A Court Gesture Read online

  So instances like this, when once again she was reminded how much she’d never be one of them, well, perhaps it made her angrier than it should. Because she really shouldn’t give a care at this point in her life. It had been years since she was the ugly duckling in high school. She’d attended a prestigious university, graduated Phi Beta Kappa. Earned herself a most enviable slot with a still-relevant international news publication, none of which was too shabby for a girl her age. And by now, she opted to stick with the nerd glasses because, well, they suited her persona. She sort of liked the quasi-intellectual air of gravitas they lent her.

  She was kicking herself, too, for automatically shunning that kind of hot guy who’d offered to get her in. It somehow irked her that he had the upper hand and was clearly “Somebody,” given that he was being ushered past the masses, all of whom were themselves Somebody as well. It made her feel small, and she wanted to get into the stupid nightclub on her own merit, not because some handsome prince (figuratively, not literally, because seriously, not as if the guy was a prince), swooped in on his white charger to save the day for the helpless damsel in distress.

  One thing Larkin Mallory was not was helpless. She’d gotten herself out of a few awkward pickles already since landing this job—once when she referred to the prime minister of Macedonia as “President.” Who knew she apparently was taking him down a notch? Bummer that he didn’t appreciate her gaff and instead condemned her boss for allowing her to ask him a question at a media event. Oops.

  Another time, she nearly caused an international incident by using a word she thought meant “professionals” but actually translated to mean “prostitutes” while interviewing the head of the Bulgarian Olympic committee. There was also the time she hurried to board a train in Switzerland en route to Paris and promptly fell asleep only to realize she’d missed her connection and ended up in Germany. But she figured it out and arrived at the Parisian press conference with moments to spare.

  Unfortunately, this time around, Larkin was up against two human mastodons who had no intention of letting her into their little circle of supermodel friends. And without the appropriate documentation, well, shy of stripping naked and twerking for her supper (and that probably wouldn’t even do it because her dancing skills were lacking), she was gonna be locked out cold. She had no choice but to grovel as she turned back to the hot-looking man with a head of thick, dark finger-running-worthy hair and eyes the intense color of a flock of bluebirds.

  “Um, I’m really sorry, sir,” she said, reaching for the man’s shoulder since he’d already walked past her. He turned around in confusion and she spoke quickly before she lost him altogether. “So, I apologize for the confusion, but maybe, do you think you might be able to help me after all?” If she were the pathetic type, she’d have batted her eyelashes for emphasis, but Larkin prided herself on being self-sufficient and not at all reliant on men to get what she wanted, and as it was, she was crawling behind enemy lines with this one merely by enlisting his aid.

  The man stared at her for a second. “Ahhh, Larkin, was it?”

  She was confused how he knew her name, but duh, that stupid name tag and all. She forced out an uncomfortable smile. “Buono sera, senore. Si, mi chiamo Larkin,” she said, parroting her nametag, extending her hand as a gesture of goodwill.

  “Ahh, parli Italiano?” he said, introducing himself and his cousin. “Mi chiamo Luca. E questo è il mio amico, Sandro.”

  So his name was Luca, and his buddy was Sandro.

  She clasped her hand in his and shook hard, as was her custom, even though weirdly enough he seemed to not reciprocate the gesture. Oh well. She hated when a man had a limp handshake. Which was fine because in about thirty seconds he would be out of her life for good. “Great,” she said, trying to bypass the formalities so she could storm her way past the bouncer. “Yes, I speak enough Italian to not look stupid, but not enough to come across as intelligent, so you’ll forgive me if I default to my native tongue.”

  “And so you’re an American, I take it?”

  She could not for the life of her figure out why this man had any plans on spending time swilling the cheapie bottle of André sparkling wine out front of the nightclub when there was a veritable Grand Cru Champagne of the gene pool lurking inside the place, and this dude definitely looked like he was after the best of the best, not humble old Larkin.

  She nodded her head. “Yep,” she said, dipping her shoulder to try to wedge her way past the bouncer, hoping that her engaging in conversation with the studly one in the expensive suit was her free hall pass. But the bouncer pressed the palm of his meaty hand against her shoulder, causing her to knit her brows at the man chitchatting at her.

  “Sorry,” he said. “You still need me to get you in then?”

  God, she hated when she was wrong, but nevertheless nodded, feeling like a meek little mouse.

  The man tipped his head at the bouncer, who promptly removed his hand, and like that, all objections to her presence in this rarified world evaporated.

  The only problem was she’d been sort of leaning into the bouncer’s momentum, and when he released it, he also let go of her, and she went flying forward, bonking her head into the door as she went and ending up on the marble landing, the skirt of her dress waist-high, her nondescript granny panties exposed for the line of no-doubt thong-loving supermodels to laugh their asses off. That is if they had asses, which they didn’t, skinny beyotches. Though one or two might have gotten those butt implants; for some godforsaken reason, those were supposed to be “in” these days. She could never understand why someone would ever deign to increase the size of their ass, being that hers was plenty big on its own.

  She looked up and saw that not only were those women laughing, but so was her nonprince and his friend, who looked like he probably owned a castle in Tuscany or something himself based on his expensive Italian designer suit and shoes.

