Page 37 of Ice To Meet You

Just then, he returned to my desk with Claudette draped over one shoulder. He held his fur-coated jacket in the other. “When you said it was bad, I didn’t realise you meant almost fatal.”

The moment he saw Lola, his grin faded to a regular smile. “Hi. How’s your hangover?”

One of Lola’s eyebrows lifted. “I don’t get hangovers. What’s that?” she said, pointing to the jacket in his arms.

“A casualty of cuteness,” Matteo said. His eyes glowed as he tickled Claudette behind the ear. But the moment Lola stepped closer, the air seemed to shift—like someone had cranked the tension dial up to one hundred.

“Claudette used it as a bed last night,” I said. “Matteo cameover on the way home to …” At the tight clamp of Lola’s jaw, my words trailed off. After her jabs about my age and Matteo’s supposed interest in me at the table last night, perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned he stopped by after her party.

She crossed her arms over her chest. “How lovely. You really are a surprise, Matteo. A talented dancer,anda cat lover. You’re the complete package.”

Her voice could cut through steel, and the hairs on the back of my neck prickled.

Almost immediately, Maurice blustered into the gallery, holding two coffee cups. Lola glared at him, then flounced off to her desk.

Matteo beat a hasty retreat, putting Claudette down on the floor. He tied on a scarf and headed to the door with a wave.

“Where are you going?”

“I have an errand to run. I won’t be long,” he said.

My mouth gaped as I stared after him, fully aware I probably resembled a beached fish. What the hell was going on? Where had all my staff disappeared to, and why were they all so tense?

I turned to Maurice, who looked as shell-shocked as I felt. “Is everything okay?”

He gave a theatrical sigh. “What can I say? One minute Lola blows hot, the next cold. I never know where I stand with her.” He sat on the corner of my desk, coffees still in hand, the shape of his mouth rivalling an upside-down horseshoe.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him I’d meant between Lola and Matteo, not him and her.

“Rough night?” I asked. Was I fishing for information? Absolutely. I knew that any designs Lola had on Matteo hadn’t gone the way she’d wanted, because he’d been here with me. And based on Maurice’s physical and emotional hangover, he’d been the one to take Lola home.

“I’m sorry. You really do care for her, don’t you?”

He rolled his eyes. “Yes. Why, I don’t know. But no matter. I’ll soldier on. I just wish I knew how to please her.” He stood, shrugged his shoulders and headed to Lola’s desk.

I drew my brows tight together. Matteo had high-tailed it off to who knows where, and my two mainstay team members had obviously fallen out over some misunderstanding. I puffed a breath through my cheeks, feeling a swath of softness against my arm.

I looked down to see Claudette. Her green eyes closed in a slow, knowing blink, as if she understood everything I didn’t. She at least was unbothered by the chaos.

I scratched behind her ears with a sigh. If only the rest of my team was this easy to manage. With the exhibition looming, I needed everyone on the same page—and ideally, still on speaking terms.

The late afternoon sun streamed through the gallery’s front window, bathing everything in a golden glow. Claudette lay on her back, soft belly up, sprawled luxuriously in the new cat bed Matteo had bought during his mysterious morning disappearance.

I’d not been impressed when he vanished without a word, but the moment he returned with a pink, bow-adorned bed—complete with Claudette’s initial embroidered on the cushion—my heart melted.

She hadn’t left it since.

I glanced up at Matteo, perched on the stepladder in the centre of the gallery. He’d spent the afternoon hanging paintings as part of our trial run for the exhibition layout. The unusually warm weather had coaxed him into just a plain white T-shirt and jeans, his neat hair falling into soft, feathered strands over his forehead.

In one hand, he balanced a thin wooden frame; in the other, he held a hammer—his jaw tight with concentration.

“That man is a machine. He doesn’t have an ‘off’ switch, does he?” Maurice’s voice drew my attention. He stood behind me, coffee in hand, gazing up at Matteo with a bemused expression.

I smiled. No, Matteo didn’t have an off switch. But if his constant state of “on” involved keeping my gallery in order, spoiling my cat, and occasionally making me laugh, who was I to send him to the electrician for a rewire?

With a creak of the ladder, Matteo reached up to adjust a frame. The added stretch caused his T-shirt to ride up slightly, revealing a sliver of tanned skin and a faint trail of dark hair vanishing beneath his waistband.

My breath hitched, heat flooding my cheeks. He reminded me of an angel with the way he hung above me. Just give him a pair of wings and a halo.

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