Over the next three days, Dante and his parents took me on a crash tour of Bali. We scuba-dived in Nusa Penida, trekked to waterfalls in Munduk, and visited temples in Gianyar. The Russos had a private driver and boat, which made traversing the island easier.
By the time Thanksgiving night rolled around, I’d tanned into a golden brown and forgotten all about the pile of work waiting for me in New York.
Even Dante frowned less.
I was glad I’d taken him up on his offer to see one of his company’s therapists. Though I could’ve probably moved past the robbery without therapy over time, talking with Dr. Cho helped me process it in a way I couldn’t have on my own.
Our sessions would continue after Thanksgiving, but for now, they were enough to ensure my trip wasn’t marred by sleepless nights and flashbacks to the press of metal against my chin.
“Luca, get off your phone,” Janis admonished during dinner. “It’s rude to text at the table.”
“Sorry.” He continued texting, his plate of food untouched.
Luca had arrived Monday night and spent the majority of his time texting, sleeping, and lounging by the pool. It was like being on vacation with a teenager, except he was in his thirties and not his teens.
Janis pursed her lips, Gianni shook his head, and I quietly ate my potatoes while tension gathered over the table.
“Put your phone down.” Dante didn’t look up from his plate, but everyone, including his parents, flinched at the cutting steel in his voice.
After a drawn-out second, Luca straightened, set his phone to the side, and picked up his knife and fork.
Just like that, the tension dissipated and conversation resumed.
“If you ever tire of the corporate world, you should become a babysitter,” I whispered to Dante while Gianni waxed nostalgic about his last trip to Indonesia five years ago. “I think you’d do great.”
“I’m already a babysitter.” Dante slid the words from the corner of his mouth. “Thirty-one years with no promotion. I’m ready to resign.”
He grimaced at a speck of stuffing on one of his green beans and shoved the offending vegetable to the side.
A laugh bubbled up my throat. “Perhaps you should. I think your charge is all grown up.”
“Do you really?” Dante cut me a skeptical glance.
“Well…” I flicked my gaze at Luca, who was shoveling food in his mouth and sneaking peeks at his phone when he thought his brother wasn’t looking. “To an extent. But you’re his brother, not his father. It’s not your job to babysit him.”
Dante assuming a caretaker role was a natural consequence of his parents’ abandonment, but it was a heavy burden for one person to bear.
Especially when the cared for was a grown man who seemed content to let his brother do all the heavy lifting.
The tiniest flicker passed through Dante’s eyes. “It’s always been my job. If I don’t do it, no one else will.”
“Then no one does it. You can support someone without fixing everything for them. They have to learn from their own mistakes.”
“You seem very passionate about this topic.” A hint of amusement laced his words.
“I don’t want you to burn out. But if you take on too much, for too long, you will.” My voice gentled. “It’s not healthy, physically or mentally.”
Dante was thirty-six, working a high-stress job with a high-stress family. He had little to no downtime. If he kept this up…
My stomach tightened.
The thought of anything happening to him bothered me more than it should’ve, and not just because he was my fiancé.
The flicker in his eyes returned, hotter and brighter. His expression softened. “Enjoy the meal, mia cara. Don’t let my family bullshit ruin it.”
A velvety flutter brushed my heart. “Don’t worry. I can enjoy good food under any conditions.”
It wasn’t true, but it made Dante smile.
I shifted, and our legs grazed beneath the table. It was a whisper of a touch, but my body reacted like he’d slipped his hand beneath my skirt and caressed my thigh.
The conversation from the rest of the table fell away as the mental image of his touch entered my bloodstream in an intoxicating rush.
There must be an invisible thread connecting my fantasies to his mind, because black bled into the edges of his eyes like he knew exactly what I was picturing.
My pulse drummed.
“So.” Luca’s voice snapped the thread with brutal efficiency.
Our heads jerked toward him in unison, and my pulse pounded for an entirely different reason when I noticed the speculative gleam in his eyes.
The table was too large and our voices too low for him to have heard us talking about him, but he was clearly up to something.
“How’s the wedding planning going?” Luca asked.
“Fine,” Dante said before I could answer. The softness was gone, replaced with his usual curt tone.
“Glad to hear.” The younger Russo took a bite of turkey, chewed, and swallowed before saying, “You and Vivian seem to be getting along great.”
