Italian Kisses: A Billionaire Love Story(22)

It was one of those times when your brain just doesn't want to deal with anything. Just shut down for a few blissful hours to remove your consciousness from reality, at least for a little while.

My lead-weighted eyelids started drooping shut. The thin, worn out pillows on the bed beckoned.

Normally I liked to pull my hair into a quick ponytail before sleeping. But this wasn't normal. My head hit the pillow and I waited for sleep to pull me away.

But then Liam knocked once on the door and came in. My heart lurched; I'd forgotten he'd be coming by.

"Hey, I hope you've been in suspense all day, because..." he started, smiling. The smile fell from his face when he saw me. "What is it? Tell me."

The bed groaned again when he sat beside me.

I started telling him, but then I cut myself off. An embarrassed heat rushed up my neck. I wanted to Liam to think I was smart, a good student. A success in my field just like he was a success in his. What would he think of me if he knew that I'd just been put on defacto academic probation, and that my days in Rome were numbered?

He took my hand in both of his and squeezed it gently, surrounding me with the warmth of his palms.

"Don't clam up on me again."

Finally I nodded. I told him the whole story. He'd gleaned parts of it himself. He'd known about Dr. Aretino's interest in me since the night of the fundraiser. He hadn't, however, suspected that interest had blossomed as it had.

His expression tightened as I told him, his fingers squeezing my hand tighter. I finished with getting back to my flat. "And that's when you knocked on the door."

"That has to be illegal. Against school regulations. Something..."

I braced myself, waiting for him to offer to do something for me. Lately everyone wanted to intervene on my behalf, it seemed.

Liam's eyes searched for the answer in my tiny flat, as though my laptop or the text on paintings of the Italian Renaissance beside it could solve my problem.

"The dean," he said, "Go to the dean. Aretino will be out on his ass before he can say, 'Leonardo.'"

"That might have worked before, when it was only him. But now that he's got my other professors in on it, the dean would probably just think I'm crying sexual harassment to fix my grades."

In this battle of he-said, she-said the He side would definitely be the victor.

Then I saw it in his face, that desire to help me, to fix all my problems for me. Money could solve any problem, provided you threw enough at it.

However, he swallowed the words back down. He knew I wouldn't accept the help.

"What will you do?" he asked.

I shrugged, tried to look like it wasn't a big deal. "I guess I'll be on my way back to St. Louis in two weeks."

I tried smiling, but my lips started trembling. A combination of anger, frustration, and despair pushed hard against the back of my eyes.

Liam pulled me close just as the first hot tear streaked down the curve of my cheek. "Your jacket!" I said, trying to pull away. I didn't want to ruin his expensive suit.

"I don't care about the suit," he replied, pulling me close again. The silk absorbed that tear, the next, and the ones after that. "You know I'll help. All you have to do is ask."

"I know."

"You also know that I'll be on the first plane to St. Louis after you."

I couldn't help but laugh at that. There was something funny in that. That image of the ultra-rich, ultra-successful man chasing after the girl who couldn't even get passing marks in an art history program, a bird course.

Except that Dr. Aretino had clipped my wings. Clipped them right from my wing bones with no chance to grow back.

"It's not funny. I mean it," Liam said. Then he drew my face away from his chest, plunged his hands into my hair so that he could tilt my head back, and kissed me.

I tasted the saltiness of my tears, knowing he could too.

When we parted, he run the pads of his thumbs gently over my cheeks, brushing away the moisture.

"So I imagine that you've completely forgotten about that surprise I hinted at earlier?"

Mostly I couldn't stop thinking about how puffed up my eyes had to be, how red my cheeks were. Or the dark, irregularly shaped smudge my tears had left on his jacket.

"Is it a time machine so that I can go back to the beginning of the semester and drop Dr. Aretino's course?"

That got me a crooked smile. "Unfortunately, no. But I think it will take your mind off things for the rest of the evening. You can start thinking up a solution tomorrow."

A distraction? I could use one of those. "What is it?"

