“What? I don’t think so!” I scowled at him while trying not to laugh. “You attacked me with my own crutches! What was I supposed to do? The only thing I could think of to save myself was to collapse helplessly into your arms and make you fall madly in love with me.”
The words hung in the air between us for what seemed an eternity.
Finally, Paulo murmured, “Well, it worked.”
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
We meandered our way back toward Lucca, taking roads that kept the two-mile stretch of the aqueduct in sight, ending at another temple-cistern, the San Concordio, just outside the city walls. We didn’t get out of the truck, as we were running a little later than we’d planned, and we didn’t want Cristofano to think we’d stood him up.
Celia and Cristofano lived conveniently close by, and when we arrived at their tiny apartment, we were warmly welcomed by both mother and son, although I could see the wary concern in his eyes. Celia offered us espresso and crunchy almond flavored cookies, and the four of us sat around a tiny table in her bright yellow kitchen while Cristofano manned up and apologized to me for taking my purse. Celia had apparently already been brought up to date since her Sunday phone call to Paulo, but her eyes still filled with tears as her son asked me to forgive him. She remained silent while he spoke, though, as did Paulo, and I sensed the pride in both of them at the steps Cristofano was taking to make things right.
I turned down his offer to work off the expense of replacing my purse and all that was in it, partly because I had no idea what he could do for me in the short time I was here. “My passport was the most important thing,” I reassured him, glancing at Paulo to make sure I wasn’t letting the kid off the hook too easily.
When we left a little less than an hour later, I had two new friends in Italy. Celia hugged me warmly and told me I was welcome in their home any time, and even Cristofano gave me a one-armed side hug, thanking me for being so kind. From the corner of my mouth, I told him Paulo had threatened to break my other leg if I didn’t come today. The boy laughed and agreed that Paulo was indeed a very cruel slave master.
“Celia is Madalina’s friend I told you about earlier,” Paulo said, once we were settled in the truck again. “About a year ago, Madalina caught Cristofano trying to steal from l’Aurora and made him call his mother, thinking it would be more effective than calling the police.” He smiled, obviously enjoying some aspect of the memory. “Madalina invited them to church where they spoke to the pastor to see if there was any way the church could help. I was just getting ready to launch my program, so he connected them to me.”
“That’s quite a coincidence that you all ended up at the same church.” I wasn’t being facetious. It kind of blew me away a little.
He squeezed my hand, his long fingers laced with mine. “Remember. I do not believe in coincidence.”
“Right.”
“Cristofano was one of the first boys in my program and he was a lot of trouble. Angry, disrespectful, and very rude to his mother. There were many times I almost gave up on the program because of him; I did not think I was making any difference.”
I was having a hard time juxtaposing the kid I’d just met with the one Paulo was describing.
“But no one is without hope, Ani. No one. Cristofano is proof of that.”
“Right,” I said again. “Hey, Paulo?” He’d brought up the subject, and after the day we’d just spent together, and the agreement we’d made about being honest, I had to ask.
“Yes?”
“Did you and Madalina…were you two ever together?”
Paulo let go of my hand and slid his arm around me, pulling me up against his side. “We went out a couple times, yes. But we knew very quickly that we would be much better together as friends. She is like a sister to me, Ani. That is all.”
I couldn’t help it. I actually sighed blissfully.
I soon discovered that Paulo’s “favorite place to eat in Lucca” was at home with his aunt and uncle and their two boys, Dominic, Jr. and Ramon. My first clue was when he pulled into a dark, narrow alley and parked so close to the back of a building we both had to get out on my side of the truck. “To make room for any other vehicle passing by,” he explained. Even so, I wasn’t sure there was enough room for that. I stood by with my crutches as he stashed the wheelchair inside the cab of the truck and locked it up, assuring me I’d be fine without it. He held open the back door of the building for me, following close behind as I maneuvered into the small foyer of an apartment building, complete with a set of steep stairs leading practically straight up.
