5. Luca
Luca
Platters are arranged across the breakfast table—eggs, bacon, sliced fruit, pastries, toast, yogurt, smoked salmon. There’s also a pot of coffee and a pot of tea.
Giada checks each dish, one after another. Her attention returns to the eggs twice.
My housekeeper pours tea for her. Giada thanks her but doesn't lift the cup.
I unfold my napkin. “Help yourself.”
“Thank you.” She remains motionless.
Perhaps she's nervous after yesterday. A church raid, a new groom, and a strange house would ruin anyone's appetite. Or she dislikes the food. My housekeeper asked me what my new wife preferred, and I had no answer. I suggested she make a variety.
When I’m halfway through my breakfast and Giada still hasn’t eaten anything, I take a croissant from the basket and place it on her plate. “Those are fresh.”
Giada smiles at me. She doesn't eat it.
The smile is polite. So is her posture. Her hands rest beside her plate, her fingertips pressed against the tablecloth. Maybe she’s dieting. She certainly doesn’t need to, but women raised in our world sometimes diet to extremes. I butter my toast and wait.
Giada looks toward the windows. Frost rims the garden stones beyond the glass. My knife scrapes across the plate.
I’ve stared across breakfast tables at women plenty of times. Most can fill every silence—talk through an entire meal without saying anything of interest. My wife has offered me two words.
“So,” I coax, “what’s on your mind this morning?”
She looks at my tie, then at my plate, then blurts out, “Tardigrades don't have lungs.”
I set down my knife. “No?”
“No. They don't have a respiratory system. Oxygen passes through the surface of their bodies.”
I return to my toast. “Interesting.”
“Yes.” Her fingertip traces the tablecloth beside her plate. “They have a mouthpart called a buccal apparatus. It contains stylets that pierce plant cells or tiny organisms so the tardigrade can eat.”
I take a drink of coffee, and when I can’t hold the question back any longer, I finally ask, “What in God's name is a tardigrade?”
Her face changes. Her brows rise, and her lower jaw drops.
“They're microscopic animals. People call them water bears because their bodies are plump and they walk with a lumbering motion.
They live almost everywhere there is water, even if it's only a thin film around moss.” She brings her hands above the table, holding her thumb and forefinger close together.
“Most are less than a millimeter long, so you need a microscope to look at them properly.
They aren't insects. They're their own phylum.”
I reach for my coffee. “A phylum of nearly invisible bears.”
“Water bears,” she corrects. “They don't have fur, and they aren't related to bears.”
“That would have been my next question.”
“Would it?” Her brows pull together.
“No.” I smile. And then my smile turns into a laugh.
A sharp intake of breath draws my attention to Susan, my housekeeper. Her expression is contorted in shock, her eyebrows raised so high they almost touch her hairline.
“Is there a problem, Susan?” I ask.
“No, sir.” She refills the coffee carafe. “It’s just…I’ve never seen you laugh before.”
Is that true?
“I laugh,” I counter. Susan, who has worked for me for nine years, makes a sound that might be a cough.
Giada asks if I’d like her to tell me more about tardigrades.
I should finish my coffee and leave. There are two missing loyalists, and half a city is being searched for Giuseppe Lombardi and Antonio Rafinelli.
“Yes.”
She tells me how tardigrades shed their outer covering as they grow and leave their eggs inside it.
She explains the difference between active tardigrades and tuns, then corrects the common claim that they can survive anything.
Heat can kill them. Long exposure matters.
The conditions of the experiment matter.
Each fact leads into another. She doesn't check whether I'm impressed—or even listening.
She doesn't steer the conversation toward anything she wants from me. She talks because the subject delights her. Her brown eyes brighten. Her lips move faster when she reaches a point she loves. I should be planning how to drag two traitors out of hiding. Instead, I’m picturing that beutiful mouth under mine.
Her tea remains untouched. So does the croissant. When I stand, Giada stops midway through an explanation about moss samples.
“I’m sorry. I’d love to stay and continue this conversation, but I have to get to work.”
Would I really, though? Would I love to stay and continue listening to her monologue about water bears?
I nearly laugh again—twice in one morning. Twice in one month—because, yes, I would.
This morning, I expected typical gossipy conversation about who’s having an affair with whom, who wore last year’s designer fashion to whatever function, and who’s undergone the latest plastic surgery procedure.
I did not expect…to enjoy myself.
She lowers her hands to her lap. “All right.”
I leave before I succub to the urge to lean across the table and steal a taste of her plump, lush mouth. Or thow her over my shoulder and take her—
I go upstairs to collect my phone and Glock. Her bedroom door stands open, and the small white suitcase sits beside the dresser where I left it. One suitcase is all she brought. No garment bags, boxes, or other luggage. It’s a reminder.
In our world, a new wife routinely tests how far her husband’s generosity extends. Whatever she needs, I intend to provide. I’ll fill her closet, vanity, dresser, jewelry box, and anything else she requires.
Giada is still seated at the breakfast table when I return. I come up behind her and tap her upper arm to get her attention. Her whole body jerks so hard I take a step back.
“Sorry,” she says before I can speak. “I… I’m sorry.”
I take out my wallet and remove a black credit card. “Here.”
Her face screws up into a questioning frown. She stares at it.
“Take it,” I demand. “It’s for you.”
She holds out her hand, palm up. I place the card on it.
“There’s no spending limit. Buy whatever you want.”
Her thumb traces the numbers on the card. “Anything I want?”
“That's what I said.” I slip my wallet into my jacket.
She turns the card over. “All right.”
She really is beautiful. Her skin is dewy, glowing almost, and looks so soft and smooth with a faint pink tinge. I reach out to brush my fingertips across her cheek.
She flinches again, hard, yanking her face back.
What the hell?
“What was that? Do you find my touch vile?” I ask. “You recoil every time I touch you.”
“I…well… You…” She looks down at the floor, and a blush creeps over her cheeks.
“I what?” The accusation comes out too harsh.
“You didn't tell me you were going to.” She presses her thumb against the edge of the card in her hand. “Unexpected touch is…difficult for me. Startling.”
I picture her standing in lace last night, rigid and waiting. She locked every muscle in her body when I unzipped her dress.
“If I tell you first, you won't pull away?”
“It depends. A touch that skims my skin can also be difficult for me. Firm pressure is better.”
The answer carries no flirtation and no apology. She gives it to me as directly as she gave me facts about tardigrades.
“Fair enough.”
Her eyes rise from my tie to my face. “You aren't angry?”
“Of course not. Next time, I'll forewarn you.”
Her thumb keeps moving along the edge of the card while she searches my face, studying me as though this might be a trick. As though asking permission before touching her is unreasonable.
At last, she whispers, “Thank you.”
“Right. Well, if you need to go anywhere, take one of the guards,” I tell her. “Security needs to accompany you until I tell you otherwise.”
Until we deal with Rafinelli and Lombardi.
I leave Giada at the breakfast-room door with a limitless card in her hand and a spread of untouched food behind her and force myself toward the car.
For nine years, I have walked out of this house eager to get to work every morning. Never once have I had to fight the urge to turn around and stay home instead.
Work has never had to compete with a woman for my attention.
Not until today.