“So, why now?” she asked after I was halfway through.
I took another deep inhale, watching the end of the cigarette turn to ash, the paper burn away. “Honestly. It just seemed necessary. After you—after you turned yourself in.”
Her forehead crinkled with confusion. “Why would that make you do it?”
“Probably because not being able to save someone I love is a giant fucking trigger,” I said, a hell of a lot more calmly than I felt whenever I thought of Nina sleeping in a prison cell. “I loved my men too, Nina. And losing them…well, I won’t say it wasn’t as bad as when I had to watch that footage of you being taken to jail. But you were a close second. Especially thinking that maybe I could have prevented it.”
She stayed quiet while I finished my cigarette. I used it to light the end of a second, then put the butt out in the ashtray at the center of the table. Great, now I was chain smoking.
“Give me that,” Nina said.
Before I could stop her, she had plucked the cigarette out of my mouth and put it to her own. Her cheeks hollowed as she sucked on the end, then exhaled through pursed lips. I stared, hypnotized. Watching Nina de Vries smoke was like watching a swan do back flips.
“Okay, okay,” I said. “Give it back. You shouldn’t be doing that.”
She took another pull on the end. “Why?”
“Because it’s going to give you fucking cancer, Nina, that’s why. I don’t want you smoking, and that’s it.”
“Well, I don’t want you smoking either for the same reasons. How does that sound?”
I scowled. “What does that matter?”
Didn’t she understand how hard this was going to be? Didn’t she understand that I needed something to keep me from grabbing her, from loving her, from doing the only other thing in this godforsaken life that made me feel even a little bit at ease with myself? Cigarettes were a poor substitute for the calm I found in worshipping Nina de Vries. But right now, they were all I had.
“Because,” she said as she held the cigarette up and watched the ash slowly forming at its tip. “I don’t like to see people I care about hurting themselves either.” She tipped her head to one side, as if daring me to take it. “So. I’ll stop. If you stop. Do we have a deal?”
We stared at each other hard across the table. Suddenly this felt like a test. And as soon as I realized that, I also realized there was only one right answer.
People she cared about. Which meant she still cared about me.
Well, then.
“You little minx,” I muttered, as I took the cigarette out of her hand and stabbed it in the ashtray. “Yeah, all right, duchess. We have a deal.”
And just like that, Nina grinned. And I grinned back with the triumph of passing yet another test with flying colors.
Chapter Eleven
Nina
We left bright and early for Florence. I had fallen asleep sometime just after nine o’clock, though I was woken twice in the night by loud thumps on the wall next to me, and once more by an unintelligible shout. That time I crept out to investigate.
“Matthew?” I had called cautiously through the door.
For a while, I thought he was asleep. Perhaps I had imagined that shout, or else he really was just dreaming.
But then, he answered.
“I’m fine, doll,” came his groggy voice.
I had paused. “Are you—are you sure?”
Was it my imagination, or did he sigh?
“Yeah, baby, I’m fine. Go back to bed.”
So I did, hard as it was. Because something had changed the night before when I stole his cigarette. It had been automatic—watching him do something that he knew was self-harming produced a protectiveness I couldn’t hold back. So now, I could no longer pretend I didn’t care about Matthew. It was ingrained.
But the next morning, I couldn’t help noticing the dark circles under his beautiful green eyes, though the rest of him was as gorgeous as ever in a pair of fitted black pants, a bright white shirt, and a brown leather jacket. Casual, yes. But with his ever-present fedora, Matthew managed to be as effortlessly debonair as ever while he sipped his morning espresso in the courtyard, waiting for me to finish my own coffee and sfogliatella before we checked out.
How one person could make something as simple as a white Oxford shirt look so good was beyond me. Was it the contrast of the color with his inky dark hair and the two-day stubble outlining his sculpture-worthy jaw? Maybe it’s the way it matched the flash of his teeth in a crooked smile that made my stomach turn not once, but twice?
Luckily, I seemed to have a similar effect on him. I had chosen a form-fitting gray skirt, and yes, it was partially to enjoy the way his eyes dilated whenever I recrossed my legs and exposed my left thigh through the slit that reached well past my knee. He couldn’t quite keep himself from leering whenever I stretched my arms and thrust my chest outward. And I particularly enjoyed his expression when he noticed the three-inch silver heels I’d chosen to go with this outfit.
“You all right over there, doll?” he asked when he caught me staring at him instead of the flaky pastry.
I looked up. “Hmmm?”
His gaze managed to be both sympathetic and slightly dangerous beneath the brim of his hat
“You looked a little lost in thought,” he replied before pushing my plate toward me. “You need to eat, duchess. We have a long drive ahead of us.”
Yes, I was aware. Three and a half hours or so to another pensione Matthew had found in Florence, where I would mentally prepare myself for the first step on my agenda: finding Giuseppe’s wife and revealing our affair. I sighed, not because of the impending drive, but because I did feel a
