Only he hasn’t finished being paranoid, not yet.
“We need to leave.” He pulls over my suitcase, brushes past me into the bathroom, and gathers up all my hair product in one big sweep.
“Whoa, there,” I squeak, and follow him out to the main room, where hedumpsmy stuff into the case. I put a hand on his arm and make him look at me. “What’s going on? Nope—” I sidestep in front of him as he tries to move past. “You need to tell me first.ThenI’ll help you pack.”
For a second he glares at me, all heavy Luca-brows and laser eyes. Then: “There is someone following us,” he says betweenalmost-gritted teeth. “So we need to get out of here, then lose the tail.”
“Screw that. Let me at him. I’ll murder that asshole myself.”
“That’s not funny.”
“You think I’m kidding?No oneis going to fuck up mythirdhoneymoon!” He doesn’t even crack a smile, and that’s how I know it’s serious. “Come on, Luca. You really think someone’s on us so fast? We haven’t even been in Rome for twenty-four hours.”
He grabs me by the shoulders. “Finch,” he says, and then takes a breath. “Don’t you think,” he says in a more normal voice, “that I know by now when someone’s following me? I need you to trust me on this.”
He stares down at me. I can feel the seconds ticking by, and I know he’s counting every one of them.
“Alright,” I say. “Let’s skedaddle.”
* * *
We packed light—waytoolight, in my opinion—so it’s easy enough to throw everything back in the cases and carry our bags down to the reception area. We ask the desk clerk to call us a taxi, and all Luca will tell the driver when we first get in is, “Just drive around for a while.” Luca spends the first few minutes twisting around in his seat and staring out the back window, but after that he relaxes a little.
“Keep driving, another ten minutes,” he says to the driver in Italian. “And then after that, we need a new hotel. Very close to the Vatican. Can you recommend somewhere?”
“We need thebesthotel,” I add firmly, in slightly less-fluent Italian. If I’m being made to go on the runyet again, I’m doing it in style.
The driver assures us his sister-in-law is a chef at the best hotel in Rome, which happens to snuggle up to St. Peter’s Basilica. “There’s a view from the terrace garden for tomorrow—that’s why you’re here, eh?” He says all that in English. I guess he’s clocked me.
“Sure,” I say vaguely. “Who doesn’t like a view?” I shift around on the hard seat, wishing that maybe Luca hadn’t gone quite so hard on my ass back there in the alley. It’s been a while since we’ve fucked like that, and I’m aching.
But Luca’s gone into alert mode. “What’s happening tomorrow?” he demands from the driver.
The driver stretches his neck to look at him in the rear-view. “Sunday,” he says, like that explains anything. “The Angelus.”
I can see Luca processing that. “It’s Sunday tomorrow,” he says blankly, and then under his breath adds, “The days are melting together. Sunday.Shit.”
He seems not to like the idea. Me, I’ve never much liked Sundays—Aidan’s never available because he’s contemplating his navel or whatever, and half the Morelli Family disappears to church as well. On top of that, I have no idea what the “Angelus” is, but the taxi driver looks so expectant that I just nod and smile. “Yep,” I say. “That’s, uh. That’s why we’re here.” I rub at my sore neck, over the bite Luca gave me, and wonder exactly how bruised I’m going to be in the morning.
It was hot, though. Making me tell him I belonged to him, slapping my ass like that… Yeah, it was exactly what I needed. And for a little while there, as we walked back to the hotel, everything felt sojoyful. Luca was affectionate and loving, his arm around me or his hand in mine, and I stared up at him in adoration, and it felt like what this vacationshouldhave been: the passionate, danger-free honeymoon I’ve always wanted with him.
But it didn’t last. It nevercouldlast, never will. I know that; I’ve always known it. I accepted it the day I married him, that our happily ever after would have its ups and downs. Its terrors and its triumphs.
I have to hang on to those moments of sweet joy when they come around, hang on to them for as long as I can, never take them for granted. I sneak my hand into Luca’s, and he squeezes it, holds it up to his mouth to kiss.
My husband spends the rest of the drive doing sudden twists in his seat to check out the back window, but he seems satisfied that we’ve made a clean getaway. And even I, non-believer that I am, find the sight of St. Peter’s Basilica rising up before us at the end of the street as impressive a view as ever when we finally get there.
It’s begun to rain during the drive, a light sprinkling that gilds the cobbled streets around the Vatican as the city lights shine off the wet surface. The hotel really does hug the edge of the Vatican; when the taxi pulls up in front of the small entryway—the only sign that it’s a hotel the discreet plaque above the door—I only need to look to the right to see through the colonnades of St. Peter’s Square.
“Nice pick,” I tell the taxi driver, as Luca pays him.
We get our bags and duck quickly into the doorway before we get too wet. “What if there’s no room at the inn?” I murmur to Luca as we approach the desk.
“They’re giving us a room if it has to be a fucking closet.”
“You’re very certain of yourself.”
“We have your charm and a lot of cash. I’m certain.”
