Page 28 of Royally Roma
His enthusiasm was underwhelming.
So was hers. She’d never been less excited to show someone priceless treasures from centuries ago, something she ordinarily delighted in. They weren’t just pieces of marble or stone. They were memories. Memories from real people who lived real lives. They deserved to be remembered, to be seen. Isn’t that what everyone deserved? To be seen? To be appreciated?
A lump lodged in her throat. This was ridiculous. Why was she getting so emotional all of a sudden?
As much as she hated to admit it, she knew why. Because in those few cherished moments when Mano had kissed her, when he’d touched her, she’d felt seen. Seen like she’d never been seen before. Not just visible. Adored.
Which was impossible, if not downright crazy. She was imagining things. Everything she’d been through—the disaster with Elio, losing her father...losingeverything...had left her vulnerable, that’s all. Apparently more vulnerable than she’d realized.
She’d only been eighteen when the Securities and Exchange Commission began its investigation into her father’s business. He hadn’t even warned her. She’d learned about it along with the rest of the world when his face appeared on CNN. Everything afterward had been a terrible blur—the trial, the foreclosure of her family home, her father’s imprisonment. Julia tried her best to move on and lose herself in her undergraduate course work, but when it had all become too much—when she couldn’t walk across campus without being hounded by photographers—she’d run.
She’d run straight to Rome.
There wasn’t a better place in the world to study archaeology, but more importantly, Julia felt at home here. She’d spent summers in Italy as a girl, back when her family still owned its villa in the Tuscan hills. The only happy memories of her childhood were buried here, among the Roman ruins.
Julia took a steadying inhale. This tour wasn’t about her. It was about her client. And as awkward as things might feel between them at the moment, that client was Mano. In the next few days, he would receive an email from Giuseppe asking him to rate her performance as a tour guide. All the clients did. During her entire tenure at the company, she’d never gotten anything less than a stellar review. She certainly couldn’t let an insignificant kiss ruin an otherwise perfect reputation.
Insignificant.Maybe if she kept telling herself it didn’t matter, it would be true.
She cleared her throat. “I think we’ve seen about enough of the Colosseum.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Mano said. There were shadows in his gray eyes—hints of a dark, predatory beauty that did nothing to stop the chaos she still felt inside.
It doesn’t matter how you feel. The only thing that matters is how you behave.
She forced a smile. “Then let’s proceed to the Forum. It’s nearby, just a short walk. I want to show you something that I think you might find interesting.”
For the first time since she’d ended the kiss, his expression softened. His chiseled face bore the barest hint of a smile, nothing more than a subtle curve of his wicked mouth.
She would take it. She would pretty much take any sign of delight, no matter how small. Because she didn’t have much longer to turn Mano Romano into a satisfied customer. This day wouldn’t last forever.
She was running out of time.
AS NICCOLO TRUDGED BEHINDJulia through the ankle-deep mud, he couldn’t help but be impressed with her remarkable restraint. She hadn’t uttered a word about the ruination of his shoes. Or his trousers, the hems of which were wet and clinging to his ankles.
Three-plus hours in the swirling mist, surrounded by the crumbling ruins of the Roman Forum, and not a single I-told-you-so. In fact, they’d hardly said two words to each other. She hadn’t even asked him what had become of his rain poncho, which he’d accidentally forgotten at the barbershop in his haste to return to her.
So here he stood, in dampened cashmere and muddy wing tips, admiring the delicate web of raindrops in Julia Costa’s hair and wondering what was going on in that pretty head of hers.
If he didn’t know better, he’d have thought they’d never kissed at all, that he’d only imagined the way she’d tasted of art and literature and silver stars and golden moon.
But he did know better. In his wildest dreams he couldn’t have conjured a feeling so impossibly enchanting. A feeling so wrong.
His gaze flitted to the swollen full moon, hanging low over the Palatine Hill, a luminous, aching reminder that his time here was drawing to a close.
It was for the best. This—the entire day—had been a mistake. He should have never followed her out the door of the Hotel de Russie. And he most certainly should never have kissed her. He still couldn’t wrap his mind around what he’d done. He’d walked away from his responsibilities. When he boarded his flight to Helsinki in less than an hour, he would be leaving behind dozens of disappointed auto workers, orphans, foreign ministers, members of the press...and one angry woman.
The angry woman in question stopped as they reached a rectangular area on the edge of the ruins flanked by two neat rows of statues. Marble goddesses clothed in diaphanous white.
“Beautiful,” he murmured. “Where are we?”
At his question, Julia’s sudden smile appeared lit from the inside. Had he really been so quiet for the better part of the afternoon that five words could prompt such a reaction?
Yes, apparently he had.
“The House of the Vestals.” She waved a hand at the closest sculpted figure. “The Vestal Virgins lived in the ninth and tenth centuries. They were priestesses of Vesta. The Romans were awestruck by them and believed the Vestal Virgins to be magic.”
Niccolo tried to wrap his mind around the fact that he was looking at art and stones that had been standing in this sacred grove for over two thousand years. “And this is where they lived? Right here?”
