Angel Unbound

by Sharon Saracino

  He steeled his features and his emotions and set off with Callista click-clacking frantically behind him to keep pace with his long strides in the unfamiliar heels.

  Though he’d been born further to the north, Luca enjoyed a familiarity with the city of Rome and her history that rivaled the most experienced native tour guide. He had, in fact, lived through much of it. And the fact that Michael the Archangel, commander of the Defensori, kept a residence in the city ensured most Earthbound at least visited from time to time.

  Luca kept up a running commentary all the way to the Piazza Farnese, pausing there to regale her with the history of the imposing Renaissance Palazzo designed in the sixteenth century for the Farnese family and later expanded when Alessandro Farnese became Pope Paul III. While Luca waxed poetic about the central window revised by Michelangelo, and above it, the largest papal stemma, or papal coat-of-arms, Rome had ever seen, Callista’s wide and interested gaze locked on something of more immediate interest.

  Reclining against one of the two large granite basins from the Baths of Caracalla which had been adapted as fountains, a young couple shared an embrace so intense it was difficult to tell where one of them left off and the other began. The man’s face was hidden by the girl’s hair, but seemed to be buried somewhere in the region just below her throat and slightly above her breasts. Luca noticed Callista’s fascination and waited with interest to see what her reaction would be to such a public display. She bit her lip in concentration and continued to watch them for several minutes. Finally, she took a deep breath and squared her shoulders.

  “Hey, you two,” she called out in a hesitant, but teasing voice. “Get a room!”

  The dark head snapped up with brows lowered ominously. Catching sight of Calli’s tentative smile and accompanying wave, the young man’s expression cleared. He shot her a toothy grin and blew her a kiss before resuming his former position. Calli glanced up at Luca, a smile wreathing her face.

  Luca’s eyes widened with something hovering between horror and hilarity. Where in the hell had she learned that? Calli’s bright smile dimmed as the seconds ticked by and it became obvious the praise she expected was not forthcoming.

  “That’s not right, is it?” she asked in a small voice. She blinked rapidly and her thin shoulders sagged, while she continued her struggle to balance on the spindly heels.

  Luca noticed the subtle change in posture and realized she was bracing herself for his criticism. Well, why wouldn’t she? It was pretty much the only thing he’d offered her in weeks. Her shields had been wavering all morning and he’d been able to sense the riot of thoughts swirling through her mind as she tried to take in everything around her, keep up with his long strides, and squelch the anxiety every time it rose to consume her. And she hadn’t complained once.

  Aw, diavolo, she really was trying and he expended so much energy trying to ignore his own reactions to her that he hadn’t given her credit for any of it. He bit the inside of his mouth to keep from smiling lest she think he mocked her.

  “It isn’t exactly wrong, cara. But it’s something you might say to tease someone more familiar to you if you saw them in that, uh, position. Like your brother and Kat. It isn’t something you say so much to strangers,” he tried to explain without making her feel badly. Callista’s slim shoulders drooped even more with her heavy sigh.

  “So I’ve offended them.” Luca took hold of her shoulders and turned her to face the amorous couple who were right back in business and oblivious to everything around them.

  “Do they look offended?”

  Calli stared at the lip-locked pair and turned to regard Luca cautiously. He quirked a brow and the corners of his lips curled. He didn’t look angry. He didn’t even look resigned, the way he sometimes did when she said or did something inappropriate. There was a glint in his silver eyes. He looked amused, almost happy. She hadn’t seen a look like that on his face since he’d carried her out of the tunnel to her brothers when they’d found her alive.

  “Not especially,” she grinned back. This was the Luca she’d missed. It seemed he only had two expressions these days, angry and indifferent. She wondered what had happened in the intervening years to change him so, but she was afraid if she asked him the shutters would slam down on the small spark of warmth she detected in his eyes and the distance between them would return.

  “C’mon, we’re almost there,” he gripped her hand in his and shortened his long strides so she didn’t have to struggle so hard to keep pace. As they emerged from the narrow alley into the market in Campo dei Fiori, Luca launched into yet another long winded history lesson.

