Page 48 of The Honest Affair

Nina, however, was dressed for it, having shucked her coat and sweater to make herself more comfortable in the thin cotton tank top that showed off a distracting amount of her neck and collarbone. With a silk scarf wrapped around her head and a pair of white, cat-eyed frames guarding her eyes, she looked more like a silver screen film starlet than ever.

“Jane sent me your itinerary,” I called back as I swerved around a delivery truck that made a sudden stop. “I changed it for a better one. I hope you don’t mind.”

Nina pulled off her glasses to stare at me. “You didn’t.”

“It might have been five stars, but that hotel was full of tourists and stiffs,” I said. “I thought you wanted to work on your Italian, baby.”

When she worked her face into a tight little scowl, I had to laugh again.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I found a great pensione, owned by the same family for five generations. Right in the middle of Trastevere, with house-made cacio e pepe to die for. I promise, you’ll love the beds too.”

“Matthew!”

I almost held my hands up in surrender, but reminded myself to keep both on the wheel.

“In separate rooms, of course,” I amended.

Was it my imagination, or did she look a little disappointed when I said that? I just laughed and shifted gears. The Ferrari shot forward, and the streets of Rome flew by.

* * *

I parkedthe car in a small garage a few blocks from the pensione, but only after depositing Nina and her monogrammed Louis Vuitton trunks near the entrance to wait for me.

“Did you bring your entire wardrobe with you, doll?” I asked when I returned to find her still standing outside the closed front door.

She snorted. “Hardly. But I had to pack heavy. I don’t know how long I’m staying.”

“You do know they have laundry services in Italy, don’t you?”

She ignored me as the door opened after I knocked, and a kindly-looking landlady greeted us.

“Salve, signora.” I tipped my hat toward her, then asked about our reservation and whether or not they had a bellhop. I prayed to God they did. Otherwise I’d be stuck dragging these mini ship containers up four flights of stairs.

“Sì, ce l’abbiamo,” she replied before instructing me to leave them inside the door.

Thank Christ.

The landlady smiled and stepped back to let us into the inner courtyard at the center of the U-shaped building common to this part of the city. I heaved the trunks to the place where she pointed and checked us in while Nina wandered around the courtyard, looking around with an expression somewhere between familiarity and awe.

The building had a gray baroque facade made of stone, but its inner peristyle and the colonnades surrounding the lower level indicated that, like so much of Roman architecture, it had probably been erected over a much older foundation stemming from ancient times. The joke in Rome, I’d heard, was that no one could build anywhere because every time you dug for the foundation, you’d find something else that needed to be preserved. It was true, too. In a single city block, it wasn’t uncommon to spot a two-thousand-year-old ruin, a medieval church, a Renaissance-era villa, and a jumble of baroque and neoclassical apartments.

Nina weaved her way around the columned floor, sometimes fingering the leafy vegetation and what looked like a few dormant grape vines for good measure. A fountain sang in the center, surrounded by a few bistro tables and an in-house bar at the far end. Balconies ringed the courtyard four stories up, at the top of which I could just see the remains of a much larger balustrade around the penthouse suite. Our suite. Containing two rooms. For us to sleep in. Separately.

I was frowning by the time I looked down again.

“It’s very lovely,” Nina admitted when she returned to where I stood.

“Just something I happened to find.”

I didn’t mention that Jane and Eric had actually put me up in the very hotel Nina booked—some five-star swank fest where even the bellhops wore tuxedos. I decided to cancel the reservation before I even made it to the front desk to check in. Nina had enough sterile glamour. This was a trip for family. For rediscovery. She needed intimacy and warmth. Places that felt a little like home.

And so, over the last two days, I’d been scouring every corner of Rome looking for something that would produce that exact expression of shy pleasure. Worth every damn minute.

“Signore.”

I turned as the landlady approached and gestured toward the balconies.

“Do you want to take dinner in your room later?” she asked in Italian. “We serve directly to the penthouse. It’s very beautiful to watch the sunset with aperitivos and then to eat.”

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