Mike looks at her and then looks up to the ceiling and back down to her. “You know it’s not fair when you give me the puppy dog eyes. You know I’ve never been able to say no to them.” He chucks her playfully under the chin.
Isabel smiles broadly. “I never said I played fair!” She winks at him and he laughs. It almost feels like old times. Almost but not quite, there’s still an underlying level of tension that had never been there between them before.
Mike locks eyes with her and she can feel his gaze turn heated in a matter of seconds. They’re standing too close to each other. She thinks about stepping away, but she doesn’t want to break the moment they’ve just shared, the moment that has made it seem as if they were just two buddies again, as if none of the other stuff has happened.
“It’s really good to see you, Issy.” Mike lifts her chin up with his index finger and leans down, as if he’s about to kiss her on the lips. But when he’s only inches away he turns her head slightly and kisses her on the cheek, just at the corner of her mouth.
Isabel’s eyes widen, knowing she should say something, but at a complete loss. A polite cough behind her snaps her out of her stupor.
“Rosa!” She is so happy to see the older woman she could almost cry. “Rosa, this is Mike.”
She introduces the two, taking the opportunity to take a few steps away from him as he shakes Rosa’s hand and exchanges pleasantries with her. Above all else, Mike is polite. That’s something no one could ever fault him on.
“Rosa, Mike’s going to be staying with us for a couple of days. Could you show him up to the Blue Room?” Isabel makes a point of only looking at Rosa, knowing Mike’s attention is focused on her and not in a purely platonic way.
“Wonderful, I show you.” Rosa gestures for Mike to follow her, reading Isabel’s need to be alone.
“I’ll see you in the morning?” Mike stops at the threshold of the kitchen, looking at Isabel meaningfully.
“I’ll be here.” She smiles broadly, doing her best impression of being footloose and fancy-free.
“Great.” Mike nods, as if he’s persuading himself of something. “I want to talk more about all this, Issy. I’m not ready to give up, not yet.” He gives her a pointed glance before he hurries after Rosa to catch up.
CHAPTER 4
Isabel sinks into one of the mismatched chairs in the charming rustic kitchen and puts her head in her hands, wondering when exactly it was that everything had become so complicated. It is at times like this she misses her mother most. In the past, she would have speed-dialed her mom and she would have given Isabel the best advice. She would have made it seem as if everything was going to be all right, as if everything could be fixed. Caroline Bishop’s emotional openness had balanced her daughter’s emotional retardedness and now that she is gone, Isabel is a little like a boat without a sail, just drifting around without really knowing where she is going or what she is doing.
“When did you become such an idiot?” Isabel asks the question into her hands, her fingers muffling the words.
“When you fell in love.” Rosa’s response makes Isabel jump.
She hadn’t even heard the older woman come in. For a large lady she is remarkably spry. She sighs, taking a seat next to Isabel and placing her hand on her shoulder, patting it rhythmically.
“Well, love isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, Rosa.” Isabel smiles at the other woman, shaking her head.
Rosa doesn’t pass comment on this particular kernel of wisdom on Isabel’s part. Instead she taps her fingers on the table, creating a drumbeat that seems to be encouraging Isabel off to sleep, which is a feat in itself.
“He seem like a nice boy.” Rosa shrugs as if to say ‘what?’ when Isabel gives her a dry look.
“He is a nice boy, Rosa. He’s a very nice boy.” Isabel rubs her temples, wondering how she can get out of this conversation without actually sprinting for freedom.
“And this nice boy, he like you, yes?” Rosa pokes Isabel in the shoulder when she doesn’t respond immediately.
“Ouch! All right, Rosa! Yes, yes he does, though I don’t deserve him to.” Isabel shakes her head at the irony of it. The one you want disappears into the night without giving you any reason to think he’ll ever be back again; he doesn’t even say the four-letter word you would give anything to hear. The one who wants you chases you over three states to turn up at your door and declare his undying love for you.
