“I don’t want my disposition improved!” Chris declared passionately. “Every time my disposition is good around you, I wind up in trouble. You have no sense of decency.”
“What? I have a hell of a sense of decency! It’s a pity you don’t remember more about the night of our marriage.”
“Oh…God!” Chris exploded in frustration. Then she threw the cheese back at him, taking him completely by surprise.
Somehow he caught the cheese. He looked at it for a second, then flew into a stream of colorful Italian curses. Chris froze for a second, certain he was going to tear her hair out, but then, as she watched him, she burst into nervous laughter instead.
He paused, looking at her as if nothing but violence was on his mind. Then he lowered his head, and when he looked up an almost imperceptible grin was tugging at the corners of his mouth.
“You should speak nothing but kindness to your husband, cara,” he advised with a level edge. “Especially to the Italian husband you brutalized last evening.”
“Brutalized?” Chris demanded.
He tossed the cheese to the floor and caught her face between his palms, sliding his fingers into her hair.
“Absolutely.”
Now she saw that he was smiling. But as he pulled her into his arms, hard against his chest, she knew his smile would always hold a hint of danger. “Would you want a brutal husband, mia moglie?” he queried softly.
She shook her head, lowering her eyes. His palm moved gently over her cheek, then shifted to caress her breast. “Nor do I care to feel the steel of your knives,” he murmured.
She wasn’t quite sure what he meant, only that for once she could sense some deep emotion simmering beneath his words. That touched her heart and reawoke all the feelings she had for him. Not for anything would she have reminded him that he had married her only to protect her, because he had known she faced a danger he had not wanted to admit.
When she looked up at him, he smiled, laughed and pulled her into his lap.
“These arguments are ridiculous,” he said briskly.
“Yes, they are,” Chris agreed, leaning against him and fingering the medallion on his chest. “So what are we going to do?” she asked a little breathlessly.
“Do?”
“Marcus…we’ve got to do something. We can’t just let this go on and on.”
He sighed. “No, we must find our blackmailer and our murderer before…before something else happens.”
“So?”
He laughed. She heard the sound from his throat, from his chest. It touched her cheek and made her shiver.
“First,” he told her, lifting her chin, “we complete our honeymoon. Just a few days, but that is something at least. No healthy Italian male would not do so. We’ll go tomorrow to the Italian Riviera, to Portofino.” He shrugged. “Maybe we’ll go on into France, to Nice, or to Monte Carlo.”
“And then?” Chris murmured.
“Then…we go back. In time we meet your blackmailer at St. Mark’s.”
She shivered slightly again. “Marcus…” she murmured, and then swallowed, not willing to create distance between them again. “Marcus, who do you think might have killed your father?”
She immediately felt the tension in his arms. “Not my mother…she was in love with him. Alfred, your father, Genovese…Joe, perhaps, or Fredo.”
“Wouldn’t it make more sense for Joe or Fredo to have blackmailed Alfred? Marcus, the di Medicis and Alfred had the money. Why blackmail someone with no money?”
“Yes, why blackmail someone with no money?” Marcus repeated. She felt his gaze on her and lifted her head, noticing something in his eyes.
“You’re onto something!” Chris exclaimed.
He shook his head. “No, Christina. I was just thinking that you have the money now. Which is why, of course, the call came to you. You want the information. You desperately wish to clear your father.” His arms tightened around her. “Christina, when we return to the palazzo, you must listen to me, do you understand? Blackmailers go to those they believe to be…vulnerable. Which means weak. You do nothing without me, do you understand? Unless you do wish to be brutalized?”
The soft threat in his voice caused her heart to take an erratic leap. “Marcus, we need to go to the police.”
“I will go to the police. But I cannot prove that Alfred was murdered—or driven to his death—because he did die of a heart attack. The notes may help. I will take them to the police as soon as we return to Venice.”
