Rome WIth Dad's Best Friend Page 3

  “So, this is my room,” I say, which is completely unnecessary given the fact that I’ve just demonstrated that truth by unlocking it.

  “Have a good night, bella,” Marco tells me. “Remember, bright and early in the morning. I’ll ask them to call your room when I arrive.”

  I smile. “I’ll try to be ready. Maybe I’ll even be down in the lobby before you get here.”

  “I don’t mind waiting for you,” Marco says. “Tomorrow will be a good day. Until then.”

  “Until then,” I breathe, unsure of what to do or say. Stay, some voice inside my head whispers, half-hoping he will magically hear it.

  “Ciao, bella,” Marco murmurs and gives me a lingering look before walking back down the corridor in the direction that we came from.

  I close the door and sigh against it, wondering why I couldn’t just find the courage to at least hint something. But it was probably for the best.

  It’s late already, so I get undressed and ready for bed, climbing into the sheets and picking up the paperback I brought with me to read. But I can’t focus on the words on the page. Instead, all I can think about is Marco – about the touch of his hand, and how his attention seems to focus all on me sometimes, making me feel like the only person in the world.

  My mind carries me down a path, thinking about what might have happened if I’d had the courage to invite him in. I picture him leaning down from his tall height to kiss me, claiming my lips with that famous Italian passion, throwing me against the wall, and tearing my clothes away before the door barely has time to close. He would run his hands all over me, I think, trailing kisses, and then carry me over to the bed to loom over me.

  My eyes are closed as I picture him tearing away my panties, ripping the delicate lace, which does not at all resemble the sensible granny panties I’m actually wearing, and tossing them aside, lowering himself over me, and then…

  Just as the excitement builds inside me, I have to stop with a groan. I have no idea what comes next. I’ve never been in a position to know. I managed to make it to eighteen as a virgin, and I can’t even put together a fantasy in my head all the way to the finish.

  I try to get comfortable in the unfamiliar sheets, shutting my eyes and hoping that sleep will come. There’s one thing I hold onto as I drift away, the thought that, if I were going to have any teacher in the world to show me what I don’t know, I would choose Marco in a heartbeat.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Marco

  I shade my eyes against the sun as I take off my sunglasses, looking up at the hotel where I dropped Hannah off only last night. I’m early as I promised her I would be – largely because there was no point in delaying when I woke so early, tense and hard for her, thinking of all the things I could do to make her mine.

  Because she will be mine. One way or another, I’m going to make sure of it.

  I walk inside, intending to head for the reception desk and follow my earlier plan, but I soon stop in surprise. Sitting on one of the comfortable sofas in the reception area, leafing through an Italian magazine that was likely left out for customers, is Hannah.

  “You’re ready,” I say, approaching her as she looks up at the sound of my voice.

  “Yeah,” Hannah says, and shrugs with a giggle. “I don’t know why, but I woke up early today. I guess it must be the excitement.”

  I can only blink for a moment. And here I thought I was the only one who had been bitten by the bug. Am I crazy, or is getting Hannah to fall into my arms going to be easier than I thought?

  “Well, there’s not a moment to lose,” I tell her crisply, offering my arm. She stands to take it in what I hope will become a habitual gesture, smoothing out her clothes. Today she’s wearing a cute dress that falls to her knees, patterned with yellow and brown polka dots that make me think of sunflowers. Fitted to her waist, it flares out below, making her bust stand out in the tightly-fitted fabric that reveals a little of her cleavage. I feel a tightening sensation in my groin, the beginning of hardness. I don’t want to imagine other men seeing that cleavage, but at the same time, the jealousy stirs something in me.

  “Where are we going first?” Hannah asks, thankfully breaking my train of thought.

  “Where else?” I ask. “Il Colosseo. The Colosseum, I believe you call it.”

  Hannah claps her hands in delight as we walk towards the doors. “I’ve been looking forward to seeing it. Is it as good as it looks in the pictures?”

  “Why ask me?” I say with a smile. “You’re about to find out for yourself.”

  And we are off. From that moment, the conversation flows freely, and with every moment I find myself becoming bound to Hannah more and more. With her delighted excitement at the Colosseum itself and the subsequent visit to the Pantheon; with her serious questions in return to the excellent local knowledge of each of these sights that I give her; with her ability to talk about anything, no matter the topic, and even to strike up conversations with other tourists in the short lines that we have to join here and there.

  Of course, we don’t have to line up often. I made sure of that by calling in some favors, and we are able to enjoy everything at our own pace without the pressure of time, seeing everything to its fullest. I want Hannah to take home great memories of Rome, for this to be a week she will never forget. It will need to be, if she’s going to come back to me afterward, to remain at my side.

  By far the favorite moment of the day for me is after the Pantheon when we retreat around the corner to a well-known gelateria that is hidden behind the ancient building, for traditional Italian sorbet in cones. Hannah grabs her phone and gestures to me, beckoning me closer; when I do, she aims the camera our way and we take a shot together, holding our sorbets, smiling, the Pantheon’s ancient walls behind us.

  “Our first selfie,” she tells me with a laugh. “Don’t we look so happy?”

