Page 22 of My Dark Fairy Tale
“Si, she needs a new wardrobe for summer. Is Maria Teresa working with you today?” When she nodded, he went on. “Good. When you have picked out some outfits, tell her I will pay her extra to go gather shoes and accessories for Guinevere while she wraps everything up here.”
“Raffa,” I started to complain when I lifted the tag on a linen dress and saw it was €1,500. “Please, I can’t afford—”
He lifted his buzzing cell phone from his pocket and raised a single finger to hush me. “I must take this. Maria Lucia, please ignore whatever protests Signorina Stone gives you, and if she is reluctant to shop, choose for her,capisci?”
Before either of us could respond, he turned on his heel and strode for the door, answering the phone with a short, sharp “Pronto.”
I blinked after him, then turned with a little wince to face Maria Lucia again.
She was grinning at me conspiratorially. “It is best, I’ve found, not to argue with Signore Romano.”
Romano. Well, at least I knew his last name now. Maybe I could google him from the changing room to find out who exactly my fabulously wealthy benefactor was.
“He’s a little overbearing,” I agreed with a sigh, trying to think about how much money I could afford to give Raffa for this designer wardrobe he was insisting on.
I had the ten grand saved for my trip, but some of that had already been spent on the apartment I’d rented and still hadn’t seen, and the few excursions I’d booked, including a day trip to Volterra to see the Etruscan ruins.
Now that Raffa had made an appointment this afternoon to expedite my replacement passport, I’d have access to my accounts again by next week, which was frankly a massive relief. Because it meant I didn’t have to divulge the details of my trouble to my parents.
I agreed with Raffa to a certain extent. They deserved to know I’d been really sick and maybe even hurt, but I wasn’t going to tell them enough to jeopardize my trip.
For the first time in twenty-three years I was doing something forme, and I wouldn’t give that up without a fight.
“Don’t stress,” Maria Lucia encouraged me with a gentle pat to my forearm. “Signore Romano is a very successful man. He can afford to spoil hisragazza.”
“Oh, I’m just a friend,” I corrected, awkwardly moving my hands as if I could erase the question from the air between us. “Not even a friend, really. He’s just helping me out.”
“Of course,” she soothed, but the creases beside her smiling eyes said otherwise. “Let’s get to work, either way. He is not a man who likes to be kept waiting. You are a size forty, I think? Yes. Do you have favorite colors?”
“Maybe just neutrals. I don’t usually wear bright colors.”
“Red.”
I jerked my head around to see Raffa coming back into the store, his phone still pressed to his ear, one hand covering the microphone.
“I don’t really . . .”
“Red,” he repeated. “It is my favorite color.”
Oh.
He turned away from us to speak into the phone again, pacing the front of the store.
I didn’t know what to think about him wanting to see me in his favorite color. It felt somehow inappropriate.
Intimate.
Like he’d imagined me in shades of red and found himself pleased with the image.
“Well then, we better find some lovely shades of red,” Maria Lucia said with a wink before gently leading me deeper into the store, chattering away about Gucci’s new summer line and Valentino’s to-die-for poppy patterns.
I let her compile an excessive number of outfits, all of them hanging together in the spacious changing room at the back of the store when she practically pushed me inside to try them all on. I wasn’t a fan of shopping on the best of days, but only because I’d never really gone shopping with friends or even my mother or sister growing up. Being ill so much had barred me from those little pleasures, and I hadn’t realized until now, trying on a slightly sheer black tank dress, how much I wished I’d had that time with Mom and Gemma.
Maria Lucia and Maria Teresa both cooed and exclaimed over me each time I emerged from the room to show them my outfits, fussing over me as they pinched the fabric at my waist and tried to prop my small breasts up more appealingly in low-cut tops. They’d pulled things for me I’d usually never wear in a million years: a citrus-yellow maxi skirt and white silk cropped shirt, a sunset-orange midi dress with a sweetheart neckline, and a long, form-fitting dress that made me look like I was dipped in liquid gold silk. Everything was too bold, too extravagant, utterly inappropriate for my simple life back home in Ann Arbor.
But even I had to admit, as I twirled in an almost backless white linen shift dress, that it was the perfect wardrobe for a summer in Italy.
Raffa appeared at one point, leaning against the wall across from my changing room with his arms crossed, a small scowl fixed to his face as if his features had been molded that way since birth. At first it made me self-conscious, but the Marias’ excitement was contagious, and when Maria Lucia took my hand and twirled me around in a red Oscar de la Renta, I laughed with her, spinning until I was dizzy.
