“Didn’t he die from too much sex?”
“That rumor was born from another painter’s claims,” I explain.
“But it’s not not true.” She tilts her head a little and turns up her palms.
“Fine. It’s not not true, but very unlikely. How many people do you know who have died from too much sex?”
She pretends to count on her fingers, then counters.
“How many people do you know who are engaged to the daughter of a cardinal but hide their mistress in the villa they are being commissioned to work on?”
She’s been researching. Now who’s an art nerd? I narrow my eyes on her.
“Engaged to the child of a prominent political figure—” I lift my brows and incline my head toward her. Her eyes widen as she connects the dots. “But having an affair with someone else. That resonates for some reason. Deeply.”
She grins. “Am I Raphael in this story? Because I don’t think I can die from having too much sex when I’m having no sex at all.”
And before I can offer to remedy that, she puts up her hand.
“Don’t you dare say you could change that.”
I pretend to be offended.
“I was just going to ask if you would like to have lunch with me to discuss your transcript from the museum. Get your mind out of the gutter.”
She laughs. “A working lunch?” Her lips press together, brows lift. “All about work and only work?”
“Call it what you will, but I brought us sandwiches.” I lift the basket I packed from beneath my desk.
“Uvaldi’s sandwiches!?” She actually jumps up and down from one foot to the other when I nod. Food will never be the same for her in America.
America.
Where she lives. Where she’ll go when she leaves. Back to Senator Shithead.
I swallow past the sudden choking sensation in my throat and hand her the basket while I gather the insanely detailed transcript she put together for me. It’s one hundred times better than anything I could have written myself. Organized, clear, meticulous. These students and all future students will be lucky that Ava’s international law seminar never was.
“Ready?” she asks, clicking the power button on the projector and reaching out to take the picnic basket whileLa Mutafades to darkness.
I nod and watch her make her way back up the stairs.
Am I ready, though? There’s a conversation to be had—a conversation that suddenly scares the shit out of me. One that I know we’ve both been avoiding since the market last weekend. One that I should have started in the car last night instead of falling prey to the spell of having her so close. But there are too many what ifs in the words that we need to share. Too many realities that, if spoken, will crush everything that either of us might want from the other.
She stops at the top of the steps and looks down at me, the picnic basket dangling in front of her like a lantern in the dark.
“Sandwiches wait for no man,” she says seriously. “Because I’ll eat them.”
I smile up at her, working hard to quiet the voice telling me that following her is akin to walking into a hornets’ nest. I gather up her notes and put one foot in front of the other until the scent of her drowns out the buzzing of the hornets.
VENTOTTO
Ava
James has laid out a blanket on a square of grass in Piazzale Roma just below a statue of Raphael that sits at the public garden’s center. The open sky is a backdrop that the bronzed artist would have approved of—a shade of blue that he would have mixed for his own masterpieces. A high-pitched squeal from the playground in the distance draws our gaze to a father chasing his daughter around a slide. James is holding his camera to his eye, adjusting his focus as he zooms in on the two laughing figures. I smile around the mouthful of prosciutto and cheese, remembering a game my own father used to play called Daddy Monster.
You should call him.
Oh, now you show up, Mom. Nice of you to stop in. You want me to call Dad? So I can argue with him about my choice of law firm since we barely speak about anything else? Maybe I can let himknow that your mark is all over Urbino? Or ask him if he knows anything about your secret life here?
