She didn’t bother to ring the downstairs bell, but opened the green door with her key and moved up the stairs to apartment number two, Valentina right behind her.
Her heart was beating fast as she knocked on the door.
CHAPTER SEVEN
NOT a moment after Charli knocked, the door was flung open and she found herself face to face with a tall woman clutching a silver cellphone to her ear. She was barefoot, wearing loose white linen slacks and a sleeveless purple shirt. With her short black hair, huge violet eyes, Antonia Graziani was stunning.
“Entri! Entri!” She moved aside, smiled widely, waved her free hand in invitation and continued talking in rapid Italian into the phone.
For a moment Charli was too shocked to move, then she stepped inside, followed by Valentina.
As she continued her conversation, Antonia Graziani kept on smiling at them as if they were treasured guests. She gestured into the sitting room, motioned them to sit down and turned her back to close the front door.
Valentina leaned her head close to Charli’s. “I love her hair!” she whispered. Charli almost laughed out loud. Leave it to a teenager to think about hair at a time like this.
“Ciao, grazie,” Antonia said into the phone and flipped it shut as she graced the two of them with another wide, welcoming smile. “I’m so happy to see you!” she said, as if she had long expected to find them at the door. “You must be Charli Olson, yes?” She held out her hand. “I’m Antonia Graziani.”
They shook hands and then Valentina introduced herself.
“Si accomodi! Sit down, please!” Antonia indicated a red overnight bag. “I just arrived ten minutes ago and found the note under the door. Let me fetch some drinks from the kitchen. I shall only be a moment.” She swept out of the room, leaving Charli and Valentina looking at each other in stunned silence.
One thing at least was perfectly clear: Antonia spoke English.
“What note?” Valentina whispered. “And how does she know who you are?”
“Massimo told me he left it yesterday.” Charli glanced around the room. It was just the way she had seen it yesterday except for the red overnight bag.
Antonia came back carrying a tray with stemless wineglasses and three tiny green bottles. “You like frizzante, yes? Or do you prefer water?” They said frizzante was just fine. Antonia placed the tray on the coffee table, sat down, and proceeded to unscrew the caps and pour the fizzy white wine into the glasses, her movements smooth and elegant.
Each bottle held a mere small glass of wine, came in a six-pack, and had a screw cap. And that in Italy, a place where wine and food were held sacred. When Charli had first seen the bottles she’d been tempted to write to Richard, he of the wine snobbery. Guess what they have in Italy! Wine in six-packs! Bottles with screw caps!
The wine was cool and delicious in spite of its déclassé packaging, at least to her unsophisticated palate.
“I was so worried!” Antonia said. “I didn’t know where you were. I checked the hotels and you weren’t anywhere. I thought perhaps you had gone back to America and—”
A dizzying waterfall of words flowed over them. Something about her uncle in the hospital, a plane to Moscow, a husband waiting. Charli couldn’t get a word in crosswise and gave up. She drank her wine and tried to piece together a story that became more convoluted by the minute.
Apparently Antonia did not live in Italy, but moved around from place to place with a diplomat husband who was presently in Moscow for reasons unexplained. Her parents lived in Florida, also for reasons unexplained. Antonia was related to the notaio, who’d been somehow related to the husband of Charli’s great-aunt who had been a sweet lady with whom Antonia had stayed sometimes when she had been in the country for a spell of things Italian. Her parents-in-law were terrible people, orribili, and she didn’t want to stay with them because it was bad for her nerves and she came to Italy to relax.
Or something like that.
Charli’s head was spinning, but not from low blood sugar. Even Valentina looked dazed.
Antonia sighed deeply. The last few months had been so exhausting, she went on, gesticulating with her elegant hand, and she’d come to the apartment because, well, she was homeless, really, and she was so tired after much travelling and doing boring things with her diplomat husband and she wanted to be alone for a while to relax and to find some old photographs if they were still somewhere among this clutter and she’d thought the place was empty and she hadn’t known it now belonged to her, Charli, until yesterday. And really, she was so sorry if she’d done something wrong. She stopped to catch her breath. Even Charli found herself without air just from listening to her.
Antonia rushed out to the kitchen to get more wine, came back with a big bottle rather than more small ones and opened it with great expertise while her mouth went on and on and on…
“When I picked up the keys yesterday,” Charli said, squeezing in her words while Antonia took a second to breathe, “the woman didn’t say anything about you being here.”
Antonia rolled her eyes and threw her hands up in an expression of utter disgust. “She was that new woman, yes? The one who is helping out now with my uncle in hospital, and she knows nothing! She hadn’t even asked you where you were staying, where to find you! I could not telephone you! I was so…arrabiata! Furious! I waited. I called the hotels and could not find you and I had to go to Napoli…”
They barely made it back to the villa in time for dinner. Valentina, eyes sparkling with excitement, couldn’t wait to bring Massimo up to date and launched into an animated account of the visit.
“Massimo, she is gorgeous! Like a model! You should have seen her hair! And she lives in Uzbekistan! She’s going back on Friday, but she’s first going to Moscow and…”
Massimo let her talk, calmly eating his parmigiana di melanzane—a lyrical-sounding name for what Charli knew as eggplant parmesan.