“I did not want to tell you I was taking you home to meet my family until I knew how you felt about me,” he explained as I stood aside and waited for him to find the key for the front door of the ground floor apartment.
“Um, I think I made that pretty clear about six hours ago when I let you manhandle me down by the river,” I retorted. “You could have mentioned it any time after that.” I was suddenly very nervous. Balancing carefully, I reached up with one hand and smoothed my hair again, and straightened my clothes the best I could. Thinking we were heading out to a restaurant, I’d used Celia’s bathroom to freshen up, but now I wished I’d taken a little longer to make sure I was presentable.
“Me manhandle you?” His eyes widened in feigned disbelief. “All I did was wave a tiny little crutch at you. You are the one who threw me to the ground and started attacking me with your mouth.”
I burst out laughing in spite of myself just as the door was flung open from the inside. Paulo’s two young nephews stood staring wide-eyed up at me for only a breath of a second before spotting Paulo who had moved to stand behind me, a hand on my back. They whooped a greeting, surged around me, and threw themselves at his legs. I stepped back and watched in delight as they shrieked their war cries and he growled threateningly, before getting an arm around each one and tossing them over his shoulders like twin sacks of potatoes.
“Ragazzi!” A chirpy, girlish voice preceded the little round woman who hurried across the front room of the apartment toward us. She paused when she saw who it was, smiled ecstatically, and closed the distance between us. “You are Paulo’s Ani!” Reaching up—she couldn’t have been more than five feet tall—she took my face in both hands, pulled me down, and kissed me soundly on both cheeks. Then she swatted Paulo on the backside, let fly a volley of Italian in her high-pitched twitter, and shooed us all inside.
“Ani, this is my aunt Sharon, my mother’s youngest sister. And these two,” he said, turning so I could see first one upside down boy, then the other. “Are Dom and Rom. Please excuse me. Aunt Sharon will have to show you around because I have to take these two young goats to the kitchen to be roasted for our dinner!” And with that, he tromped off like any good monster happy with his day’s catch.
Sharon was a surprise. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this butterball of a woman with her nonstop chatter who preceded me into the kitchen in the boys’ wake. The three of them had passed through, though, and when Sharon refused my offer to help with the last minute dinner preparations, I was at a momentary loss.
“Sit, sit!” Sharon ordered, waving a hand at one of the chairs around the table already set for us. “Tell me how wonderful is our Paulo! Dominic and Ramon think he is perfect. I do, too, of course, but I would never tell him that. It would give him a very big head, yes?” She laughed at her own humor, which made me smile, especially since she kept talking about the virtues of Paulo without waiting for an answer from me. At one point, the man himself poked his head into the kitchen and said something to her in Italian. I giggled when I realized he was asking her to stop talking about him—he turned embarrassed eyes on me and mouthed an apology.
By the time dinner was ready, Dominic, Sharon’s husband, had come home, and having spent the last hour with the talkative Sharon, I was not at all surprised by his quiet reserve. The boys, thankfully, fell right in the middle of things, behaving exactly the way two well-loved chi
ldren should in the comfort of their home, whining to their mother, showing off to their father, and roughhousing with each other and their giant of a cousin. The fare was simple but as delicious as Paulo claimed it would be. Homemade basil fettuccine noodles and chicken with a creamy garlic and butter sauce, fried zucchini rounds and bread so soft it seemed to melt in my mouth. For dessert, Sharon served us each a bowl of melon gelato, and for the adults, tiny stemmed shot glasses of pear-flavored grappa. I’d never had any before, but she assured me that it was the perfect after-dinner digestive, and she insisted I at least try it.
“You will not be disappointed,” she claimed. “You will see it is delicious.”
I wasn’t disappointed. And I did see it was delicious. And dangerous for a lightweight like me. I refused a second serving of it when I realized the wonderful sense of well-being and the pleasant vibrations in my toes and fingertips could, at least in part, be attributed to the potent liqueur.
We didn’t stay late. The boys had early bedtimes, and as much as I enjoyed being in Paulo’s home away from home, in spite of my earlier trepidations, I was glad when he said we were going to head out.
