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“Oh,” he said. “Sorry I startled you.”
“At least I wasn’t holding any eggs this time,” she said. “Did you want to come in?”
He shook his head. “Actually, I wanted to take you out.”
Amy frowned. “What do you mean? Take me out where?”
“I feel as if the two of us might have gotten off to a bad start.”
“I’d call that an understatement.”
“I’d like us to be on good terms,” he said. “And I thought maybe a tour of the city would help. Have you ever visited Como before?”
“I haven’t,” she said. “But I don’t really feel like I can visit it now, either, since I can’t leave the property.”
“You can leave. I gave you the gate code.”
“I can only go as far as I can get on foot. It’s really not much.”
“Hence the offer of a tour.” He sounded a little annoyed. “Would you like to come or not?”
“I would,” she said quickly. She had wanted to speak her mind to him, but she’d done that now, and she didn’t want him to withdraw his offer. It would be good to get out of the house.
She followed him down the path that led to the front driveway. A car awaited them there, Luca holding the back door open. Amy got in, and Adriano followed her.
“Where are we going?” she asked as the car pulled away.
“I’ll take you to see all the sights,” he promised. “We’ll start with the Piazza del Duomo, and the cathedral. I think you’ll like the architecture.”
She wondered how he could have that opinion, knowing nothing about her. Who was to say she cared about architecture at all?
But when they reached the piazza, Amy had to admit that he had been right. The cathedral was a beautiful gothic structure, massive and looking as though it had been standing since the dawn of time. Amy stared up at it reverently.
“Do you like it?” Adriano asked her.
“It always surprises me to see things like this right in the middle of a modern city.” There was a chain fast-food restaurant on the corner behind her. The two things didn’t look like they belonged on the same planet, much less in the same plaza.
“That’s what it’s like in Italy,” Adriano said. “Have you been here before?”
“I’ve never been out of the U.S. before,” she admitted. “It was just good luck that I had a passport—I meant to take a trip with my brother a few years ago, but we had to cancel it.”
“Where were you going to go?”
“Iceland,” she said. “We’ve always talked about going.”
“Iceland is beautiful.”
“You’ve been?”
“I’ve been to most countries in Europe,” Adriano said. “They all have their own unique charms. Why did you cancel your Iceland trip?”
Amy hesitated. Did she want to talk to him about this? She wasn’t sure. But then, it wasn’t a secret.
“Our mother got sick,” she explained. “I had to start taking care of her, so I sold my plane ticket to my brother’s best friend.”
“He went without you?” Adriano frowned. “He left you to care for your mother alone while she was ill?”
Amy didn’t like him implying that Mike had done anything wrong. “I told him to go,” she said. “I didn’t want him to miss out.”
