Chapter Three Guinevere
Chapter Three
Guinevere
I woke up groaning.
Not in the way I’d dreamed in my fantasies of meeting a handsome Italian and being caught up in his strong arms, but in the way of my entire body pulsing like one giant bruise.
My eyelids were crusted together, and my head felt so heavy on the pillow I was almost surprised it didn’t fall straight through the soft down and mattress to the floor.
Instantly, I wished I could go back to sleep, but the pain was too vibrant to ignore.
“Oh God,” I croaked, my throat parched and sore.
“You should not take the Lord’s name in vain.”
I lifted a weak hand to rub my eyes so I could pry them open to look at the man sitting on the edge of my bed.
Or not my bed.
His bed.
In his house in Florence.
It wasn’t really a house, though. Not like we had in the US.
Raffa had flippantly called it a palazzo last night as he led me blurrily through the massive home to a bedroom on the second floor.
I was sleeping in a literal palace .
My life had become some seriously messed-up Italian version of a Grimms’ fairy tale since I’d arrived in Rome.
I swiveled my gaze over the high ceilings and stone walls, the modern furnishings a stark but attractive contrast to the old architecture.
There was an actual marble sculpture in the corner of the room beside open French doors and a painting I was fairly sure, even with my blurry vision, was a real Botticelli.
“It was built in the sixteenth century, but I assure you, we have running water,” he drawled in that decadent Italian accent.
Even though the effort made me wince, I barely turned my head on the pillow to squint at him in the honeyed light spilling through the sheer curtains.
The sight of him in full daylight stole my breath straight from my lungs.
He was . . .
I scrambled for words to define him and wished fruitlessly that I had a better grasp of Italian. It seemed the only language romantic enough, beautiful enough, to fulfill any accurate description of him.
It wasn’t that he himself was soft or romantic.
No.
His face was all planes and angles, with the hard jut of a square jaw and slightly pronounced chin that made him seem imperious, especially matched to the arrogance of those thick brows, arched over eyes that were brown but pale.
Light as sunlight caught in maple syrup, clear and completely unmuddied.
It felt almost wrong to call eyes like that brown, as mine were.
They were piercing, cutting through me as I lay there, like hot knives pinning me to the bed.
It should have been terrifying, that level of intense, unwavering attention from a near stranger who was broad enough and tall enough to finish what Galasso had tried to begin the night before.
But I felt oddly settled by it.
Intensity was exactly what I had been searching for in Michigan, what I’d been yearning for my entire young life.
I had a voracious appetite for life that urged me to crack it open with my bare hands and suck out the marrow, messy and violent with satisfaction.
It was a kind of savagery I’d always had to temper back home.
That was the way my Italian stranger looked at me then.
Like a meal he was impatient to eat through to the bones.
“Oh,” I said without thinking. “You’re beautiful.”
His expressive brows slammed down over those clear eyes. “A man is not beautiful.”
“You are,” I insisted. “Not like someone from a Renaissance painting. Like, well, like Dante’s angels, maybe.”
“Nothing about me is heavenly,” he argued again, crossing his arms defensively, but there was a tiny curl in his mouth that said he was enjoying this.
Enjoying me.
“A fallen angel,” I corrected.
“Dante’s fallen angels are monstrous looking,” he retorted. “Your youth is revealing yourself. Have you even read The Divine Comedy ?”
“Yes.” I winced. “Could we blame it on the potential concussion?”
He made a sound like a snort that was only an exhalation of breath through his nose. “In fact, I am certain you have one. The doctor is waiting downstairs to give you an exam. This is why I woke you.”
I tried to sit up and winced when my entire side crackled with pain. “I don’t think I can sit up.”
“No,” he agreed. “ Dottor Pesci will make sure you do not have anything emergent because I would like to avoid a trip to the hospital while you do not even have identification. At most, I think you could have some broken ribs, but there is nothing to be done for that but time.”
“Time I can’t waste. I need to go to the consulate and figure out what to do about money and buy clothes because otherwise I’ll just have a dirty, torn dress to wear, and the consulate might not even let me inside wearing that, looking like a—” I stopped abruptly when Raffa’s large hand gently covered my mouth.
