She loved Niccolò with all her heart, but Niccolò was torn between her and his family. Unquestionably, his father would force him to annul their marriage. She couldn’t rip Niccolò from the family he cherished.
These thoughts twisted in her heart like a knife, carving out all the happiness she’d found in Lake Como. She’d prayed that his father wouldn’t react this way. As the moon outside her window rose in the sky, she cried herself to exhaustion.
Suddenly, she awoke to the sound of pounding on her door.
“Ruby, it’s me.” Niccolò’s hoarse whisper echoed through the door.
Groaning, Ruby turned her back to the door. Unable to bear hearing words of finality from Niccolò, she pressed her hands against her ears. Yet she could still hear his muffled knocking, which grew more insistent.
Fearing he would wake neighboring guests, she pushed herself from the bed and dragged toward the door. Her blouse was damp with tears, and her hair was in disarray, but she didn’t care.
Leaning against the door, she said, “If you’ve come to tell me it’s over, just go away. Don’t say it, don’t apologize. I can’t bear to hear it.” She slid to the floor and hugged her knees.
Anywhere in the world was better than being here. As soon as the director released Ruby from the film, she would go home. To the ranch. Or maybe she could go early. Bending her head over her legs, she let tears trickle onto her bare knees. She couldn’t manage here anymore. Not with a broken heart.
“I’ll never let you go,” Niccolò pleaded hoarsely, jiggling the knob. “Let me in. Per favore, cuore mio. We can’t talk like this.”
Ruby lifted her head, considering his words. Never let you go. Did he mean them? She scrubbed her hands over her face. Grasping his lifeline, she rose on unsteady feet to open the door.
Niccolò swept her into his arms. “Quanto ti amo,” he murmured, crushing her to his chest.
“I love you, too,” Ruby cried, throwing her arms around his neck.
In the next instant, Niccolò’s mouth was on hers, and she hungrily returned his kiss, needing his touch, craving his reassurance.
They bumbled their way through the tiny, moonlit room, running their hands over each other’s face, reassuring one another of their love until they reached the bed.
Ruby caught her breath. She had to know. “What happened after I left?”
“It was…terrible.” Niccolò raked his hand through his thick hair, leaving it in disarray. “My father can’t see that we are meant for each other. We are married, and that’s forever.”
Until death. Ruby would sooner die than live without Niccolò. “But, your family…”
Niccolò clasped her hands in his. “I will love you forever. My mother understands, and in time, my father will, too.”
Although Carolina Mancini had welcomed her into the family, Dante had exploded. “What if he never does?”
Niccolò’s grip on her hands intensified. “Anima mia, our love will last through this. You are my wife. Trust me,” he said, his voice catching. “You must believe me.”
The moonlight lit Niccolò’s face, illuminating his earnest expression. Ruby chose to believe him, even though every nerve in her body twitched in warning.
“I do,” she murmured. Closing her eyes, she met his lips, forcing the events of the evening from her mind. Together, like this, she could imagine that they were still in Lake Como. Without the burden of family disapproval. If only they could return to where they’d been so happy.
Wordlessly, they slipped from their clothes, finding their truth in the love they shared.
As the moon cast its glow upon them, Ruby rested in the protection of Niccolò’s arms. This moment was all that mattered. With her head nestled in the crook of his neck, she fixed this picture in her mind. Tomorrow, their world might splinter again, but she couldn’t think of that. She drew her fingers across her husband’s chest and watched his breath slow until, exhausted, they both fell into a deadened slumber.
In the morning, every muscle in Ruby’s body ached from the stress of yesterday. When she tried to lift her head from Niccolò’s chest, her forehead throbbed. She wasn’t just tired; she was weary to the core of her being.
Only once before had Ruby felt such emotional destruction. In the spring of her twelfth year, a tornado had darkened the horizon near her parent’s ranch in the midst of a thunderstorm. When her father spied it in the distance, he and Ruby drove the horses and livestock from the barn and away from their house. Animals had a natural instinct and would fare better outside of structures that could be demolished and cause injury.
Afterward, with the tornado upon them, they’d closed the barn door and hunkered down. Ruby saw a mixture of terror, sadness, and resolve in her father’s lined face. He clutched her and shielded her body with his under a thick stack of horse blankets, and she could hear his fervent, whispered prayers in the dark as the tornado roared toward them.
Miraculously shifting at the last minute, the twister narrowly missed the barn and the house. When Ruby and her father emerged from the barn, they were stunned at the damage surrounding them. The tornado had ripped through a pasture, dismantling fences and lofting them like toothpicks, then scattering broken pieces across the land. Trees laden with fruit had been uprooted—even century-old live oaks. Mangled equipment lay twisted around them.
To this day, Ruby still remembered how drained and bone-tired she’d felt after the calamity.
She’d grown up that day, and the thought that her parents were in control of their world vanished. While she rebuilt the fence with her father, Ruby’s childhood veneer was scraped away, nail by nail, board by board. As tall as her mother and on the brink of womanhood, Ruby faced the daily hardships of ranch life along with her parents. And on the adjoining property, her sister Patricia toiled long days beside her husband on their ranch.
Though several years had passed, Ruby still had moments of feeling like a scared child hiding under horse blankets. While she’d learned to hold her head up and get on with whatever task she had to do like an adult, that didn’t mean that she wasn’t impervious to anxiety and loss.
Ruby bit her lip as she thought of the events of last night. When Niccolò’s father had lashed out at her and Niccolò, she worried that she should have stood up to him more. She had tried to, but she was an interloper in the family. Dante’s anger was like that tornado, sucking the air from the room and leaving destruction in its wake.
Now tucked in Niccolò’s safe embrace, Ruby listened to the early morning chatter of the pensione proprietor and vendors outside her window. The smell of fresh-baked bread wafted to her nose.
Niccolò stroked her hair, his touch as gentle as the breeze on Lake Como. “Are you awake?”
As long as Ruby kept her eyes closed, she wouldn’t have to talk about last night or Niccolò’s argument with his father. Or what their future might hold.
She sighed. But she’d also learned that when a storm approached, you fought for what was yours.
“I’m awake,” she said, opening her eyes. His half of the silver heart gleamed against his sun-bronzed chest in the morning light.
“I’m not going home anymore,” he said, kissing her forehead. “My home is with you now.”