I should have worn a wetsuit, she thought with a flash of amusement. That would have done it. The idea made her smile, and the smile, parting her naturally red lips, made her look so beautiful that Cesare, stared at her in open admiration.
‘The first time I see you,’ he said, ‘you have all your clothes on. The second time, you wear only a swimming suit. Maybe the third time . . .’
‘You’re outrageous!’ Devon said crossly.
He smirked. ‘In Italy,’ he informed her, ‘we say what we think. In England, perhaps you do not. Moh.’ He shrugged, raising his palms to near shoulder height, clearly indicating which way he thought was preferable.
Gasping at his arrogance, Devon jumped back and splashed him with water; her aim was good, and his white jeans were promptly splattered.
‘Capisco,’ he said airily, standing up and starting to undo his belt. ‘You get my clothes wet because you want to see me nudo.’
‘No!’ Devon screamed, giggling, covering her eyes with her hands. ‘No! I didn’t mean that!’
‘Aspetta un’ attimo,’ he said, walking around the pool and disappearing into the green-painted pool house.
As soon as he had gone, Devon leaped out of the pool and dashed to retrieve her towel, desperate to cover her bottom and upper thighs. She wound it round her as tightly as possible, so she didn’t look too bulky, and wrapped it in the most Grecian-like way she could manage.
What just happened? she thought frantically. Cesare was extraordinary: somehow he had managed to escalate the situation in the space of barely a minute to the point where he had vanished, possibly to take his clothes off. Thinking about him all yesterday evening and today, she had built him up in her mind, picturing him as irresistibly handsome, and the revelation, seeing him again, was twofold.
Firstly, no, he wasn’t handsome. His nose was too big for that, his hair too wild, his mouth too wide. And secondly, he was even sexier than she’d remembered. He looked at her as if he were picturing her naked, and it made her weak to her core.
He’s not really going to come out of there nude, is he? she wondered helplessly, torn between excitement and nervous anticipation. I’ll definitely run away if he does. He can’t chase me if he’s naked.
My God, this is totally insane!
And then, as Cesare emerged from the pool house, a complacent smile on his face, she burst into complete hysterics.
‘It is not mine,’ he said, looking down at the bright blue Speedo he was wearing. ‘But it fits, yes?’
He was definitely hairy, Devon saw between the fingers she had clapped over her eyes. But, thank goodness, in the right places. After Matt, Cesare looked very slim, lean and muscled, the dark curly hairs on his chest failing to conceal his pectorals and the absolute flatness of his stomach – it’s almost concave, she realized, sitting up to suck in her own. There was a definite line of dark hair down to the waistband of his Speedos, which actually sat on his hipbones, perilously low; she blushed, even behind her hands, as she checked out the Speedos’ contents.
Not huge, she thought, rather disappointed. But maybe he’s a grower, not a shower . . .
‘It fits?’ Cesare repeated, doing a slow pirouette so she could see the back.
Oh thank goodness, not a hairy back! She almost sagged in relief. And his bum – oh, wow . . .
It was just as tight and firm as she had imagined, watching it yesterday as he climbed the stairs in front of her. Devon was sure her face was as red as a turkey-comb by now.
‘But you have got out!’ he said, hands on hips, staring at her with an outraged expression. ‘This is not fair! I put on my swimming suit, and you get out of the pool!’
His hair stuck out in all directions; his nose, for some reason, looked even larger when he was almost naked. The muscles in his forearms flexed. He looked more confident in those ridiculous shiny blue Speedos than any of the men Devon had dated did fully clothed. He wasn’t Devon’s type at all; too slight, too lean. She liked them big, handsome, chunky with muscle. Action heroes.
And she was melting, totally melting, for this arrogant, almost-skinny, curly-haired idiot. She felt as if she were drunk, as if her entire body were filled with bubbles, airy and weightless.
Cesare was walking across the grass now, to the twin flights of stone steps that led down into the pool. Gingerly, he put his toes into the water, and jumped back, an appalled expression on his face.
