I knew he’d break first. Apology time. I meet his steady gaze.
“Please send Signorina Graham in when she’s ready.”
He gives me one last shit-eating grin and I choose not to throw his stapler at him. The moment the door to his office is shut behind me, my eyes find her, ankles crossed demurely as she stares up at me.
She pushes up off the divan slowly, eyes on mine. “You know I can fulfill this role with my eyes closed?”
Part of me wants to open the door so Zio can witness this. Part of me knows it will only further confirm his decision.
“Great. You can start by heading into town and getting to know the subject matter since you’ll be grading the seventy-four assignments they’ll be bringing to class tomorrow,” I tell her.
The students were released after introductions and syllabus questions to capture their favorite “artistic moment” in Urbino and write a thousand words explaining why it resonated.
“I think I can handle seventy-four thousand words. That’s the length of the romcom I just finished on the plane,” she says, looking bored.
I step toward her so that she has to tilt her chin up to meet my eyes and I see her chest still. But she doesn’t step back.
“Do you know anything about Renaissance art?” I ask.
Her lips turn up in a tight smile. “I know that if they allow you to teach it here, it can’t be too difficult to master.”
I bite my lip. Nod. I notice her gaze dip down to my mouth. I remember the way her eyes closed as I leaned toward her last night before she nearly stepped off that cliff. I need to get away. Fast.
“The dean is waiting for you,” I tell her, turning my body and gesturing toward the door.
She lifts a haughty brow and pushes past me.
“I’ll see you at dinner. Unless, of course, you’ll be hiding in the woods again behind your camera.” She tosses the words over her shoulder without looking at me before she knocks lightly on the dean’s door and lets herself in.
I breathe in deeply—try to clear my head, but the smell of the lavender shampoo I put in the guest house is lingering in my uncle’s waiting room. I walk outside and lean against the brick wall. Take a deep, not-so-cleansing breath.
This woman is a menace.
There are lectures to be written, a new batch of art to be catalogued and inspected at the museum, and a thousand photographsto be sorted through. My career. My art. My family. Yet, somehow, she’s made her way into all three and she’s been here for a little over twenty-four hours.
I push off of the brick wall and hope to God that Nina will distract me from this spiral. And for the first time in years, I start the daily walk home without my uncle.
DIECI
Ava
The stone that holds up the massive archway that hovers above the cobblestone street leading up into Urbino’s city center reflects a pinkish hue in the late afternoon sun. The walls, the turrets—every piece of the town seems to have shifted from the gold in my memory of last night to a soft blush. I want to bottle the color. Paint my nails with it so that every time I see my hands I remember what they’ve touched.
I pull my hand off the stone and rub my thumb to my fingertips, imprinting the sensation of something so old and so solid. There’s no time to dawdle here. I must stay focused on the task at hand. There’s five hundred years of Renaissance art history to catch up on in these walls. No way in hell am I going to let Professor Assholio catch me unprepared again.
After pleading my case to Dean Russo, it has become painfully clear that there’s no escape from this assignment. If I want theinternational studies credits needed for matriculation, I’ve got to assist in a class that covers some aspect of a foreign culture. There was a moment in the conversation when I nearly pulled the mom card and explained that this class would bring up too much grief, but I bit my tongue and kept the panicky feeling in my chest locked down. It’s not like I can avoid art forever. Especially while I’m in Italy. Besides, Leo assured me this was the only possibility.
So I’ve laid out my plan into three simple, foolproof phases:
Phase 1: Get to know the city. The paper map in my left hand was procured after a few terrible attempts at Italian conversation at the visitor’s booth a few hundred yards behind me, where they also sell bus tickets. I believe I have a one-way ticket to Pesaro now.
Phase 2: Capture images. Leo has lent me a camera that looks like it belongs in a museum. Extra bonus is that it belongs to James and I have an inkling that he wouldn’t like me using it. So I’m going to use the hell out of it. I will catalogue every piece of art known to Urbino. And basically dive head first into whatever said art might stir up inside me.
Phase 3: Gather information. There’s nothing James knows that Google doesn’t. Please see the aforementioned paper map where I have circled an internet café for art research—and maybe some light Ethan stalking.
I bump into a woman as I stare at the map and she murmurs, “Americana,” like it’s a contagious disease. I dump the map into my purse.
Point taken.
