1
Nella
Forget red flags, this guy was a walking emergency distress flare.
He was perfect.
Scruffy blond hair like a rehomed retriever, Instagram-filter skin, wanted to come upstairs instead of ravaging her in the bar’s seedy alleyway. Gold ring on his left hand.
He was the perfect alchemical balance of lust and self-destruction she was after tonight. So she followed him into the penthouse suite she shared with her siblings and shut the door behind them.
‘Whoa,’ he breathed.
The playlist she’d had on before she left started up again. She didn’t know how to turn the automatic function of her brother’s sound system off. And she sure as hell wasn’t going to do something ridiculous liketexthim. So she was stuck in the purgatorial horror of Gen Z’s idea of ‘music’, where guitars and coherent lyrics were endangered species.
She swerved around his frozen form, anticipating his sudden halt like it was a choreographed ballet routine. She was yet to bring a guest to this apartment who didn’t make that annoying sound. Like he thought she’d been lying when she said who she was.
No matter what promises of nudity and whipped cream had been made back in the bar, it was the same every time. They evaporated as soon as her guest was confronted with the floor-to-ceiling glass cabinet of famous Barbarani wine, which stood where any normal person might have put a wall.
Probably for the best – all the whipped cream was expired anyway.
‘I can’t believe I’m here.’ He twirled like Alice in Wonderland rolling out of the rabbit hole.
She shoved past him and tossed her denim jacket across the amber couch (not her choice of colour), then made her inevitable pilgrimage to the kitchen, clinking two glasses onto the marble kitchen benchtop. As her invited interloper proceeded to sniff out his new surroundings, she shoved his glass under the ice dispenser with more force than needed, rogue ice shards grazing her hand. He was gazing starstruck at the framed copy of her grandfather’s wine recipe (secret ingredients blacked out, of course) like it was a sheer La Perla brassiere. She sniffed; he hadn’t paid nearly this much attention toherin the restaurant.
He was good with his fingers (when it came to fingering the statues Nella’s brother Tomaso had decided were artistic and expensive enough to put on display). Tom rarely came here, but Nella liked it well enough – everything was out in the open. No hidden bedrooms, no secret passageways. No lies. No betrayal heaving in the shadows waiting to smother her.
No murder plots.
And the penthouse had fulfilled its purpose these past six months. No matter how many stray bullets and cannons were fired back at the family mansion in Bindi Bindi Cove, she was spared from them here in her war bunker.
Evidence of the apartment’s longest-ever inhabitation was catalogued through the lounge room as her date stepped over discarded pink Ugg boots and G-strings like they were normal debris on a leisurely bushwalk. His eyes lasered across the wall-length paintings – the type of art working-class people scoffed at and said, ‘My three-year-old could paint that’ – but he tactfully ignored the rubble of takeaway containers and coffee mugs as he crossed his arms and took in the view of the sparkling river and Kings Park. When he got to the wine cabinet, he scratched his shaggy cool-dad surfer hair and took a shuddery breath.
‘You cold?’ She squeezed a lime into his glass and added an extra shot of gin to her own.
It was 3.36 a.m. The sickly green numbers on the microwave made her regret every decision she’d ever made that had brought her to this moment: standing in this kitchen instead of being curled up in bed with her laptop watchingAmerica’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaderson Netflix.
‘No, it’s just ... hard to believe I’m here.’
Congratulations, sir, you’re now officially breaching Challenge 21(Don’t drink and swim), which was a reference to the fatal action of bringing up Barbarani Wine in any sort of romantic situation. If he made any sudden movements, it would crumble beneath him. Under normal circumstances she would have kicked him out. But normal circumstances were about four cocktails ago.
Nella raised her brows. ‘In front of my grandfather’s famous wine, you mean?’
He turned to look at her, for the first time since he’d walked in. ‘No. In the home of the most beautiful woman at the bar.’
Urgh.He should have stuck to worshipping at the shrine of her infamous family. Then they could have had immensely satisfying hate-sex.
‘It’s not my home,’ she said. ‘I just come here sometimes.’
That was his opportunity to boast that he could make that happen more than once tonight. But he didn’t take it. Instead, his gaze dropped to a pizza box balancing on the life-size statue of Romulus and Remus suckling the wolf that raised them. ‘How long have you been here this time?’
‘Six months.’ She passed him the glass and took a deep sip from her own.
He gave the liquid a lavish swirl. Of course! She was the daughter of the late wine mogul Giovanni Barbarani. An agile wrist swirl was bound to get her wet in an instant! ‘Gin?’ he asked accusingly.
‘Mmm.’
‘Couldn’t we have some of the wine?’
