Murphy's Law (16 page)

Her mouth was open and her eyes were slightly glazed and she didn’t even notice he was holding on to her.

“This is neutral territory,” he said, and she shifted those large brandy-colored eyes to look at him. “This square belongs to all of Siena, but the rest…” He grinned. “The rest of Siena belongs to its
contradas
.”

Faith frowned. “
Contradas
?”

“Yup. Neighborhoods, though there’s nothing neighborly about the way they feel about each other. Seventeen of them and each one is as individual as a fingerprint. Ornery, too. You see those flags waving from the flag-holders?”

She nodded.

“Each contrada has its own symbol. A couple of hundred years back, they’d have killed for those symbols. And they’ll still shed blood over them come Palio time. The contradas include the She-Wolf, the Giraffe, the Owl, and the Dragon. The Rossis belong to the Snail.”

“You guys should’ve been the Panthers,” she murmured.

“God forbid,” Nick shuddered. “They’re north of us. We hate them, of course, and they hate us. But we particularly hate the Turtles. We’d rather lose the race than see the Turtles win. We’ve been rivals for seven hundred years.”

Her face shut down, smooth as a doll’s. “My parents are from Belfast. We took a visit back to the old country when I was fifteen. Technically, there’s peace, but…” She shrugged tensely. “They have hatreds that last for hundreds of years, too.”

“Nah, it’s not like that here. Sure, the rivalry gets a little…heated at times—”
And the blood could flow,
Nick thought with an inward smile, and often did. But it usually got mopped up quickly and forgiven over a glass of wine. “Once the Palio’s over, there’s this huge victory dinner in the streets of the winning contrada and life goes right back to normal. Speaking of dinner, here we are.”

They’d circled the square and plunged into another narrow street that angled upwards this time.

Ten yards up the steep incline, a large, gray, stone archway set into the wall led into a square courtyard with geraniums banked in terracotta pots around the perimeter. Tables were set out in the courtyard. It was early for the Sienese and nearly all the tables were still free. In an hour’s time, the place would be jumping.

“Niccolò!
Mascalzone!
” a burly man shouted and rushed toward them. He pounded Nick on the back. “Good to see you, you rascal, you! Still killing them on the ice?”

“Tullio.” Some of the pleasure Nick felt at seeing his old friend faded. He pounded back, because it was expected, and tried not to think about never being on the ice again.

Tullio had a broad grin. “You’re here early. You going to help your cousins Michelangelo and Dante whip Turtle butt?” Tullio leaned close and Nick got a tantalizing whiff of garlic, truffles and Brunello wine. “We’re going to show those fucking Turtles what’s what, aren’t we?”

Technically, Tullio was a Dragon and a potential rival, but the Dragons were the sworn enemies of the Turtles, too, and on the theory that your enemy’s enemy was your friend, the Dragon and the Snail were allies. Sort of. This year.

“I don’t think Michelangelo needs my help,” Nick said. “And Dante’s staying out of it, of course.” Mike was the
capitano del popolo,
the leader, of the Snail contrada. For the purposes of the Palio, the capitani del popolo were the commanders-in-chief.

Tullio knew perfectly well that a police
commissario
shouldn’t be involved in the mostly illegal wheeling and dealing that went into trying to secure a victory for your contrada. Tullio also knew that Dante was happily involved up to his neck. Their eyes met and slid away in perfect understanding.

“And who is this lovely young lady?” Tullio boomed as he turned to Faith. “
Bella ragazza.
Much too good for you, Nick.” Tullio frowned, taking in Faith’s pallor and the bruised-looking skin under her eyes.

He stretched out a beefy arm to indicate the way and bustled behind them. He sat them, with enormous fuss and bother, in a small out-of-the-way table in the courtyard where they would still have privacy even when other diners started trooping in.

Then he and Nick started haggling over the meal, serious as judges.

It was only when Nick was assured that the
panzanella
was made with the freshest of spring onions, the crispiest of cucumbers, the greenest of tomatoes—
nostrane
, the lumpy but savory local variety—and the purest virgin olive oil, made only from trees on the south side of Monte Cercina; that Faith’s fish antipasto was made with seafood so fresh it was practically still swimming; that the
vitello tonnato
was made according to Artusi’s nineteenth-century canon; the mayonnaise made by hand by his sainted mother a quarter of an hour ago and the salad plucked from his own garden that very morning, did Nick sit back, satisfied.

