The girls, Mira and, I learned, Rosetta, followed me home in their little Alfa Romeo.
My family was still on the back patio, the conversation terse as I rounded the corner with Mira and Rosetta at my back.
Conversation stopped immediately, Dante’s chair scrapping painfully across the tiles as he stood up and stalked toward me.
I didn’t move an inch.
He collected me in his arms and carted me up against his chest, burying his nose in my hair. My hands found the back of his hair and tangled there, holding him to me.
“My Lena, lottatrice mia,” he murmured as he clutched me to him like a life raft. “You have to know, please know, I love you better than anyone else. I love better even than I love myself.”
“I do,” I whispered thickly, slowly wrapping my arms around his waist, kissing his chest where my cheek was pressed to it. “I do, I do. And I love you too. So much it makes me crazy. It’s my only excuse for running away instead of talking to you about how much it hurt.”
“I know,” he soothed, a big hand cupping the back of my skull as he pulled away to look down into my tear stained face. “I promised I wouldn’t hurt you and I’m sorry. I knew if you found out, it would damage the truth between us so I didn’t tell you about Cosima. I didn’t tell you because those feelings were nothing. How can you compare the beauty of a single bulb to the brilliance of light from the sun?”
I breathed through the tightness in my chest, embracing the pain so I could accept his words into my body. “How do you always know what to say?” I said as I often did, trying to lighten the tension, trying to show him I was brittle, but I was trying.
“We are made of the same thing,” he reminded me. “I feel you in my heart.”
He kissed me then.
Not a sweet kiss.
One that pulled me to my tip toes, straining against his chest to get closer, to feel the friction of his body against mine the way his tongue moved against my mouth.
It was a possessive reclaiming that I submitted to with my entire being.
When he finally pulled away, the lingering pain in my muscles had been replaced by tingling warmth.
“You leave without a guard again, lottatrice, I’m tan your ass so red you won’t be able to sit for a week,” he growled in my ear before stepping back a little.
I smiled a little, shifting my hand to his cheek so I could run my fingernails over his stubble. “I think that’s fair. I’m sorry I was so stupid. I think I’m so ready to be betrayed, sometimes I manifest it.”
“It’s understandable,” he murmured, running his nose along mine. “But to betray you would be betraying myself. I won’t do that to either of us.”
“I know.” I winced. “I think I just needed to remind myself of that one last time before it got through my thick skull.”
He kissed me then, softly, lips wet and silken as rose petals at dawn. I sipped at him, licked at him, hummed when he palmed my throat and slid his thumb over my pulse to feel my heart beat for him.
Because it did.
It always would.
Which was why I’d concocted a mad plan to keep him for myself at all costs.
When I pulled away, I smiled, looking over my shoulder at the awkwardly waiting female couple behind me.
“Do you want to tell me why you brought my betrothed over for lunch?” Dante asked, eyes crinkled with mirth.
I was relieved he wasn’t mad at me, harboring righteous resentment at me for taking out my shock and anger at him, that I couldn’t speak for a moment.
“This is Mirabella’s lover, Rosetta,” I explained as I stepped away to gesture them closer. “This is why Mira absolutely does not want to marry you either.”
“Assolutamente,” she echoed firmly.
Absolutely.
Dante didn’t miss a beat. He moved forward and kissed Rosetta on both cheeks in greeting. “Ciao, amica mia.”
Hello, my friend.
My heart almost burst in my chest.
We all moved to take seats at the table and I squeezed Cosima’s shoulder as I took the chair beside her, letting her know I was sorry. She reached up and squeezed my wrist in return, her eyes soft with understanding.
“Okay, so I may be new to all this, but I was a damn good lawyer so hear me out,” I started, looking at the face of the family around me, desperate for this to work. “The wedding is next Sunday and if everyone is willing, this is how it will work…”
Fifteen
Dante
Elena’s plan was good, but it wasn’t enough.
Even if it all worked out against the implausible odds, it left our operation in Italy floundering and the war back home in America without its general.