Men wearing flowers in their hair infused the morning with the fragrance of jasmine that vied with cloves and incense to permeate the air. Merchants bargained in Arabic and a smattering of French, English, Italian and German with tourists looking to take home souvenirs. Barbers plied their trade on every corner.
Maeve was enchanted by it all: the scents, the sounds, the atmosphere, the exotic foreignness. Nothing here hinted at a troubled past. No disapproving mother-in-law lurked nearby. No secrets were hidden behind locked doors. She was happy and in love, and for as long as it lasted, she intended to savor every second.
“I’m so glad to be here with you,” she told Dario, when they stopped midmorning to refresh themselves with tiny cups of sweetened mint tea.
“And I with you.” He touched her hand, tracing his finger over her wedding ring. “I must have been mad to wait so long to claim you as my wife again.”
His words filled her heart to overflowing.
They resumed their explorations, wending their way through the maze of street to Ez Zitouna, the Mosque of the Olive Tree. Here the gold souks and other so-called “clean” professions stood closest to the walls, while the “unclean” professions such as dyeing and crude metal work were farther away.
It was a shopper’s paradise and Maeve was fascinated by the delicate silver jewelry, sequined and embroidered accessories, and finely woven wool which only the very wealthy could afford.
“Some of my former clients would kill to own this,” she remarked, examining a beautiful fringed shawl in vibrant shades of blue and crimson.
“But it was designed with you in mind,” Dario said, and over her objections promptly started bargaining with the merchant to acquire it for her.
When they finally left the Medina around three o’clock, he’d also bought her an exquisite antique perfume bottle and a bird cage intricately carved from white wood, “because,” he insisted, “no wife of mine is leaving here without something to remind her of her second honeymoon.”
“But I don’t own a bird,” she protested, laughing as he juggled the cage through the crowds.
Unfazed, he said, “I’m sure they sell those, as well. We’ll come back tomorrow and look for one.”
The driver he’d hired to pick them up at the airport had dropped off their luggage at the place they were staying. A French Colonial mansion converted to a small boutique hotel, it was exclusive, elegant and charming. Their suite, overlooking the rear gardens and the Mediterranean, was shielded from the city noise and cooled by ceiling fans. The floors were marble; the furniture, antique provincial; the wall hangings, silk.
By then, worn-out from the early start to the day and the heat, Maeve was glad to kick off her sandals, shed her dress for a cotton robe and stretch out on the bed for a late-afternoon nap. But that plan went awry when Dario, who’d gone out to the terrace to make a phone call, came back into the room.
She felt the mattress give under his weight, then his lips were on hers, his kisses sliding from soft and persuasive to hard and commanding.
Love in the afternoon, she discovered, had much to recommend it. Leisurely, splashed with sunshine, it invited a different kind of intimacy from that of the night before; a more acute visual scrutiny than candle flame and moonlight allowed.
She saw his mouth curve with pleasure when her nipples peaked under his grazing caress, and the slow, sultry sweep of his lashes as he buried himself deep inside her. She watched the passion flare in his eyes, the sweat beading his brow and the hard line of his clenched jaw as he fought the tide threatening to overpower him.
Clutching his shoulders and rising to meet him as her own body answered the demands of his, she glimpsed the reflection of their tangled limbs in the gilt-framed mirror hanging above the dresser on the opposite wall, his burnished by the Mediterranean sun to the color of brown sugar against her paler skin tones. Even as her eyes closed in surrender, his taut buttocks, the sensual rhythm of his hips, the flexing and contracting of his back muscles, imprinted themselves forever in her mind.
Drowsy and sated, with the damp heat of utter gratification still binding her to him, she kissed his throat and whispered, “Nothing that happened in the past matters to me any longer, Dario. From now on, this day, this moment are all I care about, and all I need on which to build our future.”
Somehow she’d said the wrong thing. Although he didn’t move a muscle, sudden distance sprang up between them, induced by a tension so potent that it filled the entire room. “I wish it were that simple, my darling wife,” he said. “Unfortunately, it isn’t.”