  Calli struggled to take in the sights, sounds, and smells of the busy market. Her head swiveled right and left in an attempt to absorb everything, and she listened with half an ear as Luca explained that the square originally sat on the unused space between Pompey’s Theater and the Tiber River in Ancient Rome. She listened with slightly more interest as they approached the statue of Giordano Bruno peering down from a dark hood on his high perch in the middle of the square. Bruno was burned at the site for heresy in the seventeenth century, Luca told her, and Ferrari designed the statue with Bruno’s back turned to the Vatican, a martyr to free speech, positioned in protest for all eternity.

  The statue’s ominous stare made her shiver. The melancholy atmosphere induced by the statue was mitigated by the two Romani musicians lounging at its feet, cranking out a lively tune on guitar and upright bass.

  Luca started a long-winded discourse about La Terrina, the area of the piazza which used to serve as a watering place for cattle, when the endless mounds of fresh flowers occupying the spot captured Calli’s delighted eye. She tugged her hand free and planted her fists on her hips.

  “Luca,” she pronounced with a grin. “You talk too much.” She spun on her heel, her braid whipping around like a weapon, and made a beeline for the flower stalls.

  Luca followed more slowly, all the while keeping her in sight. At six and a half feet, he towered over most of the crowd, so it wasn’t difficult to monitor her progress.

  Did she think he was boring? It shouldn’t bother him. Okay, maybe he’d been rambling like a history teacher on crack, but he found concentrating on the distant past very effective in deflecting attention from the uncomfortable present. His irritation dissipated as he watched Calli move from one bouquet to the next like an enchanted butterfly, reaching out to gently stroke a petal or delicately sniff an exotic fragrance.

  He realized he wasn’t the only one watching when the old signore working the stall reached out to offer her a tissue wrapped bunch of blue Iris’. She buried her face in the soft fronds. Old men, pretty girls, and flowers. Some things defied the passage of time.

  The flowers perfectly matched the wide, blue eyes she raised to Luca as he approached and he felt something shift in the region of his chest. She’d always loved fresh flowers. How had he forgotten?

  Without taking his eyes from hers, he dug in the pocket of his jeans and tossed a handful of coins to the old man. It was far more than the price of the bouquet, and Luca absently waved off the vendor’s smiling ‘grazie mille’.

  Luca reached out and offered Callista his hand for balance as she picked her way out of the artfully arranged field of flowers, avoiding the bunches scattered on the ground. She tripped over a plastic bucket filled with sunflowers at the perimeter of the stall and fell into him. His arm came around her waist to steady her, and he felt her brief hesitation and swiftly indrawn breath before she stepped away, still clinging to his hand.

  “Thank you for the flowers,” she breathed, clutching them to her chest. Luca shrugged uncomfortably. He hoped she didn’t misinterpret his brief lapse in coherent thought as some big romantic gesture. He sure as hell hadn’t intended to buy her flowers, but, well, they’d matched her eyes. And oh man, if that didn’t sound like something Mac would say about Katrina. Merda! His friend would have a field day with this.

  “Artichokes,” Calli announced sud
denly, breaking into Luca’s unsettled thoughts.

  “What?”

  “My mother wanted us to get artichokes, remember?” she chided looking around with a frown. “Where are they?”

  “Callista, your mother detests artichokes.”

  “She does?” Callista snagged her full lower lip in her teeth and wrinkled her brow in thought. Luca briefly wondered what it would be like to run his tongue along that plump little lip before nibbling on it himself and quickly buried the wayward thought with a barely suppressed groan as Calli spoke again.

  “It was an excuse to get me out of the house, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, it was an excuse to get you out of the house.” But Luca wondered if it was the only reason Madge had thrown them together. In fact, he worried Madge McAllister saw far more than he’d like.

  The woman knew him better than anyone, except maybe Mac. He uneasily began to wonder if Callista’s mother had an agenda of her own.

