I woke up groaning.
Not in the way I’d dreamed in my fantasies of meeting a handsome Italian and being caught up in his strong arms, but in the way of my entire body pulsing like one giant bruise. My eyelids were crusted together, and my head felt so heavy on the pillow I was almost surprised it didn’t fall straight through the soft down and mattress to the floor. Instantly, I wished I could go back to sleep, but the pain was too vibrant to ignore.
“Oh God,” I croaked, my throat parched and sore.
“You should not take the Lord’s name in vain.”
I lifted a weak hand to rub my eyes so I could pry them open to look at the man sitting on the edge of my bed.
Or not my bed.
His bed.
In his house in Florence.
It wasn’t really a house, though. Not like we had in the US.
Raffa had flippantly called it a palazzo last night as he led me blurrily through the massive home to a bedroom on the second floor.
I was sleeping in a literal palace.
My life had become some seriously messed-up Italian version of a Grimms’ fairy tale since I’d arrived in Rome.
I swiveled my gaze over the high ceilings and stone walls, the modern furnishings a stark but attractive contrast to the old architecture. There was an actual marble sculpture in the corner of the room beside open French doors and a painting I was fairly sure, even with my blurry vision, was a real Botticelli.
“It was built in the sixteenth century, but I assure you, we have running water,” he drawled in that decadent Italian accent.
Even though the effort made me wince, I barely turned my head on the pillow to squint at him in the honeyed light spilling through the sheer curtains.
The sight of him in full daylight stole my breath straight from my lungs.
He was . . .
I scrambled for words to define him and wished fruitlessly that I had a better grasp of Italian. It seemed the only language romantic enough, beautiful enough, to fulfill any accurate description of him.
It wasn’t that he himself was soft or romantic.
No.
His face was all planes and angles, with the hard jut of a square jaw and slightly pronounced chin that made him seem imperious, especially matched to the arrogance of those thick brows, arched over eyes that were brown but pale. Light as sunlight caught in maple syrup, clear and completely unmuddied. It felt almost wrong to call eyes like that brown, as mine were.
They were piercing, cutting through me as I lay there, like hot knives pinning me to the bed.
It should have been terrifying, that level of intense, unwavering attention from a near stranger who was broad enough and tall enough to finish what Galasso had tried to begin the night before.
But I felt oddly settled by it.
Intensity was exactly what I had been searching for in Michigan, what I’d been yearning for my entire young life. I had a voracious appetite for life that urged me to crack it open with my bare hands and suck out the marrow, messy and violent with satisfaction. It was a kind of savagery I’d always had to temper back home.
That was the way my Italian stranger looked at me then.
Like a meal he was impatient to eat through to the bones.
“Oh,” I said without thinking. “You’re beautiful.”
His expressive brows slammed down over those clear eyes. “A man is not beautiful.”
“You are,” I insisted. “Not like someone from a Renaissance painting. Like, well, like Dante’s angels, maybe.”
“Nothing about me is heavenly,” he argued again, crossing his arms defensively, but there was a tiny curl in his mouth that said he was enjoying this.
Enjoying me.
“A fallen angel,” I corrected.
“Dante’s fallen angels are monstrous looking,” he retorted. “Your youth is revealing yourself. Have you even read The Divine Comedy?”
“Yes.” I winced. “Could we blame it on the potential concussion?”
He made a sound like a snort that was only an exhalation of breath through his nose. “In fact, I am certain you have one. The doctor is waiting downstairs to give you an exam. This is why I woke you.”
I tried to sit up and winced when my entire side crackled with pain. “I don’t think I can sit up.”
“No,” he agreed. “Dottor Pesci will make sure you do not have anything emergent because I would like to avoid a trip to the hospital while you do not even have identification. At most, I think you could have some broken ribs, but there is nothing to be done for that but time.”
“Time I can’t waste. I need to go to the consulate and figure out what to do about money and buy clothes because otherwise I’ll just have a dirty, torn dress to wear, and the consulate might not even let me inside wearing that, looking like a—” I stopped abruptly when Raffa’s large hand gently covered my mouth.
“Abbastanza,” he ordered, not unkindly. “You have been threatened, chased, and hit by a car. You need rest.”
“But—” I mumbled beneath the weight of his palm.
“No. We do not know each other, I understand that. But the first thing you should know about me is this: Once I make a decision, I am loyal to it no matter what. I knew what I was signing up for when I invited you into my car last night. Do not make me regret my uncharacteristic show of kindness by being timid. You are here, you will remain here until you are healthy and reestablished, and that is the end of the discussion.”
