Falcon's Angel by Danita Minnis Read Free Book Online Page B

do.”
    Angelina turned toward him.
    His grim expression lightened into an apology. “It’s the city. There are so many hiding places, and most of them the polizia don’t even know about.” He helped her into the car. “Let’s go to the Pantheon today.”
    “What?”
    “It’s a nice long drive to Rome, and it will make you feel better to get out of the city. Bring your violin. You can play for me on the steps.” He went around to the driver’s side and got in, giving her a quizzical glance. “What?”
    “That’s one of the things on my ‘to do’ list here in Italy. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”
    “Stick with me, Angel, and there’ll be a few more things you can check off that list.”
    She brushed fingers through her bangs, because that sounded like a promise.
    “So, what do you say, let’s get out of the city this weekend.” Tony’s eyes asked the question he had in the Conservatory’s music room the day they had played together. ‘Are you a merciful angel?’
    Like the hot springs of Bath, those jade pools engulfed her in satisfying warmth, banishing the impersonal, methodical procedures of the polizia.
    She nodded, thinking, Tony is the merciful one.
    * * * *
    It took Angelina two weeks, but with Tony’s help, she managed to stop looking over her shoulder when she rounded a corner at the Naples Music Conservatory. In unspoken agreement, she met Tony after classes and they walked home together.
    One day, on the way back from classes, they got caught in the type of summer storm that restored the old pavements of the Piazza Avellino to their original slate color.
    She slipped out of her sandals upon entering the apartment and laughed at the sound of Tony’s squelching steps behind her.
    “You’ll have to wait until it stops raining. You can’t go home in this.” She padded into the bedroom. She came out with her hair wrapped in a towel and wearing a fresh, dry blouse.
    “Hey, that’s not fair. I don’t have another shirt to change into,” Tony said.
    Before she could hand him the towel, Tony shook himself, splattering the blouse she had just put on.
    She gasped, holding her arms out, away from her wet blouse. She was almost as wet as he was now.
    “That,” he said, “was terrible of me.” Droplets streamed from his hair and once he’d rubbed them out of his eyes, the contrite expression vanished.
    She threw the towel at him. He chased her into the kitchen.
    Angelina circled the butcher block, which separated the kitchen from the living room, but laughter impeded her progress. “Wait! I don’t have a shirt, but I have something else you want!”
    Tony stopped and folded his arms. Chest and shoulder muscles made an interesting journey under the wet T-shirt. “I’m listening.”
    She opened a drawer in the butcher block and produced a yellow sheet of notepad paper with a flourish. “I have here in my hands a recipe for Shrimp Capri!”
    “Is that what you think I want?” Although Tony’s words were playful, his sudden shift into Italian was jarring because she knew what it meant. He wasn’t playing anymore.
    Zio had taught her Italian when she just a little girl and now, taken off guard by the blatant hunger in Tony’s eyes, she couldn’t conjure a coherent sentence. She fidgeted with the paper, and responded in the language her sleeping brain cells preferred, English.
    “Well, I know how you love to cook…”
    He lifted the edges of the sopping wet shirt, pulled it off his back and aimed for the sink, where it fell with a plop! As he approached, she held her breath, staring at the rippling muscles of his abdomen.
    “This will do, for now.” He stood in front of her, so close they were almost hip-to-hip.
    Her bare toes curled on the floor when she wondered what would do for later.
    “Hope you don’t mind, but I can’t cook wet.” Tony opened the cabinet behind her and she watched the little beads of water coursing down an olive chest.
    “Quite right.”