  Chapter Three

  Callista insisted on buying the artichokes anyway, and vowed to shame her mother into eating at least one all by herself. And she bought the biggest ones they could find. She also begged for a bottle of Crema di Limoncello from another stand for after dinner cordials, and though it would have been much easier to carry one of the more compact liter bottles, she insisted the decorative one with the long stretched glass neck was much prettier and looked at it so longingly that Luca finally gave in.

  He couldn’t help noticing that although she remained relatively quiet following her faux pas with the amorous couple, her anxiety appeared to be subsiding the longer they were out. When interaction with others was necessary, she turned to him for guidance, but smiled genuinely at the vendors and other shoppers, and when they smiled back, the hollow, haunted look began to fade a little from her eyes. Some of the recent tightness in his chest eased as he realized while there would be a learning curve and it might take some time, Calli had far too much innate strength to end up a broken recluse like his father. Of course, he’d always attributed a good deal of strength to his father, too. He’d tried to get through to him right up until the end. But Luca hadn’t been enough.

  The sun had passed its zenith and started its long descent toward the opposite horizon. Luca was surprised to realize how many hours had passed. The vendors loaded crates and lowered awnings, packing up for the day as Callista finished her triple gelato. She’d been unable to decide on a flavor, so she’d tried several, and had ended up eating most of Luca’s as well. He studiously avoided the sight of her delicate pink tongue licking and swirling the cold cream, and focused on the fact that at least she was eating something for a change.

  They meandered slowly between the miniature trucks and half packed boxes, the smell of exhaust mingling incongruently with the perfume of ripe fruit, warm bread, and fresh espresso, as they wandered past the trattorias encircling the perimeter of the square. Calli took the lead. Luca followed slightly behind, consciously avoiding the sight of her gently swaying hips, accentuated by the high-heeled boots. He’d never seen her in jeans before, and all of those bustles and petticoats she’d worn years ago never even hinted at that phenomenal ass. He gripped the bag of artichokes and the bottle of limoncello more tightly than necessary in his left hand, leaving his right free in the event of trouble. They navigated the narrow alleys around the Campo, finally arriving at Corso Vittorio Emanuelle, the wide and busy thoroughfare connecting Piazza Venezia and the river.

  “Where to?” He asked, squinting into Calli’s upturned face and wishing he’d remembered his sunglasses. She imitated his shrug and grinned saucily.

  “You’re the expert, Professor. You tell me.”

  “Hungry?”

  She laughed, genuinely laughed, and Luca felt his heart flip in his chest. It was the first natural, truly happy laugh he’d heard from her in all these weeks. Her blue eyes sparkled. Her cheeks were flushed, and for a moment he felt as though no time had passed. God, he’d missed her. He hadn’t realized how much. He was old, tired, and cynical. Seeing the world through her eyes made everything seem fresh and amazing. It soothed him in ways he couldn’t fathom.

  “Have you not been paying attention? I must have eaten a gallon of gelato,” she smiled. “I couldn’t possibly eat another thing for hours.”

  “How about coffee or something? At least we could sit down and rest for a while,” he offered. She had to be exhausted. She hadn’t slept well, and they’d been walking around for hours. But she didn’t look exhausted. She looked…almost energized.

  “What’s wrong, Luca? Has all the activity been too much for you? Oh, wait! I forgot how much older you are. Of course we can rest and have coffee. I wouldn’t want to be responsible for you collapsing in the street,” she teased.

  “Don’t worry about me, cara. You might think I’m old and decrepit, but I can outlast you on your best day. C’mon, bambina, there’s a little place a couple of blocks away near Chiesa Nuova. Since someone ate my gelato, I could use something a little more substantial than coffee.”

  Callista suddenly sobered. “I’m not, you know.”

  “What?”

  “A bambina. I’m not a little girl, Luca.” She tilted back her head and regarded him steadily, challenging him with her eyes.

  Luca’s jaw tightened in direct proportion to the tightness suddenly erupting below his belt. He reached to cup her cheek, gratified when he heard her swift intake of breath at his touch. He stroked her jaw with his thumb and curled his fingers around her nape. He slid them into her hair and pulled her tightly against him, letting her feel the hard evidence of his desire. He brought his face down to within inches of hers and her eyes narrowed with a look that seemed part curiosity and part anticipation.

