Something told him there was a whole other world going on inside Erica. A world that he suspected she showed to absolutely no one. Who was she inside that world?
He watched as she held a necklace up to her throat and peeked in a strategically placed mirror. With Erica’s insights, he noted the tiny spotlight that was probably aimed just right to make the jewelry glitter when viewed there. It certainly looked good on her.
But she set it back down, smoothing it onto a display pillow in probably the exact form it had been when she picked it up. Was she so careful about everything in her life? It was hard to imagine what that would be like. He certainly hadn’t been. And he’d gotten that straight from Bibi, who had seemed to bound through life in great leaps gulping down whatever life brought her way.
Erica picked up a necklace of fine sea glass stones. It was a deceptively simple band of stones on a fine gold chain. But the shapes and colors were not random in any way. The artisan’s eye had formed balance and accent. And the colors were so perfect for Erica.
She laid it across her forearm first, and the colored glass seem to come to life. The amber tones picking up her skin. She laid it at her throat and turned for the mirror. There were also dark red stones that caught the natural highlights of her hair. And the pale blue that changed the necklace from formal to fanciful, bringing the colors of the cool Mediterranean.
He stepped forward and took the dangling ends from her fingertips, fastening the clasp behind her neck. She scooped her hair back with one hand and turned to inspect the effect.
Ridley let his hands fall to her shoulders, so delicate in his big hands, yet containing such great strength within that he could feel it vibrating against his palms. He spotted the tiny price tag dangling down the nape of her neck. Not outrageous like fine jewelry, but not cheap either.
“At the risk of paying you a compliment, you have to have this.”
Her nod of agreement was slow, but it was agreement.
“Let me buy it for you. Not as some trinket. Just…” he never just bought a woman jewelry. There was always some agenda—usually not a very hidden one. Typically “let’s have some fun together” or “thanks, babe, it’s been fun.”
Not in this case.
“Just…because I want to.” Her eyes met his in the mirror as he looked over her shoulder. Again, one of her long, unwavering assessments.
“I think you actually mean that.”
To his surprise, he did.
“But I need to buy it for myself.”
When he flicked the price tag at the nape of her neck, she nodded.
“Despite that.”
* * *
Erica rested her hand on the necklace and felt the cool stones warm against her skin.
This is me. I deserve something that makes me feel like me. The me that can choose to make things happen.
She wasn’t believing it, not entirely…yet. But if she bought the necklace, maybe she would come to believe it.
Ridley’s hands worked a moment at her neck. Warm hands that made her want to shiver with every touch. Shiver, not from fear, but from anticipation. Rather than undoing the necklace, he’d undone the tag and held it out to her over her shoulder.
No argument. No battle of wills. He’d accepted her statement that she needed to buy it herself at face value and didn’t try to shift her to his way of thinking. However much he might think he was the bad boy, he had a kindness that ran through him like a shining light.
She turned back to the jeweler and held out the little tag.
“I thought of that piece the moment you walked in the door. I didn’t want to push, but it is so perfect for you.” Whether it was real or part of her sales pitch, she made it sound completely genuine, so Erica chose to believe her.
She’d always liked buying from the local artists at street fairs because they were so passionate about what they did. The big stores could barely be bothered to wait on you.
“I really mean it,” the woman rested a hand over hers. “But it doesn’t mean I’m giving you a discount.”
And Erica laughed and paid happily. It was only as she and Ridley stepped out of the gallery onto the small porch with the shocking view of Vernazza, that she glanced at the credit card receipt before she tucked it away. A small note had been scrawled across the bottom: “A 20% discount for the joy of seeing it on the right woman. Anne.”
Erica glanced back inside, but Anne was once more working on her elaborate bracelet, perhaps a little too studiously. Erica could feel them sharing the same smile without looking at one another before she turned back to Ridley.
“Up?” He nodded toward the ascending stairs.
“Up,” she agreed. Definitely the right direction.
Chapter 6
Ridley was not used to being the slow one, but Erica made him feel that way.
Atop the cliff had been a broad platform with a garden offering spots of shade. At the center, a stone watchtower rose another two stories and she had stood atop the ultimate platform with her eyes closed and her face into the gentle breeze. It had fluttered her hair back and made her seem indeed an Italian princess of old—face raised to defy the pirates.
She’d let him buy her lunch at the restaurant built into the face of the cliff. Most of their tables were down on the piazza, but a few were placed on a porch halfway up the cliff. The small balcony was accessed through a massive submarine’s hatch bolted right to the rock. The door was salt-crusted on the outside, but the bright condition of the fastenings said that it wasn’t just for show, and powerful winter storms must slam against the harbor wall to reach so high. Neither of them had ordered the perch.
Throughout the long afternoon they’d wandered the streets and back alleys of Vernazza. They’d turned it into a game, who could spot the “perch.” It had become their phrase for whatever was most touristy, most kitschy.
She’d found the real prize and he’d insisted on buying it for her.
