Chapter 9
Plum...the Color of Hidden Desire and...Danger
Aria Amora
My husband and I couldn’t stop grinning at each other after the fish incident. Whenever I would remember his face when the…crappie…hit him, I’d explode with laughter. I knew for years to come, whenever the memory came back to me, I’d still laugh.
“For you.” I thrust the stiff fish at Eva before I could start up again. “Our offering to the party.”
“Er…” She lifted it and looked it over. “Thank you.” Then she looked between my grinning husband and me…laughing like a loon in intervals. “You brought enough, but I sense a story here. I’ll…have my uncle preserve this fish and I’ll send it to you as a gift.”
“Just what every girl wants hanging in her home.” I sighed playfully, hip bumping my husband. “A stiff fish hanging on the wall.”
Rocco exploded with laughter, and every eye seemed to turn in our direction at once.
It was hard to tell what the men were thinking, but the women…
they all melted. So did I. I tucked myself closer to his body, wishing I could permanently become a part of his skin—his entire system.
Then everyone screamed “surprise!” so loudly, I jumped.
I hadn’t realized the entire party had made a human curtain around the lawn, and what I was seeing was a completely different scene from what I’d seen when we first arrived.
Thousands of plum-colored flowers mixed with tiny lights decorated the space. Tables with fine linens had been set up. A table with a cake as tall as I was stood in the center of it all.
“Is someone getting married?” I asked.
Rocco chuckled, pulling me in close, kissing my temple. “Happy Birthday, Vita Mia. My Amora. My wife. My life.”
I looked up at him in confusion. “My birthday isn’t until October…oh. You did this to surprise me.”
“You are a smart woman, Aria Bella Fausti. You would have figured it out closer to the date.”
“Maybe.” I grinned. Then I looked around at how everyone was dressed for the occasion, then at myself. I smelled like a day on the bayou—sweat, fish, and bug spray. My husband…he always smelled delicious, even when he was coated with sweat and all those other things.
Eva and Scarlett both started laughing, pulling me toward the house.
“Now it makes sense,” I said to Scarlett. “The reason you gave Rocco the stink eye for letting me cook.”
“Yes!” Scarlett laughed even harder. “I hated that you cooked for your own party, but…the colors you cooked with…perfect for the theme! Rocco planned all this himself. We just helped where we were allowed.”
I stopped and looked up at my husband, taking his hands. “Thank you so much,” I whispered. “This is beyond anything I could’ve ever imagined.”
“Bene,” he whispered, touching my face lightly before he leaned in and kissed me.
Eva waved a hand toward the house. “You two go get ready! You don’t want to be late for your own party!”
We were, in fact, late. How could I be on time when my husband and I showered together, and, when he was all wet, my hands couldn’t stop touching him? It was somehow harder to keep my hands off him when we stepped out of the shower, but he had put so much work and detail into the party…
Rocco dried me off while I forced my mind to ignore the needs of my body. After I did my makeup and styled my hair—curling it and pulling it up on the sides—he helped me into a silky, plum-colored halter dress that fell to my feet.
“This is such a beautiful dress, Rocco,” I whispered as his hands caressed the fabric clinging to my body. “I love it.”
He was so pleased with how happy he made me, he only nodded, leaving a lingering kiss on my shoulder, before he dressed in a black button-up shirt and slacks.
When we stepped out of the house together, Mia (Scarlett and Brando’s daughter) was there to take our picture.
A band had set up, and music was floating miles down the bayou, it seemed.
Even Luca and Maggie Beautiful had showed up, and when she asked the band if she could sing one, she serenaded the crowd with Billy Joel’s “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.”
It made me cry, thinking of my grandparents and how much they had loved the song. Rocco kissed away my tears and then serenaded me with the birthday song in my ear. The band began to play “It’s My Birthday” as I cut the enormous cake, and all the guests sang along.
I had no idea who had taken my hand after the cake cutting, and when I realized it was Thandie, I screeched and pulled her in for a tight hug. “You came!” I shouted over the music.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world!” She raised her eyebrows at Rocco. “Besides, your husband said he’d come get me himself if I didn’t show up for his wife’s party.” She grinned at me.
My eyes widened when I noticed Giovanni, the guard who had walked her out of the house in New Orleans. The way he was staring at her made me turn my eyes back to hers and lift my eyebrows.
She raised her hands. “Don’t ask!”
“All right, all right, all right,” I said. Snagging a drink from a passing server, I handed it to her.
“Your husband doesn’t miss details, does he?” She lifted the drink he had designed and named after me for the party.
I sensed Rocco’s grin from behind me, and I reached back to touch his thigh. “Not one!”
Rocco and I started laughing, and before I knew it, the entire party was on the “dance floor,” and we were celebrating into the night, the bayou reflecting all the music, laughter, and lights. Maggie Beautiful seemed especially lit up. She was getting down something fierce to “Dancing Queen.”
By the time Rocco made another speech in my honor, setting diamond and opal bracelets around my wrists as his gift to me, my face was flushed, as if I could feel the pulse of the leftover sun from that day.
The cool tears streaking down my cheeks, mixed with the hot air, made me feel almost feverish.
The dress was sticking to me from sweat.
My heels had long ago been set to the side, and I was ready to get out and celebrate some more.
The party was only the icing on the cake. My husband had laughed so hard during our fishing trip, and after, it seemed to open something inside of him. I could feel him slowly becoming human—even if it was only for me. I wanted more of the man. I wanted to free him.
That was the true gift.
Who he was in Italy, I had accepted the moment I welcomed him into my life. But when it was only the two of us, he deserved to be more than his role in the family. I deserved that.
I wasn’t sure what time it was when I took a seat on my husband’s lap and took a breath with him.
