here. No reason to talk as if I weren’t.”
“Sure.” Nick nodded agreeably. “No reason not to tell you, to your face, that Falco’s right. You look like caca.”
“Thank you.”
“You want compliments, you’re in the wrong place,” Falco said, but his usually hard expression softened. A bad sign, Rafe thought glumly. “So, you want to tell us what’s going on?”
Rafe thought of making another clever response, but what was the point? His brothers knew him too well to be fooled. Besides, he was the idiot who’d called this meeting and brought this on his own head.
“Nothing. It’s just been a long couple of days.”
Nick raised his eyebrows. “That’s it?”
Another shrug. Another swallow of beer. Then Rafe pressed the icy bottle against his temple, where a Chinese orchestra playing traditional Mandarin melodies had moved in to replace the departed trolls.
“I, ah, I have some things to sort out.”
“Such as?” Nick asked.
“Just… things.”
Nick looked at Falco. “Your turn.”
Falco scowled. Nobody could scowl quite like Falco.
“You want to tell us what’s happening? You don’t show up at the office—”
“I’m entitled to a day off,” Rafe said, trying not to sound defensive.
“You don’t show up,” Falco continued, “then you phone us and say you need to talk—”
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to. It’s Monday, the market’s in the toilet and here we are, taking a break at your request. You really think we’re going to think it’s just so we could all say ‘hello, what’s new, how was your weekend?’”
“Hello,” Rafe said, “what’s new, how was your—” A muscle knotted in his jaw. “Okay. It’s true. I have a, uh, a slight problem.”
“Blonde or brunette?”
“That’s insulting, Nicolo. I mean, why jump to the conclusion that it’s a female problem?”
“Blonde or brunette,” Nick repeated, and Rafe sighed.
“Brunette.”
“What happened to the Valkyrie?”
“She’s history.”
“How come?”
Rafe narrowed his eyes. “Are we going to discuss the past or the current situation?”
“Don’t get testy,” Falco said mildly. “Okay. So, what is the current situation?”
Rafe stared at his brothers. The thing was, he did know why he’d phoned them. Who else would he turn to when he was in a mess straight up to his eyeballs? And, damn it, yes, this thing was a mess.
He was married. Married, him, a man who’d never even contemplated marriage, who’d run like hell anytime a woman so much as breathed the word. He was married to a stranger from a world so unlike his it would have been funny if it hadn’t been so unbelievable.
That was item one in the “current situation.”
Item two was that even though he was going to end the marriage as quickly as he could pull it off, that hadn’t kept him from, item three, damned near making it with Chiara on his kitchen counter, which led, inexorably, to item four, that she was almost certainly a virgin and having sex with her would, oh damn, item five, make ending the marriage more complicated, never mind item six, that he’d introduced her as his wife and she wasn’t, well, she was, legally, and—
“Rafe?”
And what a disaster of a scene that had been. His housekeeper had all but burst into congratulatory song. Not Chiara. She’d turned bright pink.
“I am not your wife,” she’d said, “and if you think that—that assaulting me makes it so, you are wrong!”
Then she’d fled.
He’d thought about trying to explain things to his housekeeper—who’d gone from looking at him through misty eyes to regarding him as if he’d turned into a serial killer right in front of her—given that up and gone after Chiara instead, but she’d locked her door and when he’d tried to talk to her—
“Raffaele!”
Rafe’s head came up. “Why’d you call me that?” he said, glaring at Nick.
“Because it’s your name. Because you’re a thousand miles away. Because one of us is nuts and the odds are excellent I’m looking at him. What’s the brunette’s name?”
Mrs. Orsini, Rafe thought wildly, and choked back what began as an insane cackle.
“This is amusing?”
“No,” Rafe said quickly, “believe me, it isn’t.”
“So, what’s the lady’s name?”
“Chiara.”
Falco raised an eyebrow. “Very nice. Very sexy.”
“She isn’t.”
“Nice? Or very sexy?”
“She’s not like that, is what I’m saying. She’s, ah, she’s different.”
“They’re always different,” Falco said, “until they get to feeling comfortable.” He made interlocking damp rings on the beat-up tabletop with his beer mug. “I take it this one isn’t feeling comfortable yet.”
Comfortable? A muscle tightened in Rafe’s jaw. She was living in his apartment. Somehow he didn’t want to admit that. He didn’t want to admit anything. He wished to God he’d never started this conversation. In another few minutes his brothers would go from calling him nuts to figuring he needed to be committed.
“Okay,” Falco said, “I get it. You got involved on the rebound. Now you want out. You do, don’t you? Want out? I mean, that’s what this is all about?”
Rafe nodded. “Absolutely.”
“I don’t see the problem. Take the lady to dinner. You know, the it’s-been-great-but-it’s-over meal.”
“It isn’t like that. She wants out, too.”
Nick stared at him. “Well, then there isn’t any problem.”
“There is.” Rafe hesitated. “It’s… it’s complicated. I mean, we both want out. But—”
“But?”
“But, she’s, ah, she’s new to the city.”
“Buy her a guidebook,” Falco said coldly.
“And, ah, and I came on to her and that, ah, that kind of upset her.”
Falco and Nick grinned at each other. “So much for those smooth Orsini moves,” Nick said.
“Hey, I’m trying to be serious here. What I mean is… See, the lady in question is a little wary. Of men. Of sex. Of me.
And, uh, and now I’m wondering if I… if I—” He swallowed hard. “She won’t talk to me.”
This time nobody grinned. “She’s frigid?” Falco said, his eyebrows aiming for his hairline.
“No. Yes. I mean, maybe. I mean, it doesn’t matter because I have no intention of keeping her around very long.”
His brothers were looking at him strangely. He couldn’t blame them.
“Back to what Falco suggested,”