  “Trust me, dolcezza,” he whispered, his breath feathering against her lips. “I am well aware of the fact.” He released her abruptly and strode away, taking for granted she would follow.

  Callista stood in the middle of the sidewalk staring after him. Oh, she intended to follow him, as soon as her bones grew back. Well, that was…unexpected. She might be lacking practical experience, but a hundred years was a long time and Jacques had always possessed an excellent library. She knew all about the things that went on between men and women and then some…theoretically.

  But no book could have prepared her for the breath stealing sensation being pressed so intimately against an aroused man could cause, especially if the man was Luca Fiorelli. Maybe there was something to be said for the fit of these modern clothes. They allowed such freedom of movement, yet eliminated the layers and layers of protection between two bodies. The thin, measly layers of silk and denim let her feel quite unmistakably that Luca Fiorelli had been aroused. She swallowed hard. In a big way, a very big way. A spark of excitement fluttered low in her body. Funny, he didn’t seem at all happy about it.

  “Callista!”

  Her head snapped up. He stood in the middle of the sidewalk about twenty feet away, facing her, and simply waited while the crowds jostled around him. She hurried to where he waited and glanced at him nervously.

  “You don’t have to pretend to be shocked, Calli. Far be it from me to judge you for anything you did to stay alive.”

  “I…Luca, what are you talking about? You don’t think Jacques…that I…”

  But he did. His shields were firmly in place and she couldn’t read him, but she saw it in his eyes. And why wouldn’t he? Everyone accepted that Jacques Rapier was a monster, but fortunately for her, sex hadn’t been Rapier’s addiction of choice. She hadn’t really thought about it before, but judging by the accusatory look in Luca’s eyes, no one else would believe she’d never been touched, either.

  She glanced pointedly at his bulging crotch and her laugh was tinged with bitterness as she stepped away from him and looked him straight in the eye. “What’s that saying you have now? Be careful what you wish for? I worried you’d never see me as a woman. Well, I guess I was wrong on that point. It simply never occurred to me t
hat you’d feel I was better off dead with my virtue intact than alive without it.”

  “Diavolo, Calli, I didn’t say…” Luca began heatedly, wrapping his fingers around her arm to pull her back. She twisted out of his grasp and stepped away.

  “Maybe not out loud. I may still have things to learn, Luca Fiorelli, but I’ve never been stupid. You aren’t judging me? Oh, but you are. Maybe you’re not judging me for what you assume I did to survive, but you’re most certainly judging me for putting myself in the position in the first place, aren’t you?”

  His jaw clenched tightly enough to crack teeth as he looked away letting his silence serve as his answer. Mac had forgiven her the moment he laid eyes on her. She was his sister and he could forgive her anything to have her back. But she wasn’t Luca’s sister and his feelings were a little more complicated, though he hadn’t actually acknowledged it until lately.

  He knew what people said about him. His indifferent sagacity was legendary. His ability to remain emotionally detached and coolly logical in any situation was a valuable asset, and one it had taken over a hundred years to perfect. A century of pain and loss when he’d made a conscious decision to guard his heart. Now it all seemed to go to hell in a hand-basket when Calli was around.

  The thought of her with Rapier ate at him day and night, leaving a raw, open wound that no amount of rationalization would heal. Some days it hurt just to look at her.

  He steeled himself to look at her now. Her eyes were averted. Even so, he could see the earlier sparkle was gone, replaced by the sheen of tears. The haunted look returned and he’d put it there.

  Her impulsiveness and spontaneity had always been her greatest charm…and her fatal flaw. He’d known that. He should have done more to convince her of the danger.

  And when she disappeared? Given Rapier’s track record, they’d all assumed she was dead. He’d mourned her along with the rest of her family, then locked his grief away in a place he never intended to visit again and got down to the business of vengeance. Even Mac never realized Luca’s obsession with destroying Rapier exceeded his own.