Chapter 9
COLE
“This is it,” Parker said, looking up from his phone.
We stared up at the small building, modest and well kept given its apparent age. Like those surrounding it, some of the terracotta color was faded to pale peach under the hot Italian sun. The cracks didn’t distract from, but added to, its character.
Authentic. Unlike the tourist trap that was the beach area we just left.
Juliette stared at the building like the rest of us, and then in true Juliette fashion, marched up to the front door. There were no flies on this woman. She was as fearless as they came.
And annoying too.
“I can’t hear what she’s saying.” Delaney chewed on her lower lip. “Think we should help her?”
“By we,” Parker clarified, “do you mean Cole? Or did you also secretly learn Italian on your way over here?”
Delaney spun toward me, forgetting all about helping Juliette. “How did you do that anyway?”
“Like I said to Juliette—”
“Jules,” she interrupted.
“Juliette,” I continued pointedly. “I brushed up on the plane.”
Now even Parker was suspicious. “‘Brushed up’ implies you knew it in the first place.”
Not wanting to get into it, I shrugged off his observation. “My mother is second-generation Italian. She and I took classes for a while together.”
“Wow. I think that’s the first time I’ve heard you mention your mother,” Delaney said.
“Here I thought you were 3D printed in a lab,” Parker joked.
“Funny.” I motioned from Parker and Delaney to turn around. They did, realizing Juliette was missing.
“Where’d she go?”
“Into the house. Appears her long-lost relative invited her in.”
“I didn’t even notice,” Delaney said.
I did.
Only the fact that the woman she’d been talking to appeared over ninety years old, and that they’d been smiling, kept me from following her inside. Even so, if she was in there too long, I’d have to follow.
“What’s so funny?” Parker asked as we waited.
“I was imagining that little old woman tying Juliette up to a chair.”
“You’ve got a screw loose somewhere.” Parker shook his head and pointed at a nearby building, telling Delaney about its likely construction. She pretended to be fascinated.
Another vision threatened the cool calm everyone expected from me. Juliette tied up, but this time, in my bed. Those luscious curves of hers on full display, watching me with a mixture of lust and anticipation. One I could easily fulfill.
But I wouldn’t.
She was too close to my inner fold. If there was one thing I would never risk, it was the family I’d found in Mason and Beck, and later Parker in college when the four of us became inseparable.
“They are a-mazing.” Juliette came running toward us.
“Did you see the woman at the door?” she asked.
“That was Great-Grandmother’s cousin. Thank goodness she knew enough English for me to figure that out.
Her husband passed away—don’t quote me on this, I’m terrible with Italian numbers over ten—almost twenty years ago.
What a badass. She invited me in but gets tired easily, apparently. Check this out.”
Opening her hand, Juliette produced a gold flower pin. It looked as old as the relative, its turquoise chipping away, although the base remained intact. “She said it was my great-grandmother’s. Do you think that’s true? And she gave it to me.”
The light in her eyes while she spoke would make someone think Juliette had just been given the keys to her ancestral home.
“I’m sure it is,” Delaney said generously. “What else did she say?”
Juliette made an “oops” face. “Honestly, her English was about as good as my Italian. We spent most of the time trying to figure out the connection and then she brought me inside for the pin. I caught something about her getting tired quickly and that was it. I can’t believe she lives alone.”
“She doesn’t, not really,” I pointed out.
All three of them waited for me to explain, which I did by waving my arms to the neighbors.
One stood on a second-floor balcony, hanging clothes, watching us.
To the left, an elderly woman was sweeping what appeared to be an already-swept walkway.
It was the same across the street. All women. All watching warily.
“Is it me, or are there no men around?”
“Want to see the men?” Juliette asked as if she had a secret. “Do we have time?”
Parker looked at his phone. “We have more than an hour.”
“Let’s go.”
This time, she led, though how Juliette knew where she was going, I had no idea. I asked her exactly that as we navigated the cobblestone streets, Parker and Delaney following behind us.
“Roslita told me the pin came from ‘una gioielleria in piazza’ which she told me was this way. I have no idea what gioielleria means, but if the piazza is this way, that’s where the men are.”
I waited for her to finish, but she didn’t seem inclined to do so.
“And why, pray tell, are the men in the piazza?”
“The first time I came with my parents to Italy, we had no idea some of our ancestors were from Monterosso. We only knew my father’s family was from somewhere in Liguria.
We were in this little town in Levanto, trying to dig up our ancestry, when I asked that exact question.
There were literally zero women in the square.
My dad hired a tour guide, who was German incidentally.
” She spoke a mile a minute. Clearly this was a topic that interested her.
Animated Juliette was a sight to see. “I guess she married someone from the town and spoke English, so giving tours became sort of a side gig. What was her name? Oh man, I totally forget.”
“Gertrud?”
“Is that even German?”
“It is.”
“No, it wasn’t Gertrud.”
“Hildegard?”
“What? No.” She laughed. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Anyway, doesn’t matter.”
“Precisely my point.”
If Juliette wasn’t a grown woman, I was certain she’d have stuck her tongue out at me at that moment. I suppressed a grin.
“Anyway,” she said, more exaggerated this time. “When I asked about it, the guide—we’ll call her Gertrugard—”
I did laugh then.
“Said all of the women were at home, either cooking or cleaning. While the husbands sat around the piazza, shooting the shit, smoking cigars, or whatever. Can you believe that? In this day and age?”
“Sounds like heaven,” I teased, 100 percent correct when guessing she’d lose it at that response.
“Really? You’d want your wife to sit at home, cooking and watching the kids, every single day while you smoked cigars with your friends after work, not a care in the world?” Before I could answer, she added, “Every day, mind you. Not, like, a special occasion.”
This was too easy.
“It feels like maybe I shouldn’t answer that.”
“Oh my God. I can’t.” She turned to Parker. “Where did you find this guy? Under a rock?”
“In college.”
“Same thing,” Delaney teased.
We’d arrived.
Sure enough, the piazza was filled with locals. Not a tourist to be seen. There were two women, about 10 percent of the square’s total occupants. Some played chess. Others sat at tables or on the foot of the fountain in the center.
I sighed dramatically. “Ahh,” I said, opening my arms, tossing my head back and closing my eyes. “Heaven.”
Not at all prepared for Juliette’s punch in the gut, I doubled over, though mostly from laughing since the punch wasn’t all that hard.
“Jules?” Delaney cried.
“He deserved it.”
When I didn’t stand up straight, Juliette moved toward me. I could see her feet beside mine, but remained quiet.
“Cole?” she asked finally. “Are you okay?”
Standing upright and grinning, this time prepared for her, I caught Juliette’s wrist before she could take another swipe. “Careful, monella,” I whispered for only her to hear. “Unless you want to me to start thinking you like playing rough.”