by Ciji Ware
And how was she going to explain to Allegra why she couldn’t petition “her friend” for help regarding the leaking palazzo?
Deciding it was time to have something to eat before returning to her lodging, she reached below the table for her voluminous leather purse and pulled out her cellphone to see what time it had gotten to be.
Just then, she heard an insistent banging on the metal gate downstairs. Glancing at her right hand, she was shocked to see that when she’d absently put her mobile phone in silent mode during another staff meeting yesterday, she’d never changed it back! Having completely forgotten she’d silenced it herself, she’d simply expected it to ring if anyone called during the hectic day that followed.
Meanwhile, the banging on the gate had grown louder and she heard a voice shouting in a distinctive southern drawl, “Prego! Prego! La Signorina Antonelli è qui?”
She experienced a rush of happiness that nearly took her breath away. Bolting from her chair, she dashed to open the door and its gate on the upper landing that guarded the workshop’s front entrance.
“Jack? Giovanni?” she cried. She pushed the gate outward, hurtling herself down the snow-slicked stone steps and fumbled at the latch of the lower gate. She flung it open and, without pausing to think, hurtled herself into Jack’s waiting arms.
“God, am I glad to see you!” he exclaimed, and she felt him scattering kisses on top of her head, on her ear, and finally on her lips. “I thought maybe you’d thrown your cellphone into the canal.”
“No... no,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “My stupido telefonino has been in silent mode for almost two solid days, can you believe? I turned it off in a meeting yesterday and forgot to—”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Serena!” Jack exclaimed, hugging her to his chest, “I’ve been trying to reach you for hours. I thought maybe you were deliberately not taking my calls.”
“You swear too much for a boy who went to Holy Cross,” she said, tilting her head so she could nuzzle her lips beneath his ear.
Jack crushed her even harder against the front of his parka, kissing her passionately at the foot of the stairs that led up to the open door of the costume workroom. Meanwhile, the snow had turned to rain, pelting down on them in sheets.
“C’mon you madman,” Serena declared, breathless. “Everyone’s gone home for the night, but I can make you a cup of coffee, and—”
“I just need a cup of you,” he mumbled into her hair, damp from the rain. “God, Serena, you had me going crazy!”
“You me too,” she muttered, pushing the gate closed behind him. “C’mon... just let’s get out of the rain.” Frantically, they continued to kiss nonstop while moving, step-by-step, toward the beckoning warmth of the shop tucked under the eaves above the ground floor.
“You kiss great on stairs,” he whispered as they arrived on the landing.
“Thanks to you, I’m getting a lot of practice,” she mumbled, flashes of the way they went up the stairs at her lodgings a few days earlier flitting through her brain.
Once inside the door, Jack kicked it shut, turned her around, and pushed her back against its smooth wooden surface while he began a torturous journey nibbling from the base of Serena’s neck to her lips where his kisses told her without words how much he’d missed her.
“I’ve just spent two days away from you regretting every second of my decision to sleep on top of that bedspread,” he said hoarsely.
“Not thinking like such a noble gentleman tonight, are you?”
“No,” he replied emphatically, his breath against her cheek, “especially when I couldn’t get hold of you. And when I arrived back in Venice and you didn’t answer at all, I haven’t known what to think.”
“You aren’t thinking about Lauren, I take it?”
An arc of electricity pulsed between them.
“I have been, actually,” he replied, “and here I am at your doorstep.”
“It’s just Venice,” she scoffed gently. “We both had better watch out.”
Jack pulled away, holding her by both shoulders.
“No,” he said soberly, measuring each word. “It’s not just Venice. I don’t really know what it is... but it’s something you and I should pay attention to, seems to me. Speaking strictly for myself, I’ve never felt like this before... this... compulsion... to find my way back to someone. Back to you,” he amended.
Serena stared into Jack’s eyes, startled to see a glint of moisture. Then she thought he’s just soaking wet.
“Come. Sit right there,” she commanded, pointing to a seamstress’s chair surrounded by the chaos of bolts of cloth, tubs of beads, and piles of feathers. “But first, take off your coat... very carefully, if you don’t mind. And anything else that’s wet. Just hang your stuff on the pegs behind you so we don’t get water on any of the costumes. I’ll heat up some soup I think we have left over from lunch.”
Serena discovered a few slices of bread and cheese in the tiny kitchen alcove at the back of the shop, and put together a semblance of supper on a tray. Within minutes, she’d brought out two mugs filled with steaming minestrone as she began to describe the avalanche of work that had faced her all week.
Before she could even finish her sentence, Jack carefully placed both their soup cups on a nearby bench devoid of spangles or fabric, and then pulled her into his lap. His shirt was still damp, but all Serena noticed was the warmth of his chest pressed tightly against her ribcage and the side of her left breast. She clung to him, threading her fingers through his dark, damp hair, her every move revealing how glad she was he had arrived at her door at the moment crippling doubts about her feelings—and what she had begun to imagine were his—had started to overtake her.
“Jack... Jack,” she said in a low voice, “it is so good to see you.”
“Likewise...” he murmured into her ear. “Ah... La Contessa... who needs minestrone to warm up when I have you?”
