Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection)

by Jennifer Blake

  Joletta risked meeting Rone’s dark gaze then. It was grim and watchful. If he felt the slightest flicker of personal interest in what was taking place, he gave no sign.

  They were all against her. There was not one of them who had her same interests and concerns, not one who did not want something from her. The truth of it was like a many-edged barb thrust inside her. There was no way to be rid of it without making the damage worse.

  She turned back to her cousin. “You must have been glad to hear from at least one of your accomplices.”

  “Yes, well, but there would have been no need for them if you had just cooperated,” Natalie complained. “I don’t know why you have to be so disagreeable. Actually, they have both been a disappointment. I think Rone only let me come along with him because it was the only way I would tell him who you were with and where you were going.”

  “Extortion, Natalie, as well as theft and burglary?”

  “Theft and what? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Joletta eyed the other woman without expression. “All right, if that’s the way you want to play it. I hate to give you the bad news after you went to so much trouble. The fact is, there’s nothing here.”

  “Nothing?”

  The letdown in Natalie’s face was almost comical. Joletta waved at the garden in front of them as she said, “You have my notes. What do you see?”

  Natalie put her hands on her hips while her thinly arched brows met over her nose. “Make sense, Joletta; I don’t have anything and never did.”

  “Oh, come off it,” Joletta said, rising to her feet and moving away from the table. “If you and Aunt Estelle didn’t send somebody to steal my carry-on and ransack my room, who did?”

  “How should I know? All I’ve been doing is keeping track of you, and it hasn’t been easy. I thought that somehow or other we could work this out.”

  Joletta didn’t know whether to believe her or not. She sounded sincere, but then she had always been good at that.

  Was it possible that Aunt Estelle had acted without her daughter’s knowledge? She certainly had the strength of will, but whether she had the contacts or the sheer greed was hard to say. It might be that she was keeping the knowledge of it from her children in order to safeguard them. She had always been a protective mother, the kind who never admitted that her children could do wrong.

  Or perhaps it was Rone who had paid someone to do those things. To discover someone in her room while he was with her would certainly be a way of directing suspicion away from himself.

  There was still his mother, that shadowy woman known only by her publicity photos, Lara Camors. Was she the ruthless businesswoman her son claimed? Or had that all been a sham, a story concocted to give Rone an excuse for tracking her.

  It made no great difference either way. Her part in the search for Violet’s past and her formula was at an end.

  “I believe,” she said slowly, “that we have imposed on Signora Perrino long enough. We had better go.”

  “I’ll drive you to the hotel,” Rone said.

  “She came with me,” Caesar interrupted, putting his hands on his hips.

  Rone gave him a hard look. “You can take Natalie back to Venice.”

  “Venice?” Natalie exclaimed. “But I don’t want to go. Joletta and I have to talk. We have to decide—”

  “Another time,” Rone said.

  Natalie narrowed her eyes as she stared at him. “Now, you look here, Rone Adamson. I’ve about had enough of you and your highhanded ways—”

  But Rone wasn’t listening. He turned toward Joletta as he said, “Coming?”

  To be alone with Rone or with Caesar? Joletta was not sure which one she wanted least. Or which choice would take more courage.

  “Coming,” she said quietly, and moved to Rone’s side. She met Caesar’s dark gaze for a brief moment. His lips curved in a fatalistic smile and he sighed before he lifted his shoulders in a shrug.

  Joletta thanked Signora Perrino for the meal, apologized for their abrupt departure, and promised to send her the little she knew about the death of the widow in Venice. With that done, she turned to go.

  She looked back, however, just before she left the garden. The sun still shone and the leaf shadows still danced on the ancient tiles. The bees hovered among the herb flowers and the leaves of the old olive tree sparkled like silver. The grass, fine and dark green, bent with the spring wind, ruffling as at the tread of light footsteps. And a single, perfect blossom of the huge old red rose shattered, so the petals fell, spinning, whispering, to lie like drops of blood on the ground.