Would he? Chris wondered. Or was he still determined to catch someone himself? Someone he loved. Someone he could perhaps…dissuade from any further violence.
Chris didn’t know. But she did believe with all her heart that he intended to let no harm come to her; she believed he would protect her with his own life.
But she wasn’t sure of any of his motives.
Did it matter, as long as he cared for her and meant to shield her from all harm?
It might—if the murderer was more talented, more devious than Marcus thought.
“Do you know,” he murmured to her suddenly, smoothing her hair from her forehead, “that your hands are always moving?”
She gazed at him a little suspiciously. He laughed. “No, I’m serious. It’s your fingers, I think. I’ve noticed that when you’re thinking about something or talking, your hands move. Like waves.”
Chris started, then laughed. She placed her hand in the air, pulled her knuckles back taut, then straightened her fingers. “Is that what you mean?”
“Yes. Not so obviously, but that’s the motion.”
She smiled. “It’s practice. Mime practice.” she added softly, wondering a bit at the dark expression that touched his features. “It’s a basic lesson,” she continued. “Here.” She sat up, smiling as she tugged his hand and brought it to the small coffee table before them. “Put your hand down, the palm flat. Now bend your fingers without allowing your palm to rise.”
“I can’t.”
“Yes, you can! It just takes practice. That’s how we ‘build a wall.’ See?” Chris proceeded to show him how the exercise helped to create the illusion of a flat surface. She smiled, but her smile faded quickly at his brooding disinterest.
“You are very good at what you do,” he murmured.
Chris shrugged a little uneasily. “I hope I’m decent. I’ve studied under some of the very best.”
“And you love it, too, don’t you?”
“Yes.” She smiled dryly. “It requires a very rigid physical discipline to keep your body in shape for the things it must do. You have to love mime to accept the discipline. But it’s like anything else, really. Once you accustom yourself to the regime it becomes a little like breathing. As you noticed, I work my hands frequently without even realizing it.”
He nodded, but again he seemed very distant. He had asked the questions as if he wanted answers, but it didn’t seem as if he wanted to hear what she was saying.
Chris turned away from him, picking up her wine and sipping it quickly. She wondered if she would ever understand him, or feel that she knew him at all. Or that she could possess any part of him besides his sinewed body when she held him in a tight embrace. So many intimacies, and yet she didn’t really know him at all. He was his own person….
A di Medici. And Sophia had warned her that di Medici men could bring a heartache to match all the ecstasy that could be found in their arms.
She felt his fingers trailing through her hair, and she turned to watch him. His expression was a curious one. He touched her as if she were something very special and unique; his fingers were gentle. And yet that wariness was there, as if he didn’t understand much about her, either.
“Marcus?” she murmured.
“Yes?”
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No, Christina. What could you have said?”
“I don’t know.” She tried to grin. “Don’t you like mimes?”
He shook his head evasiv
ely. “What would I dislike about a mime?”
“Then…it’s me.”
He shook his head again, smiling. “There is nothing I dislike about you at all.” He laughed suddenly. “Except that you are stubborn and seem to have a passion for dangerous stunts. But at the moment—” he shrugged, and his gaze held a cobalt glitter “—you are perfect.”
He pulled her back against him. Chris was content when he rested his chin against her hair and mentioned that they needed to shop for some clothing, since they couldn’t wear robes to Monte Carlo.
* * *
Perfect, he thought again later as he lay in bed and waited for her. In so many ways. She had been born with her tawny beauty; her craft had perfected her movements and poise. She moved like a shimmering silver wave, her limbs long and sleek and graceful.
She appeared in the doorway, naked, hesitating. Now, in the semidarkness, her hair cascaded over her bare shoulders, rich tendrils of reflected copper and gold, enticing his touch. Her flesh was bathed by a soft glow; the moon cast its rays over the curves of her body and awoke his fantasies.
