18. Pietro #2
“I know. I’m going to keep trying anyway, for as long as you let me.”
Another long pause. Then, slowly, Rodrigo nods.
“I’ll walk her down the aisle. But if you ever hurt her again-”
“You’ll destroy me. I know, and I’ll help.”
The corner of his mouth twitches. It’s not a smile, but it’s the closest I’ve ever come to earning one from him.
***
I return to the bakery to find Ysabelle exactly where I left her, curled in the rocking chair, the card still in her hands.
“Well?” she asks.
“He’s walking you down the aisle.”
Her eyes widen. “How?”
“I told him the truth. It was terrifying.”
“Pietro Marino, voluntarily choosing honesty over charm. The world must be ending.”
“Don’t get used to it.” I can’t keep the grin off my face.
She laughs, and the sound fills the bakery. I cross the room and pull her up from the chair, drawing her into my arms.
“We should celebrate,” she murmurs against my chest.
“What did you have in mind?”
She pulls back, and the look in her eyes makes my breath catch. “I believe I’m standing in a fully equipped kitchen. The counters look sturdy.”
“Ysabelle.”
“What? I’m testing the structural integrity. Very responsible.”
I look around the bakery I built for her, and I realize that in all my careful planning, I didn’t anticipate this. But then, Ysabelle has always been better at improvisation than me.
“The door locks?” she asks, already glancing back to check.
“I had it installed myself. Very secure.”
Her gaze slides to the front of the shop. “And the windows?”
“Frosted glass. Privacy was a design priority.”
She raises an eyebrow. “Almost like you were planning for this.”
“I was planning for every possible future. This one just happens to be starting earlier than expected.”
I back her toward the central prep counter, the one with the marble surface that I chose specifically for temperature regulation during pastry work. She hops up onto it with practiced grace, her legs wrapping around my waist.
“This counter is new,” she observes. “I should really break it in. Test the quality.”
“Quality assurance is very important.”
“Vital.”
Then I’m kissing her, deeply, thoroughly, my hands sliding up her thighs beneath the summer dress she wore for the reveal. Her fingers work at my shirt buttons, and when she pushes the fabric off my shoulders, her palms flat against my chest, I feel claimed.
“Tell me what you want,” I murmur against her throat.
“I want to laugh,” she says. “I want to feel good with you and laugh about it. No drama. No intensity. Just us, enjoying each other.”
“I can do that.”
“Show me.”
Easing back, I take her in, this woman who has somehow forgiven me for years of failures, and I grin.
I skim a hand along the marble edge. “You realize this counter is exactly the right height for-”
“Yes, I noticed. Why do you think I suggested it?”
“You’ve been thinking about this.”
She loops her arms around my neck. “I’ve been thinking about this since you showed me Nonna Fe’s oven. Do you know how attractive competent restoration work is? Very. Very attractive.”
I laugh, and the sound surprises me. She’s right, we’ve been so focused on rebuilding trust, on honest conversations and emotional vulnerability, that we forgot to simply enjoy each other.
The zipper of her dress goes down with deliberate slowness, my mouth following each inch of skin it reveals. When she’s bare except for her undergarments, I step back to admire her.
“You’re gawking.”
I don’t deny it. “I’m appreciating. Entirely different discipline.”
“Appreciate faster. It’s cold.”
My knuckles skim up her side, unhurried. “The kitchen is climate-controlled.”
“I’m creating urgency. Work with me here.”
She pulls me back to her, and then we’re both laughing as we fumble with remaining clothes, as my belt gets stuck, as her bra proves inexplicably complicated.
“This is very romantic,” she says dryly as I finally conquer the clasp.
“I thought you wanted to laugh.”
“I do. But I also want to have an orgasm, and we’re on minute five of wardrobe removal.”
“Patience is a virtue,” I tell her, and mean none of it.
She hooks a heel behind my knee and pulls me in. “Then stop being virtuous.”
