He looked at my hips—myhips, not my lips. “I’ll order you another.”
My mouth fell open and then snapped shut. “Youwantto keep feeding me!”
“Lo voglio.” He set his hand against the place where he gazed, his ring meeting bone.I do. “Mi dà piacere.” His tongue rolled slowly overpiacere.It gives mepleasure.
“As sensual as that sounds, I can’t eat another bite.” I hoped the tight dress didn’t show the noticeable stomach bulge from dinner. I had excused myself earlier to go to the ladies’ room, and after washing my hands, I noticed in the mirror the pooch that had formed after eating so much, which wasbeforedessert. “Everything was delicious. Thank you for dinner,mio marito.”
The restaurant seemed exceptionally romantic tonight, with all of the soft candlelight, the rich smell of food and robust wine, and the trumpet master serenading us. An Italian tenor accompanied him.
“Brando.” I turned to face him. I was bewitched by their version of “Italia.” I fiddled with the napkin for a moment. “Did you bring him here? The tenor, I mean. From Italy?”
We had been to this restaurant many times before, and I had seen numerous artists perform, but never this man. His performance reminded me of Italy, bringing back memories of our times there. Brando loved being home, but I knew he considered Italy his home, too.
He ran his fingertip over my knuckles, the caress curbed to my left finger, around the edges of my wedding rings.
“If I did?”
“Well.” I was having a hard time speaking, touched by his thoughtfulness. He had done this for me, and without a word of acknowledgment on his part. If I hadn’t put the pieces together, he would have never admitted to what he had done. He didn’t want me to know. “I’d feel it a terrible, terrible sin that you haven’t asked your wife for a dance.”
He grinned. “What apietàthat would be, ah?”
“Such apity.” I shook my head. Then I lifted my heeled foot. “I have to keep them in shape, ah?”
There wasn’t much of a dance floor, but we made do. The crowd was thinning out, the evening getting late, and it almost felt as though we were the only two people who existed.
Our bodies moved in perfect sway to the tempo of the music. He kissed away the tears that slipped from my eyes when “The Very Thought of You” began to play.
“I love that music can make you cry,” he said. “The stars too.”
I pulled back and looked up at him. “You do?”
“I don’t like it when you cry because you’re upset. But this—” he looked around, encompassing our evening “—doesn’t make you sad. It makes you feel. It takes a certain amount of innocence to allow an outside influence, such as music or art, to make a person feel enough to cry. In turn, I feel it, too. What I feel comes from you.”
“You don’t feel it on your own?”
“You know better than that.”
“It’ll do,” I murmured. Those were his exact words about Paris, the first time I knew he had been and asked him what he thought. “You feel something when I dance?”
“Always have.” He touched the tip of my nose with his finger. “You know that, too, Ballerina Girl.”
I rested my head against his chest, listening to the drumming of his heart. A smile replaced the tears when he started moving me faster to “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”
On a dip, I was met with the upside-down face of the sheriff. Jane Jones was on his arm.
“Hello, Sheriff,” I said, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks. “How are you this fine evening?”
The man rarely laughed. His last name seemed indicative of the extent of his facial expressions. If he even attempted to crack a genuine smile, I was afraid he was going to fracture something. No danger of that, though. He only tipped his head to me in acknowledgment.
Brando brought me up, tucking me into his side. He nodded at the sheriff. Jane’s eyes took him in greedily. Small, cold feet seemed to skitter up my spine. As much as it angered me to watch her staring, I hoped the sheriff didn’t notice. The two men had enough ammo between them. They didn’t need a wild flame to ignite the entire cargo at once.
“My brother’s wife is fond of the girl, no matter what she did to her boy.” No time wasted on pleasantries, the sheriff rolled right into it. “My sister-in-law would like to know how the girl is.”
“La ragazza,” Brando said, his face matching the sheriff’s—hard.
I could tell he didn’t like Juliette being referred to as “the girl.” I could tell the sheriff didn’t like Brando speaking in a language that he couldn’t understand.
Romeo and Brando’s relationship was strained, at best, and I could see the accusation in Brando’s eyes. He had something personal against the sheriff, more than he did before, for the loss of his blood and the strife that existed in thefamigliadue to this man’s nephew.