  Joletta turned quickly and walked away.

  The first thing she noticed, when they reached the street-side parking, was the car Rone was driving. It was a tan Volvo.

  She had assumed the silver Fiat was his, a rental car picked up at the quay in Venice as the Volvo must have been.

  More than likely, whoever was in the Fiat had not been following her at all. There was nothing strange about another car keeping the same pace over the relatively short distance from Venice to Florence, especially since it had dropped behind after the traffic jam.

  Rone did not speak until he had pulled up before the hotel in Florence. He turned to her then. “Tell me just one thing,” he said, his voice harsh in its intensity. “Did the carnation you left on my pillow mean something, or was it just an impulse, or a joke?”

  She had expected many things, but not this. Panic surged through her as she searched for an answer that would not leave her exposed to more pain. The truth was always good, but she wasn’t sure what that was at the moment.

  “I don’t know,” she said finally as she stared ahead of her through the windshield. “I’m not Violet; I’m just a modern woman who prefers things nice and simple. Symbols are nice, but plain words and actions are better.”

  He thought that over. “Meaning?”

  “I don’t mean anything,” she said, her voice rising. “I would just like to forget the whole thing. I would like to finish my trip, and then go home and get on with my life.”

  “It isn’t going to happen,” he said in low certainty, “even if I would let it, which I won’t.”

  “Why not? I give up; I’m not even going to think about the perfume anymore.”

  “No one’s going to believe it.”

  “Watch me,” she said.

  “I intend to,” he answered, his voice grim. He hesitated, then went on. “But not, this time, at such close quarters. I had in mind a room next door.”

  She turned her head to meet his gaze without evasion. “Not adjoining.”

  “No.”

  “Good,” she said under her breath. But it was not, in her mind, an agreement of any kind.

  Almost immediately after she had checked into her room in the hotel, she left it again. She had no real plans, no special purpose; it was just that she was determined not to be kept under supervision and thought Rone would not expect her to make another move so soon.

  It was pleasant to walk around the old city on her own, to visit the cathedral and the old squares, to climb steps to see the views, and to pay her fee for the privilege of standing and staring at Michelangelo’s David.

  She bought a jacket with a wide, flowing collar, one made of incredibly soft and lightweight leather of the kind used for the mild winters of Sicily and Capri. It should be just right for New Orleans. She found a pair of wonderful hoop earrings of eighteen-karat gold and several gilded leather comb cases as souvenirs for friends.

  The exercise, solitude, and self-indulgence was what she had needed. Regardless, she still had to return to the hotel.

  The first person she saw as she neared it was her aunt Estelle.

  She almost didn’t recognize her in her acid-green culottes with a braided jacket, Italian sandals, and a jaunty hat with an attached scarf that covered her hair. There were three other people with her, sitting at a table at a sidewalk café next door to the hotel. Timothy pushed awkwardly to
his feet, smiling and waving at Joletta, resuming his seat only after she started in their direction. Natalie, next to her brother, looked self-conscious and a little worried. The fourth person was another older woman with beautifully styled white hair, perfect makeup including false eyelashes, and a stylish pearl-gray suit. There was in her smoky blue eyes an expression that was definitely measuring as she watched Joletta’s reluctant approach.

  “Joletta, dear,” Aunt Estelle said, “here is someone I think it would be worthwhile for you to meet.” She turned to the white-haired woman beside her. “Lara, my niece whom I’ve told you so much about. Joletta, this is Lara Camors.”

  Rone’s mother. The owner of Camors Cosmetics.

  The older woman smiled with an odd twist to her lips as they exchanged greetings. “So you’re Joletta,” she said. “I might have guessed.”

  Joletta looked inquiringly at the other woman.

  “I had Rone’s description, of course,” Lara Camors said. “But you also have much the same style as Rone’s grandmother who brought him up — his father’s mother. Elegant, sensible, but with soft edges.”

