by Susan Meier
So she asked about Constanzo and let Antonio relax as he talked about his dad, about the success of his first showing and his rapid rise in the world of art. But he still sighed heavily and tossed that morning’s canvas out the back door as if it were trash.
She wondered if sweet, wonderful Gisella had ever seen his little fits of temper, and had to hold back a gasp. They’d never spoken about his wife! They’d never even brushed against the real reason he didn’t paint. And she suddenly saw the mistake in that. By ignoring that they were, in effect, trying to put a bandage on an open wound. She’d brought him this far by being someone he wanted to paint, but what if that was only half the battle? What if he needed to talk out some of his pain? What if he needed to face the sadness inside him before he could actually use his talent to the fullest?
As he set another canvas on the easel, she swallowed. Sucked in a breath. Prayed for strength. And finally said, “So is this what happened when you stopped painting?”
He peered over. “Excuse me?”
“Did you try canvas after canvas and toss them aside?”
He bristled. “Yes.”
“So tell me about it.”
“No.”
She sighed. “Look, I get it that you can’t paint because you lost the love of your life. I just lost a boyfriend who didn’t really like me and it hurt like hell. But you lost the love of your life. You need to address that.”
His expression shifted from angry to confused. Twice, he opened his mouth to say something. Twice, he stopped himself.
“What?”
He licked his lips and turned away. “Nothing.”
Purpose rattled through her again. She needed to get him to admit he’d quit painting because without his wife his art had no meaning. He needed to say the words. Needed those words to come out into the open so he could face them. “It’s not nothing. It’s something. Tell me.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Look, this...me posing for you...is all about you getting your mojo back. So we’ve hit an impasse.” She glanced down at her black dress and heels, then smiled up at him. “I helped you through the last one by recreating the look that inspired you. Now I’m sensing that it’s your wife—your love for your wife—that’s holding you back. I don’t think I’m wrong. You need to talk about it.”
He tossed his pencil to the metal desk, massaged his forehead, then laughed slightly. “No.”
A minute went by in complete silence, but eventually he picked up a pencil and began drawing a light outline on the canvas.
Desperation filled her, but so did a realization. In falling for him so quickly, she’d forgotten his real pain. Maybe the first move was actually hers. “I don’t think I ever told you I was sorry.”
He peeked away from his work, across the room at her. “For what?”
“That you lost your wife.” She paused a second. Though forcing him to talk about his wife was the right thing to do, it hurt. Gisella was the reason he would never love her. And she gave herself a space of time to acknowledge that pain before she said, “She was beautiful.”
He turned his attention back to the canvas. “Yes. She was.”
Laura Beth swallowed hard. “And special.”
He said nothing.
“Please. I think you need to talk about her.”
“No.”
“My gram told me one of the hardest things about losing my pap was that after a few weeks people stopped talking about him. She longed to remember him, to keep his memory alive, and people seemed to forget him.”
“Laura Beth, please. That’s enough.”
“I just want you to know that you can talk about her with me.”
He stepped away from the canvas, his spine stiff, his eyes narrow. Irritation vibrated from him across the room to her. “Dear God! Will you just let it drop?”
She snapped her mouth shut. She knew he might not be eager to talk about Gisella, but she hadn’t expected him to get angry. “I’m sorry. I just desperately want this for you. I want you to be able to paint again.”
* * *
Antonio’s fingers tightened on his pencil. He realized she was trying to help him relax by what she considered to be a logical method, but she had no way of knowing her comments about his wife were actually doing more harm than good.
Still, it wasn’t her fault. No one knew the real story, his real pain, and though he would die before he would admit his failings, he could at least let Laura Beth know she wasn’t at fault.
“Look, my wife wasn’t exactly what everyone thought.”
“Okay.”
Again a soft word filled with regret. He shifted a bit, putting himself solidly behind the canvas. He hated the self-loathing in her voice. Hated that he was responsible for it. He might not be able to tell her the whole story, but he could tiptoe around enough facts that she’d stop feeling bad.
“I’m not angry with you. I’ve simply never spoken about my wife with anyone.”
“I still think you should.”
He sniffed a laugh. “Honestly, carissima, I don’t know what I’d say.”
“Why don’t you just tell me the truth?”
The truth would probably scandalize her. But he suddenly noticed that his pencil was moving with easy efficiency. The image he captured was perfect. His vision. Exactly what he wanted.
He didn’t know if it was the pose or the distraction of talking or even the power of the topic, but he was working...effortlessly. And he couldn’t break the spell, ruin the moment or lose the opportunity.
“I wish I could tell you the truth.” As the words spilled out and the picture before him began to take shape, something inside his chest loosened. A weird kind of excitement nudged his heart, and he wondered if she was right. Did he need to talk about his wife to let his anger with her go?
His pencil paused. He glanced over at Laura Beth. He might need to talk, but was Laura Beth—was anyone—ready to hear what he had to say? “The story of my marriage is not a happy one.”