‘Ma e gelida, l’acqua!’ he said, looking outraged. ‘Is freezing! How do you swim in that?’ He shook his head sadly. ‘English people are cold,’ he said. ‘Cold like the fish. Cold hearts, too.’
Devon wasn’t going to fall for that obvious trap. And she didn’t want him to see her in a swimsuit; she hugged her towel around her and said firmly, ‘That’s why I got out. It’s too cold. You should get dressed,’ she added hopefully.
Because if he does, I can too. I really don’t want him to see my cellulite.
An expression of extreme calculation narrowed Cesare’s dark eyes. He looked at her as if he were working out a complicated equation.
‘So if it is warm, you get in?’ he demanded.
‘Yes, of course!’ Devon said, feeling that this was a safe answer: what could he do, suggest they take a hot bath together? ‘I love being in the water.’
‘Perfetto!’ He raced over to her, grabbed her hand, and pulled her to her feet, dragging her back to the little gate. He was so close to her, and so nearly naked, that it made her even dizzier; she could smell his scent, feel his bare, hairy arm against her smooth one, rasping and so masculine that she had to bite her lip, hard, to stop herself rubbing against him. She snatched at her towel, which was coming loose, but to her disappointment Cesare didn’t even notice that it was falling off her.
‘Bene!’ he said. ‘You go to the villa, you put clothes on – simple clothes, some jeans, a pull – and you bring your swimming suit, and I take you where the water is very warm.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Zitta! Vai!’ He smacked her towel-covered bottom. ‘Hurry! Then you meet me in the parcheggio. The parking lot.’
‘How dare you—’
‘Go!’ Cesare crossed his arms over his chest and frowned intimidatingly at her, his thick brows coming together over his nose. The Speedos hanging off his hipbones rather undercut this attempt at authority. Devon giggled all the way back to the house.
* * *
It turned out that Cesare owned a bright yellow Lamborghini, which had been undergoing some sort of complicated electrical checks the day before, and hadn’t been available for his errand collecting Devon from the airport. It made short work of the switchback of sharp curves that hugged Chianti’s steep hills on the left side and dropped away on the right to breathtaking views. It was like driving through a series of postcard photographs; the stone house on the hill, a cypress-lined drive arrowing up to it, surrounded by terraced olive groves and vineyards, their lines of green-leaved vines marching in perfect symmetry. It was a sea of lush green, with the odd bright flash of stronger colour: blue glints of swimming pools that echoed the blue skies above; bright red poppies and roses; yellow-petalled early sunflowers. Mercifully, at the wheel of his own car, Cesare was fully occupied with the serious business of whipping it around each corner as fast and efficiently as possible. Chain-smoking happily, humming along to the CD, which seemed to be the same hoarse-voiced male singer as the day before; he ignored Devon almost completely, limiting himself to the occasional informative comment.
‘Now we go round Siena. It is very small and the people are not very interesting – they talk only about their horse race, the Palio. Moh. Chi se ne frega? Always the same. The horses run round the square. Sometimes the horses fall down. Moh.’
And, ten minutes later: ‘Here we are in the Creti Senesi. Siena white hills. It is the only interesting thing about Siena.’
‘They look like the white cliffs of Dover,’ Devon said.
‘Che cosa?’ Cesare, visibly uninterested, ov
ertook a white Panda so fast that its outline almost blurred as he sped past. ‘Panda di merda,’ he muttered. ‘Panda shit. I hate the Pandas.’
They were driving along a ridge now, the road falling away to each side, and Devon gasped at the views; the landscape here starker than Chianti, which was very heavily forested. Beyond Siena, the chalky cliffs shone a lunar white; the houses were much fewer, scattered over peaks of hills.
‘Imagine in the Medioevo,’ Cesare said cheerfully. ‘Up this hill with no one but your family and some animals, all winter long. Maybe a priest, if you are unlucky. Nothing to do if you are a young man but fuck the sheep. Ah si,’ he said, turning his head for the first time to look at Devon, who had snorted in shock. ‘Sienese men, they like to make love with the sheep,’ he added very seriously. ‘It is well known.’
