Everything—from the family house behind me to all of the outer buildings that were dotted across the property—had been built to overlook the vineyard below. It stretched in pristine rows with hundreds of squatty trees filling the area. Between them, paths, nets, and large hip baskets were scattered throughout. In a word, it was breathtaking. Deep, rich greens and browns were set against a perfect cloudless sky.
I wanted to sit in the window of the barn and sketch the view. Or take a bath in the main house with a glass of wine and Marcello behind me and watch the sunset.
“Do you like it?” he asked, wrapping his arms around me. The children’s laughter faded, the music was different—a strumming mandolin now filled the calm.
“I love it. It suits you,” I said, leaning into his embrace.
“What does?” He kissed my cheek.
“This place. The country.” The kids.
Marcello looked different out of the city. His top buttons were undone, his hair was mussed, probably from playing with the children, and while still gorgeous he seemed . . . relaxed.
“You look comfortable out here. Not that you don’t in the city, but out here in the wide-open space, all fresh air and warm sun with no hustle and bustle and technology, surrounded by kids, you look . . . perfect.”
He remained quiet for a moment.
I looked around, uncertain. “What?”
“Nothing,” he said, turning me slowly before dipping me, the blanket falling to the grass behind us. He dropped light kisses across my forehead and cheeks, then my lips, while whispering tesoro over and over.
We stopped kissing in time to see the children running over the hill toward us. They’d multiplied and I wondered just how many people were here for the weekend.
Smoothing my hair back, I tried to unrumple my dress. What was I thinking wearing linen around his roaming Roman hands? He scooped up the blanket and laid it around my shoulders.
“I am sorry for your chest.” He laughed, and when I looked down, there weren’t just pink scruff marks littered across my breast. A hickey was forming.
“I’m going to kill you,” I said, running after him through the grass.
He let me catch him when we got to a clearing that had massive wooden steps built into the hill.
“You didn’t tell me that your family made wine,” I said, catching my breath and walking closer to the hill’s edge to get a better look.
“Not wine, olives,” he said, brushing my hair away from my shoulder to place a kiss there. He rested his chin where his lips had just been and we watched the brilliant orange sun setting behind the grove.
“Bianchis have been making it for generations. I learned how to pick them as soon as I could walk,” he said, and I pictured a small Marcello weaving in and out of the field laughing like his nephews were earlier.
“I love to sleep out here. On a blanket under the moon. Maybe naked,” he said, pulling me into his arms. “We’ll have to try it when the house gets too noisy.” He kissed my neck lightly. “Out here we could be noisy.”
“I look forward to it.”
“I’ll show you after dinner. It’s magical at night. I’ll give you a tour and kiss you under the stars, but Mamma wants to meet you first.”
Mamma.
My stomach bottomed out, body tensed, heart thundered, and my ears were ringing. My track record with moms wasn’t exactly noteworthy, and she was arguably the most important that I’d ever meet.
Taking my now-sweaty hand, he led me up the hill.
Marcello’s family home may have only been two stories, but it was expansive, spread out into a U shape with a large stone courtyard in the center. The home was covered in light-colored brick and each window was framed with weathered royal blue shutters.
The grounds were scattered with various colored clay pots filled to the brim and spilling over with vibrant flowers and fragrant fruit trees, similar to what he had at his house in Rome.
“Is there a side door that I can sneak into so that I could change?”
Nodding, he led us around the back of the house away from the crowd of people.
“Cello!” a woman yelled, and he squeezed my hand.
“I’m sorry, tesoro,” he said, turning us around to see a young woman, about our age, coming toward us with a round belly.
She took one look at me, kissed stupid and wrinkled, and laughed, grimacing at him. “Why you do this to her?”
“I did nothing to her,” he said, holding up his hands in surrender. “Avery, this is my oldest sister, Allegra.”
“How many are there?” I asked.
“I am the youngest of five.”
“Why you have to say oldest, you couldn’t just say my sister?” She slapped at his shoulder, throwing a few choice curses at him. “It is nice to meet you.”
“It’s great to meet you, too. We’ll join you in a bit,” I began, but she took my hand.
“No time to change, I afraid. You look good.” She grinned knowingly.
Still, she gave me the thin sweater from around her shoulders. It covered the mess a bit better than the blanket and I looked slightly less like a homeless person.
The three of us followed the chatter around the sprawling grounds and into the beautiful courtyard. Marcello took my hand in his and kissed my cheek.
What drew my eye away from Marcello was the endless wooden table and the cheery, boisterous family seated at it, watching us intently.
“I’ve never seen a table that big,” I said, counting his family. It was as expansive as the table.
“My father built it when I was a teenager,” he said, a reassuring hand on the small of my back. “It’s a bunch of separate pieces so it can be put together or taken apart depending on how many of us are around it. When the kids started having kids—well, you can see it got bigger. Add in aunts, uncles, cousins . . .”