I silence her protest with my mouth, and my hands finally get where they’ve been trying to go, one palming her breast, thumb rolling her nipple, the other sliding down between her thighs to find her already wet for me.
She arches into my hand, and the laughter goes ragged, breaks into a moan she tries to turn back into a joke and can’t.
“Remember the first time we made love in a kitchen?” I ask against her ear.
“The test facility. Midnight. You knocked over an entire rack of cooling cookies.”
“They were terrible cookies anyway. My sacrifice improved the batch average.”
She smacks my arm. “Your sacrifice cost us forty cookies and two hours of cleanup.”
“Worth it.”
I lift her from the counter, carry her to the old wooden table in the corner, the one I salvaged from an antique shop in Little Italy. When I lay her down on the surface, she looks up at me with an expression that’s half tenderness, half mischief.
“This table is an antique.”
“I know. I bought it.”
She runs a palm across the old grain, mock-solemn. “It seems rude to defile it.”
“Consider it a blessing. This table has waited forty years to be useful.”
I spread her thighs open on the old table and push into her in one slow slide, and we both groan, low, at the sound of coming home.
She’s slick and tight around me, and I set a lazy, filthy rhythm, deep and unhurried, still grinning, because she’s right there with me, punctuating every thrust with commentary.
“Slightly left, yes, there, no, your other left-”
“I know where left is.”
“Evidence suggests otherwise.”
A shift of angle, and her breath catches.
“Better?”
“Much better. I retract my criticism.”
“How generous.” I bite the inside of her thigh for it, lightly, and she yelps.
I fuck her slow and deep on that antique table in the morning light, my thumb working her clit until the teasing dissolves into the broken little sounds I love, until she’s dragging me down into a kiss with her breath coming ragged against my mouth.
“This might be my new favorite place,” she breathes.
“The bakery?”
“This moment. You, us, all of it.”
The pleasure is building now, the playfulness giving way to focus, to intention. Her hands grip my shoulders as I increase the pace.
“Pietro-”
“I’m here.”
“Harder. Just a little, yes-”
I watch her face as she climbs, as the laughter gives way to a sound with no jokes left in it, and when she comes she’s laughing and gasping my name at once, and the sound wrecks me.
My own release follows moments later, and I bury my face in her neck, breathing her in, memorizing this moment.
“I love you,” I say when I can form words again.
“I love you too. Even when you can’t find left.”
“I found it eventually.”
“Generous interpretation.”
We lie tangled together on the antique table that has definitely never witnessed anything like this in its forty-year existence. The morning light is golden now, fully arrived, illuminating the bakery around us.
“Tomorrow,” she says softly. “We get married again tomorrow.”
“Are you ready?”
She turns to look at me, and her smile holds all of it, the history and the child growing inside her.
“I’ve been writing my vows in my head for two weeks,” she says. “You’re going to cry.”
“I probably am.”
“Good. I want everyone to see Pietro Marino, terror of every negotiation he ever walked into, weeping in public.”
“Whatever my wife wants.”
She kisses me once more, then pushes at my chest.
“Get up. We have a wedding to prepare for. And this table is, frankly, very uncomfortable.”
I don’t move. “I could get a cushion.”
“For an antique table? That’s sacrilege.”
One eyebrow goes up. “You didn’t seem concerned about sacrilege five minutes ago.”
“That was consecration,” she says, sliding off the table and out of reach. “This is just loitering.”
I laugh, and I help her up, and we dress each other with the easy familiarity of people who have done this a thousand times and will do it a thousand more. The bakery glows around us, Nonna Fe’s oven standing witness, the flour-bin notes framed on the walls, the napkin preserved behind glass.
At the door she stops, turns, and kisses me once, hard, a kiss that’s a promise and a dare at once. “On purpose this time,” she says against my mouth. “Remember that.” Then she’s gone out the door ahead of me, into the morning, and I go after her.