Dante’s jaw hardened.
“Of course they’re getting along great,” Janis said. “They’re in love!
Honestly, Luca, what a silly thing to say.”
I pushed my food around my plate, suddenly uneasy.
“You’re right. Sorry,” Luca said a tad too innocently. “Just never thought I’d see the day when Dante fell in love.”
“Enough.” Dante’s tone was sharp. “This isn’t a roundtable on my love life.”
Luca’s grin widened, but he heeded his brother’s warning and didn’t say anymore after that.
After dinner, Dante, Luca, and Gianni cleaned the dining room and took out the garbage while Janis and I did the dishes.
“I like the way Dante is around you,” she said. “He’s less…”
“Uptight?” Normally, I would’ve never been so blunt to the man’s mother, of all people, but wine and days of sun had loosened my tongue.
“Yes.” Janis laughed. “He likes things done a certain way, and he’s not afraid to tell you if they don’t meet his standards. When he was a toddler, we tried feeding him broccoli with a bit of mashed potatoes on it. He threw the plate on the floor. Three-hundred-dollar Wedgwood. Can you believe it?” She shook her head.
I didn’t ask why she’d been serving a toddler food on Wedgwood china.
Instead, I broached a more sensitive topic, one that’d been weighing on my mind since my beach conversation with Dante.
“Was it hard saying goodbye to him and Luca?”
Her movements stilled for a split second. “I see he’s been talking to you about us.”
My bravado retreated in the face of possible confrontation. “Not that much.”
At the end of the day, Janis was Dante’s mother. I didn’t want to antagonize her.
“It’s okay, darling. I know he’s not my biggest fan. Truth be told, I’m not a great mother, and Gianni is not a great father,” she said matter-of-factly. “It’s why we left the boys in their grandfather’s care. He gave them the stability and discipline we couldn’t.”
She paused before continuing in a softer voice, “We tried. Gianni and I quit traveling and settled in Italy after I found out I was pregnant with Dante. We stayed there for six years until after Luca was born.” She ran a dirty dish under the water, her expression far off.
“It sounds bad, but those six years made me realize I wasn’t cut out for domestic life. I hated staying in one place, and I couldn’t do anything right when it came to the boys. Gianni felt the same way, so we came to an agreement with Dante’s grandfather. He became their legal guardian and moved them to New York. Gianni and I sold our farmhouse and…well.”
She gestured around the kitchen.
I remained silent.
It wasn’t my place to judge other people’s parenting, but all I could think about was how Dante must’ve felt having his parents give up on him because taking care of him was too hard.
Then again, perhaps it really was for the best. Nothing good came from forcing someone to do something they didn’t want to do.
“You must think we’re terribly selfish,” Janis said. “Perhaps we are.
There have been many times when I wished I was the kind of mother they needed, but I’m not. Pretending otherwise would’ve hurt the boys more than it helped.”
“Maybe, but they’re both adults now,” I said carefully. “I think they would like to see their parents more often, even if it’s only for milestones like birthdays.” And engagement parties.
“Luca, maybe. Dante…” She clucked her tongue. “We had to twist his arm to get him to Bali. If it weren’t for you, he would’ve brushed us off with another excuse about being too busy with work.”
I wasn’t surprised. Dante gave me the impression of someone who held a grudge for decades.
“I’m glad he has you now.” Janis’s smile returned, a tad more wistful than before. “He could use a partner. He takes too much care of other people, and he doesn’t take enough care of himself.”
Three months ago, I would’ve laughed at the idea of anyone describing Dante as caring. He was moody, hot-tempered, and dead set on getting his way. But now…
My mind flashed to our conversation on the beach, our snack night in the kitchen, and the thousands of little moments that revealed little glimpses of the man beneath the armor.
“I’ll be honest, I was skeptical about the engagement at first.” Janis handed me the freshly scrubbed plate, which I wiped and placed in the drying rack. “Knowing Dante, I wouldn’t put it past him to marry someone strictly for business purposes.”
A concrete block formed in my chest.
“Our families work in similar fields,” I murmured. “So there is a business element to it.”
“Yes, but I’ve seen the way he looks at you.” She ran the last dirty dish under the water. “It’s not about business.”
She was wrong, but that didn’t stop my pulse from spiking with anticipation. “How does he look at me?”
Janis smiled. “Like he never wants to look away.”