He stared at me for a long moment as if to punctuate his point, but it wasn’t necessary.
His offer—no, declaration—of help was unexpected. In the light of day, he didn’t seem like the kind of man to care about the well-being of a stranger. He was wearing another expensive suit, this one a rich, textured brown that perfectly matched his wavy hair, and a wristwatch that winked diamond bright back at me. He owned a palazzo in central Florence and drove a Ferrari.
So it might have been out of character for him to offer help, but he could also definitely afford to do it.
When he slowly pulled his hand away, I worried my lower lip with my teeth as I considered my situation and noticed how his furrowed brow tightened while he watched the gesture.
“Thank you,” I said finally. My throat ached like I was also coming down with a cold, which seemed in keeping with my perpetual bad luck. “I can’t really express how grateful I am.”
He shrugged one shoulder slightly, a flippant, arrogant expression that suited him.
“I took the liberty of plugging your phone in because it was dead. Why do you not text whoever you must to tell them you are safe and start the process of canceling your cards? I will send the doctor up.”
He stood up abruptly, passed me my cell phone, and then strode to the door. It occurred to me that he was tall, not only compared to my measly height, but in general. His wide shoulders filled the suit jacket perfectly, and his long legs ate up the floor in athletic strides.
If I’d been feeling better, I might have ogled him a little.
Who was I kidding?
I could ogle him just fine, even with a concussion.
He was so gorgeous, I couldn’t really believe he was real and this wasn’t all some kind of fever dream.
“Raffa?” I called as he opened the door. He hesitated, shoulders visibly tightening at the sound of his name. It tasted good in my mouth, chocolaty and rich. “I promise I’ll be out of your hair by the end of the week.”
He gave a clipped nod and shut the door behind him.
But as it turned out, I was a liar.
The doctor’s exam passed in a hazy, exhausted blur. He confirmed I had a mild concussion, bruised ribs, and the beginnings of a bad illness that made my throat feel tight and swollen. He recommended sleep, fluids, over-the-counter pain meds, and bed rest until I could stand without feeling dizzy and pained. When I told him about my condition, he clucked his tongue at me and declared he’d be back to check on me the next day in case I needed to be hooked up to an IV to replace my fluids and replenish my vitamin B.
Raffa stood over his shoulder the entire exam after I gave him permission to stay, his arms crossed and brow furrowed in a way I was beginning to think was his trademark stance and position. He watched the doctor with hawkish focus, as if afraid I’d be triggered by the man’s clinical hands on my body after what happened last night.
It was strangely sweet from a man who seemed determined to refute any softness or kindness in himself.
After the exam, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until it was dark again. I attempted to move, needing the restroom, but my entire body had seized up, encased in cement that refused to budge without considerable effort. I whimpered as I shifted one leg to the edge of the bed and began dragging the other over the mattress.
When both feet were dangling above the floor, I tried to twist and raise my torso into a seated position. Sharp blades of pain slid between each of the ribs on my left side, and a cry of pain escaped my lips before I could curb the urge.
Seconds later there was a knock on my bedroom door, which immediately opened to reveal Raffa in low-slung black pajama pants and an open black robe. Without hesitation, he strode across the room and to my side, winding an arm around my waist gently to lift me out of bed and to my feet. He held me while I swayed, searching for my equilibrium.
“Costante,” he murmured, curling me closer into the bracket of his strong arm and warm side.
I noticed vaguely that he smelled like oakmoss, smoky and earthen. An aroma that made me want to lean closer, cuddle up, and inhale that warmth until the fuzzy, awful haze in my brain faded clean away.
“Bathroom,” I tried to say through the swollen, hot confines of my throat, but the word emerged as only a mangled whisper.
Without hesitation, he started to lead me toward the door, but two steps in, a small cry left my lips because my side screamed in protest. Raffa made a displeased noise and very carefully bent to gather my legs over one arm and prop my back delicately against the other so as not to jostle my ribs. I pressed my stuffed nose into the short hair on his hard chest and squeezed my eyes against the tears that sprang up behind them.
The simple kindness was too much to handle after the sheer terribleness of my first day in the country.
“Sorry,” I croaked.
“Stai zitta.”
That I knew well.
Shut up.
My father still muttered it under his breath sometimes when one of us was being particularly obstinate.
