Page 56 of Shades of Grey & Gold

He squeezes my thigh with one hand under the counter where no one can see it. And heat rises into my cheeks again. The way this feels right; feels normal.

He looks so calm, so happy here, despite his sister’s barbs. His hand slides away and he stands. He walks around the island slowly, kisses Carmela on the cheek and says something to her in Italian that makes his mother scoff while waving a kitchen towel at him.

And the smile he gives me before he walks out the back door with a coffee in one hand makes my heart skip a beat.

1.Madonna mia —"my madonna," used in exclamation like 'oh my god'

2.Basta— Stop

Chapter Seventeen

Cal

Theguesthouseiscool and smells like old wood and paper, the way it always has. The double doors are open, and Nico is leaning against the frame, arms crossed, looking out at the yard.

I walk up beside him and turn to follow his view.

From here, through the kitchen window, I can see Max, sitting at the island between Sophia and my mother. Holding the espresso she was forced to take, she’s laughing at something—her head tilts back slightly, just a little, and the afternoon lightcomes through the window and does something to her hair that I am going to think about later when I have time to think about things.

And she looks happy. Like she fits there. Like it’s just another morning having coffee with my mother and sisters. Like she does this daily. Like she could.

God, I only wish she could.

Sophia says something. Max laughs again.

“Who’s the little lady?”

Nico hasn’t looked at me, but I can hear the teasing in his tone. He’s watching the window too.

“No one.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see him turn his head slowly and look at me the way he’s looked at me since we were children whenever I’ve said something he finds genuinely stupid. It’s a specific look I know without seeing it. It involves his whole face. His dark hair is shorter than mine, and his eyes are mirrors of my own, just a bit darker.

“My big brother,” he says, and I turn to face his words that are accompanied by the point of his finger and a smirk, “who has not, to my knowledge, brought a living, breathing woman to this house in the entire twenty-nine years of my own life, shows up unannounced with one, and expects me to believe she is no one.”

“Nico.”

“Rudi.” Nico raises his voice without looking away from me. “Gio. Give us a minute.”

Chairs scrape inside the guest house behind us. Footsteps. The door at the far end closes.

Nico turns back to the window and I follow his gaze. Max has said something to my mother. My mother is laughing now, too, touching Max’s arm. Something inside of me is trying to find reasons we can stay, some way to bottle the happiness on her face in this moment and keep it for her.

“No one,” Nico repeats, with significant feeling behind the words.

I look at the window. I look at him.

“No one outside this family knows who she is. No one finds out who she is. She’s not connected to any of this, she doesn’t know what any of this actually is yet, and I need it to stay that way. You know no one attached to this family is safe.”

“And yet you brought her. Here, specifically.”

“I didn’t have a choice.”

He raises his eyebrows in question.

“For fuck’s sake—she wouldn’t stay in the car.”

Pure delight crosses Nico’s face as he repeats my words back to me, “She wouldn’t stay in the car.”