“All right.” I stared at my sneaker for a moment, tapping it against the pavement. “Will you readRomeo e Giuliettato me? InItaliano?”
“Sì, se ti farà felice,”he said.Yes, if it will make you happy.
Just imagining his mouth while reading, his eyes scanning the page, the way the words would roll from his tongue made me suck in a breath. Something deep inside clenched and then sent a delicious shiver over me.
“Smile again,” he said. “You don’t do that enough.Per me.” He pointed to his chest—for me.
“Brando,” I said, taking his arms in my hands. “Who am I to you,mio angelo?”
He didn’t respond for a minute. He just looked at me with a blank look on his face. I wasn’t sure if he was thinking of an answer or trying to figure out if he should have cut me off after that first espresso—he should have, for the record. My heart kept skipping a beat. “You are my wife. My life. My family. My flesh, blood, and bone. My world. My heaven when we’re together and my hell when we’re apart.”
I nodded, almost hypnotized by the lines I made against the cement with my shoe. Romeo said something and I glanced their way, to see if the car was here for us. Not yet. Romeo was goofing off with Guido and Thomas, showing them the boxing moves he saw inRocky.
“Tell me why you want to know.” He turned my face back to his.
I took a deep breath in and released it in slow puffs. “You make me smile all of the time, even when you don’t mean to. But you are my husband. You worry about me. You have responsibilities. You’ve always felt responsible for me. Especially after Elliott died.” He went to protest, but I held a hand up. “You have a lot to worry about. Someone in our house is digging through our things. Nemours is out for revenge. So is Ettore. Lothario is out to proveheis the Godfather of the Fausti family, because you threaten him. Your brothers are requiring your assurance; they want to bond with you as a brother. Taylor, the football player, has some strange affinity with me. Let’s not forget about Lev, the deadly Russian assassin, popping up now and again. Maja has come back from the dead to deliver a warning. And war is on the horizon, all because of me. Me.I’m a huge job. I know it. You can’t be as carefree as Romeo.”
His eyes snapped to mine. He knew me too well. Well, I knew him too.
“Not right now,” I continued, sensing that I had hit a nerve, or in his case, a feeling. “I know who you are,mio angelo. You aremyworld.Myshield.Myheart and soul.” I stabbed a finger to my heart each time I said the word “my.” “It doesn’t matter if you make me laugh or cry. Or if we smile like fools at each other or stare for no apparent reason. I love you no matter what. Right now, you’re doing the best you can for us. You’re a man. And being a man means that you carry all of our burdens on your shoulders. They’ve been weighed down lately. I’m your other half. I feel what you do.”
I said this last part softly, and his eyes softened. Then I smiled. It went a little too wide.
“Damn, you’re high off espresso,” he said.
I exploded, laughing into his chest like aheeheeing monkey. I started up thefare pipìdance again.
“Come,” he said, dragging me back toward the airport. He turned his head a fraction, yelling over his shoulder in Italian to Rocco that we would be back in five.
The private airport was cool and smelled of rubber and gas fumes. The fair-haired woman at the desk watched my husband with appreciative eyes as we moved past her.
“By the way,” he said, “Do you think Charlotte dug through our things? Looking for the journal with all of Grandma Evelyn’s advice?”
It didn’t take me long to formulate an answer. Charlotte was sneaky, but she wasn’t the type to dig. It took too much work. She would approach me and then try to bully it out of me. “No,” I said. “It’s not her. Besides, she was with us. Remember?”
He gave one slow nod. “I wanted to eliminate her. I think the spy under our roof is Collette.”
“Me too,” I said, keeping up with his long strides. The caffeine exerted itself in big spurts. “She never closed drawers at our place in Paris.”
He nodded and thought about this for a moment. “I remember. So we know it’s her. Why?”
“Well, that seems to be the question of the hour, isn’t it? I wonder if she’s a thief? But she never stole anything from me before. And the diamond my father gave me, from Grandma Evelyn, was around. It’s worth a lot of money. She’s seen it. Wait!” I almost shouted, coming to a sudden stop. “You can’t come in here. This is the ladies’ room.”
“Hell if I can’t. This won’t take long.”
“What—”
He broke off my question with a kiss that had me fumbling for the wall to steady myself. “You can’t talk to a man like that and not expect to berrravished,” he said in Tito fashion. He locked the door behind him without really having to look. “That’s the kind of speech a woman gives to a man before he goes off to war.”
“What did I say?” I started to pant, and not in a very ladylike fashion either.
“Shh, Ballerina Girl,” he said. “Now is not the time to talk. Let me show you how it feels to be your man.”
My heart beat in triple time at the look in his eyes.Five minutes, my ass.He could be quick when we were pressed, but never five minutes quick.
“Ooh,” I said, and then surrendered.
* * *