It was a ceramic refrigerator magnet. It was the unlikely super-fit upper torso of an overly handsome Italian man. The tiny scene behind him was of a beach with sun, sea, and sand. About his waist he wore a kiddie’s flotation ring with a large duck’s head springing forth from the front. He wore it low enough that it was an obvious statement about how Italian men were built below the waistline. The ring was labeled with “Benvenuto Vernazza.”
“I will treasure this and think of you every time I see it,” Erica had clasped the two-euro bauble to her chest as if he’d just bought her a diamond necklace.
They’d laughed, eaten gelato, and made a dinner of bread, cheese, and Pellegrinos at the outermost tip of the breakwater.
They watched the sun set over a glass of wine at a small table on the piazza. The church bells had rung out so loudly and clearly in the narrow ravine that speech was impossible. Five, perhaps ten minutes it had carried on, leaving a hushed silence in its wake. They were slow to resume their talk as he taught her how to taste the wine. Erica, no surprise, had turned out to be an apt pupil picking out the pineapple nose and the herbal palate of the exquisite Cheo Cinque Terre. The young apple eluded her, but it was very subtle.
During the train ride home she’d wrapped both arms around one of his, snuggled close, and rested her cheek on his shoulder for the short ride. Thankfully the bus had still been running or they might have had to sleep at the base of the three-hundred-whatever steps (now she had him doing it) back to Corniglia.
At the second floor landing outside his room, she had melted against him. It was only their second kiss, but it proved that the first had not been only in his imagination. His arms fit around her like they’d been made just for her. He had to lean his back against the door to make sure he kept them steady enough to not tumble unexpectedly to the first floor.
She’d ended the kiss too soon…never would be too soon…and simply laid her head upon his shoulder. He nuzzled her hair and held her.
But he knew if he kept holding her, he’d be dragging her into hi
s bed. No matter how much he wanted that, it still seemed too soon for Erica.
Her reluctance at being shooed up the last flight to her own room had almost undone him, but he’d been firm and she’d gone.
Now he lay sprawled in his bed and wondered at what kind of an idiot he’d been.
Since when, Ridley, do you turn down a woman who wants to be in your bed?
Since never! He wished he could give Bibi a call and ask her what the hell was going on, because he most certainly didn’t know.
Erica might be “good girl” to the core, so why didn’t he jump at the chance to corrupt her a little?
Somewhere Bibi was laughing, but he couldn’t quite tell where.
A whisper of air washed in from the open window. He’d left the curtains open and a thin slice of moonlight was etched across the darkness. Even as he watched, an apparition moved through the light.
A woman. In a long white gown, gone almost before he could see her. Not tall with Bibi’s long fall of bright blonde hair. Short, with dark hair neatly to her shoulders.
Close beside his bed, he could just make out the white outline, but not the figure within. If he spoke, the vision would be over. Gone.
Even as he watched, the cloth parted and fell out of sight at the edge of the bed as if empty. Then the covers lifted and Erica slid in beside him.
* * *
“Are you ghost or are you flesh?”
The sheer wonder in Ridley’s voice told her she’d made the right decision.
Good-girl Erica had gone upstairs to her room alone. She’d gone through her nightly routine, only briefly flummoxed by the clasp on her new necklace. She’d pulled on her flannel nightgown and left the patio doors open to the moonlight before sliding between the cool sheets.
New-girl Erica lay there wide awake and wondered why she had done any of those things. A thousand rationalizations had done nothing to answer those questions. She was a woman grown—she was twenty-eight, for crying out loud. She wanted Ridley…badly. Yet she’d walked away.
Good-girl Erica always did what others expected of her. She’d worked hard to ease her burden on Stephen. She’d studied hard to get the scholarships and get out early. She’d worked hard to prove herself to… She wasn’t even sure who.
But was that who had come to Italy? Even she hadn’t expected herself to do that. Each stage of her journey a surprise: letting go of her apartment, walking down the jetway, passport control and the surprising entry stamp, plunging her car into the olive trees only to arrive in a fairy-tale medieval tower complete with a handsome courtier.
None of that sounded like Good-girl Erica.
But if it was New-girl Erica, she wasn’t sure quite why she was lying alone in her bed. A handsome and willing man lay mere feet below. And she wanted to be with him.
The Good-girl had considered getting dressed, perhaps even donning the necklace, knocking on his door, and asking if they could talk.
New-girl Erica hadn’t even stopped to run a brush through her hair or slip on sandals. Instead she’d eased down the stairs, into his bedroom, and finally naked into his bed.
And except for the one question, “Are you ghost or are you flesh?” (to which she wasn’t sure of the true answer), he silently opened his arms in welcome.
She curled against him. No question that he was the sort of man who slept without clothes and she’d been right. But the shock of skin on skin as he’d pulled her against him almost overwhelmed her.
He made her feel so…alive.
Tucked tight against his side, her head on his shoulder, her arm across that broad chest she’d been admiring throughout the afternoon, she wanted to burrow in. She turned her nose into his chest and just breathed him in.
