Runaway Love

by Nicole W. Lee

  “Of course not.” He settled his plate on the table opposite Genie and sat down. “I'm glad to find a use for them.”

  “You...don't use pyjamas?”

  “No. I find them uncomfortable.”

  “Really?” She didn't intend to sound so excited by this new knowledge about what Lorenzo might, or might not, wear in bed.

  He seemed not to notice and nodded at her food. “Eat. Get your strength back.”

  Genie obeyed, lowering her head to study her meal, hoping the images filling her mind of Lorenzo's bed time, sans pyjamas, didn't show in her face.

  However, once she had focused on her plate of roast pork, her usual single potato and a side plate of salad, she didn't need any second bidding. Her stomach gurgled enthusiastically.

  “This is great, Lorenzo. Thank you.”

  “Niente.”

  After she had applied some emergency first aid to her stomach, Genie felt ready to explore a little. “Lorenzo,” she said, “I must have been a mess when you brought me back.”

  “Si. All your clothes were soaking wet and you had hypothermia.” His face failed to retain a neutral expression. Instead his mouth showed traces of turning up at the corners, and his eyes sparkled.

  Genie surmised his memory must be at work. “I'm sorry to have caused you so much trouble.”

  “It was nothing.” His grin broke out. “Only a little trouble to lift you out of the bath--”

  “Bath?” Genie almost dropped her fork.

  “You were slippery from the water.”

  “You gave me a bath?”

  He nodded. “To make your body warm.”

  Genie started to burn up with an odd mixture of embarrassment and excitement. She tried to joke her way out of it. “I didn't think we knew each other that well, Lorenzo.”

  “I think we do now.”

  “You gave me a bath.” Genie repeated, slowly lowering her fork.

  “It worked.” Lorenzo shifted his gaze to his meal and began to slice off a piece of meat. “It made your body very warm.” He looked up briefly. “Mine too.”

  Genie examined Lorenzo's hand as he forked a small cut of pork into his mouth. It had touched her naked body. Her skin rippled in response to the image. His eyes, they'd seen...everything. “And you dried me off afterwards?”

  Of course he had, stupid.

  He swallowed the food he had been chewing. “I think the English expression is, every nook and--”

  “I get the picture.”

  “...cranny,” Lorenzo completed. “That is the correct saying, isn't it?”

  “You know full well it is, Lorenzo Calderone.”

  He remoulded his expression back to somewhere close to normal. “It was nothing really,” he said, returning his attention to his meal.

  Genie bristled at his matter-of-fact response. Is that all my naked body meant to him - nothing? All that drying every nook and...was nothing, was it?

  “You need not worry,” Lorenzo said, without looking up, “You had a chaperone to watch over you in the bath.”

  Genie frowned in confusion. “Chaperone? Who, in heaven's name?”

  He glanced up at her, smiled and then nodded down towards her feet.

  “Domino?” Genie leaned back and looked under the table. The St. Bernard was curled up fast asleep, totally oblivious to the fact that he was the subject of conversation. “So, he's seen me starkers as well.”

  “Starkers?”

  “In my altogether. You know, without clothes.”

  “Oh nudo – eme- naked. Yes. He saw you - but he promised not to tell a soul.”

  “I hope you've made the same promise.”

  “Well, no.” He adopted a serious face. “I hoped, because of all the trouble--”

  “Hope again,” Genie narrowed her eyes. “You tell anyone and...and--”

  “And?”

  “And...I'll refuse to ever milk Gloria again - ever.”

  “You said 'ever' twice.”

  “I know. It was to make a point.”

  “Poor Gloria.”

  For the balance of the evening, Genie's mind was filled with images of bath time with Lorenzo. The new revelations were beginning to mark a deepening change in their relationship - increasingly more intimate.

  During their subsequent conversations, Genie found herself trying to read the sub-text. Words, alone, were not enough. She felt impelled to wrestle with the myriad of potential meanings lurking beneath.

  What was clear, they could never view each other in the same light they did before the snow drift - no, before the bath.