‘What about Florentine men?’ Devon asked, not wanting to seem like Cesare had it all his own way; if he could tease her, she could tease him. ‘What animals do you like to make love with?’
It was Cesare’s turn to snort. ‘We do not make love with the animals,’ he said with great hauteur. ‘But in the old days, we make love with the back of the woman. The culo,’ he clarified. ‘That way, she is still vergine for the husband, but she has still fun with a lover. It is very common. My uncle, he made love that way with half the women in Greve.’
Devon rolled her eyes. ‘More fun for him than them,’ she muttered.
‘It is obvious,’ Cesare said austerely, lighting another cigarette with his right hand while the Lamborghini shot through a village at sixty kilometres an hour, its inhabitants turning to stare enviously at the yellow sports car, ‘that you have not made love with a man of the Montigiani family. Ecco!’ He gestured with his cigarette to a sign they were passing at speed, which read: RAPOLANO TERME, SAN GIOVANNI. SPENGERE SIGARETTE, FONTE TERMALI. ‘Siamo arrivati. The sign, it says no smoking, because there is hot gas from the earth here. It makes the water hot.’
‘Shouldn’t you put that out then?’ Devon said, looking at his Marlboro.
‘It is not pericoloso,’ Cesare said casually, throwing the lit cigarette out of the window into the ditch. ‘See? That sign, it is for tourists.’
He drove past a No Entry sign, past a hotel and round its side to a parking lot, where he pulled up the Lamborghini in a No Parking zone and jumped out lightly. The hotel doorman stared over at the car, and Devon longed for him to make Cesare move, but he just called something appreciative to Cesare, who raised a hand to him in response.
‘OK, as the Americans say!’ Cesare announced, leading Devon up a flight of stairs to a long low elegant white building. ‘You like hot water, I bring you to hot water!’
Inside it looked like a cross between a spa and a Swiss health club; stripped down simple wooden walls, pale green and white fittings, a reception desk staffed by elegant women in black uniforms. Cesare chatted away to them, handed over some money, hired himself and Devon a dressing gown, towel and flip-flops each, and bustled her along into the women’s changing rooms.
There was nothing for it, she was going to have to strip to her swimsuit again. Bundling herself into her robe, Devon emerged to find Cesare lounging like a Roman emperor against the wall. He had the very annoying air of being the master of all he surveyed. Leading her upstairs, through a bar and restaurant, out onto a terrace, they passed groups of people in dressing gowns and towels, or just wandering in their swimsuits, their faces pink and relaxed. They exited onto a wide terrace, and Devon gasped at the sight below.
It was a huge blue swimming pool, surrounded by loungers. Water poured down into it from a series of much smaller pools, terraced down the side of the hill, cascades of lightly steaming hot water. A higher narrow pool led into a wooden dome, Swedish-style, whose glass windows were translucent with steam. Everything was as simple and elegant in style as the reception had been, the cushions in shades of white and grey, the parasols aqua blue, the bodies of the clientele tanned and shiny.
‘We have many hot springs in Tuscany,’ Cesare said, bounding down the flight of stairs that led to the pool. ‘Terme. Is very good for the skin, and the circulation. Vieni!’
Devon followed him, and in an effort to put her cellulite on display as little as possible, she chucked her towel on one of the loungers, kicked off her flip-flops, pulled off her robe and dived inexpertly into what she assumed would be like a warm bath. She came up screaming in shock, wiping the hair off her face, to see Cesare standing on the side, laughing his head off at her surprise.
‘This is the coldest part,’ he informed her, stripping off his own robe and diving in as easily as a merman. ‘Aah!’ He emerged, shaking his head so vigorously that water sprayed off his wild mop of hair in all directions; it was like being next to a sheepdog shaking itself. ‘Up there,’ he added, ‘it is more hot. Here! Vieni!’