“Why you say that, Isabel?” Rosa frowns, her eyes creasing in the corners at the action.
“Because it’s the truth.” Isabel sighs as she lays her head against the kitchen table. “He’s a great guy, Rosa. He’s a great guy and a great friend. And anyone woman in her right mind would be in love with him and would want to be with him. He’s every mother’s dream for her daughter! Hell, even my mom would have been overjoyed if I’d introduced him as my boyfriend!”
“But you don’t love him, not like that.” Rosa’s voice tells Isabel she already knows the answer to that particular question.
Isabel shakes her head, still keeping her head on the table, the cool wood going some way to ease her burgeoning headache. “What if Mike’s right, Rosa?” She asks the question quietly, a little afraid that the tears will find their way out of her tightly shut eyes. “What if he never comes back?”
Rosa doesn’t ask which ‘he’ Isabel is talking about; there’s no need. They both know who it is. Rosa sighs deeply. “Isabel, let me tell you a story.”
Isabel shakes her head. She knows Rosa means well and that she just wants to help, but right now the last thing she wants is a moralistic tale about how her life is passing her by and she shouldn’t be waiting for a man that is never going to come back. “Rosa, I’m really tired. Maybe another time -”
But the older woman cuts her off. “Isabel, I try again and again to tell you this story. Every time you say you no want to hear it. Well, this time, I don’t care. I going to tell story and you going to listen.”
The serious tone of voice makes Isabel sit up and blink at Rosa, who looks like she’s about to blow. “All right, Rosa. It’s fine. Tell me your story.” Isabel makes calming gestures with her hands, wondering if she’s ever seen the other woman so mad.
“Bene.” Good. Rosa nods, satisfied that Isabel is paying attention to what she has to tell her. “When I was in Italy, I was so happy.” She smiles as she begins her story, the memories of her homeland flooding back. “I was young and beautiful.” Her eyes twinkle but her mouth purses as she catches Isabel’s expression. “What? I was skinny like you then.” She pats her matronly hips as if she is remembering a time when they didn’t take up quite so much room.
“I’m not surprised, Rosa.” Isabel doesn’t even have to lie. Despite the fact that the older woman clearly has an impressive girth, her full face is still more than pretty. It wasn’t hard to imagine what she must have looked like thirty years before.
“Hmmff.” Rosa makes a suspicious noise, as if she doesn’t quite believe Isabel, but she continues on regardless. “Anyway, in my town there were many men who want to marry me. But I no like any.” She shakes her head, her eyes getting that faraway look in them again. “Until one day, a man came to our town. Mario.” She sighs deeply, lost in her memories and Isabel listens in fascination. “He was from Roma, the big city. He had so many stories and used to talk to me about what it was like there, how one day he would take me there and show me everything.” She shakes her head.
“You fell in love with him.” Isabel can tell that just from the look on Rosa’s face.
Rosa nods. “It was like this.” She snaps her fingers. “I see him, he see me and that was all.” She shrugs and Isabel nods, understanding exactly what the other woman is saying. “But my father, he no approve. This man, my father say, he is trouble.” Rosa sighs again.
“What kind of trouble? Why didn’t your father like him?” Isabel clenches her hands tight, leaning towards Rosa, enveloped in the story.
“He was, ho
w you say? He was a man not suitable for a girl like me. My father, he say I too innocent, that I do not understand what a man like him wants.” Isabel watches as Rosa’s eyes fill up with a hurt she must have been carrying around for more than half her life. “I no understand what my father mean, until one night, I follow Mario and watch. He meet with another man and the other man give him a gun.” Rosa shakes her head as if she were trying to get that memory out of her mind. “In Italy, back then, only two kinds of people have gun.” She ticks off fingers on her hand. “Police and Mafioso.” She looks pointedly at Isabel.
Isabel gulps. “Mafioso. He was part of the mafia.” Isabel’s eyes widen. No wonder Rosa can recognize trouble when she sees it, she thinks to herself.
