The groves were lit up, lighting our way as we walked. The men who worked the fields had helped me string up countless solar lights in the trees for the special occasions.
Mariposa was quiet until she wasn’t. “A walk in the groves, huh?”
“I haven’t had a chance to talk to you in private.”
She nudged me with her arm. “Getting cold feet?”
“My mind rules my feet, and my mind is set.” I glanced at her dress. She looked like a Roman goddess. The color was light blue, the material almost sheer, and it draped over her arms. When the wind blew, the dress fluttered like wings. The hem swept the ground as we walked, and I noticed she didn’t hold it up. “Your favorite color. Blue. It looks beautiful on you.”
She looked at me, right in the eye, and I had to catch her before she fell over a crate left on the ground. She exploded with laughter. “Too much wine.”
She hadn’t had a drop to drink.
“Is that what the kids are calling fun these days?”
“Are you accusing me of lying, Capo?”
“Depends. If that’s what the kids are calling it.” I shrugged. “You’re telling the truth. If not, your pretty nose is going to grow like Pinocchio’s.”
“Ooh!” She laughed even harder. “Who’s lying now? Pretty nose.”
“You’re beautiful,” I said. “The most beautiful woman to me.”
She wiped something from my face. “Are you sure about that?” She showed me her hand. It had a smudge of red lipstick on it.
Gigi. She had kissed me on the cheek earlier. Mariposa noticed it. I even caught her mocking Gigi. She’d pretend to laugh like her and then shake her tits. Gigi hadn’t noticed, but I did. Mariposa hadn’t even met her yet. They never seemed to be in the same place at the same time. And when Gigi would appear, she’d talk to me when Mariposa wasn’t beside me.
“I don’t say things for the fun of it, Mariposa.”
I almost laughed at the sour face she made in response, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to fight the night before our formal wedding. There was nothing to fight about.
We became quiet after that. She had her thoughts and I had mine.
Then she inhaled, bringing me from mine. “I love the smell here. It reminds me of the new perfume.” She lifted her arm and I inhaled the scent on her skin. It was from the same designer who made her other one, but this one was different. It had notes of orange flower and the sea. Both perfumes seemed made for her, but the new one even more perfect.
I kissed her pulse and then held her hand. “This way.” I led her deeper into the groves, wanting to go as deep as possible, as far away from people as we could get.
“Capo,” she whispered, not looking at me. “That was a nice thing you did for me tonight. Switching my dinner.”
Before she had the steak at Macchiavello’s, she had told the planner to serve it for dinner that night. After she ate there, she had fallen in love with the pasta and crab dish. I had the planner switch her order at the last minute, after I’d found out that she’d ordered the steak before she knew what the pasta tasted like. She wanted to thank me for it, but we had a deal and it wasn’t necessary. We both did for each other.
I nodded. “You’ve been great with my grandfather. He really enjoys spending time with you.”
She stiffened. “My arrangement is with you,” she said, keeping her face straight. “Not with anyone else. I enjoy spending time with him. Because I want to.”
I hadn’t meant to offend her, but I did.
“Tell me, Mariposa, if you were to ever fall in love, would love cancel out your kindness law?”
“Law?” She almost scoffed, but she took a moment to answer. “I’m not sure. I’d need time to think about it.”
Or feel it.
I sighed, pointing to two overturned crates. “Here we are.” I motioned for her to take a seat and I took the one next to her.
The silence was welcome after being surrounded by family since we arrived. When I had come to live here, sometimes I’d walk the groves to be alone. I’d sit on a crate and clear my mind from all thoughts. After, I did my best scheming.
“Is something wrong, Capo?”
I realized she’d been talking. She was looking at me, waiting for me to reply.
“No. It’s peaceful here. I’m content.”
“Okay,” she whispered. She looked down at her hands, and I set mine over hers, making her look at me again.
“I didn’t want to do this in front of everyone. I wanted to give you this in private.” I dug in my pocket and pulled out a rosary made from real pearls. The spacers were made with sapphires. The cross was gold. I opened her palm and set it in the center, closing her hand around it. “That was your mother’s. I thought you’d like to have it. You can carry it tomorrow, if you want. Something old.”
“My mother’s.” Her voice was soft as she opened her palm, as though I had given her an invaluable treasure. “Where did you get it?” Her fingers gently caressed the beads, maybe trying to find a connection, trying to remember something. When she came across a blood spot, she tried to wipe it clean but it was stained for good.
“You,” I said. “Your mom prayed with you every night before bed. You’d recite the rosary with her in Italian. The night I took you with me, it was near your coloring books, and you handed it to me.”
“You kept it.”
“Close,” I said.
After a few minutes, she placed the rosary down on her legs, putting a hand behind her back. She lifted a small box toward me. “When you told me we were taking a walk, I decided to give you what I had, too. If not, I would’ve had to send it with someone tomorrow. Tonight feels right.”
I grinned at the fact that she had tucked the box in the soft wraps of her dress without me noticing. This small girl could’ve brought a knife and stabbed me in the back with it and I wouldn’t have had a clue until it stuck in my flesh. I realized in that moment how much I trusted her. It might have been foolish, but since I was running a race on uncharacteristic decisions when it came to Mariposa, why not add one more to the list?
The grin slipped from my face when I opened her gift.
“Your family jeweler probably hates me because I didn’t think of it until we got here, and he had to rush the order again. I thought…I thought you’d like to carry a piece of your mom on…our wedding day. This felt like a clever way to do it. You have so many of them at home.”
She had given me cufflinks, cufflinks that had a picture of my mother on each one.
“Mariposa—” I started but couldn’t finish.
“Remember our deal,” she whispered. “I do for you. You do for me. You do for me. I do for you. We’re even.”
Far from it, but I didn’t respond.
“She’s so beautiful,” she said, looking over at the cufflinks. “You look a lot like her, just a manly version.”
I grinned. “My grandfather,” I said. “She looked like him, just more feminine. She had his features, but the blue eyes are from my grandmother’s side. So technically I look like him when he was younger.”
“Either way,” she said. “I’ve never seen a more beautiful woman.”