I thanked my hosts profusely, readily accepting Sharon’s numerous hugs and kisses, and hoping she would write a letter to her sister filled with only good things to say about me. We said our goodbyes, Paulo promising the boys he’d come say goodnight to them again when he got home, even if they were asleep.
By the time we had clambered into our seats in the truck, we just sat there in the dark, reveling in the sudden stillness; Paulo’s arm was warm around me. Finally, he said, “I hope my family did not overwhelm you with their affection.”
“I can think of worse things to be overwhelmed by,” I replied, still buzzing a little. “Paulo’s Ani, hmm? So when exactly did I get that label?” It was so quiet after the busy chaos of the house that I found myself not wanting to speak much louder than a whisper. It added to the sense of intimacy as well, and I was good with that.
He just chuckled and turned my face up to his for a toe-tingling kiss. I no longer cared when I’d become his, just that I was his now.
Finally, he started up the little truck and wound his way out of the narrow alley, through a few streets crowded with pedestrians, and out of the city walls. “It has been a long day, Ani. Would you like me to take you home now? Are you tired?”
It had been a long day, in the sense that it had been quite eventful, but it would have been too short a day even if it lasted for an eternity, the way I saw it. I was a little tired, but in a well-fed, emotionally sated way. “I suppose we could head that way… but do you by any chance know a long way home? Like, a really long way home?”
He laughed appreciatively and promised he’d do his best to make it the longest trip to the Lazzaro home in all of history. He quite possibly achieved his goal.
We took side roads and detours that led to dead ends, pulling over and stopping three different times. Twice to practice the new kissing skills we’d worked so hard to master today, and once to stand in awe at the beauty laid out before us. We pulled over one last time before the road ducked in among the Lazzaro olive groves. The moon poured liquid gold over the sparkling town below.
“Look up, Ani,” Paulo whispered, standing behind me, holding me up against him. His breath was warm on my neck and ear. I leaned my head back on his shoulder and gazed in wonder at the stars overhead.
I turned in his arms so I could press my face into the curve of his neck and breathe him in. “Paulo?”
“Hm?”
“What did you say after you kissed me in the truck at the tower?”
His low laugh rumbled loudly under my ear. “Mi lasci senza fiato. You leave me breathless, Ani.”
“Oh.” I whispered. I could feel the flicker of his pulse under my lips when I pressed a kiss into the tender skin under his jaw.
“It is not quite ten o’clock and we are only ten minutes from the house. Would you like to sit here for a while and look at the stars with me?”
Yes, yes, and again yes, I thought, but only nodded.
After removing the wheelchair to make room, Paulo retrieved the blanket from the cab, laid it out in the bed of the truck, and helped me up onto it. We lay pressed together, blissfully ignoring the metal ridges under our backs, the chilled night air caressing our cheeks and noses. We talked of childhood memories, of cultural differences, about operas and Giacomo Puccini, of love at third sight, or fourth, or fifth.
I closed my eyes in complete contentment, listening to his voice vibrate in his chest against my ear.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
I awoke with a start as something shrieked just above our heads. It was only an owl, but the strange surroundings had me momentarily grasping for reason. Paulo, too, had stiffened violently at the night bird’s call, and we both sat up, staring at each other in shock.
“What time is it?” I whispered, my voice still trying to catch up with the fact that I was awake. I rubbed my hands up and down my arms, trying to warm them; my clothes were slightly damp from the heavy night air. Isa was right; the weather was shifting and the winter rains would be here soon. The moon hung low in the sky, still full and bright, but nowhere near where it had been the last I remembered.
Paulo pulled out his cellphone and made a distressed sound in the back of his throat. “It is nearly 3 o’clock in the morning, Ani. I must get you home.” In a flash, he’d leapt over the side of the truck and was reaching up to help me down. Not waiting for me to use my crutches, he scooped me up in his arms and deposited me, rather unceremoniously, on the passenger seat of the cab. I tried not to laugh at his obvious concern, but he was being a little over the top about it, I thought. When he’d returned the wheelchair to the truck bed, he climbed in behind the wheel, tucked the blanket around my legs without even asking if I wanted it, then explained gruffly, “It is cold and the heater in my truck does not work well. You will have to sit close to me to be warm.”
