Her voice sharpened. “I said put it down, Emma.”
She knew my name. Of course she did. She just never used it except as a weapon.
She turned to the guests with an embarrassed little laugh — the kind of laugh that asks everyone to agree that this is funny. “Please forgive her. She’s new.” Then she looked straight at me, and the laugh died. “And apparently desperate for attention.”
A few people smiled politely. Nobody laughed. Because Luca Moretti had not taken his eyes off the plate in my hands, and when Luca Moretti looks at something, everyone else in the room looks at it too.
He was perfectly still. That was the frightening part. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t stand up. He just watched me with those dark eyes, and I understood in that moment why grown men lowered their voices around him.
Vanessa folded her arms. “Explain yourself.”
The Questions
I looked past her, directly at Luca. My mouth was so dry I could barely get the words out.
“Sir, did you order the sea bass?”
His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Yes.”
“And Mrs. Bellini ordered the chicken?”
“We’re not married yet,” Vanessa snapped.
I ignored her. I kept my eyes on Luca. He glanced down at the plate sitting in front of Vanessa, then back at me. “Yes.”
I swallowed. “Then these plates were switched.”
Vanessa actually laughed — a real laugh this time, bright and disbelieving. “That’s what this performance is about?” She reached for Luca’s dinner, the one I was holding. I stepped back and moved it farther out of her reach.
That was when I noticed the two men near the doorway straighten up. Not servers. The kind of men who stand near doorways for a living.
Vanessa saw them too. Her voice dropped low. “You have five seconds to put my fiancé’s dinner back before you leave this house permanently.”