I sat for all of sixty seconds on the edge of the bed Raffa had lent me in his Florentine palace, feeling confused and downtrodden by his sudden cold dismissal after a lovely day together, before I told myself to stop being an idiota.
Raffa may have rejected whatever bond I’d felt growing between us, tenuous but sticky like the first tendrils of a spider’s web, but that didn’t mean all of Florence wasn’t waiting outside these doors for me to explore. I had money (from Raffa) and clothes (also from Raffa), so what was stopping me from setting off on my own adventure?
Raffa, really, or the thought of him.
After such a short time, I shouldn’t have been able to factor him into my Italian fantasies so easily, but dreams floated across my consciousness like scenes from a much-loved film. Twirling in that field of poppies, in that dress he seemed to love, only to tumble into his strong arms, the two of us then crushing the delicate blooms beneath our bodies as we had sex in the grass. Sucking aged Modena balsamic off his thumb while we shared a meal in the city, and laughing with him when he teased me for enjoying everything with a little too much enthusiasm.
Exploring alone seemed desaturated now, but I wouldn’t let my trip be derailed by a moody Italian.
So I grabbed the big raffia YSL bag Maria Lucia had thrust into my hands at one point that morning, along with the thick handful of euro notes Raffa had given me, and set off to take in the city.
Just as I was opening the front door, Martina appeared, silent and terrifying with a cleaver, of all things, in one hand.
“Going somewhere?” she asked with a raised brow.
I eyed the knife and swallowed. “Yes, I thought I’d check out the city because I’ve been cooped up indoors for too long. I’m sick of waiting around for adventure to come to me.”
For some reason, this seemed highly amusing to her. “Si, capisco. Have fun, then.”
“Do you have any suggestions for a nice place to grab dinner?” I asked after a brief hesitation.
“Where are you headed?”
“I want to see the Duomo,” I admitted, a little sheepish because I felt like such a tourist admitting I wanted to see the most famous site in the city.
But Martina only nodded. “Of course, why don’t you try Trattoria Umberto? It’s on the way to the Duomo, across the river. Eat first and see the Duomo for the first time under the lights. Something tells me you will like it better at night.”
I wasn’t so sure about that. Walking around Florence after dark made me apprehensive after my encounter with Galasso, even though I’d looked up safety in Florence at least a dozen times before I’d left Michigan. It was safe to walk through the center at night, even as a lone woman, as long as I stuck to the main thoroughfares, which would be thick with tourists. I just had to watch my belongings and stay away from dark corners.
Which was easier said than done, really, when I’d always been drawn inexplicably but inexorably to the shadows.
I thanked Martina, ignoring her manic grin and the gleam of the cleaver, and pushed into the hot evening air. It was thick and stagnant, but I could smell garlic and cooking meat from the little restaurant down the street, and on cue my stomach rumbled.
As I headed toward the Arno and the famous Ponte Vecchio, my phone buzzed in my purse. I pulled it out to see the screen lit with two missed calls and three text messages, one from my mother and two from my father.
I chewed on my lower lip as I scrolled them.
Dad: Why haven’t you called? I know you said you were sick, but surely you’re better now.
Dad: Guinevere Luisa Stone, if you do not give me proof of life in the next 24 hours, I will be on the next flight to Paris to find you.
Mom: He means it.
Damn.
I’d been texting them almost every day, except those few days when I was so sick and concussed I could barely open my eyes, and they still worried about me. I was twenty-three years old with a master’s degree, and they still couldn’t stop worrying.
As I hesitated, another text came in.
Mom: Are you taking your medicine? Don’t forget, the humidity will dehydrate you quicker than you’re used to!
My sigh unwound like a spool of thread over my tongue. I looked around and saw a building that could pass for something in Paris. It made my chest ache to perpetuate this lie to my parents, the first of my life, but it also felt necessary. A rebellion against a totalitarian parenthood. I smiled into my camera phone and took a photo.
Jinx: I’m alive and well if a little pale from being stuck inside. Don’t worry about me if I don’t check in every day. I missed a whole week to sickness. I want to soak it all in!
I sent the message and the photo, then resolutely stuffed my phone deep into my purse and quickened my pace as if I could leave the past and my reality back in Michigan in the dust.
A moment later, my worries faded to nothing as I took in the bustling, stunning sight of Ponte Vecchio ahead of me. The famous bridge was built up on either side with stores, most of them tourist traps, I knew from my research, but the effect was still unlike anything I’d ever seen. Tourists milled between the narrow bridge walls, looking at overpriced jewelry and licking fast-melting cones of vibrant gelato.
A giggle bubbled up in my throat as I took my first steps onto the bridge, and even when a tall man bumped into me, I just beamed up at him in response.
It hit me all at once, a week after I’d arrived.
