building, the energy fled with her, and he slumped against her office wall.
“This is going to be harder than I thought.”
He finalized plans with Dr. Stevens before he left the Huntington that night, strolling the four blocks to the large Tudor-style home he’d purchased the month before. He was still getting used to the layout of the house but had been charmed by the dense trees that surrounded the property and the tiered gardens and ponds that filled the yard.
As he walked through the front doors, he looked around and listened for the activity that should have been going on in the library on the first floor. He heard nothing except the bouncing of a basketball behind the garage. Laughing under his breath, he turned and walked silently through the kitchen and out the back doors.
The boy was bouncing the ball in a pool of light that shone from the back of the garage. He was bent over, dribbling through his scrawny legs, his attention focused on the rhythmic bouncing of the orange ball in his hands. Just then, he crouched down and shot up, tossing a precise shot toward the basket mounted over the garage door.
“He shoots…he scores!” the boy shouted when the ball sailed through the hoop. “And the crowd goes wild for Ben Vecchio, lead scorer of the-” He turned then and spotted Giovanni, leaning against the wall.
“Scorer of the what?” Giovanni asked with an amused smirk.
“Um…of the top college in the country, which I will be getting into with no problem because I already finished my math and my Latin translation?”
“Reading?”
“Done before you woke up tonight.”
“History?”
“Well, not quite…”
“Composition?”
“You know, you’re back a lot sooner than I thought you’d be.”
“How about piano?”
Ben’s mouth gaped open and his shoulders slumped. “It hasn’t even been delivered yet!”
Giovanni frowned. “I forgot that part. Did you call the movers today?”
Ben nodded. “Yep, they said that it’d be here next Thursday at the latest and to make sure that we had room for the truck.”
“Excellent. Toss me the ball then.”
“Pass, Gio.
“Fine, whatever,” he muttered as Ben passed the ball to him. He dribbled it, then tossed it toward the backboard, where it bounced off the rim before Ben ran over to catch it. He bounced it back to Giovanni.
“Okay, you need to square up your shoulders with the basket before you shoot. Try again.”
Giovanni dribbled the ball a few more times before he tried again, squaring his shoulders like Ben had directed. “You know, if you put half the concentration into your composition that you do into this game-”
“Game, Gio. Remember? We’re supposed to talk about non-school stuff when we play.”
He rolled his eyes and shot again, this time getting slightly closer to the square behind the hoop.
“There,” Ben encouraged. “That’s better.” The boy rebounded the shot and took some time dribbling it before he tossed it toward the hoop, where it sailed in. “So, did you talk to her?”
Giovanni watched as the boy ran around the small court, shooting baskets and chasing rebounds. His lanky limbs and awkward gait seemed to disappear on the basketball court, as he exhibited the natural confidence that had brought him to Giovanni’s attention when he’d seen the boy in New York over a year ago.
“I did.”
“Is she really mad at you?”
He nodded as Ben passed him the ball. “Yes, she’s…fairly angry.”
“Did you tell her about me yet?” he asked in a small voice.
“Not yet,” he smiled. “I told you, Beatrice is far more apt to like you than me at the moment. Don’t worry about that.”
Ben gave a nonchalant shrug. “Girls always like me more, G. It’s ‘cause I’m so good-looking.”
Giovanni chuckled and passed the ball back to him. “I worry about your self-esteem, Benjamin. Really, I do. Have you eaten dinner yet?”
“Just a few more minutes?” His eyes pleaded. “Then I’ll go in.”
“Fine. But after that, you’re finishing your homework.”
“Sweet!” Ben shot a few rapid baskets. “So how long do you think it’s going to be before she’s not mad at you anymore?”
“How long was it before you started liking me after I took you off the streets and made you start bathing regularly?”
Ben snickered and passed the ball back to Giovanni. “Not as long as I acted. The food was a lot better at your house.”
Giovanni snorted. “Better than the randomly purloined hot dog? I should hope even
“Well, it was close, but-hey!” Ben dodged the ball that Giovanni threw at him. It hit the wall of the garage and bounced back toward Ben. Giovanni grinned at the boy’s sharp reflexes, which had been part of the reason he’d been such a successful pickpocket until a little over a year before.
“I’ll go start dinner. Come to the kitchen in a few minutes.”
Giovanni walked back in the house and went to start a pot of water to boil. He had little interest in food that night, but because he was determined to civilize Benjamin as much as possible for a twelve-year-old boy, he had made nightly dinner at the table a priority.
When he’d found the boy in New York, Giovanni had spotted his wasted potential almost immediately. The urchin had stolen his wallet, and if Giovanni hadn’t had preternatural senses, he would have easily gotten away with it. As it was, he’d let the boy have the wallet, followed him, and done some investigating.
Ben was the illegitimate son of a con woman and a cabbie. After looking into both parents and talking to the boy, Giovanni decided that neither one of them was deserving of his help-or their own child. One physically abusive and the other a manipulator, they had passed on to Ben little more than the ability to fend for himself and lie convincingly to authorities.
Giovanni, however, had seen the sharp intelligence and survival instinct the boy exhibited and decided he deserved more than to be chewed up on the streets of the city. On paper, Ben had become Giovanni’s nephew, the son of his deceased brother and his wife, who had died in a tragic car accident the year before. They had spent the previous year resolving the details of the adoption and catching Ben up on the realities of his new world.
The boy barreled into the kitchen just as Giovanni finished putting the jar of sauce on the spaghetti. He set it on the table along with a salad he’d put together from a bag and a bowl of olives.
“Spaghetti again?”
He cocked an eyebrow at the boy. “Tomorrow night you can cook. Besides,” he said as he flicked the back of the boy’s ear as he sat at the table, “you’re an Italian now, you need to eat lots of pasta.”
Ben snorted and dug into the food. Giovanni watched him scarf down his food with gusto; it reminded him of how much Caspar had eaten at that age. It had been harder to find food for Caspar in postwar Britain, but with the proliferation of American all-night markets and Ben’s natural independence, the two of them managed just fine.
“I’m not Italian, really,” Ben said between bites. “I’m Leba-Rican.”
Giovanni smirked at the boy’s quick wit. Ben was half Lebanese and half Puerto Rican, but their coloring was close enough that no one questioned their relation. The only difference was Ben’s dark brown eyes, which had always reminded Giovanni of Beatrice.
“You might have to be the one to convince her,” he mused.
“Convince who? Beatrice?”
“Mmmhmm. You’ll have to convince her I’m not a complete bastard.”
“Well, technically,” Ben said between bites, “we both are.”
Giovanni flicked the boy’s ear again. “You know what I mean.”
Ben paused and set down his fork. “You know, if we were friends and then you went away and I didn’t see you
