She stared at the car. He thought he’d done well, hiring something comfortable but not ostentatious. He’d known he’d be venturing into difficult territory, places he’d rather avoid, so he’d gone for something boring. So he couldn’t see why she stared at it as if it were an eagle and she were a rabbit. “I’m not getting in that thing with you.”
“You won’t get in it without me. What do you think I’ll do? Kidnap you?”
She swung to face him and he realized that was exactly what she’d thought. Why would she think that? He’d never shown any propensity to violence or possessiveness. He had no right, and after she started dating Byron he’d done his best to avoid her. Who had treated her this way, to make her so wary? Anger rose in him, unwarranted and unwanted. “I would never do that, Lina. I promise.”
She smiled, but it looked forced. “No, of course not. But I want to know where you’re taking me. And I want your word that you’ll bring me back when I’ve told you what I know.”
Relief flooded him. He’d won a concession. “So you’ll talk to me?”
She sighed. “Yes.”
“Gladly. How about I take you for lunch? You look as if you need some.”
She got in the car, ignoring his last remark. He took the driver’s seat and asked her, “Where to?”
She leaned back in her seat and frowned for a moment. Then she smiled. “Head for the bay. Let’s go tourist.” Where lots of people would be around, where she’d feel safe, he guessed.
People in Naples drove as if the laws of the road applied to everyone except them. When he slowed for traffic lights, the car behind blared a warning that it had no intention of stopping. At one point Jon wondered if brake lights were disabled around here as, gaping in disbelief, he watched the car in front go around a corner on two wheels.
Despite the journey that took five years off his life, he enjoyed Lina’s chuckles when he swore or someone missed him by a hairbreadth. He still had difficulty thinking of her as Lina, but he understood only too well why she wanted to use that name. Bella Mazzanti Forde was too well-known to pass as a waitress in a café. Lina seemed someone different. Until he looked at her properly, and until she’d pressed her body against his. He’d know her in the dark, remembered a dance at a ball. One unforgettable dance when he’d imagined a future that never came to pass. Fuck.
A car zoomed across his path, making him shout something that surprised even him. He enjoyed driving—normally. But not this. “It’s hell here. A fucking inferno.”
“It’s fun. They drive like I used to.”
He glanced at her, which proved to be a mistake, as he took a slight blow from a car that wanted his space. “Ah shit, my hair would turn white if I lived here. What do you mean, used to drive?”
“I don’t need to drive here.” She snapped her mouth shut, as if she’d said too much.
She had. That meant she lived close to where she worked. At least he knew something more about her. Not that he planned to let her out of his sight until he found Byron.
She directed him into a parking space. He maneuvered in, determined not to show weakness. He compared driving in Naples to a battleground, perhaps one of those gladiatorial combats the ancient Romans had enjoyed so much.
But now he’d stopped, he had the time to notice where she was.
The Bay of Naples was beautiful. Dominated by a castle on a promontory, a castle with a peculiarly stark, modern look, not at all like the castles of his imagination or the one where Sleeping Beauty lived. The blue, blue sea merged into the blue, blue sky, with the twin peaks of Etna and Vesuvius a constant reminder of the power of nature to curtail lives in an instant.
People jostled each other, but the air here seemed cleaner than near the café, the individuals better dressed, most of them smiling or bearing contented expressions. Probably because most of them were tourists. At home, they’d probably have the careworn expressions everyone seemed to wear every day.
He got out of the car and waited for her, resisting the urge to sling his arm around her shoulders as every cell in his body told him to do. Claim her as his own. Heartily sick of the way his body wanted to control his mind, he decided he’d do this, then get rid of her. Once he had Byron back, she could go to hell. And by the look of her, that was where she was heading. Straight down.
Jon did his best to ignore the yearning to help her. He’d been down that road before and it didn’t do any good. The only one who could stop the downward spiral was her. She had to want to do it, really want to, and not for anyone else. Forcing her to give up whatever drug she used these days wouldn’t work. It never did. Unless he wanted chaos to enter his life again, he had to let go.
But not without talking to her first, doing his best to persuade her to give this life up and let him take her home.
She took him to a restaurant, touristy but pleasant, with gingham tablecloths and friendly waiters. They ordered pizza at her insistence. With a smile she said, “What else in Naples? You have to try some.”
“Does your café serve it?”
“Sure. It’s very popular, even with people who live here.”
And when it came, it proved very good. He had a pizza to himself, and she had a salad, which she picked at. He watched her carefully in between bites, relieved to see she ate something.
“Some of the best pizzerias in Naples are part of the association,” she told him. “Look for this symbol and you can’t go wrong.” She indicated a sign on the paper menu. Interesting.
“How long have you been here?”
She eyed him warily. “Two years.”
“Where were you before?”
“Rome.”
“With Byron?”
She sighed. “Yes.”
He persevered, though it was worse than getting information out of a man. “You split, or drifted apart?”
“Split, kinda.” She pushed her plate away. “Yeah, we split and he stayed in Rome and I came here.”
“Why?”
She met his gaze with a cool, hard stare. “None of your business.”
Stonewalled. He tried a different tack. “Marty Hanson died.”