I was here.
I’d made it.
Five weeks in Italy stretched out before me like a red carpet lined with bright lights. I was so excited it was hard not to get ahead of myself and imagine how I might feel when I returned stateside to my predictable life and boring self after what had already been a fairly life-changing trip.
But that was a future-me problem.
In that moment, I had nothing to worry about but luxuriating in the setting and finding authentic Toscana food to fill my hungry belly.
I took some time to look through one of the arches in the middle of the bridge with a fabulous view of the Arno. The sun was a huge golden medallion kissing the edge of the horizon, the river blushed pink from the embrace, and the sky tinged tangerine. I took a photo, but I knew nothing would ever capture this experience for what it was.
Total freedom and the realization of a dream I’d first conceived of in a hospital bed as a child.
“I’m here,” I whispered, perhaps a little foolishly, to the spirit of my sister I imagined I carried with me on my travels. “I made it, Gemma. And I think you’d be proud of me.”
I let the swell of tourists push me gently forward over the bridge onto the opposite bank and then turned right instead of heading straight to the Duomo. According to my phone, Trattoria Umberto was a little restaurant with rave reviews off the beaten track deep in the Santa Croce neighborhood.
There were other restaurants I had in the typed itinerary on my phone (I’d lost my physical laminated copy along with my suitcase), but I was trying to be more impulsive and a little less uptight about everything. Control had always been my favorite method to combat the uncertainty of being ill. When your own body acted against you, it was easy to cave into helplessness, and while I wasn’t immune from bouts of rage and frustration, being organized and disciplined was its own kind of balm.
Besides, I figured a local would know the best places to eat, and I was ready to make a fool of myself over a proper plate of Italian pasta.
The restaurant was nothing special from the outside. A wooden overhang with the restaurant name written in golden paint and two small windows filled with hanging legs of prosciutto to either side of the door. There wasn’t a line, but when I entered the dark, fairly cool interior, it was packed with diners, most of them speaking fluid, loud Italian.
I grinned at the bustle, noting the crooked art and photographs on the walls, the way the building seemed to be a collection of varying rooms at slightly different elevations, the wood dark and the beams exposed.
It was gorgeous.
A curvy older woman with iron-gray hair and sharp creases beside her mouth bustled up to me and asked me something in rapid-fire Italian.
“A little slower?” I asked in my own timid Italian.
Her smile softened a bit, but she didn’t switch to English, which I was grateful for. “Table for one? We only have space in the back.”
“Yes, please.”
She nodded briskly and turned to weave her way efficiently through the tables. Even though I wanted to hesitate over the fragrant plates of food at the tables and eavesdrop on some of the louder conversations, I followed quickly so I wouldn’t lose her in the maze of rooms. She dropped me off at a table in the very back where the room opened up to allow for a second wooden bar and a small band playing live music in the opposite corner.
“Bene?” she asked me, already setting down the menu.
I nodded, turning my smile on her. “Grazie mille, Signora.”
She laughed, a short, sharp exhalation. “It is my job.”
Within moments of my sitting down, an older server swept up to my table with a charming smile and exaggerated politeness.
“Signorina,” he said in Italian. “I am deeply pleased to welcome you here tonight.”
I laughed, charmed despite his obviousness. “Thank you. I’m really happy to be here.”
“American?” he asked in English. “Ah, but you look Italiana to me!”
“My father,” I explained. “He was born somewhere in the area.”
“Of course, this is why your beauty caught my eye from across the room,” he said shamelessly, but there was a twinkle in his eye that said he was just having fun.
It felt good after Raffa’s obvious rejection to have a little admiration.
“I’m sure you tell that to all the ladies,” I countered.
“Not her,” he assured me, gesturing to the woman who had seated me as she power walked through the room.
I muffled my laugh behind one hand, but the server didn’t bother to hide his.
“I’m Guinevere,” I said, because it felt wrong not to introduce myself somehow.
“Nicola. Now, what can I get you to drink?”
“What do you suggest?”
His face lit up even more, creasing the skin beside his eyes and cheeks handsomely. “Will you let me have the chef prepare a true Toscana meal for you tonight? We will start with a beautiful bottle of Sangiovese and a panzanella. It is bread salad, very good.”
“Just a glass, please,” I corrected, because I had to limit my alcohol intake as much as possible with my kidney transplant and condition. Transplants typically lasted twelve to fifteen years if you took good care of them, and I didn’t want to have any more surgeries than necessary in my lifetime.
“D’accordo. You have allergies?” When I shook my head, he clapped his hands together and whisked my menu away without my having opened it. “Bene, bene. Prepare yourself for culinary delights.”
I was still laughing when he spun away from the table toward the bar.
