My Funny Valentina Read Free Page A

explanation, trying to hold the bucking black metal door shut with just her twiggy body.  ‘He said he’s here for V–’ Before Kandi could finish her sentence she was knocked off balance, the door swinging wide and the man himself appearing – all six-foot-three of him, his sculpted upper frame filling up the entire top portion of the doorway. 
    W hich seems somehow appropriate, Valentina’s thoughts went every which way at once.  He is a native son, after all, of what’s known as the ‘City of Big Shoulders’.
    ‘ Ah, for the love of –’ Lars’s sigh held deep exasperation.  He lowered his camera seeming resigned to taking care of the problem himself. ‘Look, stud, the auditions for male models for our ‘Hunk of the Month’ calendar shoot don’t start until this afternoon.  Now we’re in the middle of a very important photo layout here for a major clothes designer that you’re interrupting.  Either leave your portfolio with Kandi, or come back later today at two...’
    Valentina saw how the mistake might have easily been made as her husband was, in a word – ‘gorgeous’. 
    Definitely male model material.  
    Her h eart jerked, having not seen him in a year; one sweeping glance from his gleaming dark head to his polished shoes, confirming her recollections of his magnificence had all been correct and not overly embellished by their lengthy separation.  If anything, he was bigger, brighter – shone more brilliantly, eclipsing all men around him to unnecessary colorless stick figures.  He wore a charcoal-grey suit on his ruggedly lithe body and he wore it well. 
    Brioni .
    M ade of a rare vicuna fiber.  Ten hours of hand sewing and over forty stages of ironing by the exclusive Italian clothier whose custom-made suits could equal the cost a luxury car.  Valentina knew all this detailed information having splurged and ordered that particular suit for her husband’s thirtieth birthday two years ago.  
    T he olive-toned skin beneath the Brioni was just as burnished in arresting contrast against a dazzlingly white dress shirt, as she recalled.  The chiseled symmetry of his face was all hard male perfection.  Just as she’d so often dreamt it during 365 long barren nights.  Framed by hair cut ruthlessly short, she knew, to thwart the glossy dark curls that were his heritage.  The distinctly masculine, well-shaped brows above his eyes still provided her a true barometer of his emotions – lowered now, as they were, in a menacing glower.  And that mouth.
    O h, that mouth!
    A shimmering miasma of just what that superbly molded mouth was capable of, ensnared Valentina in a fast-moving wildfire of incandescent heat.  That mouth her entire body had once genuflected before, had wanted to shout about from the rooftops, could take on a devastating sensual curve when he was happy or... aroused …but it was neither now, instead maintaining a tight clenched line of furious anger.   That mouth she had once revered opened.
    ‘ Was there something you forgot to tell me?’
    A chilling softness was detectable in his voice and Lars, for one, appeared confused by the question.  He pushed his glasses up to the top of his shiny dome, looking over at Stash with a puzzled expression, ‘Er…what’s that you said now, bud?’
    ‘ I said I need to speak to Valentina – alone! ’  Stash slashed out, sparing him just a flick of a look before cannoning another icy black glare her way that made her blood run cold.
    ‘ Mama mia , the strong commanding type I love,’ Mario’s hot pant of breath in her ear sent one of her shoulder-grazing peacock feather earrings swaying.  He stared over at Stash enrapt. ‘How did you get so lucky, cara? ’
    Valentina swallowed . ‘He’s my hus – my ex -husband…’ 
    One black brow on the man across the room arched high upon overhearing her use of the descriptive pronoun ‘ex’.   Valentina knew by that almost imperceptible bodily twitch she was not