Chapter 14 Naomi
NAOMI
By the time the sun slides behind the far ridge, the villa has traded its honeyed afternoon for an even softer glamour.
Lanterns are strung along the pergola and between trees, candles pooling light on white linen, the vineyard a dark-green sea beneath a sky rinsed in violet.
The air smells like rosemary, grilled stone fruit, and warm stone.
Cicadas keep their relentless chorus.
Somewhere, a cork pops and someone laughs the way only Italians laugh when dinner and pleasure are foregone conclusions.
Chef Nonna Rosaria presides over it all like a general in an apron.
She is not anyone’s idea of fragile.
The “Nonna” softens the edges for tourists, nervous financiers and TV screens.
She’s everyone’s grandmother in the sense that she feeds you and says what she likes.
But she is also legend—Vecchio’s cousin and Tuscany’s most stubborn culinary talent—small and square-shouldered, hair like a steel cloud rolled into a knot, eyes sharp as the mezzaluna she wields.
She kisses my cheeks, sniffs me for sincerity the way she’d check a melon for ripeness, and clucks at Vasso in rapid-fire Italian that makes him look unreasonably pleased.
“She’ll feed you,” Vasso murmurs to me, offering his arm as we’re shown to our seats beneath the tangled vines. “She’ll test you. And if she likes you, she’ll fatten us both and then tell the whole region we’re either in love or frauds.”
“She can tell all that from pici?” I whisper, smoothing the skirt of my dress as I sit.
“She can tell that from how you hold a fork.”
I glance down at the bracelet on my wrist, the new gift, presented to me by Vasso in our suite with a smile that still made my knees weak. It’s a slim line of diamond baguettes, delicate enough to be mistaken for light until it catches the real thing and throws it back.
He fastened it while I watched his hands and tried not to think about what else those hands had done an hour ago under a fig tree.
“Pretty,” Nonna Rosaria says, settling across from me and tapping my wrist once, approving but not fooled. “He knows jewelry. Does he know when to shut up and let you shine?”
“Sometimes,” I deadpan.
Vasso’s mouth curves.
Vecchio barks a laugh.
The table breathes around us, resplendent in pale linen, bone-white plates with a Hellenic blue runner that looks like the sea.
To my left, the view falls away through the pergola slats to the vines; to my right, Lulu drapes herself in a chair one seat down like a mermaid who traded her tail for an indecent dress.
This evening’s offering is a blush-pink wrap dress that barely remembers it’s supposed to stay closed.
Her perfume is a sticky amber that makes me crave water and some sort of fumigation.
Wine arrives, and with it, the first course.
Crostini di fegatini—velvet chicken-liver mousse with a scandal of capers and anchovy and figs quartered and set over ricotta, drizzled with honey that tastes like sunlight.
Vecchio insists we taste before talking and then ruins his own rule by talking anyway.
“So,” he says, waving his glass at the hills, at the food, at us, “the trust on the island—when do they vote the next piece?” He spears me with a look and turns it on Vasso like a laser. “And are we charming them in time if I were to come along on this…teatro with you?”
“Next month,” Vasso answers, not giving away any hint that the old man has tipped his hat on the deal. Then he tips his chin to me. “And our lighthouse program and the exchange with your sommeliers will be on their docket, with your permission, of course.”
Vecchio’s eyes gleam. “Good. Tie your rope to mine and I pull, capito?” He flicks his gaze to my bracelet again. “And you, ragazza, are you doing this because you are clever, or because you are in love?”
The chicken liver goes rich and heavy on my tongue. “Both,” I say, holding his gaze. “Cleverness without heart is a brand. Heart without cleverness is a hobby. We’re building an institution.”
Nonna Rosaria taps her fork twice in approval. “She can stay.”
Lulu leans toward Vasso in the motion’s shadow, a too-obvious tilt that turns “lean” into “lunge,” fingers finding his forearm like a homing pigeon finds the right roof. “Vecchio says the truffle dogs love me best,” she trills. “I think it’s because I have good energy.”
“Or because you carry salami in your purse,” Nonna says dryly without glancing up.
“I like to be prepared,” Lulu sings back, squeezing Vasso’s arm again.