“Now,” Tullio said with a gleam in his eye. “The wine.”

Nick and Tullio put their heads together again. In the end, Tullio disappeared and came back with a wisp of cobweb clinging to his cheek and a bottle of 1992
Poggio Antico
white from his own special reserve. He poured a golden finger into the crystal glass and waited with a smug smile.

Nick sipped and closed his eyes as every cell in his battered body signaled acute pleasure. Tullio poured half a glass for Faith and she, too, closed her eyes in pleasure after the first sip.

A call came from inside the restaurant. “
Vengo!
” Tullio bellowed, and hurried off.

“Sorry to take the ordering out of your hands, Faith,” Nick said as he topped their glasses. “But I thought it might be easier that way. Tullio takes pleasure in setting a fine table. I wouldn’t cheat him out of fussing over the food. It’s the way things are done here, and this way he got to describe every dish.”

“In detail, it sounded like.”

“The finest detail,” Nick agreed. “Including where everything came from.”

“Well, I certainly couldn’t have done the ordering, not like that. Did you order fish for me?”

“That’s right. You often order fish back home so I thought you might like it. Tullio makes a great seafood antipasto.” Nick frowned. “How’d you know I ordered fish?”

“Well, I bought a little teach-yourself-Italian manual at the airport before leaving and studied it on the plane. And I did Latin in high school and I know French.
Poisson
,
pesce
. It’s not that hard a leap. And Tullio’s fish imitation was perfect, wriggling fins and all.” She imitated Tullio’s extravagant imitation of a fish. “So putting all those things together, and with the body language…” She shrugged. “You’d have to be blind and deaf not to follow. Though I’m not too sure what Tullio was doing there toward the end.”

“End?”

“When he made those noises and pawed the ground? Are we having steak?”

“Oh.” Nick smiled. “The mozzarella for the
Caprese
salad. He wanted to assure me that the mozzarella was so fresh it practically mooed.”

Nick vowed to make sure Faith ate some of Tullio’s
tagliata
at some point. Made from Chianina beef. After you ate Tullio’s
tagliata
you could die because life wasn’t going to get any better.

Faith laughed and Nick relaxed. It was good to see Faith laughing again. She had a skewed sense of humor that delighted him. Often, he found himself barking with laughter a minute or two after a murmured comment she made sank in. His dates usually laughed about five minutes after, when they got it, which wasn’t often.

Tullio would take at least a quarter of an hour, twenty minutes to serve them. Faith was smiling. He’d never get a better shot at it.

He leaned forward and covered her hand with his, scowling when she slid it neatly back out from under his. “Listen, Faith, I think we need to talk about what happened. You know, the other night. I’m afraid I wasn’t really—”

“Why are you limping?” she interrupted.

It took him a moment to change gears. “Limping?”

“Yeah. You were limping…the other night, too. What gives?”

He didn’t want to go there. Someday soon it would be public knowledge that he’d retired due to injuries, but not yet. It was childish, but somehow until it was official, it didn’t have to be true. He shrugged. “Problem with the meniscus.”

“Uh-uh.” She narrowed her eyes. “You’re hiding something, Nick. What is it?”

“I’m not hiding anything. I’m trying to apologize here, but I guess I’m not making much headway.”

“Okay,” she said crisply. “Apology accepted. Tell me what’s wrong.”

Horrifyingly, though she looked like the same sweet, gentle Faith as always, her voice had Lou-like overtones.

Before he could even think about it, his mouth opened. “The knee’s nothing. It’ll heal in a couple of weeks. It’s my head that’s the problem.”

“Your head’s always been the problem. What’s so different about it now?”

He looked away. Diners were starting to trickle in. Darkness was fast approaching and Tullio came out to start lighting the candles on the table.

“Nick?”

He swallowed. “I, um, I…” The hot ball of grief tangled in his chest, stopping him from getting the words out. He pushed them out in a rush. “I had a concussion, a bad one. It’s all right now, but I can’t afford to ever have another one. I’d be running the risk of a coma or even death. The head doctor said I can’t play hockey.” His eyes lifted to hers. “Ever again.”