Charli watched Massimo, knowing this would be the last meal they would eat together at the villa. Tomorrow morning she would get her bags ready, call a taxi and move into the apartment. She’d told Antonia it was no problem for her to stay until Friday. She’d help her look for the photographs, and Antonia had said she’d initiate her into the mysterious workings of the water heater.
In the candlelight Massimo’s face looked dark and brooding. Or maybe it was just her imagination. He looked up from his plate.
“So no need to hire a lawyer and start eviction procedures?”
Charli didn’t miss the faint mockery in his voice, but pretended not to notice it.
Valentina’s eyes grew large. “Oh, no, she’s not stealing the apartment at all. Actually, you know…”
Charli let Valentina do most of the talking. It was easier that way and Valentina was having fun. Charli didn’t feel much like talking. She was enjoying the food and the wine and trying desperately not to look at Massimo.
It was a lost cause, really. Her gaze wandered off in his direction without her consent, which probably had something to do with the wine she was drinking. And the fact that she’d had a couple of glasses already with Antonia. But this particular wine was very delicious, and it went down so nicely with the delicious food. Massimo looked so good. She loved looking at his chin, and his hands, and the strong column of his neck. He wore a white linen shirt, the collar unbuttoned, and she suddenly felt a bit sad, knowing that from now on she would be having her evening meals without the view of all that male splendor.
She wanted to touch him, and then she remembered what had happened when she had touched him last time. The feeling came rushing back and she had another drink of the wine and she felt so good and then Massimo looked at her and refilled her glass like the gentleman he was.
Later she lay in bed, realizing her capacity for wine had been surpassed. She wondered why Massimo hadn’t taken the chance to further demonstrate his talent for seduction. She fell asleep before her fuzzy mind could formulate an answer.
When dawn came,
Massimo had been up for hours. It had rained in the night, and when he looked out of his office window he saw more clouds hanging heavy in the gray sky.
Charli was packing up her things, Mimma informed him when he strolled into the kitchen for one more caffè. What a shame she was leaving, said Mimma. She expelled a long-suffering sigh and gave him an accusing look. She so enjoyed Charli’s company and really she was quite good in the kitchen, which was surprising, wasn’t it? From what she’d heard women in America didn’t cook anymore. All they did was buy these awful ready-made meals in tins and jars and boxes, and those frozen horrors that were now all over the Italian supermarkets as well. Had he seen those bags of frozen gnocchi? What was the world coming to if a woman couldn’t even make her own gnocchi anymore? It was terrible, didn’t he agree? Pretty soon Italian women were going to give up cooking altogether, but she hoped they’d wait until she was dead.
He escaped the kitchen and made his way to Charli’s room. The door stood open and her back was turned to him as she folded clothes into a suitcase on the bed. She was wearing a short skirt of some flouncy material and below the hem her slim legs were tanned and bare. His gaze lingered on her narrow ankles and small feet, also bare. He liked the delicate shape of her feet and toes, the luscious berry-pink of her nail polish. He surprised himself. Feet had never been of special interest to him.
He tapped his fingers on the door-frame and she turned around.
“Hi,” she said, clutching some silky underwear to her chest.
“Good morning. You’re packing, I see.”
“Yes.” She turned and dropped the bras and panties in her suitcase and looked back at him again. “I thought I might as well get going.” She wiped a curl away from her forehead. “Is Valentina up yet?”
“I haven’t seen her.” He leaned back against the door-frame. “She’ll miss having you around, you know. And so will Mimma. She told me so a few minutes ago, in the kitchen. She gave me the evil eye because somehow she thinks it’s my fault you’re leaving.”
“I was only here because I couldn’t get into my apartment. She knows that.”
A damp breeze blew in through the open window. The rain in the night had washed the dusty world and the temperature had dropped significantly since yesterday.
“You’re welcome to stay here if you want to wait until that woman leaves on Friday.”
“Thank you, but I really want to get over there. Antonia is going to tell me about some of the problems with the place, and show me the foibles of the water heater. And she has suggestions about making some renovations. The kitchen and the bathroom are rather old-fashioned and…anyway, I like her, so I think it might be fun having her around for a day or so.”
“All right, as you wish.” He couldn’t keep her here against her will. Although his earlier fantasy of keeping her locked up in this room still held some wicked appeal. “When you’re ready to go, let me know. I’ll drive you over.”
“Thank you, but that’s not necessary. I called for a taxi.”
He stiffened with irritation. Why did she have to be so damned standoffish? What had he done to deserve this? Last night he’d been a paragon of good behavior. He had not touched her, not kissed her, while knowing full well that he’d have no trouble at all seducing her if he gave it even half a try. It had nearly killed him to be such a saint.
He pushed himself away from the doorjamb. “Good God, woman, what is the matter with you? Why didn’t you just ask me?”
She shrugged. “I didn’t want to disturb you. You’re working. I’m perfectly capable of finding transport. I may not know much, but that I can do.”
He moved closer toward her. “Charli, are you so threatened by a man who wants you in his bed that you have to run away like this?”
