Italian Kisses: A Billionaire Love Story (25 page)

He shrugged, not apologetic in the least. "I wanted you all to myself. What's the point of having money if you can't have nice things?"

It was sweet, and I had to admit I'd been feeling a little anxious about sitting so close to a pair of strangers the whole ride up.

I had just picked up an Italian edition of
InStyle
magazine when the train started humming. Although it was less a sound and more a feeling. It started moving away from the platform. Gliding described it better. Like we floated above the ground, it was so smooth.

And it picked up speed with deceptive quickness. I barely felt the inertia pushing me back into the comfortable padding of my seat.

Yet when I looked out the window Rome had already disappeared, replaced by the rolling fields of the rich vineyards and farmland around the city.

And even that flashed by in a blur. If I wanted to look at any one thing, I had to focus on it and turn my head as fast as I could to get rid of some of the haze of speed.

"Wow," I said again. I'd lost count of times Liam had done something to make me utter that exclamation.

"I never get tired of hearing you say that," Liam said.

"Well it seems like every time I see you, you feed me some amazing food or show me some incredible thing."
Or come out of the shower with that body of yours still flushed from the heat of it and nothing but a towel to cover it
. I didn't voice that last bit out loud.

"I can't help it. You make everything feel new to me, like it's the first time I'm seeing it, too," he said.

The way he looked at me across the table, those baby blues fixed so intensely on my face, made me blush and look down at my hands, which I had clasped in my lap over the forgotten and glossy cover of
InStyle
.

I could sense something from him, some desire to say something, to express something, that he struggled with. What sort of thing did a man like Liam have to struggle with, especially involving me?

"Stop," I said, my cheeks so hot that if they started smoking I wouldn't have been surprised.

"You know that I won't," he said, "You should have learned then when I chased you to the airport."

"So we're going to the Uffizi?" I said, trying to change the subject. The Uffizi Gallery was the foremost museum of art in all of Italy. Perhaps all of Europe.

"That's not what I want to talk about right now," Liam said.

I'd begun shaking a little. I clenched my hands into sweaty fists, crinkling the cover of the magazine. Had our train car heated up?

"Work, then?" I said, "How's your business stuff going? That merger or whatever go through?"

"Emma, look at me. Please, look at me."

I swallowed against a lump in my throat. It wasn't the train car that felt hot. It was me. I burned. It took every last ounce of willpower I had to drag my eyes away from the smiling model on the cover of the magazine to Liam.

He'd leaned his elbows on the table. His eyes kept flicking between my eyes, searching. He licked his lips as though nervous. My trembling intensified, seeing him like that.

"Yeah?" I said, my voice small.

"My business trip has been over for the last week," he said.

"Then why are you still here? Don't you have a huge international corporation to run?" I knew the answer to my question. I just wasn't sure I could accept it.

"Business can wait."

"Said no successful CEO ever," I broke in. I tried to smile, but my lips refused to stop quivering.

"You're the reason I'm still in Rome. Well," he said, glancing at the blurred landscape on the other side of the glass, "Italy, at least."

"Seems like a silly reason to me."

He sighed. "I've known it for a while now. Maybe even that first night we met. The fundraiser. I've just been trying to find the right place, the right way to say it. I thought maybe in Florence, surrounded by all the art you love so much. But I can't wait. I can't hold it in any longer."

"Are you sure? How can you be sure?" I said, my voice very small, so quiet I thought even the low thrum of the train might cover it up.

"I've fallen in love with you, Emma."

My throat started closing up. I couldn't breathe. My lungs started burning with the rest of me.

My heart did its best to beat its way through my ribs. Alternating waves of hot and cold washed over me. This incredible joy started pulsing through me, along with an unbearable fear tinted with guilt.

"You can't be," I said.

"I am, though. I love you," he returned without hesitation.

It was then I noticed the little tissue dispenser on my seat. They'd thought of everything, it seemed. I pulled one out. Then another, for good measure. I dabbed at my eyes.