He slipped a hand beneath the front of her sweater and sought to touch her breast beneath her bra. Again, bolts of electricity shot through her solar plexus and her breath caught.
“You are a devil, you know, to do that,” she said, inhaling deeply to steady herself.
“Do what?” he teased.
“Make me all sparkly like this.”
“Just how warm is my welcome?”
“About as warm as I feel yours is...” she replied, deliberately shifting her weight on his lap.
Jack chuckled and whispered, “Ah, so you’ve noticed my rising ardor, have you? Would you be offended if I told you I mastered enough Italian to secure a couple of condoms, just in case they might be called for one of these nights?”
Serena reared back, feigning shock.
“In a Catholic country? Now how did you do that?”
“I asked my new friend Maurizio who took me out to see the MOSE gates... and he kindly gave me several from his private stash.”
“I hope you didn’t name your intended quarry!”
“Of course not! A gentleman never reveals such information.”
“Well, Maurizio sounds like an amico simpatico, for sure,” she said, smiling. She kissed his nose. “And here’s what I can contribute tonight,” she announced, throwing caution to the winds. “There’s a daybed upstairs. At the moment, it’s covered with bolts of Fortuny velvet, but I’m sure we could...”
Jack leaned forward to kiss her once more, his lips and tongue insistent, asking silently, urgently, if she wanted him as much as he wanted her. She responded with an audible sigh and fiercely kissed him back, reveling in the touch and taste of him and the pleasure that was cascading down her spine. Finally, he lifted his head and smiled, his eyes boring into hers.
“Who needs a bed,” he asked, his fingers seeking the button on her jeans, “when my lap is so handy?”
“And who said trained engineers have no sense of creativity?” Serena murmured.
“Ah... but I’m also a writer and I think we’ve both come to the same
creative conclusion,” he said, inserting the palm of his hand beneath her waistband.
“And that is?” she said, swallowing slowly.
“That making love right here on this nice chair is an inspired idea.”
“Don’t you want the rest of your soup?” she managed to gasp as his fingers caressing her abdomen moved steadily lower.
“First... you. Soup, later.”
And I want you, too, Giovanni... her heart cried out, however foolhardy this might prove to be.
CHAPTER 9
Long before the seamstresses were due to arrive at the costume shop, Serena and Jack awoke in the daybed on the floor above the workshop. At some point during the previous evening they’d finally climbed the ancient flight of stairs to sink with exhaustion onto the piece of furniture that she jokingly called “The Fainting Couch.”
“C’mon, Contessa,” Jack suggested as pale shafts of snow-laden light filtered through the upstairs windows. “How about some breakfast?”
They held hands descending the steps from their tiny sleeping quarters and got dressed in the clothes they’d abandoned the previous evening. Jack retrieved his shirt from the back of the chair near Serena’s cutting table.
“Here, let me help, Casanova,” she said, fastening the top button for him and then handing him his coat from a peg on the wall.
“Well, I’m mighty flattered to be called that by a bona fide Italian,” he declared, pulling her close, his parka nestled between them. “I guess you could say I had a lot of inspiration.”
Serena gazed at him for a long moment. “Well, for me, anyway, last night was... wonderful. No, amazing is a more apt description.”
Jack nodded slowly. “In actual fact,” he said, brushing the backs of his fingers gently along her cheek, “it was a show stopper for me, too. You should also know that it was unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.”
“Really?” she murmured, arching an eyebrow.
“Really.”
“I guess we sort of ‘forgot’ about waiting until after you officially settled things with Lauren,” Serena said with a look of chagrin.
“Yeah... so much for that New Year’s Resolution. When you rushed toward me down the stairs in the rain, any thoughts other than wanting you, big time, flew right out of my brain.”
Serena cast him a rueful look and admitted, “Me, too, you.”
“But I want you to know, Serena, making a clean break—which I should have done months ago—will be first on my list when I get back home.” He pulled her close again and kissed the top of her head. “But let’s not talk about anything except what a total sex pot you turned out to be!”
“You, too, Giovanni...” In a move she was beginning to recognize, his kisses began at her ear, moved across her cheek, and migrated to her lips. “Uh-oh,” she whispered.
“Here we go again, right?” he muttered.
Serena pulled away and gazed at him regretfully.
“We’d better get ourselves right out there into the snow and cool off, Signor.”
“Otherwise...” he mumbled, nibbling her earlobe once more.
“Otherwise, very soon, you’re likely to run into a bunch of inquisitive seamstresses. And besides, I completely forgot that I have something important to discuss with you.”
Jack took a step back, a guarded look in his eye. Serena immediately sensed his unease and cast him a reassuring smile.
“I need you to help Allegra and me with something. I’ll explain over a caffè latte. Let’s get out of here before anybody arrives for work.”
Bundled against the cold, they trudged through a foot of snow piled against one side of the embankment and entered a local café. Over strong coffee and plain biscotti, Serena explained the latest dilemma facing the producer of the upcoming carnival ball. She quickly outlined the extent of the flooding at the rented palazzo, along with Allegra’s problem getting the ball’s venue into a condition that would satisfy the Venetian bureaucrats in the various ministries responsible for the building’s safety and historic preservation.