  Genie's recovery from her ordeal was slower than she expected. She thought she would be up and around the day after she woke up. While she did manage to get 'up and around', her energy resources were so low that she was forced to rest frequently in front of the fire, nursing her impatience, with an attendant Domino.

  It was all the more frustrating because she was bubbling with a new, stimulating perception of life. Everything seemed brighter, even exciting. She didn't fully understand it. Nevertheless, she wallowed in it, determined to enjoy this new brighter world as long as it lasted.

  “Now, if I can get the rest of my body to catch up,” she told Lorenzo. “I'll be able to leap over an avalanche in a single bound.”

  Her enforced inactivity did, however, give her time to reflect on her near-death experience. She'd heard that when you're about to die, your whole life passes before your eyes. Genie spent many hours wondering why it never happened to her. Although she was sure there was a point where she was about to “toss off this mortal coil”, all she got was a few scattered memories. That could hardly be construed as her whole life.

  She leaned forward to rub behind Domino's ear. “I think you messed up my personal history movie, Dom. If you'd been a little later in nosing me out, I may have learned a few lessons from my dissolute past.”

  She straightened up and passed a few stimulating moments wallowing in the images of Lorenzo, her and the bath. “Actually, it's my potentially dissolute future I ought to be worried about,” she said after she had managed to bring herself back to the present.

  On her third convalescent day, Genie decided that she'd had enough of playing the role of a couch potato. She missed being outside with Lorenzo but she knew she wasn't strong enough just yet.

  Was it through her lack of strength, she wondered, or was it the thought of going out in the snow? Perhaps she was getting a snow-phobia - if there was such a thing. “What do they call a snow phobia, I wonder? I must look it up sometime.”

  The third day was the first day without Domino.

  “He's getting too lazy,” Lorenzo said. “He's going to walk with me to inspect the fence today whether he likes it or not.”

  Domino made it clear he didn't like it - but he went.

  After they had left, Genie pushed herself up from the couch. “Enough of this,” she said. “I'm in danger of vegging out stuck in here.” She smiled at that thought. “I wonder what sort of vegetable I'd become? Hey, perhaps Lorenzo would nurture me in his greenhouse. That'll be almost as good as having him bath me.”

  She smiled as she reflected on another thought. “Perhaps he would keep her in a vase in his bedroom.”

  His bedroom.

  “Now there's an idea.”

  Since she could no longer trust herself to get too close to the real Lorenzo, perhaps 'contact by bedroom' would compensate. Definitely safer.

  It occurred to her, as she began to mount the stairs that, all the time she'd been here, she'd never really taken the time to explore inside the house. Her daily objective had been to get outside with Lorenzo as much as possible. Her indoor activities tended to be restricted to sharing the dining room, the kitchen, the lounge with Lorenzo. And then to bed - on her own - except for the times Domino managed to negotiate his way in.

  She paused before his closed bedroom door. Behind it was Lorenzo's most intimate side.

  Doubts invaded and eroded the edge of her
enthusiasm. “This isn't right,” she said. “It's private in there.”

  Almost instantly, her little devil - never far from her at times of doubt - leapt up onto her shoulder. She wanted to throw him off, but his voice was too enticing - almost hypnotic. “Your Lorenzo wouldn't know.”

  “My Lorenzo?”

  “You don't have to touch anything.”

  She didn't remember opening the door.

  Perhaps her little devil did it.

  Whatever happened she found herself peering through the open portal into Lorenzo's bedroom with an odd tingling sensation at the back of her neck.

  This was the heart of Lorenzo.

  The faint aroma of his cologne lingered. She flared her nostrils and breathed it in, closing her eyes to better imagine he was there.

  Opening her eyes, she stepped in and concentrated on the room itself. The walls were a striking warm orange, setting off the light wood cupboards, chests of drawers, and dressing table. The two high-backed chairs and the ends of his king-sized bed were of the same material.

  Her gaze lingered on the bed.

  He slept in there last night - without pyjamas.