My hand was in his, our fingers intertwined, and he kept kissing my shoulder with ice in his mouth.
I shivered and rested the back of my head against his front.
I looked up at the sky, tiny stars overcoming the darkness, and sighed.
“Besides the first time meeting you, and our wedding, this has been one of the best days of my life, Rocco,” I whispered. I couldn’t count the number of times I’d already spoken those same words to him. Always beginning with…Besides the first time meeting you, and our wedding…
“Bene.” He placed a lingering kiss on my shoulder. “I live to serve my wife—inside the bedroom and outside of it.”
I didn’t know how to respond to such a powerful statement, the truth in it, and all I could do was nod before I whispered, “The same for me. Together we are one, working for the good of our marriage.”
“It is in these moments in time, in the truth you speak to my heart, that I find a life I never knew existed. A life that gives me life.”
I squeezed his hand, and he lifted mine to his mouth, placing a kiss on each of my knuckles, before he set me on the chair and went to make me something to eat and refill my drink.
He had made me a plate earlier, but he was always wanting me to eat.
Or wanting to feed me. I wasn’t all that hungry, but I understood the motivation behind his actions and couldn’t refuse him.
A smile came to my face when I really took in the party in front of me.
All of our closest family and friends…all together to celebrate me.
A rush of warmth flooded my chest, and I began to tap my foot in tempo to the music, or maybe it was my own happiness.
Especially when a brass band took over the stage and announced the second line parade.
All the guests grabbed napkins, handkerchiefs, whatever they could find, and got in line to do the traditional dance.
Weddings, birthdays, even funerals, this was a staple at most parties in New Orleans.
I picked up a napkin and waved it above my head. As soon as Rocco got back to the table, we’d join the line. Fireworks exploded over the bayou, and it made me breathless for a second, before a smile lit up my face as bright as the lights above my head.
“Daughter of the heart.”
The deep, Italian-accented voice seemed to come out of nowhere.
I looked up to find my father-in-law staring down at me.
I thought he was going to ask me to dance, which he usually did.
At our wedding, he was one of the first, apart from my husband, to get me on the floor.
He was a smooth dancer, and a much better singer, which was saying a lot.
Even Scarlett said she had a hard time keeping up with his dance moves at times. And she was a pro.
But no.
The look on my father-in-law’s face stopped me cold.
The next words from my mouth seemed to fly out, but I whispered them.
“Is everything okay?” My eyes automatically went to the crowd, to the tables of food, to the house, but I didn’t see my husband.
I stood abruptly, fisting the long dress in my hands, about to shoulder past him to find my husband.
I could feel like Scarlett and Eva, had when Rocco’s life was on the line and the seconds ticked by and the explosives were about to tear the house apart with him in it, but I didn’t trust myself to do it all the time.
I was better at working out this…gift…with words.
Luca took my arm. He wasn’t hurting me, but I felt the pressure. He nodded to an iron bench in a darkened part of the yard, away from the party, roses surrounding it. A strong breeze stirred them up, and I could smell their oils perfuming the air.
I crossed my arms and shook my head. “Where’s my husband?”
He said nothing, his eyes staring into mine. I truly looked at him then. His hair was not as impeccable as it always was. His eyes were steady, but something told me that, underneath his skin, a volcano was going off.
Long gone was the man who accepted me as the daughter of his heart. This was Luca Leone Fausti, the man the world feared. What I didn’t completely understand was…why? Why the sudden change?
Thinking back…Luca had been watching Maggie Beautiful the entire night, but that wasn’t unusual for these men.
He could be contemplative, like all his sons, a little dry at times, a lot of the time serious, especially when business was in play, but…
since my mind was being clouded by the happiness I had been feeling, I realized then how off he’d been.
Talk to me…the plea went through my head.
I didn’t dare speak it out loud, though.
This animal. This animal, who for some reason was in this…
mood…space…was looking at me with contemplation.
As if he had something on his mind, and the jury inside of his head was still out.
I wanted to say something, but all that was inside of me was screaming at me to be quiet.
My eyes looked to the right of him for a second, not wanting to make direct eye contact, or he might think I was challenging him—in any other circumstance, especially over my husband, I would, but something inside of me broke when I thought I felt something…odd coming from him.
Fear.
Why?
The only thing that could make this man fear, any Fausti man, it seemed…was the loss of their woman.
Oh God. Was it Maggie Beautiful?
In that instant, my feelings of uncertainty converted to care. I only wanted to give him grace. Understanding. A sense of peace.
None of that could come from me, though.
Shadows stretched in fast-moving ripples as my husband cut the corner and came into view. Eva and Gabriel were right behind. Behind them, Scarlett and Brando. Then Maggie Beautiful’s sweet voice cut through the tension, the danger, as she called for her husband.
“Luca!”
Luca stared at me for a moment before fireworks exploded over our heads again, and Maggie Beautiful took her husband’s arm and pulled him close.
“The night is not over, handsome! We came here to celebrate the daughter of our heart—one of them.” She giggled. “My feet are not tired yet!”
Luca nodded at her, kissed her cheek, and then nodded at me. I had a hard time moving my eyes away from them as they walked away.
At the same time fireworks exploded over my head again, my husband set his hand on my lower back, and I jumped.
I laughed it off, but he seemed to know there was a false note to it.
I had no idea what was going on with his father, but I wasn’t ready to speak on it yet.
Instead, I plastered on my best smile and almost repeated word for word what Maggie Beautiful had told her husband.
Was she hiding behind it too? There was no doubt Luca wasn’t buying it either, but maybe for the sake of the party and his wife’s happiness, he was willing to set it to the side as well.
In that moment, I pushed it to the side, because I didn’t like the look on Eva’s face, and I didn’t want my husband to see.