Chapter Ten #2
“No. I—” Her brow flexed with confused anxiety. “Your home is beautiful, Rocco. Of course, I love being here with you. But it’s your home. I can’t presume you want me to stay here with you for four years.”
“Presume,” he commanded. What the hell was she even talking about with getting her own place? “If you have your heart set on Cambridge, I’ll figure out how to work from London, but I would prefer you stay here.”
“Really?” Her expression softened and glimmered with wonder. “You’re asking me to live with you?”
“You already do.” They hadn’t spent a night apart. Her clothes were next to his in the closet. There were tampons under the sink.
“I thought you were just too lazy to drive me to a hotel after we had sex.” Her mouth quirked. She was being glib, but the way she lowered her gaze told him there was some truth behind it.
“Where do you live if not here?”
“I have a flat in Berlin,” she pointed out, lashes lifting even as her chin stayed tucked. “Once my villa is ready, I can live there.”
“That’s months away. When it’s ready, I will sometimes live there with you, but when we’re not there, you will live here.
With me.” He hadn’t felt this riled and possessive since they’d stepped off an elevator in London and Axel had talked her into walking away from him.
Trying to lighten the mood, he added, “Because, no, I do not want to get up and drive you home after we have sex. Especially if you’re in bloody Praiano. ”
“Is that the only reason?” She bit her lip. “We haven’t talked about us. And we don’t have to,” she quickly added. “I’m okay with taking it a day at a time. I just…”
She wanted to know where they stood.
“Come.” He gathered her so she was straddling his thighs, knees against his hips, eye level. So damn pretty and soft and lovely he didn’t know how to process it.
I know who your father is. The words were right there, but if he said them, he would lose her. The thought of her living across town in her own flat was intolerable. He couldn’t make himself push her away.
So he revealed pieces of himself that he guarded just as carefully, something he hoped would keep her with him if that other truth came out.
“I know you want to know what our future is.” He tilted his head back, unable to see it clearly as long as this secret left a murky streak on the lens. “I don’t know. But I want to see if we have one.”
“Really?” Her eyes widened with vulnerability. “I thought this was just sex and revenge. I didn’t think you wanted…me.”
Had no one ever told her how precious she was?
“But I do,” he assured her, cupping the side of her neck as he allowed his need of her to sink its way into him like a ship that he had been holding at the surface, but now welcomed into the deepest parts of himself.
The essence that was Mira came to rest softly inside him, but with enough force to leave a scar against his heart forever. An imprint shaped like her.
“Don’t talk of leaving,” he ordered gruffly. “It makes me grouchy.”
Her mouth was trembling, barely holding the smile that was dawning across her face.
“We can’t have that,” she said in a voice that wavered. She blinked back the tears brimming in her eyes. “What would the neighbors say?”
She was so beautiful in that moment, she struck sunlight into his chest, making his throat ache. Then she dipped her head and her soft lips were against his own.
His brain drank in her taste and the scent of his soap on her skin and the lush give in her hips as he splayed his hands to hitch her deeper into his lap.
I can’t lose her, he thought.
It might actually kill him if he did.
Mira floated through the next few days. No one had cared about her in so long, she didn’t know how to accept Rocco’s regard. How to believe in it.
And maybe there was a part of her that was disappointed, wishing he’d been more effusive when he’d asked her to live with him because she was falling in love with him.
That’s what this fullness in her was that carried her through her days.
It was more than simple contentment or transient happiness.
It was an overflowing sense of rightness.
Colors were more vibrant, her steps were lighter.
She felt as though she had found where she belonged.
At least, Rocco made her feel that way. Everything he did for her allowed her to flourish. Just yesterday, he had come home with a handful of archeology textbooks, saying it might help her decide which time period interested her most.
It was such a thoughtful gesture, she almost blurted out her feelings.
Something in her resisted, though. Old uncertainties created a reluctance in her to fully give herself over to him.
As if a few tiny words would make a difference, though, when her heart was his and she was eagerly weaving her life into his.
It felt too soon to think of marriage, but she was wearing his ring.
If you’re still wearing it a year from now, you can keep it, she remembered him saying and smiled as she sent her applications for the programs she wanted, three different options that would keep her here in Rome.
She was in the middle of doing the math on whether it was better to lease out her flat in Berlin or sell it, when she received a photo from Patrizia, the project manager at her villa.
We found this safe. Do you have keys or shall we call a locksmith? How should we proceed?
