almost trips over her feet when he comes into the restaurant. Even mamma has blinked at him a few times.”
I turned and she was blinking at me again, a smile lingering on her face.
“He is trouble,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “He knows who I am.”
She shrugged. “He only watched papà and mamma.”
“Studying them to get to me,” I said. “If the bull—Junior—” I hated to say his name, but I did it sometimes just to spite him. Other times, he was the bull.
“Uncle Tito wouldn’t have brought him if he felt he was a danger. And if he is—” She made a snipping motion at me. “You still have the shears.”
We stared at each other for a second before my grin matched hers, and we started laughing.
She lifted a pointer finger. “The bull—poetic justice at its finest. If you have to make this one into a eunuch, that would be such a shame. He is so pretty.”
I shook my head at her. “I am taken, remember?”
“I remember,” she said. “So is he. Uncle Tito told me he is arranging his marriage. He will be married by the time he leaves. But.” She bit her bottom lip, tilting her head a bit. “We must fight fire with water. He is not married yet, and neither are you. If he claims you…” She shrugged. “Let him fight for you.”
I laughed, louder than she had. “Claim me?”
She nodded. “In a way that you have never been claimed before. The way he was looking at you today…” She nodded. “I recognized it. Most woman can’t, unless another woman tells them—a woman has no idea what it means to be claimed, until after she is.”
“I thought the woman claims the man,” I said.
“True, we do, but we make them think they claim us first.” She grinned, and it was evil. “You think you are sly, but I saw what you did. You dropped that glove on purpose, to have him pick it up for you.”
My heart fluttered a bit, remembering the moment. I silenced it with thoughts from the past. “It does not matter,” I said. “What is done is done.”
“Nothing is done,” she called after me as I opened the door to leave, grabbing the shears I carried with me. “Not until your final breath!”
It was something our mamma told us—life was not done until we were. If we were still breathing, we still had a reason.
The lights were on outside, old-style lanterns on the villa, and when I turned, I found jeweled eyes, the color of dark amber, staring back at me. He stood against the house, one shoulder against it, waiting.
“Alcina,” he said, and my name sounded so beautiful from his mouth.
Even when he had stopped me earlier in the groves, when I’d dropped the glove on purpose, his voice had that same calm to it, and it was smooth. Fucking, as they would say in America, deceptive.
He didn’t need to flaunt his power. It was just…his. He owned it, like the scent in the air around him. A fine cologne that was his alone and unforgettable. It was mixed with his sweat and the dirt from working the harvest.
I turned toward him, narrowing my eyes to see him better, and then, without thinking twice, snapped the clippers in the direction of his balls. “Stay away from me, scorpione,” I said, equally as quiet. Then I turned, the feeling of his eyes on my back refusing to leave me, even in my dreams. And even in dreams, he was never what he seemed.
8
Alcina
I needed better places to hide.
I would walk to one side of the grove. Lo scorpione would suddenly be there.
I would run to another. He would already be leaning against a tree. His eyes on me. A grin on his face.
I would hide in the kitchen of the factory, and as soon as my foot would hit the outside of it, he would be standing there.
I left Anna’s villa. He waited outside of it.
If I moved left, he moved left. If I moved right, so did he.
We were dancing a dance I was unfamiliar with.
He was tripping me up, his moves (or motives) at odds with my safety, but my heart raced and my breath became shallow every time our eyes met and we somehow completed a step.
“Bad, bad heart,” I whispered to myself, picking pistachios from a tree that was rooted on a steep mound of volcanic soil. As I picked, I kept muttering to