Emily: Sex and Sensibility (17 page)

Tears rose in her eyes.

He saw them, drew her close, kissed them away.

“Something is happening between us,” he said softly. “If you want the truth, it scares the hell out of me. But I am not going to walk away from it,
Emilia mia
, and I plead with you not to walk away from it either.”

She began to weep.

Good tears, the kind that came from a heart full of joy.

Marco wrapped his arms more tightly around her.

“I am yours, Emily Madison. And you are mine.”

She was. But she wasn’t. She had to tell him that. Surely, it wouldn’t matter. Not now that he knew her. The real her. Because everything that made her Emily Madison also made her Emily Wilde.

She hadn’t set out to deceive him…

“Emily,” he whispered, and she lifted her head from his shoulder and kissed him, and once again, she let the world spin away.

******

They ended up staying an extra four days in Paris.

“But don’t you have things on your calendar?” Emily said.

Marco shrugged. “As it turns out, I have an easy week ahead.”

He didn’t. He found himself wondering if that qualified as lying after that foolish, impassioned speech he’d made about lies and liars. No, of course it wasn’t. A lie was something that caused hurt.

Telling Emily they could be here another few days, making the surreptitious phone calls necessary to cancel his appointments, was hurtful to no one.

Besides, that didn’t matter.

This was Paris. It was a city of lovers.

There were so many wonderful things to see and do. They strolled through the Louvre. The Jeu de Paume. They walked the winding streets of Montmartre. They people-watched over
demitasse
at a sidewalk café on the Champs-Elysées. They went to Les Puces, the famous flea market that Emily had not been able to see when she and her sisters had been here visiting their father, because he hadn’t approved.

She dropped that piece of information—that she and her sisters had been in Paris visiting their father—unexpectedly, and instantly regretted it. A flea market wasn’t where she wanted to tell her lover the truth about herself, which she was increasingly desperate to do.

“So,” Marco said as they held hands, walking down the long, crowded aisles of the market, “you have sisters?”

She nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“A nice-size family.”

She looked at him. Should she tell him it was a bigger family than that? That she also had three brothers?’

Yes. She should.

“We’re a big family,” she said. “I also have three brothers. Half-brothers. Our father’s first wife died and he married our mother.”

“And everybody got along?”

“Yes. “ She smiled. “We never think of each other as half anything’s.”

He laughed. “Did your father take your brothers to France, too?”

“Well, there’s an age gap. Our brothers were away at school. We were still home.”

“Ah. Must have been fun, a holiday like that.”

She knew he was trying to reconcile what he thought, that she’d grown up poor, with a family that could afford a holiday in Europe.

“It wasn’t actually a holiday. As I told Mrs. Barnett, my father was—is—in the army. We visited him when we could.”

“It must have been difficult. Your mother, raising three girls and three boys with him gone.”

“Actually, she died when we were little.”

Marco let go of her hand, put his arm around her shoulders and drew her to his side. “And who took care of you?”

Nannies. The housekeeper. The ranch hands. And Jacob, Caleb and Travis when they weren’t away at school.

“Hey.”

She looked at Marco. He smiled, hugged her closer and kissed the top of her head.

“If it hurts too much to talk about—”

“No. It doesn’t hurt. It’s just, you know, it’s kind of complicated. There were—there were always lots of people around.”

“Good. Grandparents. Aunts. Uncles. You were not alone,
cara
. I am happy to know that you were cared for and loved.”

That much, at least, was true. She had been cared for and loved, though not by aunts and uncles and grandparents.

Her belly knotted.

She had to end this litany of omissions and half- truths. What had begun as a self-protective way of keeping people from seeing her as a Poor Little Rich Girl had turned into the kind of falsehood she would never have told this man she had come to care for.

Her throat constricted.

To care for? What a lifeless way to describe what she felt.

She loved him. With all her heart. With everything she was.

All the more reason to tell him the truth, but when she did…

Would he be upset? She sensed that he might be. But if he really cared for her…

He must.

She’d seen how he looked at her. When they were alone. When they were spending a simple day together. Or over dinner in the elegant restaurants where he was greeted like visiting royalty? The tiny bistros where the owners fussed over them?

“They hope we’re from the Guide Michelin,” she whispered to him that evening and Marco laughed and said she was probably right.

Or was she?

