“Look at me.”
She opened her eyes, her expression pained.
“I won’t be with anyone else, and if I can avoid it, I’m not even going to be with Cressida.”
“Oh Amo,” Greta said in a desperate tone. “What kind of deal are we agreeing on here?”
“I don’t care. I just don’t care. I want you. I fucking need you in my life. This trip, it made me realize it. There wasn’t a single night in the last twelve months that I didn’t dream about you.”
She nodded, but her despair remained. “What if this ends badly?”
“What if it doesn’t?”
She put her cheek against my chest. “How could it not?”
When Amo drove off, I felt as if he’d taken a piece of my heart with him. I held onto a column of the porch, petting Bear’s head who was pressed up to my leg as if he wanted to steady me. Momo sat on the last step, his nose twitching as he smelled the air. I sighed and turned away from the driveway. We hadn’t made a new date to meet again. How long would it take before I saw him again? A few weeks? Months? Longer than that? Even just communicating with our cells would be difficult and risky. I couldn’t put my life on pause until then but it felt a bit like a part of me would lie dormant until we met again. With a sigh, I picked up Dotty from the blanket she rested on and carried her down to her favorite patch of grass in the shade beside the house so she could relieve herself.
My phone and watch buzzed. I peered down. A car had pulled up to the gates. I opened the browser window to check the security cam. A foolish part of me hoped it was Amo but the logic side of my brain told me it was probably just Jill coming back early from her meeting with her father, but when Nevio’s grinning face flashed up on the screen, I froze. He didn’t wait for me to let him in. He had the code to overrule every security lock, just like my father and uncles. The car pulled out of view of the camera. Soon the eerie red glow of the headlights of Nevio’s all black, pimped Dodge Ram came into view. Nevio always had the headlights on, day or night, because the red glow freaked people out, especially because everyone in Vegas knew to whom the car belonged.
The car stopped in front of the porch and Nevio jumped out. My pulse sped up considering what would have happened if Nevio had arrived ten minutes before. He jogged over to me as Alessio and Massimo got out of the car.
“What are you doing here?” I asked, surprised.
Bear growled when Nevio lifted me off the ground. “We’re picking you up.”
I gripped his shoulders, getting dizzy from him spinning me around. When he put me back down, I said, “Jill’s not here yet. I can’t leave.”
Nevio rolled his eyes. “The pigs can entertain themselves for a couple of hours.” He leaned down to sniff at me. “Do you use a new perfume? I don’t like it.”
“I’m not wearing perfume.” My insides cramped. Did I smell like Amo? Alessio regarded me closely while Massimo sank down on a step and lit up a cigarette.
“You have so much medical knowledge and yet you smoke,” I said, hoping to distract Nevio from my scent.
Massimo glanced over his shoulder at me, one dark eyebrow slanting up. “Considering our lifestyle, I’m fairly certain lung cancer or one of the other smoke-related diseases won’t be the cause of my death.”
“Come on, Greta. Let’s get back to the city.”
“We’ll have to take the dogs with us,” I reminded him.
“We can put their transport cages up on the truck bed.”
“But you have to drive carefully.”
Nevio gave me an exasperated look. “Fine.”
I sent Jill a text that I’d be leaving the farm now and when she answered that she was already on her way and would be there in thirty minutes, I began to pack everything.
Fifteen minutes later, we were driving away from the farm. This place had always meant a lot to me, but now that it was also connected to Amo, it became even more special.
“I have a surprise for you,” Nevio said after a while, drumming excitedly on the steering wheel.
I gave him a wary look. That could mean everything and his nervous energy definitely gave reason for worry.
“She’s worried,” Alessio said from the seat on my right.
“As she should be when Nevio is excited about something,” Massimo said from where he lounged on the backseat. I resisted the urge to tell him about his chances of surviving a crash when he wasn’t buckled up. He knew, and would only give me the same answer as with the smoking.
“I was looking for something to cheer you up and one of our contacts gave me a tip about a breeding farm for these handbag dogs.”