“—and then got a line on a job back in Rome.”
All the places he’d been. All the things he must have seen. Once more I felt that little pang that reminded me of how one could live a life when they grabbed it by the balls and just went for it.
“And now you’re here,” I said, still amazed at everything he’d accomplished.
“And now you’re here.” His eyes met mine, searching, wondering.
There were so many questions I wanted to ask. In those nine years, who’d been alongside him on these great adventures? Was it one woman? Two women? Several? Many? Who had shared his bed and his life all these years, someone special or just someone? I wasn’t sure which I was more interested in.
And just how special was this Simone he’d been all over the other night?
I could have sat there for hours and just asked him questions with my eyeballs, but the pizza place was hopping and there were people circling our table like sharks.
Finished, I got up and tossed our wrappers into the recycle bin at the street corner. I felt his eyes follow me with each step.
My phone buzzed as I was walking back to the table. It was the lawyer emailing to tell me that Daniel’s attorneys (yes plural) had requested another meeting, and it wasn’t looking good.
“Ah shit,” I muttered, stabbing at my phone and shoving it back into my purse.
“Everything okay?” he asked, touching my elbow. I blinked up at him, the worry eating away at the happiness I was feeling from being with him again. “We can go?”
“No, everything is fine.”
He seemed satisfied with my answer until he saw me rereading the email again on the way to the Vespa. The crowded street had gotten even crazier with the line of people outside of the pizza shop tripling in size.
“If you are in need of a friend to talk to, you can talk to me,” he said, throwing one leg over the scooter and offering me his hand to help me on.
“Is that what we are? Friends?” I asked, taking his hand but making no move to get on behind him. Not yet.
He pondered, searching my eyes for something. Answers? Hesitation? Second thoughts? “I think I’d like to be.”
I saw something in his expression change then. Guarded, yes, they’d likely be for a while. But something was breaking down, changing, smoothing out where it concerned me. Tonight was proof of that. I could feel an enormous weight lift right off and float away into the air, hanging somewhere over the pizza place. “Okay.” I nodded. “Friends.”
And with that I climbed onto the Vespa without a second thought, happy to once again slip my hands around his waist and hang on so very tightly. I caught his eye in the side mirror, and he grinned, pleased that I was becoming more comfortable riding with him.
When we pulled up in front of Daisy’s I let him help me off, wanting to keep him close. Now that I’d been wrapped around him once more, my body was reluctant to let him go.
I did let him go, but as he walked me up the stairs and to Daisy’s door, I noticed that the distance between us was shrinking. In all ways. This made me happy. In all ways.
“The pizza, you liked it, Avery?”
God I loved the way he said my name. At the door, I turned back to him, dreamy eyed.
“I loved it. Thank you.” I held out my hand to him.
He looked down, then at me and grinned. “What am I to do with this?”
“Shake it? Hold it? Kiss it?” It might be too soon for inside, but I could good night flirt with the best of them.
Taking my hand, and in the most excruciatingly slow way, he raised it to his lips and pressed them to my knuckles. He kept his eyes on mine the entire time, burning through me with one light kiss, then another, and finally a third. Bringing the other hand up, he repeated it, kissing my knuckles with three sweet pecks. With my hands in his, he brought his lips back to them together and held them there.
I exhaled a shaky breath. When he murmured, “Buona sera, Avery,” his breath puffed out across my heated skin.
He tugged playfully on the end of my scarf, headed back downstairs, and sped off into the night, tossing a ciao back over his shoulder. I giggled a little at the sight of this powerfully sexy man riding a tiny scooter. I hated to admit it, but it was pretty fun tooling around town on the back of one of those things. Would it become a habit?
Maybe. Possibly. We could all use a little vroom-vroom in our day-to-day lives.