  Bathed in stimulating hot flushes, Genie allowed the thought to linger as she stepped closer to the bed. The touch of the quilt brushing against her knees was so intoxicating that she had a struggle to turn away from the bed and her fantasy.

  She backed out of the room, grappling with a dizzy spell, and closed the door. For a few moments, she stood still, regaining her equilibrium and calming down her heart beat. “Idiot,” she said, trying to pass off her imaginations as nothing worth getting so excited about.

  It didn't work. The effects refused to go away.

  “All this over a guy's bedroom,” she said to the door. “You are in a mess.”

  Perhaps if she went back downstairs, she'd be okay.

  As she was about to leave, the door at the end of the landing reached out and grabbed her attention. She'd seen it before, of course. Even wondered what was behind it. But each day, she'd been too anxious to get to Lorenzo that it had been way down the scale of her priorities. Now, with adventure and exploration on her mind, well...its turn had come.

  She imagined it to be Lorenzo's secret room - where he kept all his secrets.

  Genie tutted. “What else would you do with a secret room?”

  She stared at it for several seconds.

  Should she?

  Her feet decided for her. They marched her straight to the door. Genie was certain she could hear her little devil cheering in the distance.

  She tried the door.

  Locked.

  Somehow, she knew it would be.

  “Now this is mysterious,” she said. “Lorenzo never locks anything, not even the gate to the farm.

  So, why lock this door? “What's behind here that so precious, Lorenzo?

  She brushed her fingertips gently down the door. “Perhaps it's too personal. Something he didn't want anyone to know about.”

  Thoughts of Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester and his demented attic-imprisoned wife sprang to mind.

  “Nah. Lorenzo'd never do that.” He'd never hide Anna up there, even if she was demented. He's not like that.

  But, if he did, and she was...well...” The thought of battling with a mad woman began to dampen Genie's curiosity. She patted the door. “I think I'll leave it for now. It might be better to leave Lorenzo with his secrets.”

  But her curiosity was in high-gear. It was too juicy to let go of the locked room - notwithstanding mad wives. She stretched up and ran her hand along the top of the door frame.

  No key.

  Genie's obstinacy reinforced her curiosity. “No you don't Lorenzo Calderone,” she said. “We Hamiltons don't take defeat that easily. No locked door is going to stop me.”

  “I'd hate to be the one to defeat a Hamilton,” Lorenzo said from behind her, “So, perhaps you'd better have the key.”

  “Oh...Lorenzo,” Genie said, spinning around to face him. Her cheeks flared up instantly. She imagined she could see the glow reflected in his face. “I didn't hear you. I was just--”

  “You don't have to explain. It's all right.” He backed up his assurance with a winning smile. “I thought today was a good day for you to see what's up there anyway. That's why I came back.”

  "How exciting. What naughty things are you hiding up there, Lorenzo?”

  He flicked his eyebrows. “I'm not hiding anything...exactly,” he said, disappearing into his bedroom.

  Genie scuttled after him, curiosity on red alert. “What do you mean - exactly?”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Genie was almost halfway up the staircase that lay beyond the locked door when she realized Lorenzo and Domino were not following. They remained at the foot of the stairs.

  “Aren't you coming?” she asked.

  He nodded. “You go. We will follow.”

  She turned back to examine the closed door at the head of the stairs. “Why? What's wrong?”

  “Nothing. Tutto va bene...everything is okay.”

  Was there something up there that made them wait and see what happened?

  Was it his demented wife?

  The hackles on the back of Genie's neck broke out into an Irish Jig, triggering an involuntary shiver.

  She turned around to face Lorenzo and study his face. It didn't show anything - hope, fear, anticipation - nothing. He did smile but it wasn't very uplifting.

  Okay. So there might be a good reason for Lorenzo to want her to go on but, what about Domino? What was his reason? He hadn't moved. Usually he goes where she goes. Why wasn't he going where she was going right now? Instead, he just sat there, leaning against Lorenzo's leg, and staring - eye wide and unblinking.

  Was Domino seeing something that she couldn't? A cold blanket wrapped itself around her. Were his canine, ultra-sharp senses seeing...a ghost?