That crooked smile grew, and mischief flashed in his eyes. "If you want to know, you'll have to come with me."

"Then I suppose I have no choice but to stay here."

That earned me a couple confused blinks. Then the other side of his mouth quirked up, completing the smile. "Funny."

"I thought so. So, what is it?"





Chapter 11


"This is incredible! I didn't even know you could do this!" I said.

My worries had receded to the back of my mind. They were still there, pressing against the envelope of conscious thought, but not quite able to sneak through.

Every now and then I'd feel their impression, and my guts started twisting up with the anxiety. But I found that if I concentrated on being in the present moment, being with Liam, managed to fight those sensations back again.

And how could anyone be anything but in the present with what surrounded me?

We'd driven over the Tiber river, the shifting water glittering below us. We'd rolled the windows down again, letting the city air flow through the cab of the grey BMW.

I'd closed my eyes, feeling the way the wind washed through my hair, making it stream back in golden waves over the headrest.

We arrived at our destination, which was a large square not far from the Vatican hill. I could see the pale domes of those palaces rising over the low buildings surrounding the square.

Water burbled from the upended basins held by twin cherubs that were the centerpiece of the modest fountain in the center of the square. The never-ending tinkle of water underscored all the other activity going on around it.

Specifically, the four hot air balloons and their accompanying trucks and trailers. Swarthy Italians swarmed the balloons, inflating them slowly with helium. All four were patterned after the Italian flag, green at the top, then white in the middle, and finally a ring of red around the bottom.

The buckets were larger than I thought. Like giant, uncovered wicker picnic baskets. I guess it shouldn't have been so surprising, since I'd never been so close to one before. I'd only ever seen hot air balloons drifting around through the sky.

"What do you think?" Liam asked. Even though we'd arrived late, they still weren't set up. Apparently even billionaires had to wait sometimes. We leaned against the side of the BMW.

"They're beautiful," I said, watching the balloon closest to us slowly lift off the ground and begin assuming its final shape. It reminded me of a light bulb, the bulge at the top tapering down to a narrow neck that the operator could use to heat the balloon using the large burners mounted beneath.

There was something majestic about the balloons, something graceful and gentle.

The slowly fading sunlight helped with that, too. The dusky light made everything ethereal and timeless. As though everything around us had its own internal glow.

"I know you can just bring up a satellite image of the city," Liam said, "But it's not the same as when you're literally floating above it, looking down."

As the balloons filled, the men crewing them kept them anchored to the ground using bags of sand tied to ropes.

The balloons jerked against this resistance now and again, like animals becoming testy with their bonds, impatient for the freedom afforded by the open sky.

And that made me notice the sky. It had darkened from its afternoon blue to a purplish shade, a few thin streamers of cloud so high they hardly seemed to move topping it off.

"I like to remind myself to look up," Liam said, following my gaze, "It's so easy to let life and responsibility and worry anchor you down and make you forget that there's more out there than you and your troubles."

"And looking up helps you to forget all that?" I said, taking in Liam's wonderment and the way it softened his eyes and gave him a youthful cast.

"No, it's just as bad to forget. It doesn't make me forget. It gives me perspective, tempers me."

"And you swear you had all this planned before I told you about school?" I said, feeling like that message was directed squarely at me.

Then I nudged him in the ribs, bringing those lovely baby blue eyes of his down from the skies and onto me. He smiled at what he saw, a touch of mischief making one corner of his mouth quirk up higher than the other.

"I swear that I didn't. Though it is apt... They're ready."

Other people had arrived while we waited. Other passengers, waiting for their chance to board and grumbling at the whole show starting late. Mostly tourists, I thought.

A large man in a Hawaiian shirt, a black Nikon strapped to his neck, was the first on. The basket, floating a few inches off the ground, tilted alarmingly beneath his weight. The driver tugged the chain to blow more hot air into the balloon to compensate.

Liam had reserved a balloon all to us. And I mean only the two of us.

He held my hand as I stepped up into the basket. It shifted slightly beneath my feet, and a sudden, sickening vertigo curdled in my stomach.