Total pages in book: 36
Estimated words: 34995 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 34995 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 175(@200wpm)___ 140(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
I shrug.
“Why did you do that?”
“He just seemed...out of my league.” I notice Jolie’s expression changing when I say this, and my gaze narrows. “What is it?”
“I was at Fox Lodge earlier, and Damian was in a meeting with him.”
Since Damian is a billionaire and billionaires usually only do business with other billionaires...
“I did a little digging,” Jolie says as she hands me her phone, and my heart is just numb as I finally find myself reading his name for the first time.
Santino Aleotti.
He’s a professional racer apparently, and if the news reports are anything to go by, he’s really good at it, too.
Santino Aleotti claims victory at Monaco Grand Prix, continuing Elite Speed Inc's dominant season.
I look at the phone.
Then at Jolie.
Then at the phone again.
Then at Jolie again, because maybe if I look at her enough times, the answer will change.
But it doesn't.
So I start scrolling through more images. Him on a podium. Him in a tuxedo at some formal event. Him with his helmet off, hair messy, that same unreadable expression on his face.
"There's not a ton about his personal life online,” Jolie volunteers as I go on scrolling. “He's pretty private apparently. But racing? That's all public. He's been doing this for years. Started karting as a kid in Italy, worked his way up, got picked up by Elite Speed Inc when he was twenty-five. He's thirty-four now. Never been married. No public relationships that anyone knows about."
“Did you...did you read anything about where he lives?”
“Italy.” Jolie’s voice is awkward. “But that was from an article years ago, so things could have changed since then.”
Yes, I’m sure things could have changed since then.
But it also couldn’t.
And that means...
Maybe...he only has a temporary role to play in my life.
"I need air," I say suddenly.
"Thea—"
"I just—I need a minute."
I stand up too fast, and my chair scrapes against the floor, and I leave my latte half-finished on the table and push through the door into the February cold.
The shock of it helps. The cold air, the sting on my face, the way my breath comes out in white clouds. I lean against the brick wall of the building and try to steady myself.
Santino Aleotti.
I finally know his name, and it’s so very fitting that his name, just like everything about him, isn’t in any way...common. Not John or Mike or Dave. But Santino, which is very Continental, and fully explains why he holds his fork the way he does and why he always seems a thousand more times more graceful and elegant than most other men I know. Damian is probably the only exception, but...maybe that’s because they’re both billionaires?
Santino Aleotti.
The more times I think of his name, the more unreal it feels.
Not surreal, but completely unreal.
It’s just completely unreal that a man of his stature has been eating in our hole-in-the-wall cafe for thirty-plus days straight, and even more unreal is the fact that he noticed how I’ve been staring at him all this time. In fact, he didn’t just notice it. He cared enough to count, and isn’t that the most unreal thing of all?
"Thea?"
Jolie's voice. She's coming out of the coffee shop, and she's got my coat in her hands, and she drapes it over my shoulders without saying anything.
"Thanks," I manage.
"You want to go home?"
"No. I'm okay. I just—it's a lot."
"Yeah." She leans against the wall next to me. "For what it's worth? I don't think he cares that you're a waitress. Or that you have bald tires. Or that you're twenty-one and he's thirty-four and you live in different worlds."
"How do you know?"
"Because he followed you home, Thea.”
Jolie’s matter-of-fact voice makes my heart start doing foolish things again.
“Men like him don’t do that unless they care.”
I want to believe her. I do. But there's this voice in the back of my head—the one that sounds like every guidance counselor and social worker and well-meaning adult from Kansas who told me I needed to be realistic, that girls like me don't get fairy tale endings, that my
father's choices meant I had to be careful about mine—
"Hey." Jolie bumps my shoulder with hers. "You want to walk? Clear your head?"
"Yeah. That sounds good."
We walk through town. It's the middle of the afternoon on a Wednesday, so most of the tourists are up on the mountain skiing, and the streets are relatively quiet. We pass the general store, the real estate office with its window full of listings we can't afford, the art gallery that only sells to people who summer here.
And then Jolie stops.
"Thea."
There's something in her voice that makes me look up.
And I see her.
Kimberly.
She's standing outside the general store, and she's everything I'm not—tall and blonde and polished in that way that suggests she was born knowing which fork to use at fancy dinners. She's wearing designer jeans and a white puffer jacket that somehow doesn't have a single