I Bought His Love, Then He Became the Don novel · Chapter 30 of 76

Chapter 30: Nothing to Pay

At eleven I turned off every light in the shop but one.

The lamp over the cutting table, under the skylight.

I'd swept the floor twice.

I'd moved the dress forms against the wall, so there was a clear path from the door to the table.

On the table I'd laid out one thing.

A man's white shirt, finished that afternoon.

I'd never measured him.

I didn't need to.

I'd watched him carry boxes up my stairs, and sit in a hospital chair, and stand on a bench with a knife.

Upstairs, Dad was snoring.

At least, he was making snoring noises.

At eleven-fifty I went to the back and put on the red dress.

I unclasped the chain from my neck and slid Pasquale's wife's ring off it.

I held it in my fist.

My hand was sweating.

Seven years ago I'd sat down on a bench with a trust fund behind me.

I'd known exactly what I was going to say for only a moment.

Tonight I'd known for two weeks, and I still didn't know how to start.

At midnight the bell over the door rang.

He came in from the dark street in his coat, alone.

He stopped just inside the door.

He looked at the swept floor, and the one lamp, and the shirt on the table.

Then he looked at me in the red dress.

"Lucia," he said. "What is this?"

"Come here."

He walked to the table.

He touched the collar of the shirt with two fingers.

"You made this."

"Today."

"It's my size."

"I know your size. I've known your size for seven years."

He picked it up and held it against himself.

The shoulders sat exactly where his shoulders were.

He laughed, very quietly.

"Nobody's ever made me anything," he said. "Except Nonno. A pair of shoes when I was ten. They squeaked."

"This doesn't squeak."

"I can see that."

He put it down very carefully, folded the way I'd folded it.

"Is that why you wanted me here at midnight? To give me a shirt?"

"No."

I opened my hand.

The little ring sat in my palm, under the lamp.

He saw it, and he went completely still.

"That's my grandmother's."

"Nonno gave it to me. At the show. He said it was mine either way. Not for you to give me. Mine."

"That sounds like him."

"He said if I threw you in the river, I should wear it to the funeral."

"That also sounds like him."

I took a breath.

"So I'm not asking with your family's ring," I said. "I'm asking with mine."

His eyes went to my face.

I got down on one knee on the floor his architect's hands had drawn.

Not like the marble in Lake Forest.

I chose this floor.

"I don't have anything to pay you with," I said. "No trust. No checkbook. I spent the passbook on a roof."

"Lucia."

"All I have is a shop and a father who cheats at cards and a dress I made. That's it. I'm not offering you anything."

"Lucia, stand up."

"I'm not done. I'm asking you for nothing. Just yes. Damiano Santangelo, will you..."

"Yes."

I stopped.

"I wasn't done."

"I know," he said. "Last time I let you finish, you never heard a word I said. I'm not doing that twice."

He got down on the floor in front of me.

His coat spread out on the boards around us.

He took the ring from my palm.

"Can I?" he said.

I held out my left hand.

My fingers were shaking.

He slid the ring on.

It went over my knuckle.

It hadn't. I'd checked it on every finger for a month.

It just fit.

"Yes," he said again, into the space between us. "Yes. For nothing. For free. Yes."

He kissed me.

On the floor of my shop, on our knees, under the skylight he drew on the back of a restaurant menu.

It wasn't like the hallway.

It was slower than that.

He kissed me.

Then it wasn't slow.

His hand slid up into my hair and tipped my head back, and his mouth opened mine.

I pushed the coat off his shoulders.

He let it fall onto the boards behind me, and laid me back on it.

The lamp over the cutting table made a circle of light, and we were at the edge of it.

He came down over me on one arm.

The red dress had ridden up over my knees.

His hand found the bare skin above one of them and stayed there, hot and heavy and still, waiting.

"Lucia."

"Yes," I said. "That's the other yes."

He laughed against my mouth, unsteady.

His hand moved up my thigh, slow, under the red silk, and my back came up off his coat to meet it.

I had my hands under his shirt, on the warm skin of his back, pulling him down.

He kissed the hollow of my throat, the edge of the sweetheart neckline, the swell of my breast above it.

I'd cut that neckline once at twenty, for a boy I thought I'd paid for, and again in January, for nobody but me.

He was kissing it.

My breath came out in a sound I didn't recognize.

He lifted his head.

His hair was in his eyes and his mouth was red and he looked twenty-one again.

"Not here," he said, hoarse. "Not on a floor. Not with your father..."

"He's asleep."

"He's making snoring noises."

I started laughing, and couldn't stop, flat on my back on his coat with his hand still under my dress.

He put his forehead down on my collarbone and laughed with me, shaking.

When he pulled back, his eyes were wet.

So were mine.

He touched the ring on my finger with his thumb, turning it a little, the way his grandfather had in the window light.

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