She looked away from the screen. “I draw many pictures.”
Bullshit. Not of men, she didn’t. “So if I show the gift you gave me to your father, he won’t think it’s out of the ordinary?”
Her gaze immediately cut back to mine as her mouth opened with a shocked gasp. “You would not do that.”
“I’ll do what I have to.” I always had. But right now, that bullshit line I’d fed myself since I was a kid felt exactly like what it was—empty fucking words.
Instead of more outrage like I was expecting, her face fell, and she dropped her gaze. Then her voice went quiet as hell. “I wish to hang up now.”
The memory came out of nowhere.
My mother smiling down at me, the sun behind her, the wind in her hair, her green eyes full of life, she laughed.
“Come on, Erico. I have you.” Grasping my hands tight, she started to spin. “You can do it. See?” My feet left the ground as she swung me in a circle. “You can fly, Erico!” Smiling wide, her laughter trailed us. “You’re flying!”
I fucking blinked.
Then the memory was gone, and I was looking at a dark-eyed angel with tearstained cheeks.
I couldn’t do it.
I wouldn’t intentionally hurt her.
“Fine. I won’t show your father the picture, Sancia.” Making her the promise was idiotic. I didn’t do promises. My piece-of-shit father had never kept one, and I didn’t believe in them.
But here I was, staring at an angel, and I couldn’t hurt her any more than I could hang up on her while she was still upset.
Fuck.
My call could wait.
I scrubbed a hand over two days’ growth. “Still want to hang up on me, bella?”
Sancia
“Fine. I won’t show your father the picture, Sancia.” He rubbed his hand over his facial hair that was neither a beard nor merely a missed day of shaving. “Still want to hang up on me, bella?”
He frightened me.
The way his deep, midnight voice curled around my name as if to protect it right after he had threatened to tell on me to Papà. How he looked at me. The intimate way he spoke to me, calling me beautiful—it did not make sense.
Nothing about him did.
Not his impossible height. Not his hard muscles that were bigger than any footballer’s, as if he needed them for nefarious acts. Or maybe it was so he could lift a woman into his arms and carry her away from her heart and soul.
The latter I believed.
I really did not want to hang up, but I did want to avert my gaze and turn away from him. Just to give my breath a single moment to catch up to the pounding in my chest, but I couldn’t.
Drawn to him as if I had no will of my own, I felt a shift the second I first laid eyes on him as sure as the moment I had found out Papà was sick.
No turning back, time rushing at me faster than I could drink in this man’s every word, my life had divided again.
Before Papà was sick, and after.
Before I saw a living, breathing, black-haired, gold-and-green-eyed sculpture of a god take his shirt off, and after.
I did not know grief until Papà’s diagnosis.
I did not know want until I saw this man.
I stared at him and he at me as my entire world silently shifted to a whole new color.
“Principessa.” He shook his head. “Those eyes are killing me.”
I did not know if I liked that he called me Principessa, but I knew I liked the soft tone of his voice when he said it just now. “I am sorry.” I did not know what I was apologizing for. His words were no more than a saying, but there was something in the air, something more than Papà. I could sense it coming—in my bones, on the soft breeze from the open window, in the pinpricks of over-sensitized nerves tingling through my fingers and up my arms as I held his phone.
Something bad was coming.
“Sorry for what? Staring at me or silently throwing me more thoughts in the past ten seconds than I’ve had all day?”
“I do not know what that means.” Momentarily forgetting about Papà and the ominous feeling, I frowned. “You do not think?” I did not believe him. That was impossible.
Exhaling and shaking his head as if it were some kind of balm to his own thoughts, he glanced past his phone screen and scanned left to right as if looking for someone or something. Or maybe it was just what he did. He had done the same in the courtyard and the foyer of the villa.
His gaze came back to mine, but he did not simply look at me. His stare intent, it was as if he were looking into my soul. “I think a lot of shit, Principessa. But trust me, you don’t want any of my thoughts living in your head.” His expression suddenly shutting down as if he had put up a mental wall, he abruptly changed the subject. “You go to school?”
Wondering what thoughts he had that he did not want me to know about but too afraid to ask for fear he would end the call, I struggled for a moment to switch gears.
“I had tutors.” But not for a while.
Once I had started taking care of Papà, I no longer had the time or desire to study. It seemed like a waste to spend Papà’s money. But now I wanted to learn again, except it was not textbooks I wanted to pour over. I wanted to study him. I wanted to know why he swore in English and slipped in a few non-Italian words when he spoke. “Do you speak English often?”
“Only when I travel to New York.”
“What is it like there?” I wondered how long it took on an airplane to get there.
“Crowded. Everyone speaks English with different accents.”
I frowned.
His eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”
“Oh. Nothing. I just….” Should I tell him? I had never even told Papà this.
His posture straightened as if he were both angry and ready to stand. “Just what, Principessa?”
“It just did not occur to me before now that English would have as many dialects as Italian.” Knowing I was going to tell him, foolishly wanting to tell him, I divulged my secret. “I learned English from one of the house staff a few years ago. She said she had an American mother. I never asked from where. She is no longer with us, but she gave me a book to help me learn more before she left. Except I do not know if the English I learned has a dialect or if it is even proper.”
“Say something in English,” he ordered as the side of his mouth barely tipped up. “I’ll let you know.”
Color flushed my cheeks. “I have not spoken it in years.”
“Stop stalling, bella.”
Now embarrassed, regretting my admission but loving how he called me beautiful, I backtracked. “I am afraid I am not very good at it.”
“Still waiting, Principessa.”
I thought for a moment. Then I switched to English. “The color of your eyes reminds me of a tiger, but your expression is that of a ghost.”
The small tilt of his lips disappeared, and then he stared at me with the exact expression I had been trying to describe. Looking at me, looking through me, with no discernible emotion, the look on his face was as impenetrable as his eyes were mysterious.
I switched back to Italian. “I am sorr—”
“Your English is perfect.”