* * *
THE FOLLOWING NIGHT I was back out on the town with Daisy, our nightly passeggiata taking us to the Monti neighborhood. And after checking out the scene and making sure we were also la bella figura, or cutting a beautiful figure, we settled in for dinner at a lovely little bistro with outdoor tables set up to take in the scene, as well as view the Madonna dei Monti just as the nighttime lights were beginning to twinkle on.
I drank it all in, along with a perfectly chilled glass of prosecco.
“What’s with the sigh?”
“Hmm?” I asked Daisy, tearing my gaze away from the fountain.
“You just sighed into your sparkly. What’s up with that?”
“It was a happy sigh—don’t worry about it.”
“Girl, I finally stopped worrying about you the day you got off the plane from Boston.” She snorted, digging into her purse for her ringing phone. “And speaking of worrying . . . Ciao, Marcello, what’s going on?”
I smiled into my prosecco, shamelessly listening in on her conversation.
“What? No! No, they can’t do that! Who would use duct tape on a fourteenth-century wall covering? What? Oh man, okay, you tell them that for every inch of duct tape I have to scrape off, we’ll charge them another five hundred euros. That seems fair, right?”
She put her hand over the phone and whispered to me, “Who in the world would think it was okay to hang a Happy Birthday sign on a six-hundred-year-old tapestry?”
Then she returned to her phone. “Okay, let me know if I need to come down there. You know how much I love a good ass kicking. No, I’m in Monti—at that little place with the truffles and cheese? Yeah, she’s here. Mm-hmm, I will. Sure, sure, I’ll ask.”
I was embarrassed to admit how fast my heart started beating when I knew he was asking about me. I might also be embarrassed to admit how hard it is to drink prosecco while grinning. I cleaned myself up with my napkin while she finished her call.
“Yes. Yes. Yes. Until he stops screaming. Okay, ciao.” She put her phone back into her bag, crossed her legs, and sat back with her menu, casually flipping through it.
“So . . .” I said, prompting her to tell me about her phone call.
“So . . . I’m thinking about the tortellini with the artichokes and the porcini. Sounds good, doesn’t it?”
“And . . . ?”
“Hmm, I suppose I could have the grilled shrimp with the lemon and fava beans—that sounds really good. There’s this place over by the Trevi that has the best fava beans—”
“This is me, officially hating you,” I said, sitting back and flipping through my own menu aggressively. “This is what it looks like.”
“Oh stop, you’re so fricking cute when you’ve got a crush. One night out for pizza and you’re smitten all over again! Although, since you were involved before, is it technically a crush? Do you move past all of that when—”
“And this is me, officially getting ready to strangle you. This is what it looks like.”
“I got that, yes,” Daisy said with a laugh. “He asked about you, asked how you were doing. He wanted me to make sure that I told you well done on the vase.”
“Really?” I squealed, then hid behind my menu when several tables looked over. Likely wondering why the obviously American girl was so bouncy. “Really?” I asked again, in a much quieter voice.
“He also asked if you’d be coming to the opening of the new bank we’ve been restoring.”
“Oh. Really?” I tried so very hard to sound nonchalant and not at all interested. My best friend didn’t buy it
for a second.
She snorted. “It’ll be filled with art people. Those old paintings and mosaics always bring out the art community in town, as well as someone from the antiquities ministry. They love to see all those old dusty pieces we unearthed during the renovation brought into the light and on display. But you know, you don’t really seem all that interested, so I’ll just tell him that it wasn’t your cup of tea, and that—”
“This is me, officially plotting your demise. This is what it looks—”
“And this is what you look like when you realize you’re going to get to spend an entire night with Marcello and a bunch of old frescoes and a vase that you had a hand in restoring.” She made a show of grinning like a crazy person, all moony and swoony. “In case you were wondering.”
* * *
“TELL ME AGAIN how you guys got this job?” I asked, tucking an arm in hers as we headed in the direction of the party at the bank.
