“Sometimes,” I lie, because the truth—I let it ring until it goes to voicemail—tastes too sharp right now and I’m not interested in the bitter taste of blood.
“Harrison Kane is a bad bet,” Nonna Rosaria says, slicing through the word like she’s cutting paper-thin fennel. I suppose I should be touched that she spares me a pitying look before she carries on. “He always was. Good-looking men go bad early if they’re lazy and greedy.”
“Careful,cugina,” Vecchio says, enjoying himself. “Half this table is good-looking.”
“Half this table is also lazy,” she returns. “Naomi is not.”
The compliment lands but the landmine stays live.
Lulu helps by spilling saffron risotto on her breastbone and shrieking with laughter when Vecchio dabs it off with his own napkin.
The tension doesn’t break, not really; it threads itself into the conversation like a bass line and plays under everything else.
Vasso’s hand drifts to my knee beneath the table, not possessive now but steady, and the simple pressure, there and constant, makes it easier to keep my face smooth while my insides riot.
Vecchio watches us shrewdly, pleased with the weather change he’s brought. He moves back to business as if he hasn’t tugged a wire that connects Vasso’s jaw muscle to my chest. “Before you leave we will do the cask ceremony. You lock it together, initials, big smiles.” He mimes a camera flash with his fingers. “The journalists love vows and barrels. They thinkit means a long marriage, even if the wine turns vinegar. But whatever happens, it’ll be good publicity for both of us, I think.”
“I prefer wine to cooperate,” I say, forcing lightness. “And marriages.”
“So do we all,” he says pleasantly. “Most of us are disappointed.”
“Vecchio,” Lulu scolds, as if any version of this conversation has a prayer of making him genteel. She leans past Vasso, cleavage a manifesto. “Tell the story about Wife Number Three and the helicopter.”
“Later,” he says, patting her hand. “It ends with a police report and a baby goat. I don’t want to ruin the fish.”
The joke does its work and laughter ripples along the table.
From the corner of my eye, I watch Vasso drink, slow and controlled, languid with his seething tension.
I sip and set my glass down with care I didn’t need an hour ago. He hasn’t looked at me since the question; he doesn’t have to. I can feel him thinking, feel the room’s tilt, feel the thread we both keep twined around Harrison’s name pull taut, then tighter.
Dessert is zabaglione so ethereal it might be a theological argument.
Marsala and sugar whipped into air and poured over strawberries that taste like someone’s childhood. Nonna Rosaria watches me eat with satisfaction, then turns to scold a sous-chef for over-browning the almond biscotti.
Lulu tries once more to press herself into Vasso’s shoulder. I pin her with a smile so cool it could freeze the candles. She blinks, considers, and for the first time tonight chooses her husband, flitting to Vecchio’s side and wrapping herself around his arm like a frivolous ribbon.
“Good,” Nonna Rosaria mutters to me, not bothering to hide it. “You’re not loud, but you move mountains.” She pauses for a moment. “And pushysciocchinas.”
“Thank you,” I say.
We linger. We talk about the truffle run tomorrow, about the market in Montalcino where I’ll be coaxed to buy a scarf I don’t need. Vecchio detours into a tirade about modern wine critics that leaves half the table in stitches. Vasso laughs in the right places and says the right things, but the line of his body stays altered. Not closed, exactly. Coiled. A kite pulled hard against wind.
When the evening ends and we stand, the night is cooler, the lanterns brighter.
Lulu whirls away on a gust of her own perfume, calling over her shoulder that she will “wear heels for the truffle dogs because they like height.” Vecchio kisses my cheek, then taps the side of my face twice with his fingertips, old-world benediction. “Tomorrow,” he says. “You make me regret not hiring you ten years ago.”
“I was busy,” I say.
“Pining,” Vasso murmurs, and I cut him a look that earns me a ghost of his smile.
Nonna Rosaria hugs like she kneads dough—firmly, with a warning to be better than you were this morning. “Eat breakfast,” she orders me. “You’ll need energy for pretending you don’t want to kill someone.”
I love this woman. A lot. “Who?” I ask with mock innocence.
“Usually men,” she says, then cackles, and leaves in a swish of apron and authoritarian perfume.
When it’s just the two of us under the pergola, the tension we’ve been pretending not to taste sits down at the table and helps itself to the last of the Brunello. We don’t speak. We don’t have to. The vineyard stretches away, a dark quilt prickedwith fireflies. The bracelet hums against my pulse like a second heartbeat.
