"Everything you say and do here is confidential," I murmur. "If I hear of anyone getting wind of what you did, you are dead. You realize that."
"It won’t come to that," Christian angles his body, half-blocking her from my view.Interesting."I vouch for her,fratellone," he adds.
The woman jerks her head in his direction. She firms her lips but doesn’t say anything.Veryinteresting.
"Do you now?" I stroke my chin. "Can I trust you to keep an eye on her?"
"I don’t need anyone to keep an eye on me," she snaps at the same time that his features brighten.
"With pleasure." The bastard all but rubs his hands together.
"Meet me in my office in ten minutes." I walk past them and to the exit.
As I leave the room, I hear her say, "I don’t need you to vouch for me." Her tone is so chilly that it could freeze a gelato in seconds.
I can’t stop the smirk that curls my lips. This, whatever it is between them, is going to be fun to watch. I head up the stairs and to Beauty’s room.
I walk into her room and find her bent over the table. Her back is to me and that gorgeous peach-shaped behind of hers wriggles as she focuses on whatever it is that she is working on. Around her, there are crumpled pieces of paper on the floor. More paper is strewn all across the table. As I watch, she straightens, then balls a piece of paper and tosses it over her shoulder. I reach forward, snatch it up and out of the air. I straighten it out, take in the half-sketched design which looks like the outline of a woman with the dress sketched on her.
"It’s called a croquis."
"Whatquis?"
"A croquis," she replies without turning around. "A quick sketch of a human body that serves as a template for a fashion designer piece of clothing."
"I knew that."
"No, you didn’t."
"You’re right," I agree and she turns to scowl at me over her shoulder.
"What are you doing here?"
"Glad to see you are enjoying yourself." I toss the wadded-up piece of paper in the general direction of the piles of paper she’s abandoned on the floor. "We do have a wastepaper basket in the room."
"I’ll clean up the room once and for all at the end."
"What are you drawing?" I step behind her, try to peer over her shoulder. She moves to block my view.
"None of your business."
"Everything about you is my business."
"Don’t you ever give your alphaholeness a rest?" She huffs.
"Do you want me to give it a rest?"
She raises a shoulder, "I am not sure I’d recognize you if you ever started conversing like a normal person."
"Normal is boring, Beauty. No-one understands that more than you."
"Oh?" She turns to shoot me a glance over her shoulder, "How do you know that?"
"Haven’t we established many times over that I know you better than anyone else?"
Her forehead furrows. "It’s true, actually," she concedes. "Only, I don’t understand how someone like you can be intuitive enough to understand what I like."
"I know what you don’t like, too."