She scrunched her face up, sidestepping a couple arguing on the sidewalk. “It was a mess. The firm we were going up against underbid us. We told them that it was a shady move and they’d be sorry because they weren’t as qualified as we were with dealing with frescoes that age and deterioration.”
“I’m guessing they didn’t listen?”
“Nope. They took the cheaper bid and a month later they came crawling back.”
We stopped in front of a crowd of people who had gathered near a man painting Girl with a Pearl Earring on the sidewalk in chalk. It was amazingly accurate for such rudimentary equipment and uneven concrete.
“So what did they do that was so terrible?”
“Someone gave Jesus Billy Idol blond hair.” She paused, snapping a pic of the artist’s work. “Frosted tips and all.”
I was laughing so hard, it took me a second to catch up with her.
“I have a Polaroid of it at the house. I’ll show you tonight.”
Ten minutes later we arrived at the party celebration for the restoration. It was so crowded that people had spilled out onto the street with their champagne and hors d’oeuvres. Plucking a drink from a tray, I sipped, praying that my nerves would settle before seeing Marcello again.
Something happens on a cellular level to your body when you sense someone near you. It’s amplified when it’s someone you’ve been intimate with. My skin felt like a current was running over it, zips and zaps sparking me to life.
I could see him in my periphery, sliding through the crowd with ease. There was an awareness about his movements that drew your eyes to him. Casually, he chatted, shook hands with men in suits, and gave hugs to the women whose hands lingered a bit too long. It flared up some long-hidden jealousy.
“What’s everyone surrounding?” I asked, standing on my tiptoes to check out a glass-covered pedestal table in the center of the room.
“That’s one of the mosaics we uncovered and preserved,” Daisy said, leading me over.
Marcello was explaining the piece’s history when we arrived, a captive audience of eight women who had dazzled looks in their eyes.
“This, ladies, is Daisy Miller; her team is responsible for this. Daisy, would you like to say a few words?”
Never one to shy away from the spotlight, Daisy greeted Marcello with two cheek kisses before taking his spot in front of the mosaic.
Unsure whether I wanted to listen to her talk about the piece or disappear into the shadows with him, I waited.
“You know what this reminds me of,” he said, sliding in behind me in the crowded space.
Spinning around slowly, I casually sipped my champagne, his eyes on the lipstick smudge on the crystal.
“Tell me.”
He angled us toward a semideserted corner. “Catalunya.”
It’s incredible how one word can evoke so many memories when said by the right person.
Hearing Marcello whisper it took on an entirely different meaning. “The museum. That was a magnificent structure. I remember the Romanesque frescoes well. Have you been back?”
I was going for casual but it sounded overeager—but with good reason. The Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya held so much significance for us. It was the spot of our first official date in Barcelona.
He shook his head. “Someday . . .” Let’s go now, I thought, mentally calculating the distance by train.
A waiter breezed by, bumping Marcello’s shoulder and pushing us together. His hand slipped to my side, his thumb smoothing the fabric of my skirt at my hip.
His eyes swept the length of me; maybe he paid special attention to the cut of my blouse. It was fitted, but not too come hither.
“I wonder,” he said, leaning back against the wall. What was he up to? “Would you like a tour?”
“A tour?”
He nodded. “See the work that we’ve done? That you’ve done?”
“The vase?”
“It is here,” he replied.
I looked around, seeing Daisy still caught up with patrons, playing the part of lead architect and project manager. I saw dozens of people milling about, sipping champagne, tasting tiny treats, enjoying the party. I looked over his shoulder, around the corner where he was now headed, looking back at me questioningly.
There was no party in the direction he was headed. Not another soul.
“Lead the way.”
* * *
“DAISY WAS THE LEAD on this,” Marcello explained as he headed down the narrow hallway, our steps leading down across the ever-sloping cobblestones, deeper into what was originally a monastery. The farther we went, the more narrow the corridor, the closer we got. “It is beautiful, yes?”