“ Abbastanza ,” he ordered, not unkindly. “You have been threatened, chased, and hit by a car. You need rest.”
“But—” I mumbled beneath the weight of his palm.
“No. We do not know each other, I understand that. But the first thing you should know about me is this: Once I make a decision, I am loyal to it no matter what. I knew what I was signing up for when I invited you into my car last night. Do not make me regret my uncharacteristic show of kindness by being timid. You are here, you will remain here until you are healthy and reestablished, and that is the end of the discussion.”
He stared at me for a long moment as if to punctuate his point, but it wasn’t necessary.
His offer—no, declaration —of help was unexpected.
In the light of day, he didn’t seem like the kind of man to care about the well-being of a stranger.
He was wearing another expensive suit, this one a rich, textured brown that perfectly matched his wavy hair, and a wristwatch that winked diamond bright back at me.
He owned a palazzo in central Florence and drove a Ferrari.
So it might have been out of character for him to offer help, but he could also definitely afford to do it.
When he slowly pulled his hand away, I worried my lower lip with my teeth as I considered my situation and noticed how his furrowed brow tightened while he watched the gesture.
“Thank you,” I said finally. My throat ached like I was also coming down with a cold, which seemed in keeping with my perpetual bad luck. “I can’t really express how grateful I am.”
He shrugged one shoulder slightly, a flippant, arrogant expression that suited him.
“I took the liberty of plugging your phone in because it was dead. Why do you not text whoever you must to tell them you are safe and start the process of canceling your cards? I will send the doctor up.”
He stood up abruptly, passed me my cell phone, and then strode to the door. It occurred to me that he was tall, not only compared to my measly height, but in general. His wide shoulders filled the suit jacket perfectly, and his long legs ate up the floor in athletic strides.
If I’d been feeling better, I might have ogled him a little.
Who was I kidding?
I could ogle him just fine, even with a concussion.
He was so gorgeous, I couldn’t really believe he was real and this wasn’t all some kind of fever dream.
“Raffa?” I called as he opened the door. He hesitated, shoulders visibly tightening at the sound of his name. It tasted good in my mouth, chocolaty and rich. “I promise I’ll be out of your hair by the end of the week.”
He gave a clipped nod and shut the door behind him.
But as it turned out, I was a liar.
The doctor’s exam passed in a hazy, exhausted blur.
He confirmed I had a mild concussion, bruised ribs, and the beginnings of a bad illness that made my throat feel tight and swollen.
He recommended sleep, fluids, over-the-counter pain meds, and bed rest until I could stand without feeling dizzy and pained.
When I told him about my condition, he clucked his tongue at me and declared he’d be back to check on me the next day in case I needed to be hooked up to an IV to replace my fluids and replenish my vitamin B.
Raffa stood over his shoulder the entire exam after I gave him permission to stay, his arms crossed and brow furrowed in a way I was beginning to think was his trademark stance and position.
He watched the doctor with hawkish focus, as if afraid I’d be triggered by the man’s clinical hands on my body after what happened last night.
It was strangely sweet from a man who seemed determined to refute any softness or kindness in himself.
After the exam, I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until it was dark again.
I attempted to move, needing the restroom, but my entire body had seized up, encased in cement that refused to budge without considerable effort.
I whimpered as I shifted one leg to the edge of the bed and began dragging the other over the mattress.
When both feet were dangling above the floor, I tried to twist and raise my torso into a seated position. Sharp blades of pain slid between each of the ribs on my left side, and a cry of pain escaped my lips before I could curb the urge.
Seconds later there was a knock on my bedroom door, which immediately opened to reveal Raffa in low-slung black pajama pants and an open black robe.
Without hesitation, he strode across the room and to my side, winding an arm around my waist gently to lift me out of bed and to my feet.
He held me while I swayed, searching for my equilibrium.
“ Costante ,” he murmured, curling me closer into the bracket of his strong arm and warm side.
I noticed vaguely that he smelled like oakmoss, smoky and earthen. An aroma that made me want to lean closer, cuddle up, and inhale that warmth until the fuzzy, awful haze in my brain faded clean away.
“Bathroom,” I tried to say through the swollen, hot confines of my throat, but the word emerged as only a mangled whisper.