Rosa nods. “He tell me everything, how he became Mafioso, how he want to leave, buy vineyard, make wine. He want a quiet life. He want to marry me, to have a family.” Rosa gulps and Isabel sees the woman is desperately trying to hold back tears.
Isabel takes hold of her hand and squeezes it, silently communicating that she’s there for her. “So what happened?” Isabel searches Rosa’s eyes for some kind of clue as to how this story ends.
“My father, he tell me no, he tell me that I cannot marry a man like Mario. He say I have to choose. I marry Mario and I never see my family again or I do as my father say and I never see Mario again.” Rosa wipes her eyes with the back of her hands, the pain from that day still as fresh now as it was then.
Realization dawns on Isabel. “Your husband. He’s not called Mario.”
Rosa shakes her head sadly. “I couldn’t say goodbye to my family, to know I would never see my mother or my sisters again. I say goodbye to Mario.”
“What did he say? Didn’t he try to fight for you, to change your mind?” Isabel feels herself getting swept away with the tragedy of the story.
Rosa shakes her head. “He was a proud man, too proud. When I tell him I cannot marry him, that I can never see him again, he kiss me and he walk away.”
Isabel holds her breath, waiting for more, waiting for Rosa to tell how he came back for her, how he told her he loved her and he couldn’t live without her, but the older woman remains silent.
“That’s it?” Isabel doesn’t even try to keep the frustration out of her voice. “That’s it? He just left and you never saw him again?”
Rosa shrugs as if to say that she doesn’t know what it is Isabel expected. “My father, he find me a husband. We marry, it was very quick because I...I...” Rosa looks down, playing with her hands, clearly ashamed of something.
“You were pregnant.” Isabel bites her bottom lip, not wanting to even imagine the pain Rosa must have gone through, to be married off to another man while carrying the baby of the man she loved.
Rosa nods. “My husband, he knew. But he is good man. He buy us tickets to go to America. We leave before the baby was born.” Rosa holds her hands over her lower abdomen as if she can still feel her firstborn kicking up a storm inside of her.
“Did you ever try to find Mario again? Did you ever hear from him?” Isabel desperately wants there to be something she can hold onto in this story, something that will tell her Wesley will come back, that everything will work out.
Rosa just shakes her head. “If he go back to my village, my father, he never tell me.” She shrugs. “And it is better this way. I marry a wonderful man and we have beautiful family together.” Rosa looks genuine about this part, as if her family is enough to make giving up the man she loved worthwhile.
“But don’t you ever think about him, Rosa? Don’t you ever wonder what happened to him? Or if he still thinks about you?” Isabel wraps her arms around herself, cradling herself against the coldness seeping through to her bones.
“I have family now, Isabel. I have family and I have husband who I love.” Rosa gives Isabel a pointed look and Isabel responds with a similar one, telling the older woman she won’t be fobbed off with platitudes. She wants a real answer. Rosa sighs heavily again, looking up at the ceiling as if she is asking the heavenly bodies for strength. “Every day I think about him. Every day I miss him.”
Isabel flops back into her chair, emotionally drained from Rosa’s story. “So what was the message behind that? That Mike is the good, decent man that I could have a good, decent life with and Wesley is the dangerous man, the man I shouldn’t be with?”
Rosa shrugs as if to say Isabel has to take what she wants from the story.
Isabel shakes her head. “Are you always this cryptic or is it just with me?”
Rosa grins, the hurt and pain vanishing from her eyes as if they were never there at all. “We all have a different path, Isabel. But I want you to know, I understand.” She pats Isabel’s hand, maternally. “I understand what it means to be in love. I understand why you say no to Mr. Mike.” She pats Isabel’s hand again, getting to her feet. “But do you want to be alone always? Always hoping? Always waiting?” Rosa shrugs. “That is no way to live, Isabel.”