She frowned and the look he’d been trying to capture flitted over her features, filled her eyes. A longing so intense it shifted every muscle in her face, darkened her eyes.
His pencil began to move again, feverishly, desperate to get that expression.
“You weren’t happy?”
“Is anybody ever really happy?”
“Don’t talk in abstracts when you know the truth. Olivia and Tucker are happy. Content. Eloise and Ricky are happy. You know happy. You know what it looks like. So you know if you were happy or not.”
Absorbed in his work, more grateful that he was succeeding than antsy about the conversation, he said, “Then we were not.”
“Then I’m sorry.” She waited a beat before she said, “Want to tell me what happened?”
As his pencil captured the fine details that made Laura Beth who she was, he weighed his options. Sunlight pouring in from the wall of windows gave the quiet room the feel of a sacred space. A time and place he could be honest. Having been left by the father of her child, if anyone could understand his situation, it would be Laura Beth.
And if telling her the truth was what he needed to do to rid himself of the demons that tormented him, then so be it.
He cut right to the chase, didn’t mince words, but was as honest, as open, as she’d asked him to be. “My wife ran around on me and aborted my child.”
The words that sounded so simple, so reasonable, in his head leveled him. His wife had gotten rid of his baby. Made a mockery of his naive love for her. Made him a fool. And now the words were out in the open, hanging on the air.
Behind the canvas, he squeezed his eyes shut, ran his angry fingers along his forehead. What was he doing?
He heard a soft swish, then saw Laura Beth’s l
ong legs approaching before she appeared at his side.
“I am so sorry.”
A piece of her dark hair had fallen loose from its pins and framed her face. Her green eyes filled with sadness.
“I shouldn’t have told you.”
“What? That your marriage was a mess?”
“That my marriage was a lie. And I was a fool.”
She stepped closer, examining his face. “All this time, I thought you were mourning her.” She shook her head as if confused. “Everybody thought you’d been so sad these past years because you mourned her.”
“Not her, my child. To the world she was an icon. But I lived the truth. She was a narcissist, who did everything she did not out of love or compassion but to make herself look important.” He caught Laura Beth’s gaze. “For two years I’ve been trapped. I couldn’t tell the world who or what she was and yet I couldn’t live the lie.”
Her face softened. “Oh, Antonio.”
Turning away from her, he grabbed a cloth and wiped his hands.
“You should talk about this with Olivia. She knows all about being forced to live a lie.”
He shook his head. “I don’t really want anyone to know.”
“I know.”
He sniffed a laugh.
“So maybe, since you started opening up, you should keep going.” She paused, waited for him to look at her. “Get it off your shoulders.”
Her honest eyes beckoned. The feeling of something loosening in his chest shuddered through him again and he knew she was right. He’d started the story. He needed to finish it.
“A year after we were married, she scheduled a trip for her charity. I’d lost her itinerary, so I went into her computer to find it and what I found was an identical itinerary for a man. She had an explanation, of course, so I felt foolish for accusing her.”
He walked away from the easel. “Dear God, she held that first accusation over my head every time I questioned something she said or did. She’d remind me of how bad I felt over that mistake and I’d back off. For months, I believed lie after lie. Then she began to get careless. Her lies weren’t as tight. Newspaper pictures of her with one man became commonplace. I saw the smiles that passed between them. I saw the intimacy. Until eventually I got so angry I went through the documents in her computer in earnest and that’s when I found the abortion.”
Laura Beth squeezed her eyes shut. “I’m so sorry, Antonio.”
“She denied it. But I told her I had seen the appointment on her calendar, the check that paid the clinic. She told me that her life was her charity and she didn’t want any time taken away from that for any reason. She said she wasn’t cut out to be a mom. I exploded and told her I wanted to be a dad and she laughed. That’s when I knew our marriage was over.” He tossed a rag to the table. “I don’t believe she ever loved anyone as much as she loved herself. The fact that she didn’t even give me an option with our child proved she never thought beyond herself.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“You needn’t be. She taught me some valuable lessons. People change. Love doesn’t last.” He sniffed a laugh. “Trust no one.”
The room grew quiet. Antonio heard the click of her heels again. When he turned she was right behind him.
“She didn’t deserve you.”
He sniffed a laugh.
“I’m serious.”
“I have my faults.”
“Oh, don’t I know it. But I still think you’re special.” She caught his gaze. “Wonderful.”
The magnetic pull of her innocent green eyes drew him to her. An inch. Then two. Then his hands were close enough that he could lay them on her warm shoulders. His mouth was close enough that he could touch his lips to hers.
As if thought gave birth to action, he closed the distance between them and brushed his lips across hers. Laura Beth edged closer too. Her lips were warm and sweet. The way she kissed him, answering the moves of his mouth slowly, hesitantly, then completely, spoke of submission. Honesty. A change in the way she felt about him, the way she related to him. She was taking the step that would shift them from friends to so much more.
