Page 30 of Dante

“Thank you,” he says. Our fingers briefly graze as I hand him the plate. I feel something like an electric live wire shoot through my body, from my erect nipples to the still tender area between my thighs.

Does Dante feel the sexual charge too?

He must.

He already knows my body as well as his own.

Still flushing at the memory of how he touched me at his office, I turn my attention to Ciro.

He’s holding up a bottle of wine. “Gentlemen, Signora Ricci, would you care for wine with your pizza?”

Though I’m not much of a wine drinker, something about the label captures my attention.

I walk toward Ciro to see it more closely.

I recognize the label at once. The wine is from the Ricci family estate in Sicily, where I first laid eyes on Dante seven years ago.

For me, it was love at first sight.

Dante hadn’t noticed me at all.

It felt like a slap at the time.

At the time, I tried to reason with myself, reminding myself I must have been just a kid in his eyes. And he was on his honeymoon, visibly obsessed with his beautiful wife Mary.

The memory of his unrequited love stings just as hard now as it did then.

I take a deep breath and remind myself I’m his wife now.

Mary’s dead.

I’ve ‘won’ him in the end.

But whatever win it might be feels hollow.

“Signora Ricci, would you like some wine?” Ciro asks, fetching a sparkling glass with an elegant gesture.

“With pleasure,” I say, accepting the glass and taking my seat near Dante.

The men eat their pizza and salad enthusiastically, but in silence. Feeling a need to fill the void, I turn to Luca.

“How do you like Boston?” I ask Luca. “I hear you’re studying at Harvard.”

“I love it. I live in what’s called the Back Bay. It’s a historic neighborhood. Maybe you and Dante will visit one day,” he says.

“Sounds fun. I’d like that,” I say, looking over at Dante. But he’s too busy with his pizza to acknowledge me.

All the Ricci men, I notice, eat pizza with forks and knives. Their mother must have been some stern disciplinarian.

“Hey, California Girl,” says Lorenzo, flashing one of his ready smiles once he’s finished his pizza. “Do you miss your hometown?”

“Not really,” I say with honesty. “Irvine was boring compared to New York. Today Angie took me shopping in Soho. It was an eye-opener. So crowded. It’s amazing how many people can fit on one square block.”

“I thought Irvine was a big city,” says Luca.

“Yes, but it’s spread out. You have to drive everywhere. And it’s boring, so boring.”

“I introduced myself to your mother,” says Lorenzo. “Nice lady. She seemed overjoyed to be back to her East Coast roots. Dante never told us why she left. Will you?”