Chapter 1 - The Practice Woman
At 4:17 on a rain-dark Thursday afternoon, Meline Hayes drove a pearl-headed pin crookedly through six hundred dollars’ worth of French silk because Lorenzo Moretti leaned across her cutting table and asked whether telling a woman she had beautiful hands sounded sincere or creepy.
Meline stared at the pin.
Then at the ruined line of silk.
Then at Lorenzo.
He looked entirely too comfortable.
That alone irritated her.
Lorenzo Moretti was thirty-eight years old, six-foot-three, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, and built with the kind of physical confidence most men attempted to purchase at expensive gyms. His charcoal trousers fit perfectly because Meline had made certain they did. His jacket currently rested behind his arms while she worked on the alterations around his shoulder.
Black-and-gray tattoos disappeared beneath the waistband of his trousers and climbed over his chest and left arm.
Outside Hayes Bespoke, Boston drowned beneath November rain.
Inside, everything smelled of steam, wool, coffee, and cedar.
“Beautiful hands?” Meline repeated.
Lorenzo glanced toward hers.
“Yes.”
Meline looked down at her fingers.
They were practical hands.
Scarred by needles. Roughened by steam irons. Short nails. No rings. No delicate manicure.
“Whose hands?”
“Theoretical woman.”
“There is no theoretical woman.”
“There could be.”
“There has been a theoretical woman every Tuesday and Thursday for six weeks.”
Lorenzo’s mouth twitched.
“That sounds like jealousy.”
“That sounds like arithmetic.”
Across the shop, Nina abruptly stood from the antique Singer machine.
“I need thread.”
Meline glanced toward three cabinets filled with thread.
“From downstairs,” Nina added quickly.
Coward.
She disappeared.
Lorenzo picked up his espresso.
Meline had stopped making coffee for him three weeks earlier after discovering that refusing to serve Lorenzo Moretti merely resulted in Lorenzo Moretti learning where she kept the beans.
“What if I said,” he continued, “‘A woman’s hands tell me what she has survived. Yours make me wonder who taught you to build beautiful things out of damage.’”
Meline’s breath caught.
She hated that.
She hated the stupid warmth that moved through her chest.
She hated the way his dark eyes remained on her.
Most of all, she hated herself for wondering what it might feel like if those words were actually meant for her.
“Oh, absolutely not.”
Lorenzo frowned.
“No?”
“You sound like you’re seducing a widow in a candle commercial.”
His laugh came low and warm.
Meline turned away.
That laugh was dangerous.
Not because Lorenzo was dangerous.
Boston had already established that fact.
His father, Alessandro Moretti, had died eleven months earlier, leaving Lorenzo businesses that existed in clean accounting books and several others people spoke about only when they believed nobody important was listening.
Lorenzo had inherited restaurants.
Construction companies.
Warehouses.
Transportation contracts.
And, depending on which neighborhood rumor a person believed, enough secrets to put several wealthy men in prison.
Yet here he sat asking a tailor how to flirt.
Meline hated that even more.
“You have dinner tomorrow,” she said.
“Maybe.”
“With her.”
“Who?”
“Don’t insult me.”
“I’m trying to identify the victim.”
“Isabella Romano.”
The change was tiny.
Most people would have missed it.
Meline didn’t.
Dressmakers survived by studying bodies.
Bodies confessed before mouths did.
At Isabella’s name, Lorenzo’s shoulders tightened.
Not with excitement.
With discomfort.
“So the neighborhood told you,” he said.
“The neighborhood has eyes.”
“So do you.”
There it was.
Another line.
Another look.
Another moment where Meline’s traitorous heart wondered whether a man like Lorenzo Moretti could possibly look at a woman like her and mean what his eyes seemed to say.
She was forty-one.
Plus-sized.
Usually covered in tailor’s chalk.
Her reading glasses hung from a chain because she had already lost three pairs that year.
Isabella Romano appeared in magazines wearing gowns worth more than Meline’s first car.
“Don’t,” Meline said.
Lorenzo’s expression shifted.
“Don’t what?”
“Test the line on me.”
“What line?”
“The one you’re going to use on Isabella tomorrow.”
The humor disappeared.
Meline turned away before he could see what humiliation looked like on her face.
“Your jacket. Off.”
He obeyed.
Meline circled behind him.
“You’re carrying your right shoulder differently.”
“Am I?”
“You know you are.”
“Old injury.”
“No.”
Her fingers pressed lightly along his side.
Lorenzo flinched.
Meline froze.
“You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.”
“That sentence should be printed on men’s tombstones.”
“Meline.”
“Were you stabbed?”
“No.”
“Shot?”
“No.”
“Hit?”
Lorenzo sighed.
“That feels judgmental.”
Meline moved in front of him.
“Lorenzo.”
For one second, she saw past everything Boston whispered.
He looked exhausted.
Not powerful.
Not frightening.
Just tired.
Then he caught the measuring tape hanging around her neck.
“You worry about me.”
She slapped his hand away.
“I worry about the suit. If you die in it, I’m not refunding your family.”
“Would you miss me?”
Her heart stopped.
There were questions a woman could laugh away.
And there were questions a lonely woman should never answer unless she was absolutely certain what they meant.
“Enough.”
Lorenzo went still.
“I mean it.”
“Meline—”
“No.”
She removed the measuring tape and tossed it onto the table.
“I’ve stood here for six weeks while you asked whether to send roses, whether touching someone’s hand is too forward, whether compliments sound sincere, which restaurant is intimate, what kind of music a woman might like—”
“Meline.”
“I’m not your practice woman.”
Something in his face changed.
She kept talking before courage disappeared.
“You come here because I’m safe. Because I’m the tailor. Because I’m not Isabella Romano.”
“Meline, stop.”
“No.”
Her voice trembled now.
“I’m the woman behind the counter. The fat woman who makes powerful men look ten pounds thinner and rich women look rested when they haven’t slept since 2019.”
His jaw hardened.
Not anger.
Something else.
“You practice your lines on me. You watch my face. Then you take the improved version to women who belong in your world.”
“Meline.”
“Stop using me to practice your dating tricks!”
Silence swallowed Hayes Bespoke.
Rain hit the windows.
The old clock clicked.
Meline heard her own breathing.
Lorenzo slowly stood.
Suddenly, she remembered precisely who he was.
He stepped toward her.
She lifted her chin.
“If you’re going to threaten me, hurry. Mrs. Whitmore arrives at five.”
Lorenzo stared at her.
Then he asked quietly:
“What exactly do you think Isabella Romano is to me?”
Meline blinked.
“What?”
“She’s not the woman.”
“What woman?”
“The woman I’ve been asking you about.”
Meline’s pulse stumbled.
Lorenzo took another step.
“The flowers.”
She said nothing.
“The restaurants.”
Her hands began trembling.
“The compliments.”
“Lorenzo—”
“Every ridiculous question I have asked you for six weeks.”
He stopped less than two feet away.
“They were never for Isabella.”
Meline could barely breathe.
“Then who?”
Lorenzo’s gaze dropped briefly toward her hands.
The same hands he had called beautiful.
When his eyes returned to hers, there was no teasing left.
“You.”
Before Meline could respond, three hard knocks struck the locked front door.
Lorenzo’s expression changed instantly.
He turned.
A man stood outside beneath the rain.
Dark coat.
No umbrella.
And through the fogged glass, Meline saw him hold up a white envelope.
Across the front, written in thick black ink, were four words.
FOR LORENZO MORETTI ONLY.
Lorenzo went completely still.
May you like
And for the first time since she had known him, Meline saw something unmistakable enter his eyes.
Fear.