Before Isabel has a chance to respond, Rosa is gone, leaving nothing but the familiar scent of her Jasmine perfume in her wake. Isabel massages her temples, trying to work out what the hell she’s supposed to do now. She had expected Rosa to tell her that she should be with Mike, that she should forget about Wesley, but what she hadn’t expected was that the older woman had been through something so similar to her.
Rosa was speaking from experience. Isabel knows for a fact that Rosa adores her family, her children, her grandchildren, her husband. But she wonders if she would have chosen differently if she knew then what she knows now. Would she have run off with Mario and left everything behind, to hell with all the consequences?
That is a question only Rosa can answer. And it doesn’t help Isabel much at all. Mike has never been one to give up on something he wants easily. It is a trait that will make him a great doctor, but it is also one that made Isabel sure he won’t be taking her first answer as her last one. She’d seen the way his eyes lit up when she’d told him the other man isn’t coming back. There’s no doubt in her mind he had seen that as a chance for him, an in. He had left believing he might still be able to change her mind, to talk her around to his way of thinking.
And would that be so bad? Would it be so bad to be with someone like Mike? Someone who is kind, dependable, successful, someone who cares about her, someone who isn’t a criminal, someone who isn’t running from the law or from rival biker gangs. There are worse things in the world than to be with someone who could offer stability. Immediately she hears Jamie’s voice in her head.
“Stability is fine if you’re looking for a coffee table, but in a man you need something a little more than that!”
But Mike is more than that, she tells herself. They are friends, close friends; she believes theirs will be a friendship that will stand the test of time. And eventually love, that first spark of passion and feeling and emotion, that all fizzles out after a while. There has to be something behind it, something that will make a relationship last, and friendship seems to be as good a starting point as any.
She’s going ‘round and ‘round in circles in her own mind, not getting any closer to a decision. As soon as she thinks the rational side of her brain has won, her heart pulls her in a different direction. It’s exhausting and all she wants to do is collapse into bed and turn her brain off for a few hours.
As she trudges up the stairs to her bedroom, she thinks about Rosa and Mario and she wonders if he ever did go back for her, if he ever went looking for her only to find out she had married someone else and left the country. She wants to believe he did return, that he loved her enough to get over his own stupid pride and went back to find her. Because if he didn’t go back for her, if Mario never thought about her again, if he never missed Rosa with the same aching sense of loss Isabel had seen in the older woman’s eyes, she can’t help but feel a little more hopeless about her own dangerous man and the chances of ever seeing him again.
CHAPTER 5
Just like always, Isa
bel is the first one to wake up in the house. In between waking dreams of Wesley, she’s at least managed to get some sleep. She had still woken up at one-thirty on the dot, like she did when she was waiting to bandage him up. She wonders how long it’s going to take to break her of that particular habit. When dawn has finally broken, she starts the coffee percolating and sets about her morning routine of breaking some eggs and beating them into submission. She wanders around the kitchen, mixing bowl in hand. She’s so agitated that it’s impossible for her to stay still. She knows that, any moment now, Mike will appear and they’ll have to repeat the conversation they had the night before. But this time will she say the same thing?
She hasn’t quite been able to figure that out. She knows what her head is telling her, but her heart is saying completely the opposite. Her heart is telling her she doesn’t love Mike. But her head is reminding her the man she does love has disappeared, for all intents and purposes, forever, without any kind of a promise of ever coming back. It’s not exactly a promising prospect.
Her eyes wander around the kitchen, landing on the seat at the head of the table where Wesley would usually sit and the spot next to him that she would take when she was patching him up. Her cheeks heat as she thinks about the way he’d kissed her in that very spot.
“Well, this is a sight I could get used to seeing every morning.” Mike’s deep voice makes her jump as she whirls around to face him.
She feels herself blush all over again as she realizes she was thinking about another man just as he had been walking in. “Did you sleep well?” She smiles at him in the most friendly way possible, suddenly very aware she probably should have changed out of her skimpy pajamas before starting on breakfast.
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