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“In Italian.”
I heaved a hearty sigh. “Grazie,” I begrudgingly mumbled as I got settled. Giada beamed at me and then scurried off, probably to serve her grandson, who was sitting in a kitchen like some sort of hired hand. Which, yeah, I guess he was. Still though…
“Gee Bonetti 1936,” my aunt said as she petted her cat. I looked up from smearing cherry preserves on my still warm cornetto, my mind going a mile a minute.
“Sorry?” I paused with my knife loaded with preserves.
“The internet password.”
“Oh. Oh! Thank you. Nineteen thirty-six. Is that the year you were born?” I teased because obviously that was an obscene amount of years in the past and no one could possibly still be alive if—
“It is, yes.” I stared open-mouthed. “Please, shut your mouth before a fly enters it.” I snapped my jaw closed. “You have a comment, maybe?”
“Yeah, I do. You look amazing for your age.”
She was clearly startled. “Grazie mille. It is good for you to help Donvino with his training. He works hard. His life has not been an easy one like yours. Charity brings its own rewards, Arlo.”
I grinned and reached for my phone lying beside my plate. Her silver-tipped cane came across the table with ninja speed, cracking my knuckles.
I yelped, jerked my hand back, and stared at her in shock and pain.
“Gracious people do not spend the meal with their faces in their cell phones.”
Oh. My. God. Seriously? “Aunt Ginerva,” I said with just the proper amount of subtle ridicule for the boomer across from me. “Everyone eats and scrolls.”
“Not here, not at my table. I find it ill-bred to ignore those you are eating with for whatever silly penguin plucking a ukelele video you may be currently enthralled in.” I rubbed my knuckles while staring at my phone as a person who was trying to quit smoking would gaze upon a pack of Marlboros. “When you are entertaining clients on behalf of Bonetti Farms Olive Oil, they would take offense to being left to make their own conversation as would any young man you may wish to date.”
“Trust me, no young man I date would care if I were checking my Instagram feed.”
“Then you are dating the wrong kind of man as has been made evident by your latest scandal.” Right, okay, no point in arguing, and to be honest, as much as this kind of killed me to admit, the old gal with the reflexes of Bruce Lee might be onto something. “Now eat. We have much to discuss. I have found you a tutor.”
I shucked off the niggle about my choices in sexual partners and slid back mentally to something else we’d touched upon. Somehow, I got stuck on the notion that being nice to someone was considered charity. Was that because Donvino was a working-class guy and I was somehow above him so being kind was some sort of altruism?
“Why can’t Donvino eat with us?” I asked around a mouthful of warm pastry.
“He was not clean,” she replied matter-of-factly. Okay, sure, yeah, he was probably pretty ripe after rowing all the way to Pisa or wherever he had gone. “Also, he is a member of the staff so he does not sit at our table.”
“That’s some bullshit,” I said after swallowing. Her silver brows rose. “I mean that’s utter bullshit. It’s classist as hell.”
“There are rules for people, Arlo, something that I am aware that you know little about since you were left to roam free like a jackal for your formative years.”
I lowered my pastry. “Right, well, maybe I am a wild beast, but at least I don’t make good people sit in a tiny dark room by a wood fire to eat their daily rations of gruel.”
That made her laugh. Lucia snuggled her nose more tightly under her tail. “Such a dramatic boy. That you get from your mother. She always wanted to be a starlet on the grand stage.”
She did? I didn’t know that. My father rarely spoke of my mother unless it was to remind me that I was disappointing her when I fucked up, which was a ton. So yeah, lots of disappointment.
“This is not the fourteenth century,” she said once her laughter had calmed.
“Could have fooled me,” I stated as I drizzled honey on my bowl of yogurt.
“My staff eat the same foods as we do, Arlo. They simply do not come to my table fresh from a workout and reeking of sweaty man, nor do they wish to. Alessio and Giada know the rules of society, and now it is your turn to learn them. There are ways that people of good standing behave. We will work on getting those lessons set up. For now, I wish to inform you that your first Italian lessons are today at noon with Señorina Vittoria Capello, a dear friend of mine. Alessio is driving me to one of my appointments, therefore I have arranged for Donvino to take you to your lesson. Please be on time and pay attention.”
“Oh cool. I’ll be good, I promise.”
She studied me closely, those deep brown eyes sharp as a raptor but she said nothing. Instead, she started talking about olive mills and the various kinds of olives we grew. I zoned out almost immediately to fantasize about the ride into town with Donvino. I wondered what kind of car he drove. I hoped it was a small one with only one seat so I would have to sit on his lap. They made them, right?
Chapter Six