Even though it was my first time taking myself for dinner, I found I wasn’t embarrassed at all. The room was too filled with happy people and the vibrancy of live music, cliché jazz crooners that reminded everyone of Italy and made my foot tap along to the familiar beats. I wasn’t alone much, anyway. Nicola lingered by the table between courses and sent over some of the other servers when they weren’t busy to keep me company. Every dish came with an explanation about its origins—panzanella, a good use for stale, leftover bread, used by farmers for generations; potato tortellini drenched in a butter-sage sauce; and Tuscany’s famous pecorino cheese.
By the time Nicola insisted on serving me a plate of tiramisu on the house, along with biscotti and a glass of Vin Santo, a sweet, nutty dessert wine, I felt like I’d roll through the streets back to Raffa’s.
I was midlaughter when the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, an electrical current pulsing over my skin. My hand stilled halfway to my mouth, my glass of sweet wine arrested as I searched the room for danger.
I found it staring out from the golden-brown eyes of a man I’d come to know too well in such a short time.
Raffa stood in the open archway, torso turned toward the hostess who had ushered me, but his head tilted my way, eyes fixed on me so intensely I felt physically restrained by his scrutiny.
“Guinevere, va bene?” Nicola asked, blocking my view of Raffa as he bent closer, his features suffused with concern.
“I-I just thought I saw someone I knew,” I admitted, lowering my slightly trembling glass to the table without taking a sip.
But when Nicola moved, Raffa was gone, and I wondered if some part of my wistful imagination had conjured him out of thin air.
I turned my attention back to the live band and noticed a man with some friends at a table near an empty space around the musicians. It was as if he’d been waiting for me to look over for some time, because his brows lifted and his mouth pulled wide into a generous smile.
He was handsome, but I couldn’t help thinking of Raffa, with his dark hair threaded through with hints of copper and those metallic eyes glinting as cool as bronze coins. He was so beautiful, it hurt to think of him as anything but a dream, something that would dissolve as soon as I tried to touch it.
But my skin tingled over my left breast, where his fingers had made contact earlier that day. I was still wearing that same dress, the bows tied neatly by his hand.
When the stranger came over, I wasn’t surprised, but it did shock and warm me to see Nicola hovering with a frown, as if he was protective of me.
“You look as if you want to dance,” the stranger announced, leaning a hip into my table so he could beam down at me comfortably. He spoke English with a mild accent that seemed more French than Italian. “I thought I had better ask you.”
I forced thoughts of Raffa away and tried to think of Gemma, who could flirt and enjoy men with a kind of irreverent joy I’d always been envious of.
“Was that a question?” I teased.
His smile loosened into something more genuine, and he offered his hand. “It was, if you’ll say yes?”
Instead of answering, I pushed out of my seat and took his warm, smooth palm. He led me to the empty space before the band and held me dramatically at the end of his arm before spinning me into his arms, his chest to my back.
It was intimate for strangers. Intimate for me. I couldn’t remember if I’d ever been held like that before and decided I hadn’t. It made me feel sad and determined in equal measure. As much as my instincts told me to pull away, to hide from the many eyes turned to us over their dinner plates and fold myself against the wall like a preserved flower, I made myself stay inside the embrace.
I’d come to Italy on a quest to find myself, and wasn’t romance the ultimate adventure?
I thought about offering him my name, but I liked the mystery of a dance with a stranger, of being nameless and mysterious, how I’d always imagined Italian women to be, instead of the plain and straightforward American I was.
Before I could even swing my hips with his in time with the music, the warm bracket of his body disappeared from behind me, and my arms were left wrapped around my torso, hugging my body as if in consolation.
I stood there for one interminable moment, alone on the dance floor in front of an entire restaurant of people, frozen in humiliation.
Just as I turned to see what had happened to my dance partner, he pressed against my back, his arms sliding around my waist to pin me even more aggressively to his front.
When I wiggled, trying to find some space, a familiar whisper wafted hot across my neck, breaking my flesh into goose bumps. “Placati, cerbiatta. It is only the man you wished to dance with from the very start.”
A shiver sluiced down my body like a bucket of cool water dropped over my head.
“Raffa,” I breathed, even though I meant it to be an accusation. “What are you doing?”
“It should be obvious,” he drawled, spinning me away and then pulling me gently, inexorably against his body so we were sewn tight from chest to thighs. He was so much taller than me, even in my heeled sandals, that I had to tip my head back and expose my neck to look into his coolly amused gaze. “We are dancing.”
“Why?” I demanded, ignoring the way his eyes dipped down to the line of my throat and darkened noticeably. “A few hours ago, you couldn’t get away from me fast enough.”