"Are you
sure
?" I said. I didn't feel worthy of his love, like I'd tricked him into believing it. Like it was some magical charm that would fade as soon as the potion wore off.

I hadn't let anyone love me for a long time. I didn't think I was worthy of such powerful emotion. Who was I to make someone feel that strongly? No one, that was who.

"As sure as a person can be about anything in this crazy, uncertain world and life."

He stood up and shimmied his way around the table, then sat in the aisle chair beside me. He grabbed my hand and held it tightly. Even though it felt like I burned, he was still hotter.

"You make me see things in a whole new light. It feels like my stomach does a somersault every time you smile. I can't get you out of my head, and I never want you to leave. Tell me you feel the same way. Tell me you feel something. Just tell me before I say something stupid and mess this whole thing up.

"I'm trying to put how I feel into words, but there aren't any words that truly describe how you make me feel, that will let me tell you what I want you to know."

He waited, his eyes searching. The tension in him kept building. I could feel it in the way his fingers squeezed mine, in the way his whole hand and the body attached to it started trembling.

I searched myself and knew it was true. "I..."

Liam's shoulders rose and fell in a great, shuddering sigh. He thought I was going to say no. He thought I was about to tell him that he'd let himself open up to me for nothing.

I couldn't let that happen. I squeezed his hand hard, forced my eyes to his. "I do, too."

"Yeah?" he said, the tension started visibly draining from him.

I smiled, even with the tears building up in the corners of my eyes. "I do. I'm in love with you!"

The tension had dissipated enough that he could return my smile. "You make it sound like that surprises you."

"It does, though," I said, "I never thought I'd feel this way about another person. Except I can't help it with you. Does that make sense? I feel like I'm babbling."

"It makes perfect sense," he replied. Then he slipped his hands from mine and cupped my face. He drew me forward and kissed me, not caring about how the few tears I couldn't stop escaping from my eyes wet his cheeks, too.

"You're really staying in Italy just for me?" I said.

"Not 'just' for you. Only for you. There's a difference, don't you see?" He said, his thumbs sweeping beneath my eyes, collecting any more tears that tried tumbling their way to freedom.

Every other part of my life shrank, became less important. Trivial, even.

I was just a girl who loved a boy. A boy who, incredibly, loved me back even though he knew about my faults and my baggage. But wasn't that one of the definitions of love, someone who not only didn't care that you had baggage, but who also helped you to shoulder it?

I laughed, unable to express my relief, my shock and incredulity and joy in any other way. It was catching, it seemed, because Liam laughed, too.

We laughed so much that the people sat in the group of chairs on the other side of the aisle kept glancing our way.

Liam didn't move back to his chair across from me, apparently unwilling to let go of my hand.

And then I looked up through the window. "Hey, is that it?"

A city astride a river started speeding towards us, the buildings growing in scale with each breath I took. I recognized the enormous home of the ancient and extinct Medici family and knew.

"Welcome to Florence," Liam said.

We'd arrived in the historic city, but Liam and I had arrived at a destination I'd never let myself dream of reaching.

S
ometimes I wonder just how magical Florence really was. When we stepped off the train and Liam led me to a waiting cab, I wondered if it wasn't a dream. A fantasy come to life.

The energy of life suffused every fiber of me. I exuded it from every pore. The old buildings and the people who lived in them seemed imbued with that same energy, too. Had it been there all along? Was it everywhere?

Was it something you could only see when new love, its fire so hot and white you thought it could never dim, had you in its clutches?

There was also a sense of urgency. As though tomorrow might be too late. Too late to enjoy Liam's touch, to enjoy all the sights and sounds and experiences that the world, that Florence, had to offer.

Even our cab driver, an older gentleman whose hair had whitened almost everywhere, couldn't help grinning when he glanced back at us. "Ah, to be young and happy," he said.

