Page 24 of My Dark Ever After

“I can understand why Carmine says you were instantly infatuated.Un colpo di fulmine.”

A lightning bolt.

The Italian phrase for love at first sight.

“It was not that simple, Mamma,” I replied.

Guinevere had been hit with something the moment we met, but that something was my car.

At the sink, Ludo snorted.

“Perhaps that is when it started,” I admitted with a glare at mysoldato. “But does a lightning strike alter your DNA? Does it carveout space for something so big in your chest that you cannot breathe around it?”

“Si,” Mamma said, reaching up to cup my cheek. “It does,ragazzo.”

I was not so certain. Surely an actual lightning strike would not hurt so much as the pain of Guinevere’s rejection.

“I’m heading up.” Guinevere’s voice came from over my shoulder. When I turned, she was in the archway, swaying slightly with obvious fatigue. “Leo insisted when I almost broke my jaw yawning,” she added bashfully. “It must be jet lag.”

Or running through a skyscraper trying to avoid two Italian thugs trying to murder you,I thought, but I did not distress my mother and sister by saying that aloud.

“Yes, bed for you,” Mamma declared. “Raffaele will show you to your room. Emiliano already put your suitcase there.”

I sighed, because my mother was incapable of not playing matchmaker, but I still went to Guinevere’s side.

“Do you need me to carry you?” I asked quietly, noting the drawn, pale cast of her face.

I wanted to carry her to my room and tuck her into my body so I could shield her from the world and bury myself in her scent.

“No,” she said simply, carefully moving away to avoid touching me.

I let her lead the way up the stairs even though she did not know where to go. When she hesitated at the second landing, I eased by her to walk down the left hall all the way to the last room on the right.

“Every room in this house has a name,” I told her, my hand on the knob, the shadows thick around us, only a shimmer of moonlight pooling in from the large window at the end of the hall. “I thought it was appropriate you have this one.”

I stepped aside so she could read the little ceramic plaque on the wooden door.

Papavero.

Poppy.

She made a thin noise like air escaping a puncture wound, but followed me without objection into the dark, cool room.

I flipped a switch on the lamp beside the bed, illuminating the large space for her to study. There was a large bed with a carved wooden headboard and matching nightstands, a floor-to-ceiling gilt mirror propped against the wall between two windows, and an ornate chest of drawers and matching bureau. Everything was done in soft creams and reds—passionate, romantic colors that suited mycerbiatta.

“It’s beautiful,” she admitted, stepping into the room timidly as if she was afraid to be alone with me.

I could not blame myself later, when I lay awake and unblinking in my own room, for what I did next. It was the wine, maybe, or the late hour and the fact that I officially had not slept in over two days.

Mostly, though, it was the sight of her in that old college tee with all that thick, dark hair spilling around her shoulders, the pale oval of her face exhausted but utterly, devastatingly beautiful. All of it amplified by having this woman, my wish on a shooting star, here in my house after a long, wonderful dinner with my family, who seemed to like her almost as much as I did.

Whatever magic it was that moved me beyond rational thought, I found myself stalking across the room toward her.

“R-Raffa,” she stuttered, stepping back against the partially open door so that it swung shut with a shudder.

Seconds later, I was on her, shoving her into the door with the full press of my body, my hands diving deep into those tousled locks to hold her head back for the kiss I bent to seal over her mouth.

She tasted divine.