“A few hours ago, I did not think you were foolish enough to entice a room of Florentine men to seduce you.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I snapped, trying to pull away from the artful way his body led mine in an easy series of steps around the small dance floor. No one had joined us, but I wasn’t surprised. The way Raffa held me was deeply possessive, his large palm pressed to the bottom curve of my spine, his bigger body curled over mine as if he could shield me from view. As if this dance was private and not an exhibition. If he could not make them cease to exist, he would pretend anyway.
“Men have been circling you like carrion all night.” In the low golden lights of the restaurant, Raffa seemed like a bronze statue come to life, his dark edges softened and blurred, his skin a warm olive.
“Are you saying I’m dead meat?” I demanded, trying to pull away using all my force.
I only succeeded in tripping slightly, but Raffa dipped me seamlessly, as if it was intended, and rolled me up and across into his opposite arm before carrying on.
“I am saying you could be, if you bat those obscenely beautiful lashes at the wrong man. You are not in America anymore, little fawn. You must pay attention to your surroundings.”
“The most dangerous man in this room seems to be the one forcing me to dance against my will,” I countered.
“Like my little bambolina?”
His little doll.
“I am not a fawn or a doll,” I said between my teeth, tossing my heavy hair over my shoulder as sweat started to bead down my back from the closeness of our bodies. “I have teeth.”
I was surprised by the gentle amusement in his smile, even though I should have found it condescending. The hand clasping mine placed it on his chest so his fingers were free to glide up my bare arm, tease my shoulder, and slide up my neck until his thumb trailed over my mouth. “Yes, but no one has taught you how to use them. Though I have wondered what it would feel like to be bitten by you.”
His thumb dipped between my lips to test the edge of my front teeth and then retreated before I could remember myself.
“Dream on,” I scoffed, but I knew the flush warming the skin of my cheeks and chest would give away the truth.
I’d never been so turned on in my life.
The way he touched me, as if he had a right to but was still a little wary, coaxing and respectful simultaneously. I realized that I didn’t have to try to be atavistic with him or charming; our flirtation was as sharp edged and pretty as a medieval blade, but it was still flirtation, and with Raffa it came easy.
Too easy, even.
The music swelled to a crescendo, and Raffa pulled me into a quick rhythm, the steady rattle of a tambourine snakelike, a dangerous temptation woven through the staccato song. Raffa moved me faster, twirling me under his arm, tugging me this way and that so seamlessly and forcefully it felt as if I was flowing like a river between rocks. When the music came to a crashing halt, Raffa tugged me hard toward him, and I allowed impulse to push my hands into his shoulders as he gripped my hips and lifted me into the air. A giddy, breathless laugh escaped me as he spun me in the air, and I let my arms rise like sails, wishing foolishly that I could float there forever.
Applause exploded into the quivering silence left by the song, some diners calling out “Bravi!” and “Ben fatto!”
But everything was muted in the rushing of blood in my ears as Raffa slowly, inch by excruciating inch, lowered my body to the floor, pressing it intimately against his own. I was damp and panting, but so was he, and it intensified the smell of him. That rich, oak-and-smoke scent I dragged into my heaving lungs like a drug. My mind seemed to swim, high off him the way I’d never been off anything before.
I wasn’t prepared for a man like him.
Raffa stared down into my face, skin glistening, and I realized when his brows lifted in surprise that I had spoken aloud.
“È appropriato,” he murmured. “Because I have no context for a girl like you, and therefore, it seems, I have no defenses against you.”
“You don’t need to defend against me. I am just a cerbiatta, remember?” I taunted, but the self-mockery hit too close to home.
Just a fawn, common, foolish, untried.
“Ah, but even a fawn is a wild animal and dangerous when provoked,” he reminded me, using two fingers to push a lock of sweaty hair away from my forehead. “So I had best not provoke you.”
Too late, I thought.
I am provoked.
You have awakened the beast inside me that was always hungry for more, eating at my bones when I wouldn’t feed it anything of value.
And now it had found something—someone—to sink its teeth into, and I was worried what kind of woman I could become if I gave in to that ever-gnawing need to devour.
Not just Raffa, bones and all, but life itself.
It was as I was contemplating this that I noticed the spot of red on his white shirt collar. At first, I thought it was lipstick, and feminine rage scoured through me, scorched earth in its wake. I didn’t pause to consider the vehemence of my jealousy because the next second it occurred to me it was blood.
“You have blood on your shirt,” I said.
And Raffa?
He smiled that movie-star villain’s grin that curled the sides of his mouth and bared his sharp teeth in a way that felt like a threat.
“I had red meat for dinner,” he explained casually, but there was something buried in his tone that dared me to dig deep and excavate the secrets hidden there like bones. “I like it still bleeding.”
“Practically still beating,” I joked, but his face was solemn when he pulled me toward my abandoned table with my hand tucked into the crook of his arm.
“No,” he said. “Very, very dead.”