“Good idea,” I say sweetly, and smile directly at her. “You should make sure you have both hands for the dogs…and your own husband later.”
The comment zips over her head like a low-flying swallows. “Oh, the dogs are napping now.”
“Two can nap,” Vecchio stage-whispers, winking at me. “Later, two can not nap with the right hands. Eh?”
Lulu frowns in confusion, then pouts.
Vasso chokes down what might be a laugh and I sip my Vernaccia and conjure an expression that reads I am a gracious woman with a sharp knife in my garter that can deprive clueless women of their hands.
Pasta arrives in its turn, because in Tuscany everything comes when it should.
Pici cacio e pepe, thick and hand-rolled, glossy with Pecorino and cracked pepper, the kind of simple that requires skill to be divine.
Nonna Rosaria stands behind me and watches as I twirl a perfect bite; when I feed the next to Vasso with a flick of my wrist, she nods, satisfied, as if I’ve passed a test I didn’t know I was taking.
“Good hands,” she pronounces.
“She has the best,” Vasso says, not bothering to hide his eyes in his voice. The heat that skitters up my neck is purely chemical. Or purely him.
Vecchio flips the deck without warning, as is his habit, business and personal braided so tightly you only notice you’re snared when the rope pulls.
“So.” He sets his glass down, considers me the way a jeweler considers a stone.
“I tell ragazzo here that he should steal you into his company. Before someone else does.”
“He doesn’t have to steal,” I say lightly, aware of every eye. “He just has to ask nicely.”
“I plan to,” Vasso says, so matter-of-factly I almost miss the shock that ripples under my skin.
I turn, the bracelet winking treachery at my pulse. He looks utterly unsurprised by the sentence he’s set loose between us; he’s not saying it to impress anyone at this table. He means it.
“Do you?” I say, arranging my features into composure before I forget how.
“Of course,” he says, lifting his glass, meeting my eyes over the rim like he’s toasting something he’s already bought. “You’re wasted as a bystander.”
Vecchio chuckles, pleased. Nonna Rosaria smirks at her plate as if it’s all going according to her secret recipe.
Lulu sighs and pets Vasso’s sleeve like his acceptance speech just turned her on.
I breathe, slow and even, and decide not to ask the half-dozen questions crowding my teeth.
Not here. Not with an octogenarian kingmaker watching for cracks.
Sea bass arrives on a bed of grilled peaches and rosemary, the flesh splintering into fat, pearly petals at a touch.
A sublime Brunello replaces the white and slides around our tongues in cherries, leather, and a hint of tobacco that tastes like stories. The night deepens; the lights gather our faces into an intimate circle the cameras on the far terrace will never quite capture as they should.
“Tell me,” Vecchio says suddenly, as if he’s remembered a poker card he meant to play first. He tips his head, benign, but I’m not fooled.
“You speak to your father, cara? Harrison? We crossed paths when he was young and I had better eyesight. I don’t recall that I liked what I saw but…
” he shrugs offhandedly. “I was a harsher critic then, I’m told. ”
My fork stops a millimeter from my plate as if it hit glass.
Beside me, Vasso goes still in the way of an animal that hears the bowstring pull and doesn’t waste energy flinching. Because he’s plotting his counterstrike.
He doesn’t look at me but I know he’s fully tuned. Vibrating with ferocious emotion I’m too alarmed to decipher.
“We’re not close,” I say, aiming for bland and hoping not to miss. “He calls sometimes.”
“And you answer?” Vecchio persists, blunt in the way of men who know their power and exploit it ruthlessly.
“Sometimes,” I lie, because the truth—I let it ring until it goes to voicemail—tastes too sharp right now and I’m not interested in the bitter taste of blood.
“Harrison Kane is a bad bet,” Nonna Rosaria says, slicing through the word like she’s cutting paper-thin fennel. I suppose I should be touched that she spares me a pitying look before she carries on. “He always was. Good-looking men go bad early if they’re lazy and greedy.”
“Careful, cugina,” Vecchio says, enjoying himself. “Half this table is good-looking.”
“Half this table is also lazy,” she returns. “Naomi is not.”
The compliment lands but the landmine stays live.
Lulu helps by spilling saffron risotto on her breastbone and shrieking with laughter when Vecchio dabs it off with his own napkin.
