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First, he insisted on taking Hallie shopping. With the new burly bodyguard at their side, they visited all the grand shopping streets of Rome, starting with the expensive boutiques near the Spanish Steps.
“More shopping?” she’d protested in dismay. “Is that really necessary?”
“One must be conscious of la bella figura in Rome. Even more than in New York. And it will help you relax, knowing you fit in.”
“How would you know?” she grumbled. “You fit in everywhere.”
Looking at her, he said quietly, “I came to Rome as a young Napolitano. I changed my clothes and changed my fate.”
Hallie waited breathlessly for him to continue, to tell her more of his hard childhood and how he’d made his fortune. But he did not.
Sighing, she gave in, rolling her eyes. “Fine. Take me shopping.”
She was relieved when the clothes were purchased and they could do what she really wanted—explore the city. They bought Jack a wooden sword and shield at the Colosseum and laughingly tossed coins in the Trevi Fountain. They drove past an enormous white-columned building that looked like a wedding cake, and the endless Roman ruins scattered around the city as casually as food carts in New York.
In the evenings, they had room service sent up to their penthouse for dinner, but once Cristiano took them out, to a simple outdoor trattoria with a private courtyard near the Piazza Navona. As the sun set, wi
th flowers everywhere and fountains burbling, Hallie wistfully watched musicians sing and play guitar, remembering her old dream of a singing career. Cristiano had observed her, then had a quiet word with the trattoria’s owner.
A moment later, the musicians spoke into the microphone and invited Hallie to come up on stage and sing. Embarrassed, she’d tried to refuse until Cristiano had said, “Please, do it for me.”
Staring at his handsome face, she couldn’t deny anything he asked of her. She’d gone up on stage and sung an old Appalachian folk song a capella.
Applause rang in her ears as she returned to their table. As she passed by, an American man claiming to be a record executive even gave her his card. Laughing, she showed it to Cristiano when she sat back down at the table.
“I told him thanks, but no thanks. My days of trying to get singing gigs are over.”
“Are you sure?”
Remembering all the painful years of rejection, she nodded fervently.
“Good,” he said huskily. “You’ll sing only for me.”
For the rest of the evening, Hallie ate pasta and drank wine and watched her new husband learn to be comfortable holding their baby. Seeing Jack tucked gently and tenderly in Cristiano’s arms, she felt a rush of happiness, like everything was right with the world.
But once they left the trattoria’s private courtyard, Salvatore had to hold back the rush of onlookers and paparazzi eager to take pictures of their family. It made her scared to go out on the street with the baby.
Each night, she sang lullabies to Jack, the same lullabies her mother had once sung to her, passed down from her grandmother and great-grandmother before. That night, when her baby finally slept, with his plump arms over his head, she turned and saw Cristiano silhouetted in the doorway, his face in shadow.
“Those songs you sing,” he said in a low voice. “They break my heart.”
Drawing her out of the nursery, he kissed her and pulled her to their bed. Then he made her heart break, too, with the purest happiness she’d ever known.
However, after living in a hotel for two weeks, she’d started to feel trapped, unable to leave the penthouse without Cristiano and the bodyguard.
One afternoon while he was working, Hallie took her baby out onto the penthouse terrace to enjoy the warm summer sun. Watering the purple flowers that decorated the terrace railing, she tried to pretend she was back in West Virginia, in their old garden. Her mother had loved to spend hours taking care of their plants. As she watered the flowers, she would sing.
“Why did you never leave, Mama?” Hallie had asked her once in the garden, the year before she’d died. Hallie had just graduated from high school, and what the world was telling her she should want and what she actually wanted seemed to be two different things. “Why did you never go to New York and become a famous singer?”
“Oh, my dear.” Turning to Hallie, her mother had caressed her cheek tenderly. “I did think of it once. Then I met your father and traded that dream for a better one.”
“What?”
“Our family.” Her mother’s eyes had glowed with love. “Your whole life is ahead of you, Hallie. I know whatever you decide to do, you’ll make us proud.”
And so, after she’d lost everything—her mother and father and brother and home—Hallie had taken her father’s meager life insurance and gone to New York. To try to make her family proud.
“Hallie?”
