“Faith, he’s just doing his job.”
She didn’t say anything until they reached the corner. She sighed. “Yes, I know. I suppose I can’t blame—”
“Faith!” A comic figure jumped out from one of the meeting rooms. He rushed to Faith and bent to take her hand. “Mahvelous talk you gave today, my dear, simply mahh-velous.”
Who the hell spoke like that? Like some idiot in a bad film.
He bared huge yellow teeth. “We’ll be discussing it for months back at Manchester. I loved the way you brought in non-linear probability for S-shaped growth. And the implications you drew for hysteresis—magnificent!”
While he babbled, Nick studied him.
He was tall and gangly with shoulders no wider than his hips. Wispy red hair on top of a narrow face with pale, powdery skin. A sparse red beard grew down to the first purple button on his amazingly ugly print shirt.
There were bits of lunch in the beard. Nick could recognize pieces of what looked like fettuccine and almost an entire cherry tomato. Nick’s eyes traveled down the unkempt body to the man’s amazingly long feet in white socks and sandals.
It was illegal to dress like that in Italy. They threw you out of the country if you went around looking like that.
The guy was jabbering, again something about tipping—what was it with these people?—and still holding Faith’s hand. Nick noticed Faith wasn’t pulling her hand back either. No, she kept it engulfed in the guy’s huge hand with the cracked fingernails and she was smiling at him.
Smiling! And talking. Math talk Nick couldn’t follow.
And this creep wasn’t letting go of her hand.
Fuck this.
He coughed and nudged Faith’s elbow, hard enough to shake the nerd’s grasp. The geek turned and stared at him, blinking. “I say.”
“You say what?” Nick asked softly, moving right up into his face, almost stepping on the hole in the guy’s sock.
The geek was several inches taller, but Nick had at least seventy pounds of pure muscle on him. The man’s sparse ginger eyebrows drew together. Puzzled, the geek turned to Faith. “Faith?”
Faith sighed. “It’s okay, Richard. He’s a—”
Nick moved even closer. “Friend. He’s Faith’s friend. Close friend, if you get my drift. You might want to remember that.”
He heard Faith draw in an outraged breath. “Nick Rossi! You apologize right now!”
“Apologize?” Nick bared his own teeth in a smile. “Sure,” he said. “Why not? I’m sorry she’s my friend because she’s been giving me nothing but grief lately, but she is my friend and there you are.” He grabbed Faith’s hand and limped away as quickly as possible.
Faith tried to tug her hand away, but one thing Nick had going for him was strength. He might not have smarts, he might not have a sophisticated mind, he might not even have a job, but he had strength and, by God, she wasn’t going to pull away from him. He made sure he wasn’t hurting her, but he also made sure she couldn’t pull away.
Grimly, he headed for the exit, limping up the ramp. He nodded his head at Egidio, the gatekeeper, who walked out from behind his desk to stand in the doorway, unabashedly watching the proceedings.
Luckily, Dante had insisted they take separate cars. They’d made quite a little procession going up the hill, first Dante in his fancy Polizia di Stato Lancia, then himself in Nonno’s ancient Dedra.
Now he held Faith’s hand tightly and practically dragged her to the Dedra.
Faith jerked her hand so hard he had to let go or she’d hurt herself. She leaned against the front fender.
Her chest wasn’t as generous as that of Sara Pellegrini’s, but Nick remembered it very fondly. Her breasts had been small and round and milk-white. And had tasted like a small cone of vanilla ice cream. He closed his eyes, slightly dizzy.
It was either the secondary effects of the concussion or his memories of the night with Faith.
It didn’t matter. Both were dangerous.
“Okay,” Faith said to Nick, crossing her arms over her chest. They were just outside the Certosa gates, in the corner formed by the stucco façade and the fieldstone wall of the Romanesque chapel.
She was uncomfortable. The gravel of the walkway leading to the high arched brick entrance was hurting her feet. She lifted a hand to shade her eyes against the bright gold of the early afternoon sun. She’d left her sunglasses inside with her briefcase, and remembering that she’d been rudely pulled away from her briefcase—and her life—made her angry.