He swam the length of the pool to the first waterfall, white chalky water pouring down into the blue-tiled depths of the pool. Cesare stood underneath it, gesturing for Devon to join him. She squealed as the water pounded down on her head, heavier than the most powerful shower, dazing her with its force.By the time they climbed up and into the next, smaller pool, to stand under that cascade, she was already so relaxed she could barely speak. The pools grew hotter, the water on her head warmer. By the time they reached the last one, resting their arms on the marble side to look down over the landscape, the series of waterfalls below them, the tanned bodies on the loungers, the swimmers in the big pool, Devon had forgotten all about her cellulite, her love handles, the extra little squeezes of flesh just next to her armpits, pushed sideways by the boning of her swimsuit. Her hair was plastered to her skull, her skin already feeling softer after immersion in the opaque white water. Everyone seemed to be floating, disappearing at the waist, or sinking down till just their faces were floating like happy masks in a bath of milk-pale water. There were old and young, beautiful and ugly, all Italians, bronzed already by the Mediterranean sun; many had curly hair and big noses, but no one’s hair was as wild, no one’s nose as large as Cesare’s.
‘Ti piace?’ he asked, turning to look at her. His face was very close. She could smell the cigarettes on his breath, something that would have repelled her before, but now, because it was Cesare, she found herself leaning towards him. Longing to taste the tobacco on his mouth.
Oh God, I really have it bad, she thought despairingly.
‘It is very beautiful,’ he said softly. His eyes gleamed, so dark she couldn’t distinguish the pupil from the iris. His arms, propped next to her on the marble surround of the pool, were lean and muscled, distractingly patterned with moles; she longed to take a pen and connect up the dots, make painstaking drawings on them. It was a ridiculous thought, but everything about this situation was ridiculous; she had known him for less than twenty-four hours, and she was obsessed by him to the point that she could quite imagine herself buying cigarettes and burning them slowly to invoke a scent that reminded her powerfully of him. She was Alice down the rabbit hole, tumbling into a world where all the rules were reversed, and her perfect, handsome, considerate husband was ignored for a scrawny Italian who rode roughshod over her.
It was almost funny. Devon couldn’t help smiling.
‘You look just like your photographs,’ Cesare said, still very softly. ‘On Rory’s books in his kitchen. I see you on the cover and I ask, who is that, this very beautiful woman? And Rory says you are a famous cook in England. And I remember. So when he rings me, listen, Cesare, my friend the cook comes to Italy, she has some problem and needs to escape to stay at my house, maybe you have a drink with her, I think, no, ancora meglio, I will go to the airport like an Italian gentleman and drive her to Villa Clara. And that will make her happy, and maybe she will kiss me to say thank you.’
He raised his hand and pointed to his face. ‘Due baci. Two kisses on the cheeks, as we do here to say hello and goodbye. And that will make me happy. But instead . . .’
The talk of kissing had made D
evon feel that her lower body was melting away into the warm water. Heat flooded between her legs, made her torso liquid. She couldn’t speak. She stared at him, hypnotized, her eyes very wide, her red lips parted, as he continued.
‘Instead, she gives me ten euros. It is a very sad story.’
He had slid closer to her, his body turning to face her. He was so good at this, he must have done it hundreds of times before, thousands maybe; taken out foreign women visiting Italy, driven them very fast in his car, brought them here, and talked nonsense to them until they literally couldn’t think straight. The thought of being just another in a long line of women seduced by Cesare woke her up from her trance enough for her to protest.
‘I was expecting Gianni. And you were driving that old Golf! How was I to know who you were?’
Of course, he ignored her objection, focussing instead on his own goal.
‘But now you know,’ he said. ‘I am a friend of Rory. So I am your friend too. And friends kiss each other here in Italy. Cosi.’ He raised his hand to his face again. Looking at the light sprinkling of dark hairs on the back, she pictured that hand on parts of her body, so vividly she was again struck dumb.
Leaning forward in the heavy white water, she kissed him on each cheek. It was like taking a shot of tequila; sensation raced through her as fast as alcohol down her throat. Her breasts brushed against his chest; her lips touched his stubble, one hand braced herself on his shoulder for balance, so that she didn’t fall into him. It was exquisite torture, trying not to give in completely, to cling onto him as she wanted to, to kiss his mouth, to taste that tobacco on his lips.
Bad Sisters Page 29