The tension doesn’t break, not really; it threads itself into the conversation like a bass line and plays under everything else.
Vasso’s hand drifts to my knee beneath the table, not possessive now but steady, and the simple pressure, there and constant, makes it easier to keep my face smooth while my insides riot.
Vecchio watches us shrewdly, pleased with the weather change he’s brought.
He moves back to business as if he hasn’t tugged a wire that connects Vasso’s jaw muscle to my chest. “Before you leave we will do the cask ceremony. You lock it together, initials, big smiles.” He mimes a camera flash with his fingers.
“The journalists love vows and barrels. They think it means a long marriage, even if the wine turns vinegar. But whatever happens, it’ll be good publicity for both of us, I think. ”
“I prefer wine to cooperate,” I say, forcing lightness. “And marriages.”
“So do we all,” he says pleasantly. “Most of us are disappointed.”
“Vecchio,” Lulu scolds, as if any version of this conversation has a prayer of making him genteel. She leans past Vasso, cleavage a manifesto. “Tell the story about Wife Number Three and the helicopter.”
“Later,” he says, patting her hand. “It ends with a police report and a baby goat. I don’t want to ruin the fish.”
The joke does its work and laughter ripples along the table.
From the corner of my eye, I watch Vasso drink, slow and controlled, languid with his seething tension.
I sip and set my glass down with care I didn’t need an hour ago. He hasn’t looked at me since the question; he doesn’t have to. I can feel him thinking, feel the room’s tilt, feel the thread we both keep twined around Harrison’s name pull taut, then tighter.
Dessert is zabaglione so ethereal it might be a theological argument.
Marsala and sugar whipped into air and poured over strawberries that taste like someone’s childhood. Nonna Rosaria watches me eat with satisfaction, then turns to scold a sous-chef for over-browning the almond biscotti.
Lulu tries once more to press herself into Vasso’s shoulder. I pin her with a smile so cool it could freeze the candles. She blinks, considers, and for the first time tonight chooses her husband, flitting to Vecchio’s side and wrapping herself around his arm like a frivolous ribbon.
“Good,” Nonna Rosaria mutters to me, not bothering to hide it. “You’re not loud, but you move mountains.” She pauses for a moment. “And pushy sciocchinas.”
“Thank you,” I say.
We linger. We talk about the truffle run tomorrow, about the market in Montalcino where I’ll be coaxed to buy a scarf I don’t need.
Vecchio detours into a tirade about modern wine critics that leaves half the table in stitches.
Vasso laughs in the right places and says the right things, but the line of his body stays altered.
Not closed, exactly. Coiled. A kite pulled hard against wind.
When the evening ends and we stand, the night is cooler, the lanterns brighter.
Lulu whirls away on a gust of her own perfume, calling over her shoulder that she will “wear heels for the truffle dogs because they like height.” Vecchio kisses my cheek, then taps the side of my face twice with his fingertips, old-world benediction.
“Tomorrow,” he says. “You make me regret not hiring you ten years ago.”
“I was busy,” I say.
“Pining,” Vasso murmurs, and I cut him a look that earns me a ghost of his smile.
Nonna Rosaria hugs like she kneads dough—firmly, with a warning to be better than you were this morning. “Eat breakfast,” she orders me. “You’ll need energy for pretending you don’t want to kill someone.”
I love this woman. A lot. “Who?” I ask with mock innocence.
“Usually men,” she says, then cackles, and leaves in a swish of apron and authoritarian perfume.
When it’s just the two of us under the pergola, the tension we’ve been pretending not to taste sits down at the table and helps itself to the last of the Brunello.
We don’t speak. We don’t have to. The vineyard stretches away, a dark quilt pricked with fireflies.
The bracelet hums against my pulse like a second heartbeat.
Vasso looks at me finally, and in the look is a question we have avoided for ten years.
“Come on,” he says, not a command, not a request, just a path. “Let’s talk about your father.”
My mouth tastes like Marsala and metal. “And yours?” I say, because fairness is a god, too.
“Mine,” he agrees, and offers his hand.
I take it. The night holds its breath. We leave the table set, the candles burning, the chairs pulled out like ghosts just stood up.
We walk toward the villa, and the bass line follows.