“Beautiful, yes,” I agreed. I was trying so very hard to look at impeccable woodwork, the pristine condition of the ancient stone walls, but all I could see were his fingers trailing along those walls and that woodwork. All I could think was what those hands would look like on my body, what they had looked like on my body, once upon a time. A nervous laugh bubbled up, and I pretended to cough. I couldn’t get my bearings around him.
I could feel his eyes on me. Moving over my face, skimming over my body, which was already beginning to show the effects of an entirely carb-based diet. Here, that didn’t matter. Here, men loved curves. I remembered how much Marcello had loved mine, my semester in Spain adding at least fifteen pounds. When I came home, Daniel had lightly suggested I start taking spin classes at the BU gym.
Marcello stepped closer, standing right in front of me. My heart beat harder.
“Do you want to see it?” He leaned in again, his body nearly flush with mine.
“What?” I sputtered, nearly choking on my champagne.
“Your vase. I will show you. Vieni qui. Follow me.”
“Right. Sure,” I mumbled, following blindly behind him, praying for a cool breeze.
We reached an ancient archway with painted vines that twisted and turned up the sides and across the plaster. Down here it was still old Rome. And now, in this space that was so ancient and so beautiful, I was finally in my element, and even the sight of Marcello couldn’t take my eyes from the beauty of all this . . . antiquity. To me, even old, cracked walls were masterpieces here. Who had crafted these, how long had it taken? What had they been thinking about when they built this hundreds of years ago, often with bare hands and limited tools? Those kinds of things had always fascinated me.
I could see how strongly Daisy’s team tried to preserve the original structure and design of the building while bringing in the new features. What was incredible was how they merged the old and new together so seamlessly. I had trouble spotting which was which.
I circled the room, taking in the colors, trying to decipher the story from the wall art. The old, musty smell filled me with memories of Barcelona, where the two of us had explored museums and churches and structures like this. Since seeing Marcello again, nearly everything was bringing up a memory.
Walking hand in hand down a Barcelona street as we laughed. Sitting in countless cafés as he patiently tr
ied to teach me Italian. On my tiny bed, curled around each other with the sun slanting across our naked bodies.
I turned, looking for Marcello, and found him leaning casually against a wall, studying me. His arms were crossed over his broad chest and the knowing smirk was back, along with that sexy, knee-buckling grin that had me immediately scouting for available horizontal surfaces.
“What are you looking at?” I asked, feeling the blood fly to my cheeks.
“Nothing,” he said, pushing off the wall. “Everything.” He circled me like prey in the jungle. “You,” he said with an honesty so bare that my hand flew to my neck, where I knew my skin was now flushed.
I was aware of every step he took; I could feel him as he walked around me. Having seen, touched, and tasted every inch of this man, I knew what I was dealing with. His voice was dark, husky, and goddamn it washed over me in the best possible way.
Reaching out, he took my hand in his. “Come,” he said roughly. He cleared his throat and led the way out of the antechamber and into another small room that was blocked off with velvet queue ropes and a sign in Italian that I assumed meant barred entry, but that Marcello ignored.
He lifted a leg and hopped over the rope. Turning, he held a hand out for me.
I gestured down at the tight green silk wrapping around my hips and thighs. Bending down and slipping underneath it would result in either flashing him (bad), or splitting it up the back since it was so damn tight (very bad). “No way.”
Without a word, he reached around my waist and lifted me effortlessly over it. I slid down his body until my feet brushed the old floor. He could have let go. He should have let go—but he didn’t.
Marcello’s rough thumbs found the sliver of skin between my skirt and the tight top I was wearing. Sweeping it across, he rubbed the skin just so. Back and forth, searing into my skin.
His breath whooshed out, and I knew what would follow. The low rumble deep in his chest that I’d always heard just before he kissed me. My tongue slipped out, licking the last of the stickiness from my wine away. His eyes caught the movement and there it was. The deep resonant sound, the clenching of his fingers against my side as he tugged me the tiniest bit closer.