  She secured her courage in both clenched fists and slowly turned to stare at the door with squinted eyes. Perhaps a fuzzy vision will reveal a hovering ectoplasm.

  It didn't work.

  That didn't mean the ghost wasn't there. It only meant that fuzzy vision wasn't the way you saw ghosts.

  Until that moment, Genie would have dismissed the idea of ghosts out of hand. But now...the locked door, Lorenzo and Domino frozen to the spot, “Not hiding anything exactly,” he'd said. It all helped to pile one wild imagination onto another in Genie's mind and turned up a ghost - or two.

  And all routes in or out blocked by an avalanche only made things worse. They couldn't even get a Priest to come and exorcise the darned thing.

  Stop it...stop it...stop it. Ghosts don't exist. And, if they did, a locked door wouldn't hold them. And if it didn't, she was bound to have received a visit during the night. Ghosts are just as curious about living people as living people are about ghosts - so she'd heard.

  Now her hackles were practically springing free and impaling themselves on the surrounding walls. They signalled that she might be wrong and it would be prudent not to offend ghosts by believing they didn’t exist. They’re probably sensitive about that sort of thing.

  “I believe,” she muttered, maintaining her vigil on the door. “Lor...” She licked her dry lips. “Lorenzo, is this place haunted, or something?”

  “Cosa?”

  “Upstairs,” she said, without taking her eyes off the closed door. “Do you have a ghost?”

  He frowned. “Una fantasma? Is that what you mean?””

  Genie shrugged. “Whatever.”

  “Do you believe in fan...ghosts, Genie?”

  Genie shook her head energetically - which, almost instantly, cross-dissolved into an energetic nod. Then after another few seconds she stopped all head movement and shrugged largely. “Not sure - now.”

  “I suppose there is a ghost - in a way.”

  “In a way? What way?” Genie flung out her arms in despair and turned back to look at him. “Lorenzo, you keep doing this. Not hiding anythin
g - “exactly”, you said. Upstairs is haunted, “in a way”, you said. What do you mean?”

  He sighed. “I think, Genie, we should go up. It'll become clear when you see inside.”

  “Really?” Genie was not convinced. “Well, I'm not going to take another step without you.”

  “There are no ghosts - at least, not the kind you're thinking of.”

  “There you go again. Are there any other kinds?”

  “Oh yes. Abbondante.eme...plenty. And they haunt also.” He indicated with his hand for her to go ahead. “Andiamo,” he said, offering a smile.

  Genie swung her arm in a sweeping arc. “You go first.”

  He laughed, bounded up the stairs and squeezed past her.

  Genie hesitated for a moment or two, watching Lorenzo's broad shoulders and allowing them to inject her with an espresso cupful of courage. Then she fixed her gaze on the target door and set her jaw.

  She aimed herself resolutely at the door. “Of course there aren't ghosts,” she mouthed silently, with her fingers firmly crossed behind her back,

  It appeared that, with Lorenzo on the move, Domino felt free to join the expedition. He barged his way past both Genie and Lorenzo. The fact that he didn't howl when he reached the door and scamper back down the stairs eased Genie's fears a little.

  When they reached to door Genie noticed an odd odour. She repeated the sniff test. It was oily - an oily smell. Did ghosts have a smell? And if so, did they smell oily?

  Either way, something was in there.

  As if to provide answers to Genie's pressing questions, Lorenzo swung open the door and stood to one side.

  Genie's curiosity was too strong. It dulled her fears and encouraged her to take a peek through the doorway.

  A portrait, propped up on an easel in the centre of the room instantly seized her attention. Ghosts and things that go bump in the night didn't matter anymore. The face in the portrait drew her in completely, wiping away all other thoughts and imaginations.

  It was a breathtaking face, almost angelic set against a brilliant, glowing, pure white background. Large green eyes followed Genie as she stepped across the threshold and moved to one side to allow Lorenzo through. The full, perfectly formed lips were the kind every woman would kill for and the high, classical cheekbones complemented the natural features that delight photographers and artists.