His heart pounded in his chest, and for a moment he was afraid, though not so much of the danger that awaited them because he was determined to solve things—and end them. That sheer determination and his simmering fury at the things that had been done made him confident that he could keep her safe and solve the riddles that had reached out to haunt them from the past.
But when the skein of mystery and confusion was unwound…what then?
He would never be able to hold her. Like an elusive nymph, she would escape his grasp. She was an American, proud and independent. He loved her for what she was but their cultures were different. The things, many of them intangible, that were an ingrained part of his life were worlds away from hers. The palazzo, art, the canals, religion…even language. He could speak hers fluently, but he thought in his own. And her profession…
She was an artist. A visual artist. Her graceful form was her canvas. The graceful, vibrant, sensual form that was totally wild and untamed in his arms. Her face, her smile, her wide, beguiling, topaz eyes. Onstage she entranced and delighted; only when he held her was she his completely.
He wouldn’t want to change her, to hurt her, to take anything away from her. He did not want to claim the artist, only the woman. And though he could command and manipulate and hold her by strength alone, it would not be right, and it would not be enough. He didn’t even understand what made her so uniquely special to him, only that she was.
And when she left the doorway, coming to him, naked, her steps as sensually slow as the supple ripple of her hips, he felt a shiver of need—and the fear of loss.
For a moment he felt something like paralysis constrict his throat and stop his breath. He couldn’t reach out. Like the breeze, she could too easily elude his grasp.
Touch her, he commanded himself. Reach out; touch her. Feel the fullness of her breasts, the warmth of her skin. Touch her; hold her. Savor her caress.
Make her yours…
She came to him, sleek and slow. She slid between the sheets, and his hands moved to her hips, pulling her to him. He felt all the softness of her flesh, and the infinite warmth.
Fiercely, tenderly, he made her his.
CHAPTER 11
They took a small charter airline into Nice, and the two days that followed were the happiest Chris could remember. She lived on a passionate cloud, entranced by all the little things done by lovers, eager to forget everything but the moment.
They spent long hours on the beach, sipping tall cool drinks, playing in the water, returning to the sand. Chris would be ready to purr with contentment when he ran his fingers idly down her back beneath the sun, and she would know that he would suggest shortly they return to their room.
They had spent the first afternoon shopping. Chris had been a little bit staggered by the amount he had been willing to spend to supply them with a wardrobe for just a few days, and she had laughingly demanded to know if he was spending her inheritance or his own. He had shrugged and replied, “Both.”
And then he had reminded her that they had agreed that there would be no future or no past for them during these days. They had agreed to forget everything and enjoy themselves.
It was ideal. Chris was a little glad to be back in France, and gratified to be the one who was totally comfortable with the language. Marcus was willing to sit back politely and watch her as she did the ordering in restaurants and the bartering in shops.
And for two days they didn’t find a single thing to argue about. They combed the streets and shops, and drank espresso and wine at little cafés. They savored the sun and the delight of returning to their room whenever the urge struck, of bathing together, ordering up champagne and little trays filled with cheeses, meats and fruits, among them grapes, which, Chris laughingly learned, were a great deal of fun to feed to one another.
She was never quite sure what happened to stop their idyllic vacation so abruptly, only that it did end on their last night—at the casino in Monte Carlo.
The evening had started out the same as any other. He was in black tails that emphasized all the intrigue and darkness of his startling good looks. Chris had allowed him to splurge on a forest-green silk gown for her. It had jet beading at the shoulders and a low-cut neckline. She had decided that between them, they were beautiful, and the night was filled with easy laughter. He was close beside her as they gambled recklessly and successfully at the roulette wheel.
Then Chris felt a touch on her arm, and she heard her name called with surprise and enthusiasm. She turned to see that Georgianne was beside her, and that Tomas stood behind Georgianne.
“Christina!” Georgianne broke into a long and excited monologue in French, asking Chris what she was doing, and telling her what a wonderful time she and Tomas were having. Chris vaguely realized that Marcus was pulling in their chips and waiting behind her for an introduction and explanation.
