She took deep breaths, finally calming the beat of her heart and the rush of her blood. She focused her mind and tried to see him as just another visiting Ph.D.

“Well, Dr. Vecchio, let’s get started.”

They worked silently for another hour, quickly falling back into the unspoken communication they’d always shared. But then, Giovanni had always had an uncanny knack for understanding the way her brain worked, and she’d had the same understanding of him.

“Did you find that one letter from Governor Portolá to—”

“Yes, I did. Thank you, that mention of the young friar—”

“Yeah, I thought that might be what you were looking for there.”

They skimmed through the first stack of documents from Mission San Diego and moved on to a stack of letters from Monterrey. They continued to whisper back and forth throughout the evening.

“Have you seen any further correspondence from the priest in San Diego that—”

“You mean the young Catalán? I think there’s something in this stack here…”

“Ah, exactly. That’s what I’m looking for. Thank you, tesoro. Look at the year. That’s promising.”

As they worked, the years seemed to slip away. Strangely, Beatrice felt even more at ease than she had when she’d first worked with Giovanni. She supposed the years she’d spent at school and working with visiting scholars had given her much-needed confidence. She was no longer intimidated by his intellect or his experience, and she realized he no longer treated her as a bright student but more like a colleague.

When it was time to leave, she felt reluctant to go back to her empty house, even though she knew she should. He hadn’t made any more suggestive overtures, but five years of questions tugged at her mind. Luckily—or unluckily, she couldn’t decide—he was waiting on the steps outside the library when she exited holding her helmet and the black backpack she wore riding.

“So…a motorcycle?”

She sat down on the steps, keeping a careful distance from him. “It’s easy on gas and good for traffic.”

“And sexy. Beautiful woman on a fast bike? Very sexy, tesoro,” he said with a wink.

Well, that hadn’t taken long.

“Gio, you need to—”

“Don’t shush me. I’m allowed to express an opinion.”

“What—” Beatrice paused, waiting for Dr. Stevens to pass. “Where have you been? Since you have appeared out of nowhere, and apparently want back in my life, I think I have a right to know.”

He leaned toward her and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “I definitely want back in your life. And I like the hair, by the way. It suits you, though I do miss the length. I had dreams about that long hair—”

“Damn it!” She slapped his hand away. “Stop saying shit like that, all right? I have a boyfriend, and I’m trying to have an actual conversation with you.”

Giovanni smirked but leaned back, placing his elbows on the steps above and stretching his long legs in front of him. She rolled her eyes, wishing she didn’t notice the way his shirt stretched across his defined chest.

“Fine. And of course you have a right to know where I’ve been. I’ve been  traveling mostly—”

“Yeah, got the postcards, thanks a bunch.”

He smiled. “Did you keep them? Those are all the places your father left me a clue, then disappeared before I could get there.”

Her heart almost stopped. “You—you’ve been looking for my father?” she whispered, tears springing to her eyes. “All this time?”

He looked away, allowing her to wipe her eyes. “On and off, yes. I told you I’d find him. I have a great desire to meet your father. He is both impressively and irritatingly good at hiding himself.”

When Beatrice had moved to L.A.—and the threat of Lorenzo seemed to disappear—she had hoped her father would find her. She’d waited, keeping a faint hope alive he could be part of her life again. But as the years passed, Stephen De Novo, and whatever mystery he carried with him, remained stubbornly out of reach. So, she tucked him away into a dark corner of her heart and tried to forget.

She was still trying to process the idea of Giovanni spending the previous five years looking for her missing father. “How did you know where to look?”

“Oh,” Giovanni murmured, “I would get word through certain channels that he’d been asking questions of this associate or that acquaintance. Looking for records at a certain library or auction house. All little clues he must have known I would pick up on, if I was looking for him.”

“Did he know you were looking for him?”

“Yes.” His expression darkened. “I let it be known I wanted to meet with him. De Novo kept leaving traces, but by the time I would get to any location, he would be gone.”

Beatrice frowned, twisting her hands together. “Does he think you want to hurt him? Is that why he’s hiding?”

“I don’t know, though it’s fairly well-known that his daughter is…”

“What? His daughter is what?”

Giovanni cleared his throat. “To put it bluntly, ‘my human,’ and—

Her eyes popped wide. “What?”

“—I wanted to speak to him—”

“‘Your human?’” she hissed.

“Beatrice.”

“Was there some sort of memo I should have gotten about this?”