“Tell you what,” Jack said, interrupting my daydream. “We’ll go where there’s nothing potentially lethal on the menu, trust me.”
I wondered aloud how he expected to just walk in someplace without a reservation. Silly me. Because of Tito’s, every major restaurateur in the city knew him; he could get a table at the last minute at whatever establishment he chose. “Best Italian in the city,” Jack said. “Gennaro’s in Coconut Grove.”
We toasted my visit with a delicious Prosecco and Jack recommended a homemade ravioli stuffed with porcini mushrooms and pignoli nuts. It was a particular favorite of his, as the dish was made without cheese. Jack was convinced that parmesan cheese was a plague visited on Italian cuisine that disguised the mundane and blighted the extraordinary. In between bites of the lightest pillows of pasta I had ever tasted, I summoned the courage to suss out Jack’s strategy regarding Bad Date. “You really want to go for all the marbles, don’t you?” I asked.
He smiled enigmatically. “It’s quite a commitment to make—commuting to New York and back every week for a quarter of a year. It’s not exactly as though the Urban Lifestyles Channel is paying for it.” Jack took another sip of his sparkling wine and poured a second glass for me.
I took a sip, lowered my glass, and looked across the table at him, searching for something in his eyes. Humor, malice, something that could give me a clue as to how hard he was playing the game. His expression gave me nothing. He was probably a terrific poker player. “Would you do whatever it takes to win?”
Jack wiped the corner of his mouth with the edge of his white linen napkin. “You like old movies, Liz?”
I grinned. “Love ’em.”
Jack smiled back. “Well, there’s another thing we have in common. You know how you find yourself in situations sometimes where you think ‘This is just like a scene in . . . ?’ ”
“You bet,” I nodded.
“Well, Liz, in one of my favorite noir movies, Out of the Past, it turns out that neither the hero nor the heroine are playing by the most ethical rules in the book. There’s a scene in a Mexican casino where Kathy is betting wildly and losing money hand over fist, and Jeff turns to her and says, ‘That’s no way to win.’ And Kathy says, ‘Is there a way to win?’ and Jeff tells her, ‘There’s a way to lose more slowly.’ ” Jack raised his glass at me. “I told you that night of the first episode what I wanted to get out of being on the show. From where I’m sitting, a million dollars and a trip to Paris aren’t the only prizes. Think about it,” he said.
I did. But was Jack referring to me or to the little kaching sound he heard in his head every time he and Rick Byron bantered on the air about Tito’s Famous South Beach Salsa?
Jack proposed a moonlit stroll after dinner. I figured walking off the pasta, and the tiramisu I’d eaten for dessert, was a good idea. We were driving toward the beach, past the Port of Miami, when I made a remark about all the cruise ships with their twinkling lights strung stem to stern like so many stars. The ships looked to me like giant skyscrapers lying on their sides. Jack said they reminded him of elliptical beehives, with so much activity swarming about inside them.
He pulled the car into a parking lot by the pier and we got out and walked along the length of one of the giant hulls, dwarfed by its pearly monstrosity. You couldn’t really see inside, but the night air was so still that it was possible to hear calypso music wafting down from one of the decks and happy laughter mixing with the tinkle of clinking stemware.
Jack stood staring at the ship, then looked out at the dark water. “I’ve always loved the sea,” he said, taking my hand. “Even if it meant running away from home one summer and lying about my age just so I could work as a busboy on one of these ocean liners.”
I looked up at him. “A busboy? You really ran away to sea to become a busboy?”
“Herman Melville probably would have rolled in his grave, but it was the closest thing I could get to being a cabin boy. Besides, as a busboy on a ship I sure learned a lot about how a huge kitchen is run. I also learned a lot about the right way to treat people from the way I was occasionally dealt with. When you’re on a low rung of the service ladder, you’re sometimes regarded by your patrons as a nonentity or some sort of ‘untouchable.’ It was quite an eye opener for a pudgy American teenager who imagined the world lay at his feet.”
“Were you good at it?” I asked Jack.
“Being a busboy?”
