old days.’” My spot-on Scottish accent had her in a fit of giggles. “Now, I have a place to stay in the Cayman Islands, where he retired to, whenever I want.”
Everyone around the table broke into another round of laughter.
My eyes never left my wife.
Stop calling her that!
She was looking at me differently now. Her eyes had softened, the lines around her mouth had been smoothed away. Was that… Was that a bit of admiration I saw there?
Ah, hell.
She couldn’t look at me that way. She was getting the wrong idea about me. I was going to have to put a stop to it.
Before she started thinking I was something I really wasn’t.
Something I could never be for her.
Who the hell was this guy?
Surely, not the same man I married. Because that guy barely ever cracked a smile. He would never be the spontaneous, adventurous sort who did impressions of a Scottish brogue and easily laughed at himself.
“Tell me, Lexi,” Nico’s mother said once everyone had caught their breaths from laughing so hard. “Did you attend school abroad? Your accent doesn’t sound entirely Russian.”
I was pretty sure I already loved the matriarch of the Rossetti family, who’d insisted I called her Val—not Mrs. Rossetti, not Valentina. She was warm and motherly. Best of all, she hadn’t once shot me a suspicious glare or made a condescending remark about the kind of girl her first-born son had married. In fact, she acted like I was already part of the family. Like the nature of our abrupt marriage was simply of no consequence to her.
“Yes, ma’am,” I answered her. “I actually went to secondary school in England before attending Cambridge University.”
I felt Nico shift next to me. I wondered if he was at all curious at my life before him. He’d certainly never asked about my education, nor my hobbies or interests. Would he even care what I was passionate about?
“Cambridge,” Mr. Rossetti said, who also despised formal names and demanded that I called him Enzo. “Quite impressive, my dear. And what did you study there?”
“Nonprofit and Public Management. I was managing a few nonprofits in Moscow, including a children’s orphanage that I help fund.”
I missed my kids so much. My heart was truly broken over not being able to tell them goodbye. I couldn’t bear it if they thought I’d abandoned them. Especially since I knew exactly how that felt.
More shifting from Nico.
Val perked up in her chair, a smile overtaking her face. “You don’t say? I’m on the board of several nonprofits here in Brooklyn, and I do a lot of work with local children’s programs. You’re welcome to drop by someday and see if it’s something you’d be interested in assisting with. We’ve been having issues with attendance and overall participation in many of the programs. I could probably use your insights.”
I only just managed to keep from screaming “hell, yes!” at the top of my lungs. This very well might have been the best news I’d received since I was given my marching orders down the aisle.
“Absolutely,” I beamed. “I’d love to. That sounds brilliant.”
She nodded. “It’s settled then.”
“By the way,” Cris spoke up, looking at his father. “There’s a few properties I want you and Mom to take a look at. Two are in the Cinque Terre region and one is on the southern Amalfi coast. Those are the only ones I could find that meet all of your criteria and are within the price range. But if you don’t like any of them, we can expand the search.”
“Are you going on an Italian holiday?” I asked.
“We’re actually looking to purchase a place somewhere in the old country,” Enzo responded, sending his wife a wistful gaze. “Along the coast. As often as we like to travel to Italy, we’ve determined it would probably be more cost effective to buy rather than continue to rent. Cris has been helping us with the real estate side of things.”
I peeked at Nico out of the corner of my eye. He was staring down at his glass of whiskey with a pensive expression. It made me curious about the dynamic between the brothers and their father. Cris was sat closest to Enzo and seemed to be the most involved in their parents’ affairs, particularly in the financial sense. But Nico was the eldest son. Shouldn’t that role have fallen to him? Or did Italian-American families operate differently from what I was familiar with?