17. Learning to Waltz #2
He was still holding my hand out like we were waltzing, but he was smiling down at me. “And that’s how we met, my bright angel, and you’ve been my angel ever since.”
“That’s, uh, that’s awfully on the nose.”
“Maybe so, but it fits. I ran up the stairs, zig-zagging back and forth, to find you.”
“And I waited for you,” I offered.
“Yes, and so we talked about Shakespeare and Romeo and Juliet for hours as the tourists streamed around us, chattering their nothingness, but we talked. For lunch, we walked up the Piazza Delle Erbe, a square with cafes and merchant stands, to a lovely, tiny art museum with a restaurant in the courtyard. There’s a beautiful spiral staircase in the center of the museum—white marble, cast-iron filigree railings—but the restaurant in the courtyard below is the undiscovered gem.
I took you to lunch down there, and we ate pasta in the cool shade and talked for yet more hours. ”
It sounded so wonderful that I longed for it to have happened.
And yet—
“You, eat pasta?” I asked. “But the carbs. No one will believe that part.”
“That’s how out of my head I was after meeting you. Yes, I ate the maccheroncino pasta with wild boar ragù, and then the duck for my second.”
“Wow, love at first sight. Or, carbs at first sight. Do they actually serve that thing you said, there?”
“Yes. I’ve been watching it for years but never indulged.”
I squeezed his hand. “Honey, Nico, you should eat the pasta. You deserve to eat pasta.”
Nico blinked like he was glitching, but then continued to lead the waltz.
We waltzed down a sidewalk where there were fewer and fewer couples, until we were alone between rows of breeze-rustling bushes and palm trees.
“And then what?” I asked.
“We talked about the art and displays in the Juliet House. I recited the paintings’ histories and named the acts and scenes that the costumes and sets had been in, but you talked about what the play made you feel, their longing, their desperation for love, even though it killed both of them.
I realized I’d never really seen the play Romeo and Juliet, just observed it, or been present for it, or studied the text or the film for the test, and then I wanted to see all of Verona through your eyes. ”
“Nicolai, you’re making me blush.”
He gazed down at me while we moved. “It would have been easy if we’d met with you on the balcony like that, if I’d seen you standing there.”
“That’s a nice thought. I mean, in reality, you would’ve seen me standing up there fumbling my lines because I’ve never done the play.
I would’ve been wearing my cheap ragged jeans and an old tee shirt, probably saying dumb things about theatre that I didn’t really know anything about.
You wouldn’t have been attracted to me. At best, you would’ve felt sorry for me. ”
“I would’ve been enchanted, you standing there with these masses of chestnut curls cascading over your shoulders, your eyes as fathomless as stars on the sea at night, and I would’ve known within seconds that I was already falling for you.”
Nicolai stopped waltzing, and I almost stepped on his foot but staggered sideways at the last second to keep from piercing his shiny leather shoes with my stiletto sandals. “Oops.”
“I would’ve seen you, I would’ve listened to you, and I would have felt more like myself than I had in years.
With those people in the cotillion, it’s always a performance.
I’m always acting. I must always be manipulating people to do what I want, to have them introduce me to people I must win over, to make sure they see me in a certain light, usually either politically unthreatening or socially domineering.
I must constantly act as if I don’t care about anything real lest it be too gauche or earnest for polite society.
I must live in a perpetual state of sophisticated ennui, and it’s exhausting.
I’d much rather be out here dancing under the stars with you, where it’s easy. ”
Nicolai’s palm cradled my jaw, and his fingers slipped around the back of my neck.
Of course, I leaned into his hand. It was enticing, and his affection felt like something real.
I was a sucker for anything that felt real.
A tiny part of my heart sighed and reminded me not to believe in it, because I was an interlude, because this marriage was for a year. We’d signed a contract to make sure of that just this morning.
His head dipped, and his lips came to mine in a sweet and slow kiss.