“Oh. Well.” I poked him gently in the ribs. “I suppose we’ll have to suffer through that, won’t we?”
He only grunted, started the truck, and stepped on the gas, the front wheels spinning a little on the gravel before the truck surged forward, leaving a billowing cloud of dust in our wake.
“Hey. It’s okay,” I said, laying a soothing hand on his forearm. “I don’t have a curfew.”
“It is not okay, Ani,” he countered firmly. “I have kept you out much too late. I do not want you to get sick again, and I do not want your hosts to think of you… that you and I…. I have taken advantage of their hospitality by keeping you out so late.”
“It’s okay,” I repeated, frowning over how upset he was over this. “Claudia told me they’d leave the back terrace door open for me if I got in late. I’ll just sneak in quietly and no one will even know what time I got in. It’ll be fine.”
He turned to look at me, his own brow furrowed in frustration. “And what if they forgot to leave it open? What then, Ani?”
“Then we’ll apologize profusely and humbly to whomever opens the door, be a little embarrassed, then you’ll go home to your bed and I’ll go crawl in mine.”
He snorted. It wasn’t a funny sound.
“Paulo. Really? I don’t understand why you’re so worked up over this.” I was beginning to feel a little defensive now and I wasn’t sure why. “I mean, it was an innocent mistake. It’s not like we’ve been out all night partying. I think our mothers would both be proud of the way we behaved with each other today.”
We’d reached the driveway and he slowed significantly, the sound of the tires on the gravel obnoxiously loud. We pulled in next to Gerardo and Isa’s Fiat and he turned off the engine. I could see a soft glow behind the shutters of my bedroom window, but other than that, the house looked dark. We sat in the ensuing stillness, neither of us speaking for several minutes.
“Listen,” Paulo finally began, sliding an arm around me and pulling me up against him. “It does not matter w
hat we have been doing all night. What matters is that I have brought you home too late and have risked your reputation with the Lazzaro family. What matters is that I have not been responsible for you. That I have not been careful to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?” I asked, trying not to laugh. I leaned back enough to be able to look him in the face. I smoothed the hair back from his forehead and kissed the tip of his nose. “We’re not kids, Paulo. They’re not going to send me to my room.” I smirked. “Well, actually, I hope they do, because it’s super late and I’m tired.” By the look on his face, he didn’t think I was funny. “I’m sorry,” I murmured. “I just think you’re worrying too much about nothing.”
His lips pressed together tightly for just a moment, then he said, “I am not worrying too much, Ani. I have seen the way Cosimo Lazzaro looks at you.” He didn’t sound polite when he said Cosimo’s name and I fought the urge to roll my eyes.
“So? Cosimo Lazzaro has no claim on me whatsoever.”
“You are his guest, Ani!”
“Actually, I’m a guest of the family. I’m Cosimo’s patient.” I wanted to shake him. Hard. “Not his girlfriend.”
“Even so, I do not want him to think you are the kind of girl who will stay out all night with a man.” He remained unyielding. “He has made his intentions toward you very clear.”
“His intentions? He’s a flirt, Paulo. There’s nothing between us. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times. Flirting is a national pastime in Italy, right?” Granted, I was much more clear about Cosimo’s intentions now than I had been a few days ago, but that was water under the bridge as far as I was concerned. I deeply regretted letting him kiss me now, but I’d been a bit off kilter and I’d allowed him to take advantage of that.
“It is just an excuse for people to behave disrespectfully. You do not understand Italian men, Ani,” his sighed exasperatedly. “You think flirting is a national pastime here? Well, so is jealousy. We are like animals marking out territory, and we do not like it when another animal gets too close to what is ours.”
All the Way to Heaven Page 26