He slid his tongue along the seam of her lips and when she opened to him he deepened the kiss.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LAURA BETH SURRENDERED to the urgent prodding of Antonio’s mouth. Desperate, shivering with need, she pressed into him as he pulled her closer.
He didn’t mourn his wife.
He did want her.
She could be the love of his life.
Except he didn’t trust.
The cell phone in his pocket began to chime out a happy beat. Antonio pulled away. Their gazes caught and held.
The phone rang again.
Antonio quietly said, “That ringtone is Bernice, my father’s assistant. She never calls unless it’s an emergency.”
Laura Beth whispered, “You should take it.”
As if in a trance, he nodded, retrieved the phone from his pocket and clicked the button to answer it. “Bernice? What’s up?”
Because he’d put his phone on speaker, the voice of Constanzo’s assistant erupted in the room. “Oh, Antonio! It’s awful! Just awful!”
Laura Beth walked a few feet away. Her head spun—the truth about his life, his marriage, had shaken her to the core. It gave her a crazy kind of hope, even as it dashed her hopes. How could she expect to build a life with a man who couldn’t trust?
Antonio said, “Hey. Calm down. Whatever my dad did, we can fix it.”
“This isn’t about a mistake.” A sob escaped. “The ambulance just left. Your dad is on his way to the hospital. They think he had a heart attack.”
Antonio stumbled to the chaise and collapsed on it. “A heart attack?”
Laura Beth gasped. “Oh, my God.” All her other thoughts and troubles flitted away in a surge of worry about Constanzo.
“Yes! Hurry! Get to the hospital!”
He disconnected the call as Laura Beth walked to the door. “You give me directions and I’ll drive.”
Antonio raced out of the studio toward the house for keys. “I’ll drive.”
She didn’t follow him, but ran to the garage. In less than a minute, Antonio joined her with his car keys. He jumped into the Lamborghini and Laura Beth climbed in too.
As he sped along the winding roads of the hills between his country house and Bogodehra, she wasn’t sure it was wise for him to drive. But she was as desperate to get to the hospital as he was, and simply held onto the dashboard for support as they raced to the city.
When they finally arrived at the stucco building with loops of arches and fancy pillars, they jumped out and dashed inside.
Laura Beth’s gaze winged from side to side as she took in the surroundings that were both familiar and unfamiliar. Department names were in Italian, but most of the words were close enough to English that she could translate. Still, the chatter of doctors, nurses, patients and patients’ families in the area best described by an American as the emergency room was in Italian. Even Antonio spoke Italian when he reached a nurse’s station.
Using the universal language of pointing, the nurse obviously told him to have a seat.
He sighed and faced Laura Beth. “We can’t see him.”
She caught his arm frantically. “We can’t?”
He squeezed his eyes shut and Laura Beth realized she wasn’t helping by panicking.
“They haven’t yet gotten the word that he’s stable.”
Her heart dipped. Fear crept into her limbs and froze them. It was impossible for her to picture an event for one of Tucker and Olivia’s kids without big, boisterous Constanzo Bartulocci, the man everyone thought of like a favorite uncle.
If she was this upset about Constanzo, she couldn’t im
agine Antonio’s fright. Constanzo was his father. If her father was the one in this hospital right now, she’d be a basket case.
She tugged lightly on his arm and got him to a plastic seat. As if in a daze, he lowered himself to the chair. She sat beside him, but took his hand, keeping the connection, so he’d know he wasn’t alone.
“My father and I haven’t really spoken since we got back from Barcelona. When I did stop by, he said he was sorry for stranding us, but didn’t want to talk about anything else. I never went over after that.”
She smiled weakly, acknowledging that. “We’ve been busy.”
He put his head back and rubbed his hand across his mouth. “I should have gone to see him again. I should have forced him to talk about that fight, or at least let him know I wasn’t angry.” He sighed. “Why are we always squabbling?”
She squeezed his hand and again her sense of purpose, of destiny, with Antonio filled her. All she had to do was listen to the easy way he confided in her, talked about such personal things, to know that he trusted her. He might not realize it, but she did.
“It’s how you show love.”
He sniffed a laugh. “Right. Either that or he hates me.”
That admission further bolstered her belief that there was more between them than friendship, more between them than a few kisses. And she knew she was the person to help him through this crisis.
“He doesn’t hate you. If he did, he wouldn’t meddle.”
Antonio shut his eyes. “He always meddles.”
“Yeah, but I think his intentions are good. I’m sure Tucker and Olivia were glad he forced them to come to Italy together to find you.”
He sniffed a laugh. “Such a matchmaker and a do-gooder.”
“Lots of people would be glad their dad looks for ways to help other people.”
“I am. Most days I’m proud of him.” He sighed and closed his eyes. “I wish I’d told him that.”
She tightened her hold on his hand. “I’m sure he knows.”
“By my yelling at him?”
“By the fact that you’re honest with each other.” She thought of her parents back in Kentucky. “I wish I could be so open with my parents.”