She turned to Nick. “Right now you’re going to give me a very good reason why you just chased off the head of the math department of Manchester University, who happens to be a top man in our field and the editor of Quantimath. A leading publication, by the way, which now has an article of mine on system dynamics under consideration. My career is happening here, Nick. Right here. Right now. Just because you don’t have one any more doesn’t mean I don’t get a shot at mine.”
Faith saw Nick wince and regretted her crack about careers. For a second or two. But damn it, Nick had had his career. He’d already had his chance to show what he could do in his field—to shine. And he was a multi-millionaire to boot. He’d done it while the time was right for him.
Mathematicians were like athletes, they did their best work young. This was her time. She’d done some very good work, but it had all somehow remained unnoticed.
She was just now beginning to suspect that the reason was Roland Kane. But Roland Kane was dead. There was nothing to stop her now. Unless you counted a very angry and very large former hockey player.
A muscle was working angrily in Nick’s jaw. It was extremely unfortunate it only added to Nick’s attraction. There didn’t seem to be very many things that detracted from it. Even exhausted and bristly and clueless, he had been overwhelmingly sexy last night.
Don’t think about last night.
Too late. An image flashed in her mind. Nick, on top of her, in her. A blue-black lock of hair falling over his forehead, tapping against it as he surged inside her…
Oh God. A flash of heat surged through her body, hotter than the heat of the day. There wasn’t any shade, any air conditioning, that could stop the intense heat of the memory of Nick in bed with her.
She had to stop herself from swaying toward him. Touching him, feeling all that electricity crackling just under his skin. He made her feel alive everywhere he touched her.
“What was I doing?” he answered angrily. “What do you think I was doing? I see some wirehead with hygiene problems getting in your face and talking about becoming hysterical, what do you think I’m going to do? Wait until he goes postal?”
Faith was startled. Nick’s thought processes were sometimes so hard to follow. Richard Allen hysterical was ridicu—ahhh. Her brow smoothed out.
“Richard wasn’t talking about being hysterical, Nick. He was talking about hysteresis. It’s the history dependence of physical and virtual systems, and he’s done some interesting work on the epsilon expansion—”
Nick’s jaw muscles clenched tightly, like runners under the skin. “Never mind,” she said with a smile.
“That’s right, go ahead and make fun of me because I’m just a dumb jock,” he said heatedly. “But I’m not dumb.” His head stuck out aggressively, big chin tilted up. He looked like an attractive bulldog. “Just because I haven’t heard of hysteric…hystero—”
“Hysteresis,” Faith murmured.
“Whatever,” he shot back. “Whoever heard of that anyway? It’s a ridiculous word. Stupid word. I’m not dumb for not knowing what it is.”
“No one called you stupid, Nick.” It was true. She had never made the mistake of thinking him dumb, even in his stupidest jock mode. Nick’s family made fun of him, but Nick was far from being stupid. It was, alas, another of his fatal charms—a completely non-theoretical, totally reality-based, street-wise intelligence.
“Listen up, Faith, because I’m only going to say this once. They’re ru
nning a trial heat of the Palio at six and you’re coming with me. You’re getting in my car and staying in the car with me. You’re going to walk the streets of Siena with me until we get to Piazza del Campo and then you’re going to stay there—with me—until the end of the horse race and then we’re going to grab a bite to eat. Together. Then I will drive you back up to the Certosa. And I’m spending the night with you again. You’re not leaving my sight.”
He said all of that pugnaciously, shifting his considerable bulk from foot to foot in full rhino mode, with exactly the same expression as when he shot a puck past five adversaries on the ice straight into the net at thirty-five miles an hour.
He looked as if he were willing to carry her off if she said no.
Well, now, let’s see. After the most satisfying day of her life, in the most beautiful place she’d ever been in, did she want to go down to the most gorgeous square on earth to watch a trial heat of the most famous horse race in the world with the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen?