CHAPTER NINE
“I THOUGHT,” she said in a small, crushed voice, “that’s what you wanted.”
More fool him, he’d thought so, too. But that, Dario realized grimly, was what happened when a man let his carnal appetite get the better of his judgment. He rationalized every decision he arrived at, even when none made sense. The truth was, there was no escaping the past and there never would be.
“What I want,” he said carefully, “is to put the past behind us. That’s not quite the same thing as pretending it never happened. Our history—what we’ve done, where we’ve been, who we’ve known—makes us who we are today, Maeve.”
“What if we find we don’t like who we are?”
“Then we make changes and try to put right the things that went wrong. We don’t lop off an arm or leg because it hurts, and we can’t just cut out a chunk of our past if we happen not to like it.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
He propped himself on one elbow and looked down at her. Her face remained flushed from lovemaking, but the light in her beautiful blue eyes was bruised with pain. “Because I see you struggling to regain your focus, and I hoped a new scene, new faces, might help. And because I’m a selfish bastard who wanted you all to myself for a couple of days.”
“I wanted that, as well.” She sighed tremulously. “I wish we could stay here. I wish we never had to go back to Pantelleria.”
“Can you tell me what it is about the place that disturbs you so?”
“I feel too…confined. My entire life has narrowed to what lies within the walls of the villa, and it’s suffocating me.”
It hadn’t always been like that, but for her own sake, it had to be that way now. There wasn’t a soul on the island who hadn’t heard about the accident and the circumstances surrounding it. It had been all anyone had talked about for weeks. Left to roam about at will as she once had, she’d be recognized and, if there was a greater risk than his telling her all that had come to pass, it was having her hear it from someone else.
“There’s something about the place that haunts me,” she went on, with a tiny, helpless shudder. “It’s as if something dark and fearful is lurking in the corner, waiting to jump out and destroy me. I wish, if you know what it is, that you’d just tell me.”
“It might be that we argued and said some hurtful things to each other, the last time we were together before the accident.”
“What kind of things?”
“Outside commitments. My obligations as a businessman and a husband, yours as my wife. Loyalties, priorities, casting blame, and misunderstandings in general.” He shrugged. “It’s not something I’m very proud to look back on.”
She regarded him in sudden hope. “Is that how the car crash came about—we argued, I got upset and drove off, and you’re afraid I’ll blame you for letting me go when I was in no fit state to drive?”
He wished he’d kept his mouth shut because, at this rate, she’d stumble on the truth before much longer, and he wasn’t sure he’d know how to handle the fallout. “No. I wasn’t on the island the day that happened. I was in Milan.”
“Oh,” she said thoughtfully. “Then who was driving?”
Dio, the one question he’d hoped to avoid! “A summer visitor who’d rented a nearby villa for a few weeks. I can’t tell you much more than that.”
“But—”
Loath to continue a subject painfully fr
aught with conjecture, he took her hand and urged it down his belly to cradle him, knowing her touch was all it would take to make him hard again. “But nothing, amore mio!” he muttered against her mouth, tormenting her in deliberate seduction exactly as she was tormenting him, because it was the only way he could think of to silence her questions. “Why are we talking about other people, when a second honeymoon should be only about a man and his bride?”
She responded as he’d hoped she would. “I don’t know,” she gasped, her eyes glazing with pleasure as he found the erogenous spot between her legs.
He stroked her until she came, and when at last he took her completely, burying himself deep in her soft, welcoming depths, it was with something approaching desperation, as if by doing so he might bury his own doubts, as well as hers.
Because she wasn’t the only one afraid that the truth might smash their newfound happiness into oblivion.
She must have drifted to sleep in his arms because when next she opened her eyes, darkness had fallen and Dario was gone, but a patch of light from the open bathroom door and the sound of running water told her where she might find him.
With a boldness that would have shocked her a week ago, she went to join him. A towel slung around his hips, he stood before one of the two hand-painted wash bowls, scraping a razor over his soap-lathered jaw. Drops of water glinted in his thick hair and sparkled on his shoulders.
