She looks up suddenly and catches me looking. "What?"
"Nothing."
"That's a lie."
"It wasn't a very ambitious one."
That earns me a smile. I count that as a victory.
Outside Rome is waking up. The kitchen fills with morning light. Vida is gone. The two men Paolo is tracking will be found. The Vettis will become a problem in their own time and will be dealt with in their own time. All of that is true and none of it is what I'm thinking about across the breakfast table. The only thing on my mind right now is the woman sitting across the table from me eating prosciutto and drinking coffee as the dawn breaks and pretending not to notice I’m watching her.
The subject of my thoughts reaches for her coffee.
The gate hasn't been locked in weeks. She knows it and she's still here. For now, that's enough.
TWENTY-THREE
Eliza
I wake before him.
He's on his back with one arm behind his head, deeply asleep. In sleep his face loses the tension it has when he’s awake. He looks as if he doesn’t have a care in the world.
I've been watching for a while now.
His eye opens.
"Still doing it," he says.
"I'm not doing anything."
"You're watching me sleep."
"You're not asleep."
"I was."
"Then go back to sleep."
He doesn't go back to sleep. He rolls onto his side to face me and his hand comes to my face. His thumb moves lightly across my cheekbone.
"What are you thinking?" he asks.
“Nothing." I say. "Just how nice this is. You?”
“The same.”
I doubt he was thinking this is nice. The word isn’t in his vocabulary. But it’s too early in the day to pick a fight with a man who gets an itchy palm when he senses he’s about to lose.
We lie there for a while. His hand moves from my face to my hair and back and neither of us is in any particular hurry to be anywhere.
“I want to invite my mother to come and stay.”
"Why"
I look at him. “We need to catch up and she’ll want to meet you."
“Why?”