Tickled, Mira called Rocco.
“It’s my very own archeological discovery,” she joked. “I said I’d catch the train this morning. I don’t want to hold up their work.”
There was beat of silence, then, “I need to make a call, then we’ll fly down together.”
“You don’t have to break up your day.” He’d only arrived at the office minutes ago.
“I’ll be back tonight.” The train was only an hour to Naples, then another to Praiano.
“I doubt there’s anything in it. All of my mother’s jewelry was accounted for when she passed.
” Aside from a couple of pieces in the safe in her Berlin apartment, everything was in a safety deposit box at her bank.
She made a mental note to collect it when she closed out her apartment.
“I want to come,” Rocco insisted.
Within the hour, they were on his jet, heading to Salerno.
When she noticed him check his phone yet again as they drove to the villa, she said, “You didn’t have to come if you had a busy day in Rome.”
“It’s fine,” he said darkly. “I want to know what’s in there, too.”
They arrived to the chaos of work crews banging and clambering around.
The laneway was blocked with tools and trucks.
The outdoor steps had been jackhammered away and new ones had just been poured, leaving only a steep ladder to provide access.
Mira was glad she’d worn casual jeans and a pair of sneakers.
Inside the empty villa, fresh holes in exterior walls were covered in plastic. The subfloors were exposed and covered in splotches and muddy footsteps. Workers stopped and took off their hats when they saw her and Rocco, greeting him with deference.
“Tell the crew to take thirty. Paid,” he ordered Patrizia, emptying the house of all but the two of them and the waiting locksmith.
“You didn’t have to do that,” Mira said. “We won’t be here long.”
He only nodded at the locksmith to go ahead.
The safe was located in the floor of the primary bedroom—the room where they’d made love the last time they’d been here, Mira couldn’t help remembering with a flush of private pleasure.
The safe had been hidden by cheap laminate flooring that had disguised pretty ceramic tiles painted in patterns of earthy blues and reds. They weren’t even cracked.
“Why were these covered up? They’re beautiful,” she said in bafflement. “Because of the safe?”
Matching tiles had been cut and fitted to cover the hatch, disguising the fact that it had been cemented into the foundation. An area rug would have sufficed to hide it.
The safe was so old, it didn’t even lock with a combination. It opened with two keys, neither of which Mira had.
“These things rarely have anything of value in them,” the locksmith warned with an apologetic look at the cardboard box Rocco had scavenged.
“Call me Pandora, but I have to know,” Mira joked.
The man grinned and took great care as he drilled out the keyholes. When he opened the hatch, he said, “This is a nice surprise. I’ll leave you to examine your treasures. Let me know if you want me to repair the door so you can continue to use it.”
“I will, thanks.” She waved as the locksmith left.
Mira kneeled on the scrap of cardboard that Rocco provided and reached inside to bring out a small marble figure wrapped in an old towel. It was a woman with a harp.
“I’ll have to get that appraised.” She handed it to Rocco. The fact that it was in the safe told her it was valuable.
He admired it, then rewrapped it and set it in the box.
“Oh, look at this.” She opened a velvet box, revealing a stunning broach that glimmered with colored stones of yellow, pink and blue, set in a floral arrangement with green stones for leaves.
They might have been costume, but the fact her mother had left it in here told her the gems were sapphires and emeralds. She would get that appraised, too.
“My grandfather’s diaries! I wondered where these had gone.” She flipped the pages on one of the leather-bound journals, pausing to thrill at his spidery handwriting and a date from her mother’s childhood. “I’ll enjoy reading these.”
She handed them to Rocco and reached for the last item, a yellowed envelope with an unfamiliar Italian solicitor’s firm stamped in the corner. Her mother’s handwriting labeled it “Mira’s trust.”
Odd. She drew out legal documents and read the note clipped to the front. Her heart slowed with every word until her blood seemed to pool in her veins.
Trude,
I understand why you wanted to keep the baby. You don’t have to apologize for that. Please forgive me when I say I cannot tell Claudina about her. I would risk losing the children I have with her.
These papers detail the trust I’ve set up for Mira, exactly as I have arranged for the rest of my children. Don’t argue. It’s done.
In another life, Trude, you and our daughter would have more from me than this.
Yours,
Silvio
“Silvio?” She looked up to Rocco, way up. He’d been standing over her and reading the note over her shoulder. “That’s a coincidence.”
As grim culpability hardened his expression, she realized, no. It was not a coincidence. Not at all.