Page 4 of The Moon & His Tides
“Cazzo,” I cursed, knocking my script off the console between the front and back seats in my haste to disconnect my call with Cosima and apologize to Savannah for my lack of professionalism.
“Sebastian?” Cosima called before I could cut the call.
“What a lovely name,” Savannah said, her eyes creased at the corners with suppressed mirth even as the rest of her face lay perfectly still.
“You’ll be hard-pressed to find an Italian name that isn’t,” I told her with a wry grin as I quickly picked up the papers that had spilled into the back. I tried to distract her with my charm so she wouldn’t look at them too closely and wonder. “You’ll also be hard-pressed to find an Italian who wouldn’t curse like a sailor after being startled the way you did me just now.”
Her lips pressed, but there was amusement there too. “Is that your way of apologizing for cursing in front of a lady?”
My grin turned wicked. “I believe actions speak louder than words… If we weren’t the definition of lady and the tramp, I would apologize in my usual way.”
Her pressed lips curled. “Let me guess, with a kiss?”
I winked at her. “Exactly, though not on the mouth. Surest way to get any woman outside of the family to forgive you. Trust me, nothing says ‘I’m sorry’ like an orgasm.”
This time, she let herself laugh and the wind chime sound peeled beautifully between us.
“You are outrageous,” she said with a shake of her head.
The movement dislodged a curl, tumbling it across the smooth peaches and cream of her cheek. My fingers twitched to tuck it behind her diamond-studded ear, and the papers I had successfully collected tumbled back to the floorboards.
I quickly ducked back over the console, twisting awkwardly to pick them up, but Savannah was already there with a sheaf of papers in her hand. I watched her eyes snap to the words like the collision of two magnets.
“You write,” she whispered, holding the discarded papers in her hand reverently.
“Uh,” I swallowed harshly. “Yes.”
“Screenplays?”
“Mostly.”
“Hmm,” she hummed lightly, then shifted the papers she held into her lap and held out her manicured hand to me. “Give me the rest.”
I barked out a surprised laugh. “Scusi?”
“Pardon,” she corrected me primly. “Now, Sebastian, hand me the rest.”
“It’s private.” I tried even though I recognized the determination in her eyes because I’d grown up with women, and I learned their capacity for stubbornness from an early age.
Her response was a sharply arched brow.
I sighed, feeling all few of my eighteen years as I petulantly passed her the screenplay I’d been working on for the past twelve months.
“Eyes on the road,” she reminded me as she settled back against the creamy upholstery with her eyes already trained on my words.
It was a seventeen-minute drive to Savannah’s beige brick and white paneled townhome on Halsey, but it felt infinitely longer with my story in her small hands, her big eyes eating up every word with an avidness that disturbed me.
I tried at one point to intervene after she let out a small gasp, but she merely held up a hand when I spoke her name, silencing me immediately.
My gloved fingers thrummed mutely against the wheel as I speculated what classy wife-of-the-amazing-Adam-Meyers Savannah might think of my story. It was about a poor immigrant boy in 1920s New York who ends up selling his soul to a variety of shady characters in order to pay for the safe arrival and setup of his big Italian family.
It was allegorical, obviously, but set in a period of time I’d always found awesomely mysterious, shadowed by backroom deals, Mafia corruption, and scandals that never saw the light of day, thanks to a few well-greased palms.
Corruption, greed, and a ruthless need to survive.
These were the things I knew.
These were things I had been taught growing up poor in Napoli, desperate to free my family from the shackles we’d been born into.
