“Seven-thirty,” I said.
“Somewhere my boss doesn’t own.”
He laughed.
“That eliminates more of Manhattan than you’d think.”
“Figure it out.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Our first real date was awkward.
That was how I knew it was real.
Marco, who could intimidate bankers without blinking, knocked over his water while asking about a novel I had mentioned months earlier.
I admitted I had been in love with him long before the Hamptons.
He looked genuinely stricken.
“You were?”
“Yes.”
“Then I made everything unnecessarily difficult.”
“Spectacularly.”
He reached across the table, then stopped before touching my hand.
I closed the distance myself.
That was the difference.
Months later, we went to Rosa’s for Sunday dinner.
There was no contract in my bag and no rehearsed story in my head.
I wasn’t Marco’s assistant anymore, and I wasn’t pretending to be his girlfriend.
When Rosa opened the door, she was wearing the diamond necklace from her seventieth birthday.
She looked at Marco, then at me.
“This time,” she asked, “did my son tell you the truth?”
I glanced at him.
Marco looked nervous.
I had discovered I liked him that way occasionally.
“Enough of it,” I said.
Rosa laughed and pulled me inside.
Marco reached for my hand.
This time there was no audience he needed to convince.
No family lie to maintain.
No week-long arrangement.
I took his hand because I wanted to.
And after everything that had happened, that small freedom meant more to me than any dramatic confession ever could.