And then have wild monkey sex?
Yes.
“Okay,” she said.
Nick was standing stiffly on the balls of his feet, fists bunched, a ferocious scowl on his face. “What?” His scowl deepened. “What did you say?”
“I said okay. You want to go down to the central square, that’s fine. The rest of the conference team is going down anyway, so I can hook up with them later. All the afternoon meetings are over.” She squinted up into Nick’s frowning face, directly against the bright afternoon sunlight. The light hurt her eyes. “But first, I need to go pick up my sunglasses. I left them in my briefcase in the meeting room.”
The scowl lightened. “Okay.” The martial stance eased a little, and his weight rocked back on his heels. “Okay, let’s go get your sunglasses.”
“You can wait here—” Faith began, then took another look at his face. “Never mind. Come on. I need to gather my things anyway.”
It was 5:30 and the conference was over for the day. There were a few participants Faith recognized lazing around in the shade of the portico, speaking quietly. Two men sitting on the low retaining wall saw her, smiled and got up. Faith felt Nick stiffen. The two looked at her, at him, then sat down again.
She sighed.
The Sala Delle Volte where she’d presided over the workshop was empty. Her footsteps echoed on the ancient terracotta tiles.
Faith drew in a deep breath as she walked down the aisle created by the rows of blue, upholstered chairs. There was a faint and familiar tang of unwashed mathematician, with an overlay of Armani for Men cologne. Doubtless Leonardo Gori. Or maybe the French guy.
At the far end was a fresco of The Last Supper, but instead of the usual lugubrious depiction, it looked like the painting of twelve men having a good time, eating and drinking. One of them looked a little pained, as if he had a touch of gas. He certainly didn’t look guilt-ridden or tragic, definitely the happiest Judas she’d even seen. The long walls were covered in frescoes too, still-bright scenes of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, frolicking in what looked suspiciously like the formal gardens of the Certosa.
She loved this room. This was the room in which her life turned around. Like many mathematicians, Faith harbored doubts about the reality—the corporeality—of the real world. The theory that there were a billion parallel worlds in which a billion parallel Faiths were having a billion different lives made a lot of sense to her.
Well, in this room, she had slipped into an alternate universe. A better one, one more suited to her talents, where she would be happier and more fulfilled.
Faith picked up her sunglasses and saw her briefcase sitting against the wall. She would just nip up to her room and leave it there. Maybe while she was up in her room, she would take the time to splash on some cologne, run a comb through her hair, change outfits…
It was going to be a fun evening. The first of many, many more to come, she was sure. Her real life was beginning. She was in the right universe.
She was smiling as she pulled her briefcase up on the table that had served as a podium. She laid it flat, snapped open the locks and froze.
Nick had been looking around the room, puzzling over the frescoes, but he suddenly zeroed in on her face.
“Faith?” he said.
She tried to swallow, tried to get the words out.
“Hey.” Nick walked up to her. “You’re white, honey. What happened? Is the heat—”
Then his eyes fell on her open briefcase and he swore, suddenly and viciously. He snatched the sheet of white paper lying neatly on top of her documents, flash drives and copies of papers.
Don’t touch it, Faith wanted to say, but nothing would come out of her mouth.
It was too late to worry about fingerprints anyway, since Nick was poring over the words, reading them over and over again. He cupped her elbow with one hand, and put the other hand, the one holding the sheet of paper, behind his back. Probably thinking to shield her from its contents.
But she knew. She had a good memory and there weren’t many words, anyway. A simple message, laser printed in capital letters.
GET OUT OF HERE, FAITH. REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED TO ROLAND.
Chapter Fifteen
When things just can’t get any worse, they will.
Magnificent evening Dante thought. The day before the Palio and Lina looked in great shape, darkly glossy, high-spirited and elegant, muscles quivering with anticipation. Nerbo, wearing the bright yellow-and-red silks of the Snails, was controlling her easily with his knees, careful of her delicate mouth.