  “We do,” I agree, surprised in spite of myself. “But you should put the phone away. Your sorbet is dripping.”

  With a yelp, Hannah flicks out her tongue, lapping melted sorbet away from the side of the cone. I feel that tightening again and look away for a moment. What I wouldn’t do to have that tongue somewhere else, to have her lapping away at me instead. And if I don’t find a way to control my lust, it might be sooner than expected.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Hannah

  Dinner is the perfect end to a wonderful day. I’ve seen so much of Rome already, and Marco has been attentive at every step. True to his word, he showed me how to skip past all of the lines, to evade the tourists’ traps, even the rose sellers in the squares who are determined to trick you into parting with a Euro. After a visit to the Trevi Fountain, where everyone throngs in droves and the air is stifling, we escape to another restaurant, this time in a room that appears carved out of stone with a traditional atmosphere.

  “So, what do you think of Rome now?” Marco asks, watching me as I skim through the menu.

  I look up with a grin. “I love it,” I say, and I don’t think I just mean the city. Not that I could dare say that to him – but the way he’s looked after me all day makes me feel so safe and happy. With Marco, it feels like I could have anything I ever wanted – and he even manages to make me feel as though I would deserve it.

  “Want to share a pizza?” Marco asks. He reaches over and taps a spot on my menu, a giant-sounding pizza with so many toppings I have trouble visualizing them all on one slice.

  “That sounds good,” I smile. It does. It really does. Sharing food – it makes this feel almost like a date. I decide, that it wouldn’t be too awful if I allowed myself to pretend that it is.

  “I’ll order,” Marco says, waving a waiter over. He speaks to the man in rapid-fire Italian, and I know that we’re about to eat something special. Marco seems to have that effect, wherever we go. Either it’s because he knows this city so well that he can always find his way to the best, or it’s because he has that presence about him that makes people want to do better –
I can’t tell. But the effect must be wearing off on me, too, because I’m still lamenting the state of the suitcase I brought with me and the utter lack of anything I could wear that might possibly be deemed sexy.

  The food comes before long – another aspect of the Marco effect, I’m sure – and I can’t help my eyes going as large as saucers.

  Marco laughs at me, and I meet his gaze before gesturing down at the pizza. “It’s enormous,” I tell him.

  “I know,” he says, a twinkle in his green eyes still visible even in the dim, candle-accented lighting. “Bigger than both of us, I think.”

  I shrug, snapping a quick picture of it with my phone. “Is that a challenge?”

  Marco’s face lights up with what I’m sure is excitement. “It could be,” he agrees. “You know, I always love a woman who knows how to eat.”

  I feel a flush lighting my face again and am thankful that at least it’s dim in here. He called me a woman. Not a girl. And more than that, he said the word love in the same sentence. Could this mean that he’s beginning to see me as more than just a kid?

  We eat our way through the pizza, laughing and joking, talking as we go. The conversation makes the meal longer, and I think this is what makes the huge amount of food more manageable. Surprisingly, even though Marco is in good shape and I’m not, he keeps up with me, slice for slice. We chuckle at the floppy slices that want to deposit their toppings back down on the oversized slate, groan at the thud of green peppers that do slide free, and even compete to draw out the longest string of mozzarella from our mouths to the pizza.

  Finally, we rest – and look down in despair at the four slices of the pizza left on the slate.

  “I don’t think I can do it,” I sigh. “At least, not before this place closes.”

  “We need a break,” Marco agrees, in what I’m beginning to recognize is his habitual no-nonsense manner. Within moments he’s summoned the waiter and asked the man to box up our remaining slices for us, and even settled the bill.

  “What now?” I ask. I check my watch and then wish I hadn’t. The evening is already growing old.

  “Let’s decide that in a moment,” Marco says. He nods towards the back of the room, where a sign indicates the direction of the restrooms. “I will be back shortly.”

  I watch him go, then settle back down into my seat, looking at my hands. I don’t want the night to be over, but I know it probably will be. When he comes back, he’ll take me back to my hotel – and leave me there alone, again.

  At least I might have a few more slices of pizza to keep me company.

  “Ciao, ciao, ciao bella!”

  I look around in surprise, with the instinct that tells you when you are being spoken to, even if you don’t know the language. At the next table over are three Italian boys, around my age if not a couple of years older, all with curly, dark hair cut in fashionable styles. They also all wear grins, which for a moment remind me of jackals.

  One of them, the one who addressed me, says something in Italian. I shake my head in confusion, trying to show them that I have no idea what they are saying. He gets up, then, and moves closer to me, standing over me.

  “What you doing with that old man, huh?” he asks me, his English heavily accented. “You looking miserable. You should get a good time, huh?”

  “A… good time?” I repeat, looking up at him uncertainly. His two friends get up, and they stand around me, uncomfortably close to my chair. I don’t think I can get up without walking right into one or the other of them.

  “Yes, come with us,” the ringleader says. “We show you good time. Good Rome time, huh? You want to have fun? We know a place.”

  Something touches my shoulder, and I whirl to see it’s one of the friends, right behind me, his hand landing there. “Come with us,” he also urges. “Good time with us.”