“Ciao, sleepyhead,” he crooned, inspecting her naked body with such unabashed appreciation that she blushed from head to toe. “Venire qui e darmi un bacio. Come and give me a kiss.”
“Not a chance,” she squealed, ducking away as he advanced on her with the clear intention of smearing shaving soap all over as much of her as he could reach.
He was quicker though, and cornered her in the big double shower stall. In the ensuing scuffle, his towel slipped its anchor and fell off. Feigning dismay at the sight of his virile proportions, she shielded her eyes. “Oh, dear! I didn’t mean to have that kind of effect on you.”
Laughing, he pinned her against the tiled wall and turned on the cold water, full force. “Sure you did, la mia principessa nuda, and now you’ll have to pay the price.”
“Stop!” she shrieked, goose bumps the size of raisins puckering her skin under the chilly blast. “There has to be a more humane way to resolve the issue that’s…um, arisen between us.”
“In fact there is, and believe me I’d resort to it in a flash if I hadn’t made a dinner reservation that leaves us only half an hour to dress and get to the restaurant.” He slapped her playfully on the bottom. “So hop to it, honey, as they say in your country, and we’ll resume this discussion later.”
The dinner dress she’d brought with her was one she’d come across by accident, stashed at the back of her closet behind all the others, many of them still too large for her. Long and black, with a narrow skirt and silver embroidery along the neckline and at the hem, it was chic and elegant without being overly formal. A gauzy wrap spattered with tiny silver stars, silver sandals and matching clutch purse, and white-gold hoop earrings completed the ensemble, and from Dario’s low, drawn-out whistle when he saw her, she’d chosen well.
He took her to a wonderful restaurant in the very heart of the Medina. Hundreds of years old, it oozed pure exotic atmosphere with its flowing draperies, brass oil lamps, and pointed arches fronted by gilt lattices reminiscent of the kind seen in old Hollywood spy movies.
Taking off their shoes, they sat on rush matting on a raised platform and dined on fresh Mediterranean lobster and succulent lamb flavored with coriander and saffron, accompanied by traditional couscous and a fine local wine. This last surprised Maeve, not just because of its quality, but that it was available at all.
“Alcohol’s allowed because Islamic law isn’t adhered to quite as rigidly in Tunisia as in other Muslim countries,” Dario explained, when she commented. “Most restaurants serve wine, at least in the city, probably a leftover custom from French colonial times. How’s your lamb, by the way?”
“Can’t you tell?” She closed her eyes in pure enjoyment. She’d been too hot to eat much during the day and was starving. “It’s delectable, and so is the lobster.”
“Make sure you leave room for dessert. They have first-rate honey cakes stuffed with dates on the menu, as well as honey and almonds in layers of pastry like Greek baklava, except they call it baklawa here. With your sweet tooth, you’ll probably want to try some of both.”
“You seem to know the place pretty well. Do I take it this isn’t your first visit?”
“I’ve been here a time or two, yes,” he admitted. “Back in my wild bachelor days, before I met you.”
“Hmm.” She pursed her lips and looked teasingly at him from the corner of her eye. “I don’t think I want to know about that.”
“There’s nothing much to tell. Being here now with you is far more memorable.”
“For me, too. I’m enjoying myself so much, Dario.”
He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingertips. “Then we’ll come back another time, stay longer and ride camels in the Sahara.”
“I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I’ve never even been on a horse.”
“You’ve probably never tried belly dancing, either, but there’s a first time for everything,” he said, pointing to where a team of young women appeared from behind a curtain.
They began to weave their sinuous way across the floor, watched by men lounging against the walls and smoking hookah pipes. The music, provided by a quartet clad in bedouin robes, consisted of a sort of zither, a simple recorder, a small hand drum and a tambourine. Even to Maeve’s untutored ear, the repetitive melody and persistent rhythm bore an unmistakably Arabic flavor.