That might have been it, I thought. It was a moment of true happiness for us. No grey clouds allowed in our blue skies. Untainted by worry or anxiety or fear.

The Uffizi was a huge building that reared up right along the Arno River, which itself cut through Florence. Uffizi is literally "Offices" in Italian. The building had belonged to the Medici and had been converted into one of the first true public museums in Europe after the downfall of the old family.

It was massive, and seemed to consist of thousands of arches and windows. We entered the courtyard hand in hand and right away I felt the eyes of the many beautiful statues in their sconces along the wall watching us.

The courtyard is said to resemble an idealized street. It did. At one end, the one from which we'd entered, you had the archways leading directly to the river. At the other side the ancient medieval palace called Palazzo Vecchio towered into the air.

A covered walkway took up part of the ground level of each side of the Uffizi, columns marching alongside them.

"They have a replica of the David standing out front, if you'd like to see," Liam said, nodding towards the fortress. Even from this distance, I could already see the David. The statue was tall enough to dwarf the people walking up the stairs around him.

"Let's go into the museum," I said, impatient to see the incredible array of artwork stored within.

Feeling the way I did, the artwork within took on an ethereal quality.

The happier I became, the happier Liam became. We rushed through the wings of the museum, both of us desperate to see everything, to take everything in at once.

We ran up a grand staircase, the rails on either side broader than both of my hands set side by side and polished to a high smoothness. At the top of these stairs the busts of many ancient figures watched us impassively.

"You have to wonder what they've seen with the passing of the centuries," Liam said, catching me up before I could go any further. He didn't look at any face but mine, however.

"And what is it you see?" I said, noticing my reflection in his eyes.

"Exactly what I've been looking for my whole life."

He kissed me at the top of the stairs, other museum patrons having to walk around us.

Soon we came to the paintings. So many of them, all masterpieces. They had Botticelli’s
Adoration of the Magi
, as well as Da Vinci's painting of the same name.

There were Rembrandts, Titians, Caravaggios. Those and more. All original. I could have died happy there that day.

The paintings seemed like living things, the colors vibrant, the characters depicted in them in momentary pauses. As though as soon as I looked away they might begin to move.

I'd never experienced the passion that must have gone into their creation as viscerally as I did that day, there with Liam. At its root, passion means suffering. And a great deal of suffering must have gone into making them.

That must also have been why it hurt, deep inside, to be there with Liam. Love hurt. It hurt so good I hoped to never be without that particular pain.

"Everything okay?" Liam said. We stood in front of a roped off Da Vinci sketch depicting a flying machine, and it made me remember that day Liam had taken me floating over Rome in a hot air balloon.

"Better than okay. So much better," I replied. "I guess I keep thinking about how if I hadn't met you that night, I'd probably be back home in St. Louis right now, completely unaware of what I was missing here. Or maybe being aware of it and not caring." That seemed the bigger crime to me, knowing that these things were here to see and choosing to not see them, even though I'd been so close.

"I'd be in an office," Liam said, "New York, maybe. Or London. Thinking about how even though it looked like I have everything that it still felt like I had nothing. It's funny how lonely it can be."

"Then I suppose it's a good thing we bumped into each other that night. It looks like we both needed some saving," I said. If I closed my eyes I could recall the wind moving through my hair and how the city had lit up beneath the basket of the balloon as the sun dipped.

"No argument from me," Liam replied.

"It was like we were both blind," I said, leaning over the ropes to get a better look at the sketching technique Da Vinci used, "So much happening right in front of our eyes that we just couldn't see."

Despite how much we both wanted to stay, eventually we had to move on. The outside world began pressing in.

It happened when I saw a painting by Giulio Romano. That reminded me of the essay I'd written, which knocked over the dominoes of my memory in quick succession. The essay. The awful grade. Dr. Aretino, the reason for the awful grade.

"Can we go?" I said, turning away from the painting.