Watching her face that night, feeling the lightness in his heart, he suddenly wondered whether all the attention they were getting had less to do with the hope of being listed in a famous guidebook and more to do with a French passion for discovering a man and a woman in love.

The thought would not go away.

Late that night, when sleep would not come, Marco pressed a light kiss to Emily’s hair. Carefully, he took his arm from beneath her shoulders, pulled on his trousers, went out on the terrace and quietly closed the doors behind him.

Paris glittered with her own brilliant light, all but eclipsing the brightness of the moon and the stars.

He and Emily were lovers. But love?

The French were such romantics.

He was not.

He didn’t believe in the concept. He had, once, but he’d been young. He’d thought that the grandmother and grandfather who’d taken him in would love him and when that had turned out to be nothing but a bitter hope, he’d believed that love would come with the nuns who’d replaced them.

What came, instead, were beatings and constant reminders that he had been born to a girl who had sinned.

By the time he came to America, he should have been past such nonsense. He wasn’t. Fool that he was, he’d opted for one more attempt at love. His marriage. The woman who had claimed to love him, who had lied to him…

“Marco?”

That was what love was. Lies. Illusions. Delusions.

“Marco. Are you all right?”

He turned around.

Emily stood in the open doorway, his discarded white shirt hanging to her knees. Her hair was loose and wild, ivory radiance caught in among the long gold waves.

“I am—” He swallowed. “I am fine, c
ara.
I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I woke because you weren’t there.”

Something happened to his heart.

He held out his arms. She went into them. And as he gathered her close and buried his face in her hair, he knew that he was a liar, too.

Love was real.

It was true.

Once you found the right person… As he had done.

The unbelievable had happened.

He was deeply, completely in love.

The flight home went quickly.

Marco had a backlog of messages on his cell phone. He’d read through them in Paris and decided they could all be safely set aside, but by the time his plane was halfway over the Atlantic, he knew he had to get up to speed.

“Cara,”
he said softly, “you must forgive me for a little while. I must deal with business.”

Emily assured him that she understood.

Moments later, he was deep in calls on his satellite phone. When he reached for a stack of sticky notes and a pencil, she got to them first.

“Speakerphone,” she mouthed.

He hit the switch. The man on the phone was still talking. Emily listened carefully and took notes. Marco covered the phone.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said quietly. “We’re not at the office.”

Her eyebrows rose. She grabbed a fresh sticky note and printed something on it. Then, with great drama, she slapped it on her silk jacket, jabbed her index finger at him, her thumb at herself.

Marco read the hand-printed sign and snorted with laughter.

You employer,
it said.
Me employee.

“Something the matter?” the guy on the other end of the phone asked.

Marco leaned over, took Emily’s lips in a long kiss.

“Not a thing,” he said, when he lifted his head. “Just my assistant reminding me that she’s here to serve.”

Emily stuck out her tongue. Marco winked, and then they settled into their roles.

That was the way it went each day at the office. Marco was the boss. Emily was his PA His AA. She was, he said, the best thing that had happened to MS Enterprises in years.

She was also the best thing that had happened to its CEO.

They were inseparable.

They worked together during the day, attended business functions together in the evenings when they had to though the best evenings were the ones they spent alone, perhaps having dinner either at little West Village restaurants or at the elegant ones where only a man like Marco Santini could stroll in and get a table.

More and more, they ate in.

Steaks broiled in one of the fieldstone fireplaces. Chicken done on the terrace grill, which was finally getting a workout. Pasta from an Italian takeout on Lexington Avenue. Chinese from a wonderful hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop all the way downtown near Mott Street. And, to his surprise and delight, Emily liked to cook. It turned out he did, too, under her laughing supervision.

On the weekends, they went down to the Union Square Greenmarket, bought bunches of this and bags of that. Then they went home and made dinner together.

He loved the weekends.

The weeknights? Not so much.

Sunday through Thursday, Emily insisted on going home at night, even if it was late.

“I can take a taxi,” she’d say.

Marco wouldn’t let her. He wouldn’t wake Charles, either. Instead, he’d rise from their warm bed, pull on jeans and a shirt, grumble as he got the Ferrari from the new garage, grumble as he drove them to the East Village, grumble about the street, the building, her apartment and, especially, her bed.

It was too narrow, too short, too lumpy.

But he wouldn’t leave her and even though she kept telling him that was silly, she was glad he stayed because falling asleep without his arms around her was becoming impossible.

He said solving impossible problems was his field of expertise. They could solve this one if she moved in.

