Chapter 62
We left the gardens and exited onto the street with Giorgio’s arm around my waist.
“That was incredible,” he whispered into my ear.
I laughed and leaned my head against him as we walked.
“It was,” I agreed.
“I’ve never done anything like that before.”
“Me neither!”
Now that the high was fading, though, what we’d done kind of unnerved me.
I recalled the wild look in Giorgio’s eyes as he’d covered my mouth while I came.
I remembered the feeling of doing something bad – something no ‘good girl’ would ever do – and how intoxicating it had been.
It seemed I was doing all sorts of things with Giorgio that I never would have considered before…
Like overlooking what he did for a living.
Which scared me a little.
He broke me out of my dark thoughts by asking, “You hungry?”
Now that he mentioned it, I realized I was. “Yes.”
“Would you like to go somewhere nice?”
“Let’s save that for when I don’t have your cum dribbling down my thighs,” I whispered.
He laughed uproariously.
I felt a little better, the dark thoughts temporarily gone.
After consulting Google Maps, we settled on a sandwich shop down the street from the gardens’ entrance.
It was a simple little place with a few wooden tables and the daily specials written on a chalkboard behind the counter, but it had great reviews.
After we ordered at the counter, I went to the bathroom to clean up.
The food was waiting when I got back, plus a stein of beer for Giorgio and a glass of white wine for me.
I bit into the veggie sandwich and was pleasantly surprised by the fresh-baked bread and delicious sauce.
“Good?” Giorgio asked.
“Very good,” I confirmed.
We chatted for a little bit about nothing much –
And then suddenly he asked a pretty big question out of nowhere.
“What do you want out of life?”
I looked at him in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, where do you want to be in five years?”
I blushed a little. “…honestly?”
“Of course.”
“I… I really just want to get married and have kids,” I said shyly. “And I’d like to live out in the countryside somewhere beautiful.”
Giorgio frowned and smiled at the same time. “Why do you say it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like you’re apologizing.”
If I’d sounded embarrassed, it was partly because I had begun to fantasize about a future with Giorgio in it.
Over the past week, I’d daydreamed many times about him coming home after a hard day’s work.
Our house was modest, just big enough for a brand new family.
I pictured an old place in the country with flowering vines growing on the outside.
Giorgio was always dressed in slacks and a simple shirt – a working man’s clothes.
No black suit…
No sleek Mercedes…
No mafiosos.
But there were children in my daydreams. A baby boy sometimes… or a four-year-old girl in a pretty red dress…
But there was no way in hell I was going to tell Giorgio any of that. I didn’t want to scare him off.
So I just stuck to the other things about my life that made me a little embarrassed.
“I don’t know… Bianca has her own store…”
“Which her in-laws bought for her,” Giorgio pointed out.
“But she’s talented. She deserves it. I don’t have anything like that. I don’t do art, or fashion, or business… and I don’t really want to.” I shrugged. “I just want to be happy.”
Giorgio nodded. “Same with me.”
I wanted to say, Oh yeah? What about your job?
But I knew he would give me that same annoyed look he had earlier. Once when I’d asked about his car, and again when I’d joked about Don’t you know who I work for?
So I just kept quiet.
It hurt my stomach a little not to say anything, but I ignored it. Pushed it down.
“What?” Giorgio asked.
I knew he could sense that I’d put up a wall, but I didn’t want to get into it, so I just said, “I don’t want to scare you off on our first ‘official’ date by talking about how many kids I want.”
“Doesn’t scare me at all,” he said nonchalantly. “I want seven.”
I hadn’t expected that.
“SEVEN?!” I cried out.
He laughed. “Yeah – how many do you want?”
“I don’t know! I was thinking maybe two!”
“Okay, we’ll compromise. Six.”
Now I was the one laughing. “It’s our first date, and you’re negotiating with me about how many kids we’re going to have?!”
“Might as well make sure we both want kids.”
“Well, yeah, I want kids, but there’s no way I’m having six of them.”
“Why not? A nice, big Italian family – ”
“Said the guy who doesn’t have to carry them around for nine months and give birth to them.”
He grinned. “Okay, point taken. Five, then.”
“No. Three at most.”
“Four?”
“Three.”
He held out his hand. “It’s a deal.”
I smiled incredulously and shook my head.
One minute I was worried about freaking him out…
And the next he was saying, Let’s have three kids together.
“Come on,” he said playfully. “Shake on it.”
I gave him some amused side-eye, but I shook his hand.
“With an option for a fourth,” he snuck in, then yanked his hand away.
“Hey!” I cried out, laughing.
“Too late! You shook on it!”
“I didn’t agree to that!”
He fake-grumbled. “Alright, alright… three kids. But six dogs.”
“Six dogs?!”
“Yup.”
“Who has room for six dogs?!”
“We’ll be out in the country. Someplace beautiful,” he reminded me. “Plenty of room.”
I smiled in spite of myself. He was using my own daydream against me.
“That’s two dogs per kid,” I pointed out.
“It’ll teach them responsibility.”
“Uh-huh. You know you’re going to end up feeding them and taking care of them, right?”
“It’ll be okay,” he said with a shrug. “We had six dogs. Although there were six of us, so it was just one dog per kid.”
“You have five brothers and sisters?!”
“Yup. My parents have a place out in Montepulciano, and all my brothers and sisters live near them. Well, my youngest sister still lives with them – she’s 17. But the others all got married and live in the area.”
“What do they do?”
“My father and brothers all work at the same vineyard. My other sister works at a small hotel outside Montepulciano. You should meet them.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Uh…”
“What? Scared?” he teased me.
“I’m not scared,” I protested. “But… I mean, this is our first date.”
“I move fast.”
“Apparently so!”
“So do you. I mean, we’ve already had our first kinky adventure in the Boboli Gardens – ”
“Giorgio!” I whispered, then looked around to see if anyone had heard.
“At your suggestion, I might add,” he said.
I gave him a look like SHUT UP!
He laughed. “Come on – I’ll take you to meet my family. We’ll make a weekend of it.”
I stared at him, my heart thumping. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Serious as a heart attack.”
“You’re about to give me a heart attack.”
“No heart attacks. You’re on the hook for three kids, you know.”
Suddenly all my daydreams didn’t just seem like daydreams anymore.
Amazingly, I wasn’t freaked out – although that was probably because of his playful tone. Like it was all a big joke.
And yet… something inside me yearned for it not to be a joke.
But what about his job? the little voice whispered in the back of my mind.
I countered it with a louder voice of my own:
If I learn more about him, I can tell if his job is important to him…
Or if maybe he’d be willing to give it up.
“…okay,” I agreed.
He gave me his biggest grin so far. “Shake on it?”
“Kiss on it.”
“Gladly.”
He leaned across the table and kissed me soft and sweet.
Then he pulled back. “What do you want to do now?”
I gave him an impish smile. “Go back to my place and seal the deal.”
He laughed again. “That’s my kind of deal! But let’s go to my place.”
“Why?”
“You haven’t seen it yet.”
There was a good reason for that: I feared what I might find there.
Guns?
Kilos of cocaine?
Or something else about his job that might make my daydream disappear into smoke?
It was ironic. I’d been okay joking about getting married and having three kids and six dogs…
But going back to his place for the first time?
Terrifying.
However, I didn’t want to spoil the moment.
So I pushed down my fears and forced a smile. “Okay.”