Chris didn’t know why, but there was already a stiff tension about him. Even when he wasn’t touching her, she could feel it.
After she had greeted the tolerantly smiling Tomas, Chris turned back to Marcus. “Marcus, Georgianne and Tomas. We work together. We are all from the school in Paris, and went on tour together this summer. Georgianne, Tomas…Marcus di Medici.”
He was very polite and courteous, and apparently very interested in the other two. When Tomas suggested that they leave the casino for somewhere quieter where they could talk, Marcus was ready to accept the suggestion.
While they waited for a taxi in front of the grand and glittering entrance to the casino, Georgianne demanded to know what Chris was up to. But as she spoke her eyes were on Marcus with open fascination and speculation; Georgianne was, above all things, a Parisienne. A soft lovely kitten—open and honest.
“I leave you in Venice with an old man; I find you in Monte Carlo with a young one!” Georgianne teased. “Is this a last fling before you return to Paris, or what?”
“It’s a little vacation—” Chris began, but Marcus interrupted her smoothly, blandly.
“It’s a honeymoon,” he said, smiling.
Georgianne gasped and clapped her hands with pleasure. Tomas quietly congratulated them both.
Chris wanted to stamp on Marcus’s foot, but his hands were on her shoulders, his fingers warningly tight. She gritted her teeth and smiled instead.
A taxi came, and they all climbed in. Georgianne kept switching from French to English as she asked Chris what she intended to do, had she informed Jacques yet of her marriage…and what of the school? Chris stared hard at Marcus and replied that as yet, she had made no decisions.
They came to a small bar overlooking the Riviera and drinks were ordered all around. Tomas and Marcus began a conversation about the roads and sights between the Italian and French cities along the coast. Georgianne turned to Chris suddenly, switching instantly into hushed French.
“Christina! Il est magnifique!” She went
on to comment on his striking eyes, his wonderful physique, his dark, intriguing, spellbinding looks. Her eyes sparkled as she congratulated Chris again, telling her in typical blunt good-natured fashion that it was somewhat amazing to see Chris up and walking, since it was most obvious that the man would be a demon in bed.
Chris listened with a flush warming her cheeks, and she urgently tried to shush Georgianne. Georgianne merely waved a hand in the air. “He is Italian, no? He does not understand me! Tell me, Christina! How romantic. A few weeks and voilà! You are married. He is wonderful, yes? A man. And what a man!” She laughed. “But Italian! How is that working with your American soul? Or does passion overwhelm all your American feminism and independence?”
“Georgianne—”
“Ah! Admit to me that he is wonderful and that at last you know the meaning of losing your heart.”
“Oui, Georgianne! S’il vous plaît, sshhh!”
Marcus was across the table, ostensibly listening to Tomas’s comments in English. But Chris kept catching his eyes on her. Along with the tension, she noticed a dry curve to his mouth, and she didn’t know what he was thinking or feeling at all.
“You will not return to Paris,” Georgianne said in French.
“Yes, I will,” Chris retorted.
“And leave such a man behind? I wouldn’t. He is too attractive to other women, and not a saint at all, I would assume.”
“I have my life, too,” Chris murmured unhappily. There was no way to explain the circumstances of her marriage. She glanced uneasily at Marcus again. She felt his eyes on her, burning her. Again she didn’t know what he was thinking or feeling.
Except that this chance meeting—for all that he was being courteous and welcoming—had made him angry.
They spent several hours together, conversing in English. Tomas was fascinated by the galleries; Georgianne was knowledgeable about the art field, and discussed numerous painters with Marcus.
Both Tomas and Georgianne knew of The di Medici Galleries, and that they had opened a branch in Paris. Tomas gave Chris a wry grin and turned to his wife. “C’est la vie, eh? We are the Europeans, Chris the American. But here is our Christina…Contessa di Medici!”
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