The dancers wore wide, filmy pajama bottoms and bralike tops draped with gold-beaded fringes that shimmied with every undulation. In view of the amount of skin exposed between the two, how the bottoms stayed up and tops stayed on was nothing short of amazing.
Noting her absorbed interest in the spectacle, Dario said with an evil grin, “Would you like me to ask if they’ll give you a lesson, my dear? I’m sure they’d be happy to oblige.”
“Okay—if you’ll try a hookah pipe.”
“Sorry, I don’t smoke.”
“Then I don’t shimmy,” she said, and settled in the curve of his arm, content to watch the show, nibble baklawa, and sip Tunisian brandy made from figs and Turkish-style coffee served in tiny cups.
They left the restaurant slightly before eleven o’clock. Tunis after sundown was something of a surprise, she discovered. Instead of rushing around as they had during the day, people sat peacefully wherever they happened to find themselves, whether it be a park bench or their own doorstep, talking quietly as they recovered from the intense heat of the day.
Once back at the hotel, Maeve leaned against the wall of their suite’s little terrace and gazed out at the nighttime view. Directly ahead, the dark mass of the sea rolled somnolently ashore. To her right, floodlit domes and minarets made up the city skyline. “This has been the experience of a lifetime, Dario,” she told him, her senses alive with all she’d seen and heard and tasted. “I feel as if I’m living a scene from One Thousand and One Nights.”
Standing behind her, he lowered the zipper on her dress slightly and pressed a hot, openmouthed kiss on her exposed shoulder. The tactile impact reverberated all the way to the soles of her feet.
“And this particular night isn’t yet over. As I recall, we have unfinished business to attend to,” he murmured. “Slip into something more comfortable, mio dolce, while I order us a bottle of champagne.”
But she didn’t need champagne to set the mood, any more than she needed the peignoir she’d so carefully included in her suitcase. The wine grew warm, the negligee spent the night on the floor in a heap of white lace, and Dario loved her with an inventiveness and passion that stole her breath away.
He explored every inch of her, cherishing her toes, her instep
, the soft, sensitive skin at the back of her knees. He kissed her breasts, swirled his tongue at her navel, buried his mouth between her legs.
He made her tremble and shudder. And when she thought she’d slide into madness from the sheer exquisite ache of wanting, he’d sidle against her, then retreat before she could imprison him within the folds of her eager flesh.
When finally he took possession of her, she contracted around him in endless spasms of ecstasy that racked her body and left it glistening with sweat. But when at last he climaxed and took her with him yet again, it was glorious: a wild, delirious ride to the ends of the earth and back again.
Limp and spent, she collapsed in his arms, knowing that no matter what the future held, this was a night she would never forget.
She slept like a child, utterly relaxed, her body warm and soft, her breathing smooth and even. Her hair curled damply on her forehead. Her lashes lay thick against her cheek. Her hand curled trustingly on his chest.
Had he somehow effected a miracle? Dario wondered. Could a weekend of hot sex and romance mend a marriage that had grown progressively shakier with each passing month and culminated in a row that had almost cost her her life?
Unwilling to get down to specifics, he’d been deliberately vague when she’d asked what their last argument had been about, before the accident. But far from fading over time, the details remained sharp in his mind, stained with guilt and ugly suspicion.
It had started the first weekend in August when he came home from an unusually long business trip to Australia. The previous summer, after he’d brought Maeve to Italy as his bride, he’d explained that his work involved a lot of travel and they’d agreed it made sense for her to remain in the penthouse in Milan during his absences. His family was close by, and so was her obstetrician. After Sebastiano was born at the end of January, however, she began spending increasing time on Pantelleria, whether or not Dario was out of town.
“It’s more relaxed here,” she explained, when he asked her about it. “I’m under less social pressure and have more time to enjoy my baby. You’re so busy during the week that we hardly see each other, anyway, but if you fly down on Friday evening and stay until Monday morning, we can at least be together then.”
The Costanzo Baby Secret Page 10