Her heart said, “do it.”

Her head said “not yet.”

It was too soon. Too much of a commitment. And there was still that thing about his not knowing that she wasn’t who or what he thought she was. There never seemed to be a good time to tell him.

So, she refused.

But she would stay on weekends.

Which was why the weekends were wonderful.

They walked the charming old streets of Soho, explored Central Park. They went to the Bronx Zoo and ate cotton candy and hot dogs; they went to the movies and he tried not to roll his eyes as she sobbed through a chick flick, but he knew better than to call it that.

Then Sunday would come and they were back to two residences even though her toothbrush was in his bathroom and lots of her clothes were in his dressing room.

It made Marco crazy.

As if that weren’t enough, she wouldn’t go to the office with him. Charles drove him. She took the subway. They did the same thing in reverse at the end of the day.

What would people think, she said, if they saw them coming to work, going from work, together?

That they were lovers, Marco thought, and cursed himself for ever having told her that business was business and pleasure was pleasure and the two didn’t mix. It turned out that they did mix. In was, in fact, a perfect combination

After several weeks, he decided to take things into his own hands.

He left his office. Charles was waiting. Normally, they’d have driven home and Emily would arrive later. Taking the subway took much longer, especially at that hour.

But Marco, being Marco, had developed a plan.

Charles was an important part of it.

“Are you positive this will work?” he asked. Marco raised an eyebrow. Charles held his ground. “Are you positive this will work,
sir
?” he said.

Marco laughed. Then he sighed.

“No,” he said. “But I am a desperate man.”

And so, that evening, he got into the Mercedes. But instead of heading uptown, Charles drove to where Emily would board the subway. There were no parking spaces, of course, so he pulled up at a fire hydrant.

A few minutes later, they saw Emily hurrying along the opposite side of the street.

“You know what to do,” Marco said.

Charles nodded. Marco got out of the car and ducked traffic as he ran across the street. He caught up to Emily as she was going down the steps to the subway station.

She glanced at him. Then she did the first double take he’d ever seen except in a movie.

“What are you doing here?”

“Experiencing the joys of rush-hour public transportation with you,” he said cheerfully as he stepped on a discarded wad of chewing gum.

“I’m going downtown to my apartment to pick up a few things.”

“An even longer ride. I am delighted.”

“What’s the matter with you, Marco?”

They reached the turnstiles. Emily had a transit card. Marco had come prepared and had one, too.

“Why should something be wrong with me?”

“I don’t know but something is.” She frowned at him. ““You’re being foolish.”

“I am not the one being foolish,
cara
.”

The train was jammed. They hung onto straps side by side. The woman to his left stood on his foot the entire trip; the guy behind him breathed garlic over his shoulder.

When they reached Emily’s stop, Marco checked his watch. He had not expected Emily to go to her place. Not enough time had gone by for Charles to complete his errand.

“I am hungry,” he said.

“I can make you something,” she said. “Or we can send out—”

He took her hand.

“I am hungry now,” he growled.

She raised her eyebrows. “Fine.”

He marched her into a Thai restaurant. They’d made the mistake of eating there before. The food was either spicy enough to cause cardiac arrest or so bland it tasted like porridge. The wait staff should have been called the wait-forever staff; they were pleasant but that was how long it seemed to take for them bring menus, take orders and deliver food.

Emily thought of reminding him of those problems at but one glance at his face and she changed her mind.

He seemed nervous.

Marco Santini, nervous?

Now she was nervous, too.

After they were finally served, they picked at their pad Thai and red curry. An hour dragged by. Marco looked at his watch. He turned in his seat, caught their waiter’s eye.

“The bill,” he barked.

“Whatever’s wrong with you,” Emily hissed, “don’t let it out on him!”

He glared at her but he took a fifty from his wallet and added it to the money he’d already left. Then he marched her outside.

Charles and the Mercedes were waiting at the curb.

“What’s Charles doing here?”

“He is here to take us home.”

“I told you, I have to go to my place first.”

Marco grabbed her hand and started walking her toward the limo.

“No, you do not.”

“Yes, I do. I need—”

“You need nothing,” he said, as Charles opened the rear door. “Is it done?”

“It is, sir.”

“Is what done?” Emily said as she got into the car. “Really, Marco—”

“You are all moved in.”

She blinked. “What is all moved in?”