I nodded.
“I sucked. I told you I only excelled at cooking and chemistry—and the chemistry thing was a fluke. I was a dreadful student. I just didn’t care about being in school, so I didn’t bother to do the work. Have you ever seen the bumper stickers that say I’D RATHER BE SAILING? Well, you could have plastered one on my forehead.” He bit his lip and looked thoughtful. “Then and now, actually,” he added. “Although I’d like to think I’ve broadened my horizons somewhat since adolescence.”
“Yo-yos?” I smiled.
“I said ‘somewhat.’ ”
I confessed to Jack that I was just the opposite, growing up—the A student whose parents wondered too loudly and too often why I wasn’t working hard enough to merit an A+. I winced at the memory. “I cared so much about trying to be perfect that I lost sight of the forest for the trees. Things that should have been fun, weren’t.”
“Do you think you’re still that way?” Jack asked me gently, intertwining his fingers with mine. “Liz? You look a bit rueful.”
It was a tough question. I didn’t answer him for a while. I stared at the ship and let the sounds of the party on the upper deck and the soft slap of the waves against the hull’s waterline wash over me as I pondered what Jack had just said.
“Yes . . . ,” I said slowly. “Unfortunately, yes. I want to ace Bad Date. I want to nail every ad campaign I’m assigned without suffering writer’s block. I want whatever’s going on between us to be perfect . . . whatever perfect is. No bumps or ruts, I guess. And just because reality doesn’t work that way, it doesn’t stop me from wanting everything I’m involved in— game, job, relationship, whatever—to be perfect.”
“No wonder you’re not having fun with the fun stuff,” Jack remarked. “You’ve chosen to live in a pressure cooker. Sometimes you’ve got to relax, relinquish control, and let things take their course.” He smiled. “You’d be surprised. More often than not, the ‘go with the flow’ result ends up happier than the one you end up with when you drive yourself so hard. Listen to this Miami boy.” He looked into my eyes and brushed my cheek with the back of his hand. “That’s my mission. To unwind you a bit.”
I took his hand and gently kissed his palm, appreciating his advice, wondering if I really wanted to be “unwound” and whether it was possible to break my habits of a lifetime and give Jack’s philosophy a try.
20/
The Love Grotto
The following morning, Jack phoned me after breakfast and said he wanted to bring me to one of the most spectacular places on the south coast, something I absolutely couldn’t see in New York.
When he arrived, the convertible top was down on the Aston Martin. Brown terrycloth towels were spread across the leather upholstery. Jack tossed me a bottle of sunblock and demanded, nicely, that I coat myself before getting in the car. I complied and after he kissed me on the nose, necessitating the reapplication of Bain de Soleil, we were on our way.
“We’re going down to Biscayne Bay,” Jack told me. “I take it you’ve never been to Vizcaya.”
“Viz-what?”
Jack released a long passionate sigh. “Vizcaya. Only the most romantic place in Florida—in my humble opinion. I can’t believe you’ve never heard of it. It was the winter home of James Deering, one of the two International Harvester heirs, a real Jay Gatsby type.”
He continued his informal tour once we reached the museum itself, a fantasy estate that paid playful homage to both French and Italian architecture, although the red tiled roof and whitewashed façade reminded me of a Spanish
hacienda. “I come down here a couple of times a month to get away from the twenty-first century, just to take a mental time-out, sit in the gardens, and write poetry,” he told me.
“You write poetry, Jack?” I was impressed. “Can I read some of your poems? Or will you read some of them to me?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re crap, that’s why. Just because I find writing poetry therapeutic or cathartic doesn’t mean it’s art.”
Jack couldn’t wait to escort me inside. He was right. Vizcaya was indeed magical, ethereal, glorious. Emblems of sailing ships decorated an airy rotunda that looked out onto sparkling Biscayne Bay and Deering’s private quai—a fantastical stone creation that looked to me like a Venetian interpretation of Cleopatra’s barge. The air smelled “aqua”: clean, blue, and a little briny.
