“Do you put onion in it?” she asked tentatively. She could not bear onions in dishes where it wasn’t cooked down.
Carlo looked at her as if she’d asked if he put diced children in it. “Anyone who puts onion in carbonara deserves to be shot.”
She smiled, agreeing wholeheartedly. “Then I would love a bowl, thank you.”
He returned the smile before bustling off, reappearing moments later with a bottle of Valpolicella and a jug of iced water. He poured them a glass each of both, then bustled off again, this time into the kitchen.
Siena reached for the bottle of wine that had been placed between them and studied the label with a wry shake of her head. It came from the chateau her cousin Francesca had worked at.
“I noticed that the last time I was here,” Elio, the man who’d chosen Francesca from all Siena’s cousins for the precise reason that she was a virgin, commented idly. “It’s a nice wine.”
She put the bottle back and drank some of her water.
A platter of antipasti was placed between them. Elio put his fork straight to it.
“You need to eat,” he said after he’d eaten a chunk of mozzarella and tomato.
“I’m not hungry.”
“You haven’t eaten since our wedding buffet, and you ate very little of that.”
“I wonder why,” she muttered.
“Starving yourself isn’t going to make our marriage any more pleasant for you,” he pointed out as he stabbed a thinly sliced fried aubergine. “Also, Carlo and Rocco will be insulted if you don’t make an effort to eat.”
With a tight sigh, she drove her fork into a plump green olive and popped it into her mouth. He was still watching her expectantly when she swallowed, so she tried an arancini ball. One bite and her taste buds exploded.
“It’s good?” Elio asked, his eyebrow raised in anticipation.
Unable to help herself, she made a noise like a muffled laugh and nodded. “Yes. It’s good.”
“Now try the aubergine.”
“I hate aubergine.”
“So do I, but not the way Rocco cooks it. Go on, try it.”
Her nose wrinkling with the opposite of anticipation, she quickly popped the slice of slime into her mouth and found herself chewing on something that zinged with garlic and mint and was nothing like the slimy texture of the last aubergine she’d eaten when she’d sworn off it for life. Just like that, her appetite roared to life.
“You and Carlo seem to be good friends,” she said when they were halfway through the platter, and her tensed muscles had relaxed.
He nodded and drank some wine. “He’s always been good to my family. He gave me my first job.”
“You used to work here?” She couldn’t imagine it.
“I did. He took me on when I was twelve.”
“Attwelve? I thought you had to be sixteen to get a job?”
“It wasn’t on the books, princess.”
She didn’t know if she disliked him calling her princess or wife the most. His princess was as mocking as his wife was proprietorial.
“Rocco, his partner, was an old friend of my mother’s,” he explained.
Unsettled by his mention of his dead mother, Siena finally took a sip of her wine.
“Your father’s war left us poor,” he told her bluntly. “Out of love for my mother, Rocco and Carlo gave my grandmother a job and let me bring my siblings and cousin here when we finished school. We would sit at this table and wait for her to finish her shift.”
