Page 33 of Angel
Chapter Ten - Paige
I packed just enough outfits for three days. No more and no less. I couldn’t tease myself by bringing anything extra.
Staying at Angelo’s meant treading dangerous, shark infested waters. Even though I knew I couldn’t go through with the arranged marriage, even if I was threatened by Moretti or anyone else, things would soon get complicated between me and Angelo.
I was falling for the guy. Hard. I wanted to tell myself it was because of my two-year dry spell, but I knew it wasn’t. It was him. Plain and simple.
Who knew what would happen once I refused to marry this Moretti guy? We didn’t know just how Angelo’s family was tied up in it all, but if it looked like he was part of my reason for refusing to go through with it, no doubt things would get bad for him.
The situation was anything but simple.
I needed simple. I needed average. Normal. I needed a guy who worked at a bank or an elementary school. A guy who rode his bike home at the end of every shift and spent each Sunday with his family on Staten Island, eating potato salad and dry turkey and watching football. The kind of guy who didn’t even know the mafia still existed.
The problem, though, is no average guy has the things Angelo does. Average guys don’t melt a girl’s panties with one look. They don’t have a touch that turns you into jelly. And not all of them stay with you all day in a hospital, doting on you nonstop. Especially not after knowing each other for such a short amount of time.
Even without the arranged marriage part getting in the way, Angelo and I probably wouldn’t have lasted. We started off so hot and heavy, I was sure the glory days would fizzle away to something lukewarm and uninteresting.
At Angelo’s building, we stepped out of the car right at the front stoop. He tossed his keys to a valet then rested his hand on my elbow and guided me towards the door being opened by a doorman. I was slightly embarrassed walking into such a nice building with a crappy old sweater on and a duffel bag hanging from one hand, but I kept my head high.
The elevator glided up the floors, taking us to the fifteenth, the top.
The ends of the short hallway were visible from the center. There was only one door, directly in front of us. Angelo found his key and let us in.
The large main room stretched out before us, as big as my entire apartment. The far wall, made of exposed brick, held four windows exposing the view of the building across the street. Paneled wood on the bottom and burnt orange paint on the top decorated the other four walls. With exposed beams and a thick, silver pipe running across the length of the ceiling, the place was something out of a magazine.
Angelo securely locked the door behind us, giving me another moment to take in the bookcases, two long, matching couches, and grand piano.
“I’ll show you your room,” he said from behind me.
I turned my face away so he wouldn’t see my disappointment. So much for his suggestion that we share a bed. What happened to the one night we slept together at his family house? Was that just a fluke?
It was probably just as well. Though I would only be staying there for a few days, I needed to keep reminding myself that it was all temporary. Sharing a bedroom together might make things harder anyway.
We walked through a doorway and into a smaller room. The doorway to the right revealed a kitchen and the one to the left a sitting room of some sort.
Right in front of us a polished wooden staircase wound up. I trailed behind Angelo, surreptitiously gleaning all the clues I could. The place was a mansion. And in the middle of the city, no less. Being in Angelo’s penthouse was like stepping back in time to New York’s Gilded Age.
Unlike his family home, the walls contained no photos. There seemed to be plenty of furniture, but the space was immaculate and elegantly put together. It didn’t have a lived-in feel at all.
The new landing took us down a wide hallway and past several closed doors.
“Here’s the best guest room,” he said, stopping at one near the end of the hall.
Decorated in off whites and creams, it contained a king size bed, a love seat, and a pretty Oriental screen decorated with flowers.
“The bathroom is there.” He pointed to the door to the left. “And there’s a walk-in closet in there as well. And this...”
He walked to the space directly across the bed and clasped two small knobs on what I previously thought was a normal dividing screen. Pulling them, the screen divided in half to reveal a flat screen TV on the wall.
“Is the TV,” he finished.
“Wow,” I breathed, genuinely impressed. “This is really nice.”
“Are you hungry?”
The question made me realize I was ravenous. “Yeah, I am.”
“I can go start some dinner. What would you like?”