The kiss infiltrated my senses. It was easy to pretend that nothing was changing with each quiet stroke on my lips, his hand on my back dropping to my waist, and our arms extended for the waltz gradually drawing in to nestle against our sides.
It was too easy to step closer to him, to lift farther up on my toes and to reach, as our arms twisted, knotting us together. First his thumb stroked my spine, then his arm tightened around my waist, pressing me against him.
The music from the ballroom drifted away, and the darkness was quiet around us. All my consciousness concentrated down to where his arms were around me, his body pressing on the delicate fabric of my dress, and his lips on mine.
When he lifted his head, he slipped his thumb over my cheek.
My voice was hoarse. “It’s like you’re trying to seduce me.”
“Oh, but I’m not allowed to do that. It’s in the contract.”
Minuscule tremors swept into me, shaking apart the dreaminess. “That’s too bad. And here I was, ready to be swept off my feet by the guy I met at Juliet’s House in Verona.”
Nicolai whispered, “Let’s go.”
“What? Go where?”
“What is the use of owning two fucking jets if I can’t whisk you away to Verona to eat pasta in a shady grotto and kiss you on a staircase in Juliet’s House?
We’ll call Billionaire Sanctuary and have our belongings packed so they meet us at the airport.
We’ll go shopping for you in Italy while we’re there, since you need clothes anyway. Let’s go.”
“But you’re in Vegas for your friend’s bachelor party. You don’t want to miss that. This is a once-in-a-lifetime party for him. Hopefully, I mean.”
“So we’ll be back in a few days before the thing wraps up. Those people probably won’t notice our absence.”
“Those people, meaning your lifelong friends.”
“Yes, they probably wouldn’t notice at all if I were missing, if I were gone.”
That was morbid.
“I’ll text Ryan to get us a room at the Billionaire Sanctuary in Verona. I think I remember them opening one there last year.”
“Surely, it’s booked up,” I said, stalling.
“Not for me. I have decades of blackmail material on Ryan von Prussian, one of the benefits of attending boarding school with him. He’ll make room.”
It was time to confess the real reason why I couldn’t go. “I don’t have a passport.”
I was embarrassed as heck at throwing a monkey wrench in his plans because I was so country that I’d never, ever gone anywhere that I’d needed a passport. His life seemed limitless.
Nicolai tilted his head and looked up at the stars, still holding my hand with my knuckles pressed against his shoulder. “What documents did you have with you for your wedding to the fool?”
“I have my birth certificate and my driver’s license, and we have that kind of unofficial copy of our marriage license. I overpacked on the documentation because I was paranoid something would go wrong.”
And I was right. It totally had gone wrong. Just not with my documents.
Nicolai blinked and thought for a moment. “Hang on.”
He tugged his phone out of his inside jacket pocket, scrolled through his contacts, and tapped before holding it up to his ear.
“Jonathan! Sorry to call so late. I say, I need a small favor. My new lovely doesn’t have a passport, and I want to whisk her away to Italy.
Could you call one of your minions to open up the Las Vegas passport office a few hours from now and provide us with one? ”
He listened for a moment and then grinned at me. “Excellent. Yes, Las Vegas. Where else in your wretched country could such a thing happen? I’ll take you to dinner at La Viande next time you’re in Paris. Yes, I can get us in. No trouble.”
He tapped the phone and smiled at me. “Done. A clerk will meet us at midnight to make you a passport.”
My jaw dropped. “That’s crazy! Who the heck is Jonathan that he can do that?”
“Jonathan Lindell, your secretary of state.”
“For all of Nevada?”
“Of the United States. I knew him at uni, at Harvard. I’ll call Ueli to bring the car around right before midnight.
I really should l make my apologies to John for leaving early, though.
Trust me, if anyone would notice we’d left early, it’s John.
He’ll take the opportunity to scold me. In the meantime, let’s put your new waltzing skills to use.
I want to see you out there with all my snobby friends, waltzing like you were raised in a private Parisian academy. ”