That made her stare, and for a moment, unfettered terror showed in her eyes. Then it was gone. “Was it natural?”
“In a way. He partied too hard for a man of sixty-five. Had a heart attack after too many all-nighters. All day in the office, all night in clubs and whores’ beds. Why did you do it, Lina? Why did you get engaged to him?” He wanted an answer too badly to use any finesse. The news had shocked him at the time and reverberated around and around until he thought he’d go mad with wondering.
He’d even asked Hanson once. The bastard had laughed in his face. “Because I’m good in bed,” he’d said. “Better than you, that’s for damn sure.”
Jon wouldn’t know. He’d never slept with either of them. Now he could ask Lina. He waited for her answer.
“It got me away from home,” she told him. She picked up her fork and speared half a cherry tomato, staring at it as if she could find answers there. The tines of her fork caught the light and that moment of stillness reminded him of how beautiful she was. Even now, thin and pale, with shadows under her eyes, she had the clean lines of a lovely woman. With very little effort she could be stunning again. “My mother went through men like she went through silk stockings. And they meant about as much to her. Marrying Marty meant I wouldn’t have to watch that anymore.”
“It must have hurt to see that.”
Her soft mouth curled. “Especially when she stole my men, too. Except this time, I stole hers.”
“And you couldn’t go through with it?”
She shrugged.
Despite knowing her sordid history, he still wanted her. Jesus, she could be riddled with disease and he’d want her. But she looked so pure, so perfect. Angel in the face, devil underneath. “You couldn’t fuck an old man for his money, then?”
“If that’s what you want to think, you go ahead and think it.”
>
Until that last remark, that was exactly what he’d thought. What he’d trained himself to think after he’d woken up one morning and discovered that his brother had run away with the woman who’d haunted his dreams for years. He’d never completely believed it, not deep down, but nothing else made sense.
Now he changed his mind. Because she wouldn’t look at him and that wasn’t candlelight that reddened her cheeks.
“Was there another reason, Lina? Why you and Byron ran so fast and never came back? We’d just given Byron an ultimatum—get the cure or leave, so we were always pretty sure why he left. But you—why did you go with him, Lina? You could have said no to Marty and gone on as you were.”
She didn’t answer, didn’t look at him, but stared out the window at the breathtaking view.
She looked better with some color on her face, even if it was a blush. She probably spent her days serving in that sleazy café and her nights scoring junk.
Something else lay behind her engagement to a man almost three times her age, and then her decision to run so hard and so far they couldn’t find her.
Too wise to imagine he’d get any more out of her now, he changed the subject, guiding her to talk about Rome and Naples, and her life there. She was good, very good. She talked about St. Peter’s, about the Vatican, the Coliseum, Vesuvius and Pompeii. But not her life and how she related to them.
He let her talk while he lingered over his food. Let her gain some confidence, let her think he’d take her back to the café straightaway. But through the meal a conviction had grown on him. If he let her go, she’d run again, and she’d proved how good at that she could be. He wouldn’t let her. In five years, this was the closest he’d been to finding his brother. And he had to admit, he didn’t want to let her go.
After he’d paid and they left the café, he drove back to his hotel, a short distance from the bay.
She gave him a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I can walk back from here. Nice to see you, Jon. Sorry I couldn’t help you any more with Byron, but as I said, I haven’t seen him for two years.” She tried the door.
It didn’t work because he still had the central locking mechanism on.
“You really didn’t think I’d let you walk away, did you?”
She twisted around to face him. “Yes. You promised.”
“I promised I’d let you go when I found Byron. After you help me.”
“But I’ll lose my job!”
He didn’t want that. To take away any chance at recovery. He’d thought it encouraging that she had a job at all. “When are you next on duty?”
She bit her lip. “Tomorrow morning. I work shifts and I’m on days this week.”
His heart sank. “What do you do at nights?”
“Serve behind the bar.” She put up her chin. “Why, what did you think?”
He didn’t want to antagonize her any more than he had already. “Nothing.” Although plenty had flashed through his mind when he’d referred to night work. That confirmed his suspicion that she lived nearby. “I’ll get you back for tomorrow.” And hang around until she finished.
“Why?”
Now he saw fear and he hated himself. “I have a suite at the George. I want to talk to you some more and I think we’d be more comfortable there.” He thought he was gaining ground, especially when she agreed to it in a muted voice that indicated only limited agreement.
“But I go back tomorrow. Early. I start at eight.”
“Once you wouldn’t have known what eight looked like, unless you’d been up all night.”
She laughed, she actually laughed. A small effort, but it was an improvement on fear, or anger. “True.”
So he took her into his hotel. He’d arrived in Naples deliberately low-key, and chosen the George as his base, a respectable, if uninspiring four-star hotel. Since mostly businesspeople and tourists used it, he considered it unlikely that anyone would know him. And he’d registered under his mother’s maiden name, which happened to be his middle name. Not a very effective disguise, but then people wouldn’t be looking for him here. But if he found Byron, he wanted everything low-key, so he could get him home and into rehab without people knowing more details.
