Page 50 of My Wedding Mafia Style

Isabella lowers her sunglasses. “You look very Bahamas. Also very slept-in-Luca’s-cabin.”

I nearly trip. Adriana catches her by the back of her cover-up. “No.”

“What? She does.”

“Ignore her,” Sofia says, coming to kiss both my cheeks as if I am not a woman she met yesterday and whose overnight arrangements she absolutely knows too much about. “You look lovely, dear.”

“Thank you,” I say, because apparently I have entered the stage of this experience where I accept compliments and international travel without understanding how either happened.

Nonna sits beneath the shade of the upper deck in a cream linen outfit and oversized sunglasses, looking less like someone on vacation and more like someone who has agreed to let the sun worship nearby. She lifts one hand toward me.

“Lucia.”

“Nonna.”

Her mouth curves. “You slept?”

I feel every person on the deck pretend not to listen.

“Yes,” I say carefully.

“Good. A woman needs rest before a beach party.”

“A beach party?”

Luca appears beside me and offers me a glass of cold orange juice. “The crew is setting up on shore.”

I take the glass. “Of course they are.”

Isabella grins. “Chef Marco makes ribs that will make you believe in destiny.”

“I thought this family was Italian.”

“We are,” Alessandro says, appearing behind Sofia. “But we respect barbecue.”

A smaller boat waits beside the yacht, and beyond it, on the sand, I can already see the impossible evidence of preparation. White umbrellas. Low tables. Coolers. A grill smoking lightly beneath the palms. Staff moving with cheerful efficiency, carrying trays, towels, baskets, and what appears to be an entire fruit market.

“This is not a beach party,” I say.

Luca looks at the shore. “No?”

“This is a luxury invasion with pineapple.”

His mouth curves. “Doyou object?”

I look at the water again. At the sand. At the way the sun lights the world like everything has been forgiven. Then I look at him.

“No,” I admit. “I’m alarmingly open to pineapple.”

The ride to shore takes only minutes, but I spend most of them trying not to stare at the water beneath us. It is so clear I can see shadows moving below, flashes of fish and pale sand ripples. The little boat bumps gently over the waves, and when my hand tightens on the seat, Luca’s fingers cover mine.

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.

On the beach, the sand is soft enough to make me laugh when my feet sink into it. I have never felt anything like it. Fine, white, warm, almost silky. Sugary, my brain supplies, and for a strange moment I think of my dream bottles. Tiny beaches in glass. Little worlds people can hold because the real ones feel too far away.

Now I am standing inside one.

Luca watches me take it in, and there is something on his face I don’t know how to name.