I obeyed, but only because I needed to save my energy for when he put me down in the bathroom. The hallway outside my bedroom was narrow, dotted every couple meters with chandeliers that glittered dimly on a low setting. When we reached the bathroom door, Raffa gently lowered me to my feet, hands on my forearms as I steadied myself. I tried to look up at him, but the effort made my head ache sharply, and I could barely open my eyes to see him anyway.
“Call if you need me,” he demanded.
I shuffled around without saying anything because I’d be damned if I asked this gorgeous stranger to help me in the bathroom. As it was, it took me way too long after closing the door on him to lower myself to the toilet and do my business. I thought briefly about checking myself out in the mirror, but I knew turning on the light would only hurt my eyes. By the time I reached the doorway again, I had to lean my entire body against the door for a moment of reprieve.
For one clear, brutal second, I wanted to cry.
I wanted teleportation to exist so I could wish myself back to Michigan with one click of ruby-red slippers.
My mom would coo over me and make sure I was fed, watered, and cuddled to within an inch of my life, while my dad would go all over town to get my favorite treats to brighten my day. I was twenty-three years old, but I felt so young, so unprepared to be sick, alone, and without money or ID in a foreign country, at the mercy of a man who’d hit me with his freaking car.
Gemma had been the one to call me Jinx for the first time when I fell through a rotted board in a friend’s treehouse as a girl and broke my arm. My parents had joined in soon after when it became apparent that karma had a grudge against me.
I’d felt lucky recently, though, that I was not the one who’d died in my twenties like my sister.
Now I wasn’t sure if being lucky or unlucky really mattered.
The truth seemed to be this: As soon as you were comfortable, life found a way to kick you straight in the teeth.
“Guinevere?” Raffa’s voice filtered through the door. “Do you need help?”
I sucked in a breath and pushed off the door so I could open it. He stood to the side, arms crossed, naked torso framed by that black robe.
“I wish I felt better to admire you properly,” I admitted as I braced myself against the doorframe.
I was too out of it to control my impulses, so I wasn’t even embarrassed when Raffa surprised me by grinning slightly, a wolfish expression that should have been threatening.
“You will have the opportunity when you are better,” he quipped before stepping forward to pick me up again. As he adjusted me in his arms, he added, “You have a fever.”
“Mmm,” I agreed, pressing my nose shamelessly to the column of his throat in search of the warm scent. “Cold.”
He cursed softly but took me to my room and gently laid me back in bed. I shivered as he tucked the bedsheets in around me, then watched through slitted eyes as he retrieved another blanket from the cabinet in one corner. Before he left, he took up my phone, held it to my face to open the screen with the facial recognition, and then typed away at something.
“My number,” he told me, placing the phone by my hip on the bed so I wouldn’t have to strain to reach it. “Text if you need the bathroom or anything else, si? Do not be an idiota and suffer needlessly.”
“Aye, aye,” I said, sucking in a wet breath before continuing, “Captain.”
He stared at me critically, then pressed the back of his hand to my forehead with a shake of his head. “If this does not come down by the morning, I will call the doctor back. And you must drink, if you can. A kidney condition is not something to fuck with.”
“’M fine.”
He ignored me, pushing a lock of hair off my brow when he’d finished taking my temperature. “Sogni d’oro.”
Sweet dreams.
“Not as sweet as I thought they’d be,” I confessed in a slur as sleep rushed up to meet me like a slap to the face.
“Not yet,” he agreed before I fell into slumber. “But they will be again soon. Prometto.”
I promise.
That continued for the next four days. Raffa was around whenever I texted, at all hours, to help me to the bathroom, to bring me medication and cool cloths he pressed to my forehead. He never lingered, but it was soothing to know he was so close, so watchful. Between the horrific cold I’d probably caught on the plane, which led too quickly to dehydration, and the bruises from the accident, I’d never felt so ill in my body before, not even after my kidney transplant, when I’d been dosed up on painkillers. It was enough to give me nightmares that meant I woke up with croaking screams, tears wet on my face, ribs so painful they burned like fire.
And Raffa was there by the side of my bed like a sentient shadow, with cool, soothing hands and quiet Italian words my muddled brain couldn’t process. There were hazy memories of his big hand cupping the back of my head to support me while he tipped a cold glass of water to my lips and the salt of his fingers against my lips as he forced me to eat small morsels of bread and sweet slices of peach.
The doctor came back and hooked me up to an IV so I could get proper fluids, which was a godsend, because otherwise I would have had to go to the hospital and try to explain, while I was in agony, what had happened to my money and ID.