  “N-no, I…” I stammer, trying and failing to brush his hand away. “Please, don’t touch me.”

  “Come on, bella,” the ringleader says, catching a strand of my hair in his fingers. “We just want to show you some fun. Come with us.”

  I don’t know what to do. I look around, trying to see past them, but the other people in the restaurant seem to be ignoring us – and I can’t find Marco at all.

  There’s no way out – they’re pressed close by me now, so close I can’t move without touching one of them. I don’t want to encourage them by doing that – so how am I going to get out of here and away from them?

  CHAPTER NINE

  Marco

  I come out of the bathroom casually enough, not expecting anything to be wrong. But when I look up at our table, I can’t see Hannah at all – but I can see a group of three men, boys really, clustered around the seat where she was sitting. Which seems suspicious in itself.

  I should probably hold back and assess the situation first before reacting, but I can’t help myself. If those little scumbags have done something to Hannah, they will regret it. And if it turns out to be all innocent, then they will regret having dared to sit close to her.

  “Hey!” I shout, my voice carrying across the restaurant as I stride over. The three guys look over at me, and as their bodies turn, I glimpse Hannah between them. She looks scared, stressed. I see red.

  “Calm down, just talking,” one of them tries to say, giving me a dismissive wave. None of them move. I can see that they don’t realize who I am – what I could do to them.

  “Get away from her,” I say, through gritted teeth. There must be something in my voice which at least tips off the two other boys, because they flinch a little and even take half-steps back, giving Hannah some room. The first, though – I see angrily has a piece of Hannah’s hair in his fingers – only doubles down, slipping his arm around the back of her chair and leaning towards her.

  “M-Marco?” Hannah says, her voice rising in pitch, a sound of panic and fear. There’s no chance in hell that I will allow this punk to make her feel that way.

  I don’t think. I only act. I grab him by the shoulder and pull him bodily away from her, and his two friends step back even further. I realize that my other hand has formed into a fist as I approached him, and I hold it tense by my side, ready to use. “You owe the lady an apology,” I tell him, using English for Hannah’s benefit.

  The guy scoffs in my face. “Whatever, old man. She’s not even pretty anyway. Fat puttana.”

  I can’t hold back the rage. I draw back my fist and drive it into his face, still holding him in front of me so that he will take the full impact. Only when I feel the satisfying crunch of his nose do I let him go, allowing him to slip to the floor. His friends are gone, one of them out of the door, the other watching on with a white face as he clings to the bar.

  “Come on,” I say, extending a hand to Hannah. She scrambles up from her chair and takes it, and as I draw her closer to me I realize that she’s shaking. I slip my arm around her shoulders as I escort her out, away from the jerks who tried to intimidate her, grabbing our pizza box as we go.

  I didn’t even think about what I was doing, but as the cool evening air hits us, I realize what I’ve done. My knuckles ache, and my arm is around her shoulders in the way I would maybe cradle a girlfriend – not the daughter of an old friend. I expect her to tense up and push away from me, but she doesn’t.

  Whether it was the horrible experience making her need comfort, or whether she’s already warming to me, the result is the same. She relaxes into my touch, cuddling herself against my side, even slipping her hand up to grasp the side of my jacket as if to keep me close. For a moment I’m speechless, then I think about what this means.

  It means that, despite my initial wondering, I might be able to actually make this happen.

  Not that I really doubted myself. But if Hannah wants it too, even now, then it won’t be so hard to convince her as I was expecting.

  I use my free arm to hail a taxi, keeping Hannah close by my side, the scent of her perfume filling my nostrils. Her warmth and the softness of her sk
in under my hand – I could get used to this very easily.

  And that, tonight, is exactly what I intend to begin.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Hannah

  Outside the hotel, our cab pulls up, and I feel myself tense. This is it. The moment when Marco will leave me. After what happened at the restaurant, I don’t want to be alone at all – and I definitely don’t want him to leave. Just like last night, I feel a desperate longing for him to come inside, to stay with me, even just a minute longer.

  “I’ll come up with you, help you carry the pizza and the souvenirs,” Marco says, making my heart skip a beat. It’s as if he can read my mind. “I’ll just pay the taxi – I don’t want him waiting around for too long.”

  “Thank you,” I murmur, meaning it because I was not at all looking forward to being alone. I get out of the car and walk into the lobby, and Marco joins me after just a couple of moments, smiling even though he is laden down with shopping bags and the pizza box.

  The journey up the elevator seems even more laden with unsaid thoughts than before, the silence almost oppressive. I’m just trying to appreciate these moments before he does go at last. I want to cling to him for comfort, but I don’t think he would appreciate it.

  We arrive at my room all too quickly, but this time when I open the door, Marco doesn’t pause outside. He comes in with me, setting the pizza box on the desk in the corner and my shopping bags on the floor. He glances around the room then, and I’m glad this is a hotel with a cleaning service and not my room at home, where I might have forgotten to tidy away clothes or make the bed.

  “It’s not a bad room,” he says, flicking aside a corner of the curtain to look outside. The view is dark, that’s why I closed the curtains when I left, there isn’t much to see, only a street lined with shops. “Looks comfortable enough.”