“I meant to ask you before you left if you know any people through the Rising Waters Conference who could smooth the way with the government pests who are making some outrageous demands on poor Allegra. She only rents the building each year from absentee owners, but the bureaucrats say it’s up to her to make it ‘safe for habitation’ if she wants to hold the ball there. Given that situation, is there any way you could also help us find workers experienced with making the palazzo’s lower floors watertight—since apparently, there’s some leaking and damage?”
Jack nodded slowly, and she could see him turning over various strategies in his mind.
“As it happens, I met a few people on the trip out to inspect the gates that might actually be able to help. I’ll call them before we leave here.”
“You will? Oh, Jack, that’s wonderful of you! Allegra will be so grateful, and so will I—”
“Sweetheart, it’s you I’m grateful for,” Jack intervened, leaning toward her across the minuscule round marble table that separated them. He raised his hand and gently touched her bottom lip. “So sweet... such a tender, generous lover you are...”
“As you’ve noted, artists need inspiration,” she murmured, “and last night provided plenty of that from you, Giovanni.” As Jack lowered his hand, Serena raised her wrist and showed him her watch. “Time to go. Will you come with me and speak to Allegra about the next steps we should take at the palazzo?”
“Absolutely. Andiamo, cara.”
“Yes, let’s go. Your Italian is getting so much better,” she teased him.
“But before we vamoose, give me ten more minutes to make a couple of calls.”
During the night Serena and Jack had spent at the costume shop, another storm had moved in off the Adriatic, dumping even more snow on the entire city. She gazed at the continuing flurries through the windows at the café, listening with rapt attention while Jack contacted by mobile phone several people he knew through the conference. To her relief, they immediately pledged to help him sort through and find solutions for the problems of the leaking palazzo.
“You are amazing!” she said admiringly when he hung up from talking to a contractor who supplied him with both cost estimates for labor and materials, along with the promise of a work crew that could arrive on site as soon as they received the go-ahead.
“I guess they liked my speech the other night,” he said with a modest shrug. “The costs are only guesstimates, mind you. The guys first must see the actual building, but flooded basements are not a new problem here in Venice, as you can imagine.”
“At least we have some ball park figures to give Allegra, to say nothing of a list of warm bodies who might be able to do the actual remedial work. As for those bureaucrats and inspectors...?”
“I’ll call a few other folks I know after we see Allegra.”
The pair paid for their breakfast and piled on their coats once again. Serena led the way tramping through the slush to the San Tomà stop where they boarded the boat that would take them to Piazza San Marco and Allegra’s central office near her retail stores in the heart of the tourist section of the city.
By the time Serena and Jack walked into the door at Il Ballo’s headquarters, they both were covered in nearly an inch of cold, white powder. One of Allegra’s staff promptly took their coats and another supplied them with more coffee.
“Come, come,” bid Allegra from the top of a circular metal stairway to the floor above where she had a private office and her large, slanted drafting table. “Welcome to Purgatory,” she joked as they entered her lair, gesturing to the piles of sketches and file drawers. “I am delighted to meet you, Jack, and am so grateful for anything you can do to help us with these molti problemi.”
Jack quickly explained that he’d just spoken with several Italian friends of his in the field of construction and hydraulic engineering.
“Maurizio Pigati said he and a few colleagues of his are happy to
offer whatever expertise and supervision they can—gratis—given that Il Ballo di Carnevale has brought thousands of tourists and virtually millions of euros to La Serenissima in the last twenty years.”
“That is so kind of them... and you,” she murmured.
“Of course, there still will be the costs of actually repairing the leaks,” Serena hastened to add, “and at this stage we can only guess what that will be.”
She offered Allegra a sheet of paper filled with calculations that she and Jack had hastily assembled while they were at the café having breakfast.
Allegra gazed from her American ‘shadow’, as she had taken to calling her new assistant, to the handsome, dark-haired fellow sitting opposite her desk and shook her head in amazement.
“I am astonished and grateful beyond words and think your friend, here, Serena, is nothing short of a savior.”
Jack held up a warning hand.
“We can only see if there is some solution available... some temporary measures to get you through February. Please understand that until Maurizio and his group survey the problem, he isn’t even sure he can do much, but at least we will all try our best for the sake of your enterprise, Mrs. Benedetti.”
Allegra leaned forward, both hands on her desk, and said earnestly, “We must do what we can. The cost of the laborers and materials to make the necessary repairs are just part of the price of putting on the ball. I’m sure that the palazzo’s owners will be happy, too, to have the free advice of your experts, so mille grazie, Jack,” she assured him with a warm smile. “And do call me Allegra,” she added.
“And why won’t the owners shoulder some of the costs?” Serena demanded.
Allegra heaved an audible sigh and said, “They know I’ll pay. I’ve been doing it for twenty years, now. They know I have no choice if I want to hold the ball. The owners are always away in winter when the flooding occurs,” she added, shaking her head in a classic Italian gesture of “This is Venice.” Then her expression grew grave once more.
“Something else is worrying you?” Jack asked.