Marco folded his arms as the car pulled into traffic. She knew what that meant. He’d reached some intractable position on some impossible subject. There were times he was worse than arrogant!

“Your things. Your clothes. Makeup. Books, jewelry, even your hair dryer. All of it is at my place. Right, Charles? “

“Right, sir.”

Emily looked at the chauffeur in the mirror. His mouth curved in a very small smile.

“Let me get this straight,” she said slowly. “You moved everything I own—
everything
—out of my apartment and into yours?”

Marco shrugged. “I suppose it is possible some small thing was overlooked. We will come down on the weekend and you can—”

She hit him.

Not hard.

It was more a punch to his shoulder and it made him want to laugh but he was not a foolish man and laughter, he was sure, would be a mistake.

“Do you remember my calling you arrogant? Well, you’re not. You’re—you’re smug and self-centered and you will move all the stuff you took straight back because—”

“Emily. We need to change things. I want you with me, not in that unsafe hovel.”

“It’s not unsafe. It’s not even a hovel. There are worse places.”

“
Si.
The neighborhood where you worked.”

“All cities have slums. Back in Dallas—”

“That’s the point, sweetheart. I don’t want you living as you did growing up. I want you to have all the things I can give you.”

There it was again. The lie she lived with. The lie she could no longer live with.

“Marco. You have the wrong idea about how I grew up. I never said we were poor—”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“But I do! I didn’t grow up poor. I grew up—”

“In a big family.”

“Well, yes. “

“With a father who supported you on army pay.” Marco took her hand. “I have money,
Emilia mia
. I am a wealthy man, and what is the point of all that wealth if I can’t spend it on you?”

“I know what you think. How it looks. My apartment. The job playing piano.” Emily swallowed hard. “See, I didn’t have to live that way. I chose to. I wanted to be independent. I never had been, not in my whole life. My family—”

“Emily.”

“Please. Please listen!”

“Sweetheart. I love you.”

“You have the wrong idea about me,” she said desperately, “and—and—” Her eyes widened. “What?”

Marco leaned forward, pressed the button that put the privacy screen in place. “I love you,” he said. “I want us to live together. Do you understand? I love you. And you love me.” He paused. For the first time since they’d met, she saw uncertainty in his face. “You do, don’t you,
cara
? Because if you don’t—”

Emily flung herself into her lover’s arms.

******

A single rule remained.

It was the one about people seeing them together outside the formal setting of the office. And, Marco insisted, it was inane.

“We are together here the entire day. We go on business trips together. What can it possibly matter if we arrive at work and leave together?”

“It was your idea. Not to mix business with—”

“It was a foolish idea.”

“If people see us coming in together and going home together, they’ll suspect that we’re… involved.”

He laughed because they were, at that moment, very involved. They were in bed, she with her head on his shoulder, his arm tight around her, her thigh over his.

“Don’t laugh at me,” she said with mock indignation.

The truth was, he doubted they were fooling anybody. He knew damned well he couldn’t keep his eyes off her, and each time she looked up and saw him watching her, she blushed in a way that made his hormones go crazy.

Not that any of that affected her competence.

She was the best assistant a man could ever hope to have. He didn’t even think of her as his assistant anymore. She was his partner.

She composed most of his letters without needing any input from him. She wrote his reports and memos. She was his sounding board when he needed one; she was his first-line contact with his various department heads, all of whom seemed to think she was remarkable. She was his Keeper of the Door. Nobody got past her unless she knew that was what he wanted.

Not mixing business with pleasure had, until now, seemed logical. He’d always assumed having sex with a woman who worked for him would undermine office efficiency, but after six weeks, he knew that was patently untrue.

And they weren’t having sex. They were making love. They were
in
love. Why shouldn’t the world know it?

The realization hit him at work one afternoon in early November.

The world
would
know it if they took the next step. A logical step. One people took after they fell in love.

He fell into his chair. He wasn’t ready for that. Not yet. No. Not yet.

Marco grabbed a handful of letters from his desk and buried his nose in them.

He read until he thought his eyes might glaze over.

One letter was particularly awful

It was a pompously-worded missive from a pompous bank that wanted him to build it a new world headquarters that would “enhance its image of tradition and privacy.” And pomposity, he was thinking when he suddenly looked up, glanced out the open door of his office, saw Emily standing at the printer, frowning at it, her hands inky, her hair coming undone from the very demure pony tail she insisted on keeping it in for work, and the truth hit him, full force.