Faith’s mouth opened and her eyes rounded. “Oh, my God.” She shook her head. “Oh, Nick, that must be terrible for—”

“I don’t want your sympathy,” Nick said fiercely, clamping down on his teeth so hard his jaw muscles worked.

She recoiled and her chin went up.

“Well, good, I’m glad, because you certainly don’t have my sympathy,” she snapped. “You’ve still got your health, you’re incredibly good-looking, you have a ton of money, and you have a wonderful family who loves you. I see no reason at all to feel sorry for you. I wouldn’t dream of wasting my sympathy on you.”

“Good, because I don’t want it,” he said heatedly.

“Good.”

“Good.”

Silence.

Nick looked up with a sly smile. “Incredibly good-looking, huh?”

“Shut up, Nick.”

Except she wasn’t looking at him, and was drawing wavy lines in the tablecloth with the tines of her fork.

“Look at me when you say that.”

She took a deep breath and raised her eyes and said nothing.

“Ahhhh, Faith.” Miserable, Nick pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. “I want to go back. To the way it was…before.”

“Nobody can go back, Nick. That’s the nature of life. You can only go forward.”

“Okay.” He took his hands away. “Then let’s go forward. I’m really, really sorry about what happened. The truth is, I was—”

“Drunk.” Faith looked at him steadily. “As a skunk.”

“Yeah. I guess you could tell.”

“I had an inkling when you tried to pay for dinner with your Hunters security pass. You’re such a celebrity the manager was actually apologetic when he said, very seriously, that the restaurant couldn’t accept security passes as a form of payment.”

Nick didn’t remember a thing about the dinner or even how they had wound up at his house. Though he did remember long, pale limbs and the feeling of bone-deep satisfaction.

“Don’t look so sad, Nick. You were a very sweet drunk.”

“You’re smiling. I must’ve done something right.”

Faith’s light brown eyebrows snapped together. “Is
that
what this is about?” she asked icily. “You want to know what your performance was like? ‘How’m I doing, coach?’ Do you want me to tell you the earth moved? Do you want a score? Your rating on a scale of one to a hundred?”

Nick winced, wishing he didn’t deserve that. “No, no. It’s just—”

“Just what? You’re making such a big deal out of this, Nick. We had sex. It was nice and now it’s over. I don’t know why we need to rehash it. And it’s not as if it was your first time.”

His cue. He leaned forward, looking her intently in the face. “Faith, listen to me.” He looked away for a second, mouth tight, then brought his gaze back to her. “I really, really need to know this, so don’t blow me off. I asked you at the time and you danced around it, but there was something…Was it—was it
your
first time?”

Blood rushed to her face and she wanted to die, simply die, on the spot. Because in all the ways that counted, Nick was the first.

She could hardly consider Tim Gresham’s unsatisfactory and brief flailing around in her body as sex in any real sense of the term. The heated discussion afterwards of Truman’s theories on factor analysis had been infinitely more exciting than the sex.

“Of course not,” she said haughtily, lifting her chin. “I’ve had—” She looked at him to see what he would buy. “—dozens of affairs. Dozens.”

Nick’s jaw muscles bunched.

She ticked off her fingers, as if silently adding all her lovers up, then opened her hands and shrugged her shoulders—
sorry, too numerous to count
.
“Can’t even remember their names.”

“Look—” Nick bit off what he was going to say as Tullio himself smoothly slid two plates in front of them.

“
Buon appetito
.” He beamed at them, then rushed away.

Nick didn’t even look at his plate. He shifted the plate away with a forefinger, planted his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Okay. That’s the way you want to play it, fine. But don’t think that’s the end—”

“Great stuff,” Faith said around a forkful. “Wow. This is the first time I’ve ever had a cucumber with a specific taste as opposed to something cold and slimy. Can you get the recipe?”

She lifted her eyes to Nick, and he could read perfectly well that the subject was closed.

Okay
, Nick thought.
That’s it.
If that’s the way she wanted it, fine.
Fine
. He shunted his guilty conscience aside. His women knew the score, he made sure of it. He didn’t ordinarily beat himself up about having sex with a woman. Granted, he never chose anyone remotely like Faith and he knew why. She’d have been perfectly justified to beat his brains out, with what he’d done. Instead, she chose to pretend that nothing was wrong. But he knew—