On the fifth day my fever finally broke and left me as hollow as a dried weed. I slept for nearly a full day after that, waking on the sixth day feeling marginally better than I had in what felt like years.
There was a tray beside me on the bed holding sweet Italian cornetti, toast, a pot of hazelnut-chocolate spread, and a few ripe Italian plums. I pushed myself into a seated lean with gritted teeth, even though the pain in my ribs and hip was duller than it had been. On the tray there was a folded piece of notecard I picked up with shaky fingers.
Ragazza,
Eat. You were too skinny before this sickness. Now you make a very pretty skeleton. I will be back in two hours. Call if you need me.
RR
“Bossy even in absentia,” I murmured, shocked by the rough texture of my voice.
Still, I was ravenous because I hadn’t eaten more than broth, focaccia, and peaches for days, so I slathered a triangle of toast in chocolate spread and shoved it into my mouth.
Which was when, of course, the door to the room opened and a stranger appeared.
She was a small woman but clearly athletic, muscles evident in her shoulders and arms through her tight black T-shirt and black cargo pants. Though she was pretty, her makeup-free face was severe, her outfit stark and almost military.
“Bene, you’re up,” she declared, moving to the closed curtains to toss them open unceremoniously, yellow light piercing through the room and my eyes.
I shielded them in the crook of my arm so I could adjust, and when I opened them again, she was at the side of my bed, staring down at me.
“Now I understand,” she mused.
“Um, understand what?”
“Why Raffa picked up a girl on the side of the road,” she offered condescendingly, as if it was obvious.
I guessed it actually was.
“You look like shit,” she told me.
My hand flew to my hair, and I winced at the greasy, ratty mass of it.
“You smell too,” she informed me helpfully.
“Thanks,” I muttered. “I’ve been sick for days. What’s your excuse?”
She blinked at me, then threw her head back to laugh from her belly, deep and loud and long. When she recovered, dashing a tear from her eye with the back of her hand, she grinned at me. “Si, I understand now. My name is Martina.”
“Guinevere,” I said.
“Raffa told me not to bother you,” she said, and I got the feeling she didn’t often follow orders. “But I had to meet you. Also, I thought you might want a shower.”
“I’d love one, but . . .” I wasn’t sure I was up to it energetically, which was incredibly sad.
“We can leave the door open slightly, and I’ll wait in the hall. If you need help, I’ll be there in a second,” she proposed.
I bit my lower lip as I considered her offer. It was just so . . . strange to be relying on strangers when I felt so vulnerable and unwell. But there was nothing for it, and I decided to be grateful instead of suspicious. Most good midwesterners would have treated me the same in this situation, I was sure, so it shouldn’t be weird that Italians might too.
“Thank you. I do feel disgusting.”
Martina nodded emphatically to make it clear that I also looked disgusting.
“Finish your food while you tell me about yourself,” she suggested, but it was more like an order, and I had to wonder if she was in the military or something. She just had a commanding aura, like you’d rather die than disobey her, and if you still managed that somehow, she’d kill you herself.
So I grabbed the cornetto and tore off the sugar-sticky end to pop in my mouth. “What do you want to know?”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-three.”
She seemed to find that amusing. “Oh yes.”
“Is twenty-three an exciting age for some reason?”
“Not really.” Her grin was sharp and wicked. “If you’re curious, Raffa is thirty-four.”
“Hmm,” I hummed noncommittally.
I hadn’t thought about his age or occupation or really any pertinent details about the man who’d become my reluctant rescuer. My injuries and illness had thrown me into a survival-state fugue that I was only now emerging from.
But I could admit to curiosity.
To thinking that an age gap that large was probably too large.
I was a naive girl in a foreign land freshly graduated with my MBA from U of M, and Raffa was a man with a job and a palace.
Yeah, talk about out of my league.
He was helping me out because he felt sorry for me, and even though he was gorgeous and gracious enough to be a walking, talking heartthrob, life had taught me better than to hope for the impossible.
“He’s been very nice to me,” I admitted. “Not everyone would have helped me the way he has.”
“Not even Raffa would have helped someone the way he has helped you.”
I frowned at her quip. “Are you implying he isn’t usually a nice person? Aren’t you friends?”
Martina laughed that barrel laugh again. “He’s my boss, I guess you could say. And he can be . . . kind. He’s just not known for it outside his family and small circle of friends. You are the exception, it seems.”
I thought she meant it as a compliment, but it only planted a small seed of unease in my belly. If Raffa wasn’t usually this nice a guy, who was he really?
