a door-wide chest and shoulders, all encased in darkness that seemed to absorb the sunlight like a black hole.
“You’re sitting at home watching sitcoms and causing a neighborhood-wide alert, when you should be in your lab advancing medical science?”
Lili blinked, for a moment believing the colossus she was staring at was an apparition. Perhaps she’d been thinking of him so obsessively she’d actually conjured him.
Not that even her fevered imagination could replicate him. Antonio Balducci was really on her doorstep, glowing like a gilded god in the afternoon sun, perfect in ways that she hadn’t known possible and that should be outlawed.
And there she stood in front of this vision of grandeur, the hair she hadn’t combed a riot of tangles, no doubt looking like a freckled porcupine drowning in its parent’s garment.
When she continued to gape at him, he folded his arms over his chest, his gaze mock-severe. “May I remind you that you didn’t ask permission to take the day off?”
His reprimand finally snapped her out of her stupor. “May I remind you that I tendered my resignation?”
His majestic head jerked up in dismissal, presenting her with an even better view of his formidable jaw and cleft chin. “You may also remember it was categorically rejected.”
She tossed her head back, too, attempting to emulate his haughtiness. “I needed you to approve my resignation only so you’d provide me with my end-of-service benefits. Your approval is unneeded if I relinquish them. Which I did. So I can do what I want. And I’m doing exactly that. Sleeping in and watching TV.”
He gave such a pout, it was a wonder she didn’t jump him to bite those maddening lips. “I hate to burst your bubble, but a rejected resignation only means you still work for me.”
“No, it means I give up all the rights that come with an accepted resignation.”
“Accepted resignations don’t only come with benefits. They come with recommendation letters—”
She cut in. “I’ll do without those, too.”
He continued as if she hadn’t interrupted him. “—endless severance forms to fill and to sign—”
She butted in again. “I’ll do that sometime next week.”
That made him stop, his gaze merrily roaming her, his lips twitching on the verge of ending his not-so-convincing stern act.
Yeah, tell her about how ridiculous she looked.
“Won’t you invite me in?”
“No.”
Her immediate answer gained her an equally swift “Why?”
“Because of all of the above.”
His eyes twinkled in the sunlight, a more crystalline and intense blue than she’d ever seen. “It’s not good for your health to hold a grudge.”
“Oh, it’s very cathartic to do so, for a limited time. I’ve allowed myself a week of hurling curses your way.”
As his lips lost the fight and broke into a smile, the image burst in her mind of a lightning bolt striking him in that perfect ass. And she burst out laughing.
His eyes narrowed as he examined her. “Are you drunk, Dr. Accardi?”
“What if I am?” she spluttered. “I can’t get a ticket riding my couch.”
Without warning, he crossed her threshold.
A thousand alarms rang in her head. “Hey, you can’t do that. I haven’t invited you in.”
He walked her back into her foyer, his advance slow, smooth, a sweep of power and seduction, the very opposite of her ungainly stumbling.