A Starlet in Venice Read Free Page A

film people fed her. In Venice, she survived on takeout. She had once wryly commented to me that she had all the attributes of a woman that men fucked, not married.
    Silly rabbit. If there was the slightest chance that she would accept, I would have proposed in a heartbeat.
    “I thought I’d wait for you,” she responded. “I haven’t been here long, in any case.”
    “How was the shoot?”
    She grinned more cheerfully this time. “It was pretty awesome,” she replied. Her entire face lit up when she talked about her work. I could have watched her all day. “How’s the writing?”
    It was my turn to smile. “The book is in my editor’s hands,” I said.
    “And?” she prompted. She knew this book had been giving me trouble.
    “And I think it’s pretty damn awesome,” I said. She laughed and we clinked wine glasses.
    “Let’s drink to your book and my shoot,” she said.
    I shook my head. “Not today, rabbit. Tonight we are drinking to the night we met,” I said. “Exactly a year ago today.”
    ***
    Tatiana:
    I didn’t even know how to process the fact that he’d remembered this was the one-year anniversary of the night we met. So in classic avoidance mode, I didn’t.
    “Movie?” I asked him brightly instead, getting up to put the film into his DVD player. Liam had been vocally horrified that I’d never seen either part of Kill Bill, and we had planned a viewing marathon tonight to rectify the situation. We were going to watch movies till the sun came up.
    “This is really good,” I said, as I ate the stew that he had made. I had never learned how to cook. All I had learned in the orphanage I had grown up in was to feel violated from the leering gazes of old men. “You are so very domestic,” I teased him. “The Dom of Casanova, the Domliest of them all, and he makes an amazing beef stew.”
    “Only the best for you, rabbit,” he winked. He drained his glass of wine, and walked over to the refrigerator, pulling out a beer. A stout, of course, but not Guinness. I’d asked once, and he’d given me this explanation that went on for entirely too long about how Guinness was undrinkable outside Ireland. Something about draught taps and nitrogen and I’d pretty mostly tuned out.
    “You are such a cliché,” I told him.
    He laughed easily. It was one of my favourite things about Liam. He was always good natured, always cheerful and always easy to be around. “An Italian drinking wine mocks the Irishman for drinking beer,” he noted dryly. “Shall we get this movie going?”
    We each leaned against an arm of his couch, sharing a blanket, our legs meeting in the middle. I’d done the exact same thing with Liam many, many times over the last year, but tonight, because of the punishment I’d seen earlier, something felt different. I was more aware of him. I felt the heat emanate from his body, and I wanted to curl up into him with a yearning that I didn’t think I could keep under control.
    He nudged my legs to move them out of the way – a game we’d played many times, trying to jockey for space. I pushed back and he grinned at me, a slow, lazy grin that sent shockwaves of desire through me.
    Stop this, Tia, I told myself sternly. He’s your friend, nothing more. If he’s looking for sex, there’s a roomful of women downstairs that’ll meet his needs.
    We watched the movie for a while, though I wasn’t really paying attention to it. When I watched the opening scene without flinching, the scene where Uma Thurman killed the woman in front of her five-year old daughter, Liam cleared his throat.
    “Are you okay, rabbit?” he asked me. His voice was concerned. “You seem a little sad tonight.”
    I had three big secrets. No one knew them all, and these secrets shaped the person I had become. I had never shared them with anyone, because to tell them would be to strip me bare. Revealed by them, I would be raw and naked and completely vulnerable, and I couldn’t let myself trust anyone that