telling me he owned a house in Italy. He must think I was the dumbest of the dumb, and he’d be right.
“I do. Want me to translate? Or I can order for both of us if you’d prefer?”
“Uh, could you just order?” The less I said the better.
“Sure. Is there anything you don’t like?”
“Mushrooms, and I’m not very keen on sushi.”
“It’s okay, I’m pretty sure they don’t serve sushi here.” He tried to keep a straight face as he gestured at the decorative bottles of olive oil arranged on a shelf. Tried and failed.
Stop talking, Lara. I wanted to slap myself. Or crawl into a cave. Or curl up and wither away quietly. Was it possible for me to say one thing, just one thing, that didn’t make me sound like a complete moron?
I stared at the table, developing a fascination for the ornate detail on my knife and fork as the waiter returned. Nick rattled off a string of Italian at him, and he replied, also in Italian. I understood none of it, but I did catch the waiter glance at me and smile. Nick was probably telling him how much of a klutz I was.
Once the waiter left, silence reigned again. I sat there twiddling my napkin in my fingers until Nick spoke up.
“You want to fill me in on what’s been happening while I’ve been away? I got a condensed version from Emmy on the phone earlier, but mostly she was busy chewing my ass out.”
I forced myself to look up at him. “She hired me to clean up your house, and she said you needed someone to keep things tidy going forward. I thought you knew about it. I honestly didn’t realise you didn’t.”
“Yeah, I know that. Believe me, I gave as good as I got in my little chat with her this morning. Well, maybe not quite, but as close to it as anyone will ever get with Emmy. What I need to know now is whether you’re sticking around?”
“Honestly? I don’t know.” Yes, he’d apologised, and he seemed sincere, but I hated the thought of staying somewhere I wasn’t wanted. Then there was the small matter of me turning into a complete ditz in his presence.
“What can I do to convince you to stay?”
Did that mean he really wanted me to?
“I guess I don’t want to feel like I’m in the way. I understand that you didn’t even want a housekeeper?”
“I’d never seriously entertained the idea before. As you can probably tell, I haven’t spent much time in that house. More than a few times, I’ve wondered why I even kept it.”
“Couldn’t you just sell it?”
His eyes changed, going from a rich brown to something darker as he stared past me to the window. In the mirror behind him, I saw a bird soar past the clouds, wings outstretched.
“I can’t,” he said finally. “I loved it once.”
I had a strange feeling he wasn’t only talking about Adler House when he spoke those words.
“What about your other properties?” I asked softly. “Nadia said you had two.”
His sadness melted away as he turned back to me. “I only use the place in Italy for vacations. The LA house is habitable, but the designer Bradley hired made it into a museum of modern art. I’m scared to set foot in it in case I break something. Mostly I stay in a hotel because it feels more hospitable.” He laughed, but not because he was amused. “I’m a thirty-five-year-old hobo.”
“Surely the decor can’t be that bad?”
“The living room has three couches consisting entirely of right-angles that are less comfortable than a bed of nails. All the furniture’s white, except for a rug that looks like a cat threw up on it, and there’s a clock with no numbers that plays excerpts of Holst’s Planet Suite on the hour, every hour. I tried accidentally dropping it, but the fucking thing was covered by a lifetime guarantee, so the designer got me another one. And Bradley told me I couldn’t have a TV because it wasn’t good Feng Shui.”
I laughed. “Okay, it does sound kinda sucky, I’ll give you that.” Sucky? My vocabulary had regressed to that of an eight-year-old.
Nick picked up a breadstick and bit into it, silent until he’d finished chewing. “The Richmond house is the only one I’ve ever liked. Maybe I’ll try living in it for a while, see how it feels.” He reached for his glass of water and took a sip. “I’ll need your