  “Thank you — I think,” Joletta said.

  Aunt Estelle claimed Joletta’s attention, demanding that she sit down, pressing a glass of wine upon her as she ordered another for herself.

  “Natalie tells me,” Joletta’s aunt said as soon as the waiter had left them, “that she hasn’t been able to really talk to you since she caught up with you. I thought it was time we remedied that.”

  “If you and Mrs. Camors came all this way for that reason, you could have saved yourself the trouble.”

  “She did say that you claim to have no leads on the perfume, but I find that hard to believe. You wouldn’t have come, wouldn’t have been visiting that woman here in Florence, unless there was a purpose.”

  “Did it ever occur to you, Aunt Estelle, that I might have other things on my mind?”

  Timothy, lifting his beer to drink, nearly overturned it as he put it down again. Wiping at the spill with the edge of his hand, he said, “Be fair, Joletta. You know we’re in the dark here, that we haven’t had a chance to see this diary.”

  “Of course she knows,” Lara Camors said, entering the discussion unexpectedly. “She’s just being obstructive because you are all ganging up on her.”

  Joletta hardly knew whether to be flattered or incensed at this too accurate description. She turned a look of appraisal on Rone’s mother.

  The woman’s hands, resting delicately on the rim of the wine-glass in front of her, were soft and exquisitely groomed, with oval nails painted a neutral color with only a hint of rose. Her facial skin was fine and unblemished, though with a network of tiny lines around the eyes. The expression in those eyes was understanding, but shrewd.

  Lara Camors went on after a moment. “Your aunt was concerned to hear that you have been having trouble, stolen bags, break-ins, and so on. So was I, for that matter.”

  Joletta, returning the other woman’s scrutiny with a steady gaze, said, “Your son has been taking care of me.”

  “So I understand from Natalie,” Mrs. Camors said, her smile unperturbed. “I hope you have been getting on well with Rone? He can be extremely annoying at times.”

  “We’ve managed.”

  Rone’s mother acknowledged that bare comment with only a faint quiver of her lashes. “As difficult as he can be, however, he is often right about things. He suggested, when this venture first came up, that there should be some way for all parties in this situation to reach an agreement. He has since convinced me, in a number of urgent transatlantic phone calls, that it would be wrong to negotiate with any one family member. I’m here to see if we can’t discover some equitable settlement.”

  Joletta saw Aunt Estelle and Natalie exchange a long look. Judging from their faces, the things Lara Camors had just said came as an unpleasant surprise. Timothy glanced at his mother with a puckered frown between his brows.

  Joletta said to Lara Camors, “But there’s really no point, is there?”

  “I refuse to believe that the formula to a perfume that has been made in a single shop in New Orleans for well over a hundred years can be lost. Businesses are simply not run that way.” The older woman’s tone was firm.

  “Mimi’s was,” Aunt Estelle said. “But are you saying that you don’t want the perfume, regardless of the report from the lab, unless Joletta is involved?”

  “According to my legal department, I must have the consent of all living heirs of Mimi Fossier if I am to have complete and unrestricted use of this formula when it is finally presented. In that case, Estelle, I suppose the answer to your question is yes. But before we go that far, the background of the perfume must be documented. Without its colorful past, it’s simply another nice scent. And Camors has enough perfumes of that kind already.”

  Joletta lifted her chin. “I have to tell you that I prefer to keep the perfume for the shop in New Orleans.”

  “Do you indeed? Now why?” Lara Camors said.

  “Pride, tradition, the challenge of it,” she answered.

  “Oh, those,” the older woman said with a knowing smile.

  “You do realize that we’re talking millions here, don’t you?” Natalie asked as she looked at Joletta with an arched brow.

  “I realize.”