She stiffened. “I’m not running away. And we already had this discussion.”
A sudden gust of wind rushed in and slammed the door shut.
“Why not just let it happen? What is more natural than two people wanting each other? I’m not going to hurt you.”
“How do you know?” Her eyes were clouded with doubt.
Well, he didn’t know. What had made him ask that question? What was wrong with him? This woman spelled trouble. She had issues, as the expression went in English. Usually he had no patience for women and their “issues”. They were too much trouble to deal with. His life was complicated enough and if a woman he might initially be interested in showed signs of making it more so, he simply refused to become involved.
“Tell me what worries you.” Some other part of him was in charge—not the rational part that wanted things easy and simple in his life.
She crossed her arms protectively across her chest and tightened her chin. “It’s craziness, Massimo! I’ll be back in the States in a couple of months. Why do you even care? Why don’t you find someone who’s going to hang around longer?”
Well, yes, why not? Only this wasn’t about being logical and practical, was it?
“Is this about rationalizing? Well, I don’t know why. All I know is that…” He hesitated. “When I see you all I want to do is kiss you and hold you and make love to you. The world is full of women and I don’t want any of them. I want you.”
As if in blessing, the rain poured down in a soft rushing whoosh.
She looked down, saying nothing. He noticed her hand trembling.
He lifted her chin. “Charli?” he whispered.
She didn’t move, her gaze meeting his, her eyes huge and jewel-blue, her berry-red lips full and slightly parted. Had she any idea how erotic she looked at this moment?
Desire spread like wildfire through him. She smelled of something sweet and fruity. And then he was tasting her, kissing her soft mouth, sliding his hands around her, under her shirt to feel the warm skin of her back.
She gave a feeble moan of protest, then melted into him almost instantly. He felt the soft warmth of her breasts through the thin fabric of his shirt. The blood pounded through his veins. The feel, the scent, the taste of her intoxicated his senses. He was losing his brain power in a hurry and he didn’t care.
She was all luscious womanly temptation. He wanted her clothes off. He wanted her naked against him. His body throbbed and ached with need.
On the fringes of his consciousness he registered the honking of a car.
Moments later knocking on the door jerked him back to sanity. Charli pushed herself away from him as Valentina’s voice called out to say the taxi had arrived.
More pounding. “Charli! Are you in there?”
He watched as Charli took a deep, tremulous breath and moved to the door and opened it. “I’m almost ready, Valentina,” she said. “Would you mind getting my book for me? I think I left it on the coffee table in the living room.”
He had to give her credit for thinking fast. Valentina in the room with them right now would not be a good thing. He closed his eyes for a moment and tried to collect a semblance of control.
Without looking at him, Charli moved over to the bed and closed her two suitcases.
“I’ll carry them down for you,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said politely, still not looking at him.
Ten minutes later she climbed into the taxi after a flurry of hugs, kisses and goodbyes to the three of them. He watched the car disappear around the first bend of the serpentine road, still feeling the polite peck she’d offered him with her thanks.
He rubbed his chest and let out a weary breath. It was better this way, he thought. In his relationships with women he wanted things simple. And with Charli…well, it wouldn’t be simple.
His chest felt tight. It felt as if something inside him was trying to break loose, some live thing shackled and trapped and frightened. Impatient with himself, he turned on his heel and strode inside.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHARLI was sitting on her balcony working on her laptop, sipping frizzante. She’d been in her apartment for almost a week now. Antonia had left and she was enjoying
her solitude. She glanced over at the Duomo, waiting for the bells to start ringing out the hour of four. But it wasn’t the Duomo bells that rang first, but her phone, and to her surprise it was Bree.
“Good news and bad news,” Bree said. “My computer crashed.”
“And that wouldn’t be the good news.”
Bree sighed heavily. “No.”
The good news was that she’d found the perfect person to rent Charli’s apartment. Her cousin Mindy from Minnesota. Apparently the poor girl was going through a nasty break-up with her man and was depressed. She was also in the process of writing her doctoral dissertation and desperately needed a haven away from her own environment to finish the project.
“You are still wanting to rent it out, right?” Bree asked.
“Yes, sure, after I leave in a couple of months and the kitchen and bathroom are fixed up.”
“Good. I think Italy might be good for her,” Bree said. “Maybe she can find herself a romantic Italian lover to cheer her up.”
A blue Vespa came roaring into the courtyard, stopped. A man in a suit and tie jumped off, whipped the helmet off his curly dark head and strode through one of the decrepit-looking doors.
“By the way, did you get the pictures before your computer crashed?” Charli asked. She’d e-mailed Bree photos of the apartment taken with her digital camera.
“Yes, I did. Clearly a very cute place, but the kitchen needs work. But what I really wanted was a picture of your Latin lover. Men are so much more interesting than kitchens, or cacti, although I must say those cacti are impressive. Very primordial-looking.”
“He’s not my Latin lover, and he would not take kindly to my taking a picture of him to show off to my friends.”
Bree groaned. “I don’t believe you,” she said, “saying no to this man.”
Charli sighed, trying not to think of Massimo kissing her. “Sometimes I don’t believe myself, either.”
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