Rich and complex like one of his wines. Male was too small a word for Ridley. Walnut, she decided. Strong like oak, but less mainstream, more unique. The sea salt that pervaded the Ligurian air now lay upon his skin, but was warm and bright. There was a flavor there as well, but it was beyond her to figure it out.
He fanned his fingers through her hair.
He began some question, but she stopped it by laying a finger upon his lips. It would be, “Are you sure?” or some other question that was for Good-girl Erica.
She didn’t want to hear those questions. She didn’t want to have to answer them. Her entire life had been bounded by asking herself that exact question and she was done with it. Being unsure—at least a little unsure—wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
She scooted up enough to replace her fingers with her mouth, and Ridley’s transformation was so instantaneous that there was no chance of keeping up. From calmly holding her against him, he now dragged their bodies together. His hands didn’t roam, they consumed. Everywhere they slid over her left a trail of power.
She had caused this.
She had chosen this.
And it was glorious!
When his mouth began to follow the exploration of his hands, all she could do was clench her own hands in his hair and be taken. She might have thought it was an act had she not felt the need shuddering through him just as she could feel it shuddering through her. His merest touch evoked the day, but in snapshots of chaos.
Kissing him under the chin, she could almost taste the cool wood of the policeman’s baton. When he buried his nose against her sternum and went suddenly quiet between her breasts, his hands slid up to clasp her shoulders as they had after placing the necklace. When he rolled momentarily away, the cool of the night slid between the sheets with a tease of gelato on the tongue. And when he embraced her once more, it was with all the gentleness of the breeze atop the fort’s watchtower, brushing away the past and leaving only the hopes of the future.
His hands, mouth, body asked and hers gave. Gave until her mind blanked. Gave until her body slid out of her control, out of his, and answered instead to its own inner call she’d never heard before.
* * *
Ridley had heard women call sex “devastating.” He’d never understood.
Not until now.
He was a dead man. Sprawled on his back and wondering if he’d live to see the morning.
Erica lay equally limply upon him. Her soft “hmm” of contentment proved that she, at least, still lived.
Unable to wait any longer, he’d scrabbled up some protection, and even as he sheathed himself, she had straddled and taken him. Frantic didn’t begin to cover what had passed between them. Their need hadn’t soared, it had exploded in one massive, blurred, fantastic, frenzied bout.
Her gasp of surprise as he felt the orgasm slam into her had sent him right off the edge. Somehow, that simple sound, that he was the one to cause her that much pleasure, had made him feel all-powerful. His own release had slammed into her and she’d dug her fingers into his chest as they both rode through the aftermath.
No words.
Not a single one.
Women always wanted words…unless it was just plain sex. But there was no mistaking this for anything plain. Hell, the word sex barely applied. Something more had passed between them. Maybe so big that it didn’t need words either.
Another happy hum vibrated through the woman lying on him.
“Being bad feels awfully good,” she mumbled, and raised her head just long enough to kiss the center his chest before resting her cheek back on the spot.
“There wasn’t a thing bad about that.” He could actually speak! So, he was still alive.
“Was it…okay for you?”
“Okay?” He tried to raise his head enough to see her, but her head was tucked up under his chin. “That had nothing to do with okay.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” and she began pushing herself up. It took him a moment to figure out what was going on and he barely managed to clamp his hands over her butt to keep her in place.
“Erica, it had nothing to do with okay, but it had a whole lot to do with fantastic.”
“Really?” Her voice was so small that it barely filled the tiny space she’d man
aged to open between them.
He ran a hand slowly up her spine, smoothing her back down against him until he’d once more coaxed her head onto his chest.
But the tension remained.
“Tell me again why I’m not killing the bastard who made you feel like you had to perform for my sake?”
“Rat’s ass,” she corrected. And he had to laugh at her unintentionally funny line.
“Rat’s ass.”
“Because,” and he could feel her sad sigh ripple between them. “Your mother was right about not wasting energy on the past.”
“Never said I agreed with her, but I learned young that there was no point arguing with Bibi once she’d made up her mind.”
“Fierce, huh?”
“Let’s just say that I only tried to blow my school-night curfew once…ever.”
He could feel Erica’s smile against his skin. “The more you tell me about her, the more I like her.”
“She’d have approved of you.”
“Me and how many others?”
“Actually, truth is, my mom wasn’t a big fan of my tastes in women.”
There was another one of Erica’s silences that he now theorized was an inner dialogue.
“Just say it, woman.”
“I’m just wondering, if you have lousy taste in women, what does that say about me?”
And that was Erica. She might not volunteer her thoughts, but she never hesitated to be honest.
What did it say about his taste in women? That Bibi had been right and him wrong for all these years? That maybe, in a moment of weakness, he’d let a decent woman past his guard? Or maybe having gotten a taste of the right kind of woman, he was gonzo confused and out of his depth? Or…
“Honestly, Erica…”
She offered a softly inquisitive “Hmm?” as she settled once more upon him.
“I’ll be damned if I know.”
He couldn’t tell if she stayed awake long enough to hear his answer.
He was certainly awake enough to catch his non-answer loud and clear.
Path of Love Page 9