  “If you are sitting on that journal, keeping it and everything we need to know from it to yourself, I — I’ll kill you, cousin or no cousin.” The other girl turned to Lara Camors with caustic amusement in her face. “Come to think of it, that’s not a bad idea, since Mother is Joletta’s next of kin under Louisiana’s lovely inheritance laws. It would make matters so much easier, don’t you think?”

  The older woman looked blank for an instant before she got the joke. She didn’t laugh, however, nor did anyone else.

  21

  I WAIT.

  I have waited through the last days of the fall, through the grape harvest and the grain harvest, and the faded, dreary days when the earth itself seems worn-out and ready for rest. I cannot believe that my dear Allain will not return for me. I will not believe that he can stay away.

  This autumn, men have been dying in the Crimea at places that are mere names on a map as the allied sovereigns of England, France, Prussia, and Austria join battle at last to try to curb the ambitions of Czar Nicholas. I pity the poor soldiers of both sides, sent to die so far from home and family, but it is a surface sympathy only. I pity myself more. Yet, wishing to have faith in my love, I despise the weakness.

  Sometimes Violet grew angry with Allain. What was he thinking of, to go away and leave her here alone among strangers? Had he no idea of the fears and fancies that beset a woman in her condition?

  He had said he would never leave her. Yet he had. He had.

  She told herself every day that he must return soon, that he did not intend to stay away forever. Every day the sun went down and night smothered the villa in shadows, and Allain did not come.

  She was sure he must have had a good reason for going. There was someone he intended to see, something he meant to do to put an end to the surveillance of his movements. Or perhaps he planned to bring to justice whoever had terrorized Signora de Allori enough to cause her death.

  But to leave her there alone in the villa after what had been done to the elderly woman who had taken them in seemed callous in the extreme. What would she do if the men returned, if they demanded to know where Allain had gone, and she could not tell them.

  She felt so clumsy as the child grew, so unlike her usual self. Where once she had been quick and agile, she was forced now to move with care. And she felt vulnerable, not so much for herself as for the child she carried. If anything happened to her, it could not survive. To protect it, she must keep herself safe.

  She was not really alone, of course. Giovanni was there.

  He was always near, pruning, raking, or sweeping the tiles, when she was in the garden. Often he brought a bouquet for her, to place on
her table at breakfast or luncheon. If she dropped her sewing, he was there to retrieve it. If she walked in the lanes around the house, he was ready to offer his arm for her support.

  Since the night Allain had left, Giovanni had been sleeping in the house. He came every evening just after twilight and stayed until dawn. He took up a post outside her door, where he made himself a pallet. When he slept, however, she did not know. If she got up in the night, he was there, asking if she had need of him. If she rose early, he was up before her. In the long evenings of late autumn, Giovanni came and sat with her in the salon. He enjoyed having her read to him. He was not uneducated, having gone to the local priest for schooling, but his long workday left him little time for books or study. He liked hearing what was happening in the world from the news sheets, but was especially fond of Italian translations of Sir Walter Scott’s tales of gallant men and fair ladies. When she caught him grinning quietly to himself at her mispronunciation one day, he began to help her with her Italian.

  He always served her dinner when his mother had cooked it. He would not allow Violet to eat in the kitchen, however, but moved in and out of the dining room with the different dishes in the correct form. He made her laugh with his droll comments on his day or the life in the village, and he was always urging her to eat more, insisting she try this tidbit or that, offering food as if it were a substitute for love.

  At first she had been disturbed.

  “You must not neglect your work for me, Giovanni,” she said, “or your family.”

  “No, madonna,” he answered, his black eyes tender, “but I must be near in case you call.”

  “Yes, but you needn’t watch my every breath.”

  His smile faded, replaced by concern. “It troubles you, having me near you?”

  “Of course not, but you must have a life of your own.”

  “No, madonna; it is yours.”

  He had changed the subject then with so much firmness it was not possible to persist. She was left to wonder whether Allain had indeed left instructions for so much attention to her comfort, or whether Giovanni was stretching his instructions more than a little for his own reasons. She suspected it was some of both.