Knees and hands were all the jockeys ever had since they rode bareback during the trial heats and the Palio. But hands and knees were all the Palio jockeys ever needed.
The other jockeys steered clear of Lina, and of Nerbo. High up on the mare’s withers, he looked tough and mean and invincible.
Briciola, the Turtles’ jockey, was visibly drunk, holding the reins stiffly, giving the horse mixed signals. The only thing better than winning was seeing the Turtles lose. Both things were going to happen this Palio. Dante could see it. Feel it. All was right with the world.
It was going to happen. Dante could feel it in his bones. Seventeen long, long years in the wilderness of defeat, his beloved Snails plunged into darkness and mourning after each Palio loss. The sniggering comments, the mournful faces, all would be wiped out in the minute and a half it would take Lina and Nerbo to careen around the piazza and take home the silk banner. Seventy-five seconds of glory.
He felt a sharp nudge and turned to see the weather-beaten face of Gigi Pucci, the oldest Snail butcher. Gigi had lost his wife last year. They had been childless, so he had made the Snail the beneficiary of his one hundred-thousand euro life insurance policy. “Looking good, eh, Dante?”
“Looking good.” Dante smiled and slapped him on his burly shoulder. It was finally looking good. After all these years.
Dante closed his eyes, tuning out the late afternoon sun turning the wall of buildings that impossibly beautiful shade of gold which stunned foreigners. Tuning out the raucously blasphemous comments of the men around him and the high-pitched, excited comments of the women. Tuning out everything but what was in his heart.
Looking good.
After seventeen years of bad luck and bad horses and bad judgment, enduring countless sly comments from the other contradas, finally, finally the Snail was turning the corner.
Dante had been fourteen the last time the Snail had won the Palio. But he could remember every moment, every second.
The excellent start out of the ropes, the heart-wrenching surge around the piazza, the celebratory firing of the gun signaling victory. The roar that had gone up from the Snail contingent, the silk banner being handed down reverently into the hands of the members of the Snail contrada, the jockey hoisted on the strong shoulders of the young Snail men, the celebratory Te Deum Mass at the cathedral.
The rest of Siena with doused lights, drapes drawn, shutters closed. In mo
urning.
Every single Snail was drunk until dawn, most on the wine which flowed from the contrada fountain instead of water, but only when the Snail won. The next morning a parade of hung-over Snails leading the winning horse, with gilded hooves, and mane and tail braided, in a celebratory parade around the city, drums rolling, flags waving.
The September victory dinner. Five thousand people eating and laughing and drinking in the streets of the Snail, celebrating the Palio. Later, the victory dinner celebrating the pole of the Palio banner. Another victory dinner celebrating the cup of the pole of the Palio.
It had been much too long since the last victory.
The square was almost as crowded as the day of the race itself, excitement vibrating in the air. With a roar from the crowd, the horses emerged from the Palazzo Pubblico, city hall, stepping lightly, almost mincing, jockeys easily riding bareback.
Prime horseflesh, delicate yet tough, responsive to the thousands of eyes, the almost palpable excitement of the crowd. One by one they emerged into the sunlight from the covered courtyard, in an order established eight hundred years before. When the Turtles’ jockey moved into the sunlight, the crowd around Dante—Snails all—erupted in boos. Briciola’s hard, bony face scowled and he slumped in the saddle.
The Tower, the Panther, and—
There they were! Nerbo and Lina! The cheers and whistles around Dante almost deafened him, though he himself was cheering and whistling as hard as any of them.
Now the horses were lining up between the two ropes, the hardest part of the Palio. The horses quivering, ears pricked, were as excited as the crowd.
Training the horses to line up calmly while remaining ready to take off at the drop of the rope was tantamount to keeping a candle lit while setting off a nuclear reactor.
It didn’t matter who won the trial heat, but a good take off, a good run, rounding the dangerous curves safely were important—the eyes of the crowd would be on the jockey and horse to see how they fared.
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