They walked in through the ultramodern marble-floored lobby. Lime green and orange chairs were scattered around the area trying to look arty and classy. Glass and chrome predominated, but Jon had the strong feeling that someone had skimped on the designer’s aims because the quality wasn’t all it could have been. The same as the rooms. Or maybe too many five-star stays had spoiled him, places where the staff fell over their own feet to do his bidding.
This time, it seemed, he was proven wrong about anyone looking for him. A black-suited man followed them to the elevators, his brass lapel badge proclaiming Giovanni Bellini, Manager. Oh perfect, just fucking perfect. Someone had recognized him. Please don’t let him have recognized Lina. But with her natural mousy hair and clean-scrubbed face, that was unlikely. And he could always deny it.
“Excuse me, sir.”
At least the manager spoke English. Jon raised a brow and lifted his chin, freezing his glare.
The manager appeared not to notice, perhaps because his gaze was fixed on Lina. “I understood that you checked in alone, sir.”
“Yes. If you wish extra for my guest, I’m sure my credit card will cover it.”
For the first time, the man appeared slightly nervous. He licked his lips and transferred his attention to Jon. “Is this a local girl, sir? Is your acquaintance of long standing?”
Before he could say anything else, Lina burst into a tirade of something that sounded like Italian but wasn’t, not completely. That patois he’d heard in the café, an incomprehensible mixture of Italian, Spanish and other elements he couldn’t place. It didn’t sound complimentary and he could do nothing except stand like an idiot and gape. Even more so when her tone quieted and softened. She clutched his arm, murmuring words he didn’t have to know to understand, rubbing her body against him.
Revenge was sweet, apparently. As sweet as her smile.
Oh shit. Thank God they didn’t know him here. She was landing him in it headfirst. Shaking her off would no doubt confirm the manager’s suspicions, so he did the only thing he could think of. “We’re leaving. You can wait if you like, but I’ll be down in ten minutes. Five.”
He heard the ping of the elevator and dragged Lina inside.
Chapter Three
Jonathan looked as if he wanted to shake her, but Lina only felt triumph. At last she’d done something to rock his fucking reserve. Served him right for that interrogation he subjected her to in the restaurant, and his refusal to let her go after he’d promised he would. Behaving like the prostitute the manager obviously took her for had worked nicely.
He ran a hand through his hair, raising the dark mass into spikes. “What did you say?” He sounded almost resigned.
She chortled at the remembrance of the expression on the man’s face. She’d changed that superior bastard fast. “I said didn’t he have a heart, everyone had to earn a crust and these days it was harder than ever. ‘What’s a working girl to do?’ I said.”
He advanced on her, hands outstretched. “I should strangle you.” But instead, he cupped her shoulders. “So what did you say after that? When you—pressed your body against mine?”
Lina fought her urge to purr like a cat at the feel of his hands on her body. “You don’t want to know. Really you don’t.” Embarrassed when she recalled what exactly she’d said, she felt the hot blood rush to her cheeks. To her shock, he bent and pressed his lips to one side of her face.
“You should keep that. You look so much better with a little color.”
“Not what an emo girl wants to hear.” She paused. “Just as well I never joined that group. Too young for me.”
The elevator doors opened. Jonathan slid one hand down to hers and clasped it warmly in his own. “Just as well I didn’t unpack. I only arrived this morning and I just du
mped my stuff and came to see you.”
“To see me?”
“I can’t explain now.” He tugged her into the room and glared at her. “Stay here.”
There wouldn’t be much point in her running away now. He knew where to find her. But at least she’d had a bit of her own back. Getting him thrown out of his hotel room was a kind of triumph. He’d find somewhere else easily enough.
She grinned and glanced in the mirror. She didn’t look too tarty. Just that her skirt had shrunk in the wash, and her T-shirt had faded. She’d bought it secondhand and had laundered it ferociously ever since. That smear of sauce she’d picked up when she’d dropped the tray didn’t do her any favors, though.
She didn’t wear makeup these days, so she didn’t have the caked mascara and painted face of the prostitutes who haunted the back streets of Naples. Her hair, too, was a mousy dark blond, not the bright platinum she used to have. A bit straggly, perhaps, but she hadn’t had it cut for a while. Having lost her scrunchie somewhere, it poured down past her shoulders in a cascade of untidy waves and curls, natural ringlets jumbled with plain tangles. Maybe she looked like a harbor whore, then, although these days most of the bay was devoted to the great god Tourism. Still, tourists needed whores, or at least some of them did.
Jonathan came out of the bathroom bearing a small toilet bag, which he pitched into a sports bag lying on the floor. That and a suit carrier was all he’d brought. “Here.” The suit carrier had little wheels at the bottom. “I’ll even give you a good tip if you behave.” He wanted to make her smile. She looked so forlorn, so lost standing there.
“Aren’t you still mad?”
He shrugged. “What’s the point? I didn’t like this place much anyway. Do you know anywhere else I can stay?” But he lied, because the manager had roused him to fury. How dare he assume that Lina was anything but a friend? He’d never been treated that way before and he wouldn’t allow her to be treated like that, either.
Learning to Trust Page 2