He turned his face to hers and lifted his hand from her belly to brush strands of hair from her face. Thumb rubbing her cheek, his mouth only a whisper away from hers, his eyes glittered with an emotion that made her heart clutch. ‘I want to show you all the places I should have shown you the last time we were here.’
She wished her heart didn’t leap so hard at this and wished, too, that she didn’t put an automatic cynical slant on it. Domenico was starting as he meant to go on, and she needed to do the same.
Injecting some positivity into her voice, she smiled. ‘Does this mean you’re skiving off work again?’
His eyes crinkled. ‘Better than that. I’m taking the next week off.’
‘Are you being serious?’ In all the years Marnie had known him, the longest Domenico had taken off work had been five days over the Christmas period. That had happened only once, a few years before they’d married and only after months of nagging from his mother and sister.
He drew his head back a little and gently ran his fingers through the length of her hair. ‘We need to know each other, Marnie, and we need to understand each other. It’s the only way we can make it work.’
It was hard to think coherently when shivers of sensation were dancing through her skin and veins. ‘I already know you, Dom.’
‘I know you do, probably better than anyone, but you need to understand what underlies it all, what the drivers of my life are, just as I need to understand the drivers of your life.’
‘There isn’t anything to understand about me. Compared to your life and everything you’ve achieved, my life has been the epitome of mundanity.’
His eyes glittered. ‘I don’t believe that for a minute.’ And then he brushed his lips to hers in a light, chaste kiss before he climbed off the bed and strolled, magnificent in his nudity, through the adjoining door.
Domenico’s driver crossed the Tiber, and soon they’d driven into a bohemian neighbourhood rich with ancient buildings.
Stopping at the foot of a narrow cobbled street, their driver ignored the angry toots of other drivers while Domenico climbed out of the car and held a hand out for Marnie. To his gratification, she accepted it, only releasing his hold when she was safely on two feet.
He led her up the street, stopping when they reached a bakery with outdoor seating. He pointed across the road. ‘That’s the apartment I grew up in. We lived on the top two floors.’
He watched her face, the interest alive on it as she soaked in the salmon-coloured fascia.
‘Do you see the balcony on the top floor? The one with all the plants?’
She nodded.
‘That was my parents’ bedroom. The window to the left of it was my sister’s. My bedroom was at the back. Mynonna—my grandmother—lived with us too. Her bedroom was next to mine.’
‘Whose mother was she?’
‘My mother’s. I never knew my father’s parents. My father was sixty when I was born. Mynonnawas three years younger than him.’
Marnie digested this in her usual quiet way. ‘I knew he was classed as an old father, but I didn’t realise he was that old.’
‘There were twenty-nine years between my parents. My father and my mother’s father were old friends. My father’s first wife had died, and my grandparents invited him to spend Christmas with them. My mother was there. They married that summer. I was born three months later, my sister a year after that.’
‘Did your father have children from his first marriage?’
‘No. I believe they tried, but it didn’t happen for them.’ He slipped his hand into hers and squeezed. ‘Come, the offices he worked at are around the corner.’
It took a few moments for her fingers to relax in his hold, but she didn’t pull them away.
Around the corner was a large piazza bustling with life. He walked with her to the ancient fountain close to the Basilica of Santa Maria and sat on its steps. ‘You see that arched door?’ he said, pointing at the building facing them. ‘That was the door into my father’s offices where he practised law. I joined the firm when I graduated and passed all my law exams under his tutelage.’ He pointed to an alleyway close by. ‘That, there, leads to the lower secondary school I attended. It’s a hotel now, but in my years there, I would visit my father’s offices on my walk home. My school finished at three, and my father insisted his diary be kept clear of appointments at that time so he was always free to greet me.’
If Domenico closed his eyes, he could hear the tap on his father’s office door he always made and how he would open it without waiting for a response and step inside as his father was rising to his feet with a wide smile on his face, eyes already alive with interest at the stories his son was about to relay of his day.
‘Were you very close to him?’ Marnie asked softly.
He nodded, breathing out to loosen the tightness of his chest that always happened when he reminisced about his early life. ‘I loved both of my parents, but always gravitated to my father. My sister always gravitated to our mother. She worked as a tour guide at the Vatican for English speakers. In our school holidays, she would often take me and my sister with her so we could absorb the English language—she was determined that we would grow up bilingual. We spoke more English in my home than Italian.’
‘The Vatican’s not far from here, is it?’
‘About five kilometres. Easy walking distance. I walked everywhere in those days. All my family did. I never imagined I would want to live or work anywhere else.’