“Check this stuff out,” Jack whispered to me, taking my arm. We entered the banquet hall, filled with heavy Renaissance furniture. The late morning light streamed into the room. “Look up,” Jack said. “On that wall.” He pointed to a pair of tapestries. “This is why I think Vizcaya is the most romantic place around. Those were owned by the Brownings.”
Wow. Double wow. “Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning?”
“Yup. Theirs was one of the great romances of all time. After Robert whisked Elizabeth away from her tyrannical father and they eloped in Florence, these tapestries were displayed in their home there, Casa Guidi.”
I felt Jack’s gentle touch on my arm as I admired the wall hangings, then his hand slipped into mine. It felt warm and dry. “Jack? What did you mean last night in the restaurant when you were talking about ‘a way to lose more slowly,’ and the million-dollar Bad Date jackpot not being the only prize?”
He kept his hand in mine. “I want to share my life with someone. I actually like the concept of commitment. You always hear women talking about having rotten luck when it comes to dating—”
“I’m living proof of that,” I interjected.
“—well, I’m living proof that it’s just as hard for guys to find someone who isn’t unhinged or has an agenda of some sort. You’re a terrific lady, Liz. And every week that I manage to stay on the show is one more week of getting to know you better.”
I found myself staring into his eyes.
“What’s the matter?”
“You are, Jack.”
“I’m afraid you’ve lost me.”
“Don’t think I’m some sort of man-hater for saying this, because nothing could be further from the truth, but I’ve kept you at arm’s length these past few weeks because I’ve never known a really nice guy. I mean someone who wasn’t being nice or good to me just because he wanted something: sex, copies of my term papers, an introduction to Nell. So I always believed that genuinely nice men with no ulterior motives were mythical beasts, like griffins or unicorns. My roommates were convinced I shouldn’t trust you and I’ve found myself following their instincts.”
Jack placed his hands on my shoulders and leveled his gaze at me. “Are you sure it wasn’t just your own gut—or your heart—you weren’t trusting? And not me at all?”
“Nope,” I grinned. “I didn’t trust you either. Trust me.”
I moved my hands up to my shoulders and laced them into his. “Thanks. Though I’m starting to get used to the idea that you might actually be as nice as you seem. I just need to go slowly, okay?”
Jack leaned down and gently kissed my lips. “Take all the time you need.”
I smiled. “I’m ready to move on, now. In more ways than one.”
“In that case,” Jack said, “when we’re through touring down here, you’ve got to let me take you upstairs and show you my favorite thing in the whole interior.”
I was curious, and feeling warmer by the minute in a most pleasant way. Jack led me upstairs and we stopped at the entrance to one of the bedrooms. “Another of the greatest real-life love stories.” He pointed to the bed. “It’s said to have been the property of Emma, Lady Hamilton. I have always been thoroughly convinced—with absolutely no scholarly research to back it up, mind you—that Emma and Nelson had some of their first trysts in this very bed.”
“I have to let you in on a little secret, Jack. Being an old movie buff, my knowledge of Emma and Nelson is pretty much based on That Hamilton Woman with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, but I always stop the video before Nelson dies in the Battle of Trafalgar. I like happy endings.”
Jack brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. “Do you?” he teased. He pulled me into an embrace. The scent of him mixed with his signature blue watery fragrance was wonderful. I made a split-second decision to stop trying to delve into any motives he had for wanting my company. Whatever was happening now was bound to be better.
“You know what I would really like to do right now?” Jack asked me before our mouths met.
What seemed like several minutes later, I shook my head.
“I want to make love with you right here, right now, in this room, on Emma’s bed. The most romantic bed in all of South Florida! I don’t think I can wait any longer to be inside you.” Taking me with him, he gave a furtive look outside the door and up and down the corridor to the room. “Shhhh,” he continued, placing a finger to his lips. Then he backed me up toward the bed so that my thighs touched the embroidered coverlet and he began to unbutton my white linen blouse.