  This wasn’t the first time Larkin had been the butt of unwanted laughter—there were plenty of times when the mean girls from the field hockey team would mock her in the locker room where she was changing for band practice just as they were preparing for their practice. You’d think by now she’d have learned to not let it bother her, but it did, nevertheless.

  “Thanks a lot, porca miseria,” she said, staring at him. Perhaps calling him a miserable pig wasn’t the most mature of responses but she couldn’t help herself. What type of man would laugh at her for having fallen like that?

  He stopped laughing as he reached out his hand to help her up. “I’m afraid you misunderstood my amusement,” he said. “Truly, I hadn’t meant to laugh at you. But rather just at the way you were trying to barrel your way in, and the minute brutto, here, who was using his strength to hold you back, let go, you had no choice but to go flying. I’m very sorry if you thought I was laughing at you. Honestly, I wasn’t. I was laughing at the situation.”

  Larkin rolled her eyes. In that case, she’d had plenty of people laugh at her situation over the years. And it didn’t make her feel any better now than it had back in high school. “Fine,” she said, straightening herself out and collecting the contents of her purse that had scattered when she fell. “Whatever. I need to get to work, so, if you’ll excuse me already.”

  With that, she pushed past the big, scary bouncer and left behind her high school trauma redux—because even though she didn’t want to be here covering the beautiful people and all that went along with Fashion Week, she was a hard worker and would do whatever it took.

  Chapter Four

  Holy crap. That chick was a veritable human tsunami.

  Luca felt like he’d been caught up in the curl of a deadly wave and pummeled into the shoreline, battered and bruised but bizarrely invigorated. All in a matter of about a minute. He couldn’t recall the last time a woman just put him in his place, even if he didn’t necessarily need to be put there, all for nothing really. One thing was for sure: she was a force to contend with, which intrigued him l
ike nobody’s business.

  He’d immediately regretted not shaking her hand adequately when she extended hers to him, but he was so unaccustomed to people doing so since it went against royal protocol to shake hands with the prince. Usually, he tried to go with the flow when someone did that, but for some reason with her, he was taken aback by her gesture. Clearly, she had no clue who he was, which was fine by him. At least he’d recovered enough to help her up after that sort of hilarious spill she’d taken.

  “Che la donna è pazzo,” Sandro said, twirling his pointer finger at his head, indicating he thought Larkin was completely crazy.

  Luca smiled and nodded. Crazy, indeed. But amusing, what with all her bluster. He definitely wanted to know more about that strange but curious bird. In the meantime, he had a party to attend and with it a wild night of clubbing ahead of him. It was time to get down to business.

  ~*~

  Larkin was on the clock, so that meant none of the free-flowing champagne that was being passed by the oh-so-cool waiters for her. Boo hoo. Instead, she grabbed a Pellegrino from the bar and wandered the place in search of something to write and someone to write about. The problem was this was so not her scene. First off, she’d never been the nightclub type. Once, in college, her friends persuaded her to go to one, but when she realized a couple was having sex in the bathroom while she peed in the next stall over, that was it and she left the place. Could she help it if she wasn’t the wild party animal? Maybe some folks just weren’t meant to be like that. She was far happier at home with a good book anyhow.

  The interior of the place was a dizzying array of black-and-white graphics: zigzags, stripes, woozy lines, polka dots, and any and every mixture thereof imaginable. That combined with flashing strobe lights and the pulsating beat from the DJ booth made Larkin feel like she was in danger of hallucinating at any given moment. Or at least coming down with a killer migraine.

  As she wandered the cavernous nightclub, going from floor to floor in search of something that felt interesting to write about, she became more and more grumpy about this assignment. She wanted to be taken seriously as a reporter, and covering this fluff clothing nonsense was just so not the way to do that. To think she could be with the Pope right now. Which, as she thought about it, seemed a little cockeyed. She’d rather hang with an elderly religious leader who practices abstinence than have a real social life, like normal people? Although this wasn’t her world either; this was merely her job. She made a mental note to contemplate maybe amping up her social life a teensy bit.

  She finally made her way to the premier dance floor, which was a sea of humanity—ironic, considering she felt like the lone warthog at a giraffe convention, nary a human among them. So. Many. Tall. Women. And thin! How thin? Impossibly so. And elegant. And hip and stylish and freakishly perfect and so very of the moment.

  Larkin glanced around at the models she beheld. There was one who wore just a diagonal stripe of sheer black fabric: it extended from her left shoulder and angled just barely across her breasts, wrapping around her nonexistent waistline, over one bony hip, down sort of thong-like past her crotch, and coming up the back end where it sort of yielded a bow on her other hip. That thing must’ve required a lot of glue to hold it in place in the necessary locales. Not that the woman’s private parts remained a mystery; they were pretty much on complete display regardless.

  Another woman was dressed in a Bubble Wrap tube top and teeny, tiny matching shorts. Lord only knew how she handled going to the bathroom when in Bubble Wrap hot pants. Perhaps that task was made simpler because random men kept pressing their fingers to her outfit to pop the tiny bubbles. If they kept at it at this rate, she’d be bubble free by the time she finished that first flute of champagne and the clothes would slip right off of her. No doubt that would please the men near her.

