it with such finality and stood up as punctuation. “Let’s get back. I want to make those phone calls.”
“How much do I owe you?” Sam persisted, opening his own wallet.
Jules waved him off. “It’s on me.”
“You come out here to do me a favor, and you pay for lunch …?”
“You have no idea how much I appreciate your friendship,” Jules said.
Sam held out several bills. “Yeah, actually I do,” he said. “It’s probably as much as I appreciate yours.”
Jules couldn’t just take the money and be done with it. He had to go and hug Sam. “Thanks.”
Of course, now the gay waiter was checking Sam out, too. He even followed them out into the square as they headed up the road.
Which turned out to be provident, since they hadn’t gone far before a group of men, ranging in ages from teens to much older, blocked their path. They were scowling and grim, and their postures were clearly meant to menace.
Jules stepped in front of Sam, his body language relaxed, a smile on his face. “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” he said in close to perfect Italian. “Is there a problem?”
Sam counted them quickly. There were nine, but only three—red shirt, goatee, and tattoo—looked capable of holding their own in a brawl.
Tattoo let out a stream of Italian that was far too rapid-fire for Sam to understand. He definitely caught the words Rome and the Pope along with what sounded like negative language. He wasn’t quite sure what the man was saying, but there was no mistaking his intention when he roughly shoved Jules.
And just like that, the talking was over. Well, almost over. “I got Tattoo and Red Shirt,” Jules announced in English, as he effortlessly took down the man who’d shoved him.
That left Goatee for Sam. But ouch, the man had a fishing knife. Sam quickly adiosed it, breaking more than a few fingers in the process.
That was all it took. Goatee ran home, crying for his mommy, eating the dust of the rest of the gang. They’d all long since am-scrayed, except for the delusional man in the red shirt, who actually still believed he could get a piece of Jules.
The FBI agent was subcompact and had a far better fashion sense than Alyssa, but he knew how to bring it in hand-to-hand combat. He fought with an efficiency of movement that Sam admired. It was beautiful, actually. Jules fought with his brain, unlike Red Shirt, who’d let loose his inner Neanderthal, swinging blindly, flailing mindlessly—making himself good and winded in the process.
Jules, on the other hand, was breathing about as hard as he’d been during lunch.
Red Shirt came at him one too many times, and Jules dodged him yet again, this time tripping him on his way past, using an expertly placed elbow to help the man greet the ground that much harder. He didn’t get back up.
The gay waiter, meanwhile, had run to get the entire serving staff of the restaurant, including the owner.
As Sam watched, Jules turned to face this new threat, ready to take them all out if necessary. But—again, since his brain was fully functioning—he immediately recognized them for what they were. The cavalry come to save them. Not that they’d needed it.
The owner of the restaurant spoke fluent English. “This is not the first time such an outrage has happened here. Such anti-American sentiment is not helpful to our town. Tourism is down as it is.”
Anti-American? Not anti-gay?
The man ushered them into his kitchen, ordering his staff to bring the first-aid kit and ice for Jules’s raw knuckles. Sam looked at Jules, but he was playing right along, talking about the anti-American protests in Greece and even Dubai, as he helped Sam over to a table and pushed him into a chair.
It was then Sam realized he was bleeding. He’d gotten cut by that knife.
It wasn’t too much more than a scratch, but the restaurant owner—who was also the chef—wasn’t about to let them leave without cleaning them up. And feeding them a sampling of all his desserts, which was fine by Sam.
The man even drove them back to the resort in his little Mini. It was only then, after they said their goodbyes, as they headed down the pathway past the pool, that Sam asked, “Anti-American?”
But Jules’s phone rang. It was his boss’s administrative assistant, Laronda. It was okay with Max if Jules wanted to take a few more days off. Which meant …
“Let’s get you a flight home,” Jules said.
But Sam shook