Page 20 of My Dark Ever After

It was a good excuse not to let her go.

Carmine shot me a look in the rearview mirror as he drove us through the countryside to Villa Romano, but he did not say a word, turning the volume up on classical music instead. Affection pulsed in my chest like a second heartbeat. It was good of him to give me that moment without teasing—uncharacteristic too.

Clearly, I was not the only one who had missed the American girl.

The sun was setting when we finally pulled up to the wrought iron gates of the Romano estate. Rose-gold light spilled over the vines on the left side of the road and turned the grass to luminous metal sheaves on the right.

“Guinevere,” I said, gently rousing her because I knew she would love the view, and some part of me was eager—proud—to show her the beauty of my home. “Wake up. We have arrived.”

She stirred in my arms, mauve eyelids fluttering before they peeled back to squint up at me. The long rest had done wonders, adding some color to her cheeks. I held still as she groaned and stretched in my arms, a sleepy smile tugging that full mouth into a pink crescent I wanted to kiss open and plunder.

“Raffa,” she murmured, still asleep enough to forget herself. “I always dream about you.”

It was as if her small hand had reached into the cage of my ribs and wrenched out my heart.

“This is not a dream,cerbiatta mia,” I told her softly, taking advantage of the situation by running a calloused finger down the suede-soft edge of her jaw. “You are awake, you are safe, and I have finally brought you home to Villa Romano.”

Even though I knew it was coming, watching her warm, open expression ice over made my stomach clench.

I let her scrabble out of my lap onto the seat beside me, smoothing down her threadbare, oversized college tee as if she was insecure or somehow immodest.

“Look,” I encouraged her, pointing out the window. “I woke you to watch the sun settle.”

Her mouth dropped open, her eyes tight with anger before she instinctively shot a glance out the glass over her shoulder. She arrested, one hand lifting to gently touch the pane the way she had done those early days back in Firenze, when she was discovering its beauty for the first time.

“Wow,” she breathed, turning completely to face the window and the glimmering, deeply orange sun kissing the tops of the endless stretch of vines leading up and away from the top of the hill we were cresting. “It’s like something from a dream.”

I swallowed the urge to tell her this wasmydream. Her in my home, meeting my family, seeing the sweet and sour memories that haunted this place for me.

“How many vines do you have?” she asked, forgetting her acrimony in the face of her undying curiosity.

“One hundred twenty-five acres of vineyard,” I told her. “Tenuta Romano is one of the oldest wineries in the country. My ancestors have lived here for over one thousand years. The tower by the gate is an Etruscan ruin, actually, and the main house on the hill is hundreds of years old.”

“So cool,” she whispered.

The tangerine light kissed her face as she turned it fully into the fading rays, limning her in a neon glow I wanted to trace with my fingertips.

“I thought you would like it here,” I confessed.

It was the wrong thing to say.

She slid me a sidelong look, shoulders tensed. “Yet you didn’t bring me here.”

“It would have been ...”Unbearable. “Hard to introduce you to my family knowing you were leaving shortly.”

“And now? I’ll still leave, Raffa. After you take out whoever it is who is coming for you and, by proxy, me.”

I tilted my head at the tone of her voice, trying to decide if I was reading into it too much. Because there was something there. A reticence or a lack of conviction. Something that said she was attempting to convince herself as well as me.

Outside the window a dog swooped into view from between the vines, asegugio maremmanopurebred my sister Stacci had named Aio. He ran beside the car as we ascended the circular road climbing up the hill, his dappled body glowing gold.

“What a beautiful baby,” Guinevere breathed, her hand clenched against the window.

There was yearning there, and awe.

“You like dogs?”

Her laugh was wistful. “Always. We didn’t have time to take care of one because I was always in and out of the hospital, and my parents feltit wasn’t fair to leave a dog alone so much. Gemma had a hamster for about two weeks before it escaped the cage and got stuck in a drawer. My dad decapitated it accidently when we were searching for it.” She winced. “Needless to say, we never got another one.”