Page 86 of My Dark Fairy Tale
But he would have sold his soul to clap his eyes on the Ferrari NART Spyder Raffa was offering to let me drive.
Only ten of them were ever made, and the last one had sold for something like $30 million.
“Just how rich are you?” I asked him, fisting my hands on my hips. “Because I have to tell you, this is getting a little absurd.”
Even Ludo laughed at that, and Renzo bumped my shoulder companionably as they moved past me to the more sensible SUV waiting at the gates.
“Do you want to drive it or not?” Raffa asked with that haughty raised brow, arms crossed so all those muscles bulged in his white linen shirt.
I knew now how he kept so fit: a gym in the basement of the palace that included an actual fighting ring.
“Yes, please.” I practically skipped to his side by the car and opened my palm for the keys. “Speed limits in Italy are just suggestions, right?”
He gripped my wrist and used it to pull me forward so I fell into his chest. “Watch yourself,cerbiatta. You would not want to hurt another one of my cars.”
“Well, you have to admit, the first time kind of worked out for me.” I flashed him a cheeky grin and rose to my tiptoes to kiss the corner of his jaw.
“Here,” he said, reaching into his pocket to produce a silk Dolce & Gabbana scarf. “This will save your hair from becoming Medusa’s snakes.”
I laughed but turned obediently and lifted my hair off my shoulders so he could tie the scarf around my head.
“Do I look like Sophia Loren?” I flirted, batting my lashes dramatically.
“No,” he said, too quiet for a joke. “You look like you, which I much prefer.”
“A hundred euros she crashes,” Carmine said just loudly enough for me to hear from where he was glaring at me beside the other car. “No way a little thing like her can handle a car like that.”
I stiffened a bit, always self-conscious about my slightness because my lack of musculature and height were a consequence of my medical condition. When I was growing up, some of the kids in my class had called me Sticks until Gemma gave one of them a black eye.
“One thousand euros says we not only make it there in one piece,” Raffa drawled, and I knew he was defending me in his own way. When I looked sharply up at him, he winked, handing me the keys and then patting my ass as he crossed to the passenger seat. “But we also beat you to Livorno.”
“You’re on,” Martina declared, grabbing the keys from Renzo and pushing him out of the way before running to the driver’s seat.
I looked at Raffa over the hood of the low-slung convertible and watched as he slid the designer sunglasses out of his hair onto his nose. My grin reflected back at me in the lenses.
“And a private bet,” he added. “If you get us there first, I promise to eat your sweetfigalater until you forget every language but the sound of ‘Raffa’ in your mouth.”
I shivered. “Andiamo!I have a race to win.”
We won.
Raffa didn’t even seem surprised by the way I handled the car on the busy highway out of Florence toward the coast, and he only whistled through his teeth when I had fun taking the curving side roads on the way to the marina just outside Livorno.
When I told him my father had taught me how to drive in a Maserati, he just laughed at me, grabbed my hand, and kissed my palm.
“Of course he did. The only thing that surprises me about you now, Guinevere, is that I am still surprised when you reveal yourself to be the most remarkable woman I have ever known.”
I added it to the list of impossibly sweet things Raffa had said to me.
When Martina had pulled up at the marina, we were making out against the car. She’d honked in a way that felt like a swear word, Renzo had thrown an empty bottle of water at Raffa’s head, and Carmine was still pouting.
Only Ludo gave me a fist bump.
Now we were on a beautiful sailboat motoring out of the harbor into the Ligurian Sea. The water was aquamarine close to the shore but deepened into azure beneath the boat as it cut south along the coastline. The rooftops of the passing city were red and orange, the rocky cliffs yellowed to gold by the afternoon sunshine. Everything was so bright it felt like the imagery was seared into my corneas, but I wasn’t upset by the idea. I hoped it meant that for the rest of my life, when I closed my eyes, I would conjure up this image of Livorno’s cityscape giving way to green hills descending into white sugared beaches and outcrops of rocks fit for Ariel to sing atop of.
It was completely different from the pervasive cultural majesty of Florence, the sense that every cobblestone and doorway had seen millions of lives pass through before your own. This setting was wild and freeing, the briny slap of ocean spray across my face as I sat alone at the bow while Raffa put the others to work behind me, the tangle of foliage that tumbled down the cliffs, and the wet crash of waves into the coastline.
I closed my eyes, dragged a deep breath of sea air into my lungs, and cast my face to the sky.