“Jack,” I whispered back, my heart racing, “I think that it would be deliciously erotic, but it’s probably not such a good idea. . . . I mean, someone’s got to play the grownup here.” I really hated myself for behaving so damn pragmatically. Jack could no doubt have guessed how much I wanted him, too, when his hands brushed against my nipples through the fabric of my blouse.
We heard footsteps. Argument became moot. I blushed as I fumbled with my shirt buttons. Jack faced me and ran his hands through my hair. “The gardens,” he said, kissing me. “I have an idea.”
I struggled to keep up with Jack’s pace as he practically sped toward Vizcaya’s formal gardens, trotting past dozens of hedges and classical statuary to one of the estate’s partially hidden grottoes.
“What happened to stopping to smell the roses?” I joked.
We reached the grotto, which was guarded by half-naked stone sentinels supporting a pediment shaped like the arch of a cockle shell, except that the design on the pediment, which looked like dripping seaweed from afar, was really dozens of carved heads resembling sea nymphs. The semicircular rear wall inside the grotto looked the same. Jack pulled me onto a bench with him. I felt like we were under the bay itself, in a dark, private, special little cave. The air was thick and damp and smelled of brine.
“I expect to see a mermaid in here,” I began, but Jack stopped my mouth with a kiss. I realized I was trembling. “Remember when I said a little while ago that I needed to go slowly?” I asked Jack somewhat breathlessly.
He nodded.
I caressed his cheeks and cupped his face in my hands. “Well, that was then; this is now. I really want you, Jack. Very much,” I whispered, and claimed his lips. They tasted sweet. I ran my tongue along his lower lip, savoring its taste and its softness. We kissed again, as gently as though a whispered secret were passing from his mouth to mine. Our passion intensified. We’d spent so much time apart, thinking about each other. Now, finally, desires were translated into action.
“I just want to be double-sure that it’s okay that we’re doing this,” Jack said, pulling back slightly from our embrace. “And doing it here, too, instead of hunting for a bit more privacy and comfort. Because I’ve been thinking about this—making love, I mean— since the day we met.”
“Me too,” I said clinging to him, my own breath coming in shorter and shorter gasps. “I have a quick confession to make, Jack. I’ve been carrying around the business card you gave me every day as though it were a lucky sixpence. Call me madcap, but it sort of makes me feel like you’re right there, for real, in
my pocket. We could wait until we get back to the Palmetto, but to tell the truth, I don’t really want to. I’m dreadful at delayed gratification.”
“Put me in your pocket, Miss Madcap.” Jack’s hand slipped down to my waist, over my midriff and down between my legs. He slid one hand up under my skirt and let it play along my thigh. I could feel the energy coming off his palm, going directly into every cell in my body. I adjusted my position so that he was able to reach his ultimate destination, letting him slide first one finger, then two under my panties and inside me. I was almost embarrassed at how wet I was. I’ve never before wanted a man as much as I wanted Jack then. He was passionate yet gentle, adventurous yet dependable. Knowing him gave me a renewed faith in the possibilities of happily ever after. I moved my hands along his chest, unbuttoning his shirt until I could caress the broad expanse of skin, then allowed my hand to graze down to his belt buckle.
He was already hard when I first touched him, held him.
“Sit on my lap,” Jack whispered.
I hiked up my skirt and did as he asked me, then placed my arms around his neck, pulling him to my breasts as he entered me. It was a glorious moment of mutual fulfillment. Jack held my hips, easing me up and down as I rode him, moving his mouth from my nipples to my throat to my lips. We exploded together, rocketing with sensation like a pair of shooting stars.
Still feeling Jack deep inside me, we held each other for several minutes as our breathing slowed to normal, as, heart pressed to heart, our rhythms synchronized as one. I rested my head on his shoulder and he ran a hand through my tangled, slightly damp mop of hair, sending pleasant shivers down my spine. “I’ve seen these gardens by moonlight,” Jack whispered, the first to finally speak. “And they are truly breath-taking. But I wish you could see your face now, Liz. It’s so beautiful.” A rush of warmth suffused my heart. I drew a lazy O with my tongue around his lips and softly kissed him.
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