  All the crazy outfits made Larkin feel acutely humdrum in her gunnysack gray dress that could have been a slipcover for a sofa it was so drab. She made another mental note to attempt to dress a tinge more adventurously. But then again, really? She wouldn’t even know how to dress stylishly, let alone provocatively. She laughed to herself. Imagine, going out in public in see-through packaging material. She rolled her eyes. Not in her lifetime.

  Luckily, or unluckily, as the case may be, she was tasked with photographing the event as well as reporting on it. She hadn’t worried too much about shooting pictures since few would end up running in the paper anyhow. Instead, she decided to amuse herself snapping pictures of the most outlandishly dressed people in the crowd, so she popped off a few of bubble-girl and thong-lady. She squeezed her way along the edge of the dance floor—there was no way she would navigate that crowd and even less of a chance that she’d be caught dead dancing there.

  The place was inducing a PTSD episode from her mean-girl high school experiences as she observed all the beautiful people writhing against one another on the dance floor. Back then, at those high school dances, Larkin was more likely to be serving refreshments behind the cafeteria counter; it provided her with an enormous safety zone, far, far from the potential for dancing—more like flailing—and making an utter fool of herself. All she needed was for anyone more to laugh at her or mock her.

  But she wasn’t that Larkin anymore, she reminded herself as she snapped off a few more pictures of women who looked like they might be important, with huge posses of sycophants oohing and ahhing over them. Larkin wondered for a minute what it would be like to have people—strangers, even—slavering over your every move, but she decided she wouldn’t want that level of attention. They could have it.

  She was fluent enough in Italian to interview some models in their native language but chose instead to approach a group of what looked like American models instead. It would be easier to pick up the nuance in their words and she could get out of here sooner that way.

  She put away the camera and pulled out her notepad and pen and approached a Christie Brinkley look-alike, wishing she had a wig and sunglasses on so no one would compare her to this specimen of human perfection. Christie looked as if she’d just dismounted from her surfboard after riding the perfect wave. In an evening gown. Professionally coiffed.

  Where was the Pope when you needed him?

  She had to look up at her to conduct the interview, the woman was so tall.

  “What are you expecting from Fashion Week?” Larkin yelled over the music.

  The model smiled and nibbled on an almond, poor thing. It was probably her meal for the week. Someone give this lady some chia seed pudding at least. “It’s the culmination of all of our training and hard work,” the young woman said. “It’s why I’ve wanted to be a model since I was five.”

  Larkin tried to put the Pope out of her mind, but it was near impossible. She also tried not to judge the aspirations of a five-year-old yearning to become a supermodel, versus, say, president of the United States. After all, we couldn’t all be world leaders.

  She did wonder if, when the Christie look-alike was five, she imagined she’d be grinding on the dance floor with men who looked to be cover models for romance novels while getting completely trashed on free-flowing expensive champagne or if she figured there was some greater-good aspect to it at the time that might not have yet panned out. Hard to imagine but you never know.

  “So what had you so excited about becoming a model,” Larkin asked. “Did you just like to play dress-up in your mother’s clothes?”

  The model, who she found out was named Taylor, paused to air kiss several other tall friends who approached her while Larkin did her best to be a wallflower.

  “Sure, I always love to dress in fantastical outfits. But it’s not just that,” she said. “I like to help people.”

  Help people feel particularly inferior in her presence is what she probably means, Larkin thought.

  “How so?”

  “Not everyone knows how to put themselves together to make the most of what they have to offer,” Taylor said. “Nothing personal, but take yo
u, for instance.” She pointed at Larkin, who felt the blood rush to her face at that dig. She was so not up for being picked apart by someone a hundred times more perfect than she. “You have gorgeous eyes and this beautiful, creamy blond hair and curves like Jayne Mansfield. You’ve got a cute figure, yet you have these face-hiding glasses and your dress—well, let’s just say it doesn’t enhance your attributes.”

  In the woman’s defense, Larkin had, after all, asked her. And she wasn’t being overtly rude; she was trying to explain why this profession called to her. But Larkin could only hear criticism.

  “Uh, thanks,” Larkin said. “But I’m good with my looks as is.”

  Taylor waved her hands in front of Larkin as if to erase her presence. “I don’t mean to demean you,” she said. “I’m trying to tell you you’re a beautiful woman. It’s just that you might not know how to take the best advantage of what you’ve got.”

  Larkin glared at her. “Like I said, I’m perfectly happy with how I look. I don’t want to change a thing.”

  She flipped her notepad closed and gave a nod, turning on her heel and leaving with the nagging feeling that she’d just told Taylor McFarland, supermodel, the biggest lie of her life.

  Chapter Five

  As Luca was leaving the nightclub with Sandro’s entourage, headed to his cousin’s estate, the bouncer approached him and handed him a piece of something laminated in plastic.

  Luca looked at him, confused.

  “La donna,” he said, rolling his eyes. The woman.

  Luca looked down at the card and chuckled when he saw what it was: a press pass for one Larkin Mallory with the International Chronicle.