Summer in Tuscany (23 page)

Gemma

I was awakened from an afternoon nap by a knock on my door. It was Nonna, with a gleam in her eye that made me suspect she was up to something.

“Let’s get dressed up tonight, have some champagne, celebrate,” she said. “Wear the new red dress, why don’t you?”

“Wait a minute,” I said, still bleary-eyed. “Exactly
what
are we celebrating?”

She gave me a little smirk and a nudge with her elbow. “The end of the sabotage,” she whispered, and then she laughed. “Anyhow, Gemma, this is your chance to wear it, so why not?”

An hour later I was checking my appearance in the tall mirrors that gave me a more than adequate view of my newly tanned self in the red dress and the ruby slippers that were meant to take me to Oz. The soft chiffon clung where it should and left bare what was nicer left bare. There was no doubt about it, the Italians knew what they were doing when it came to clothes. I sighed, thinking gloomily that I’d better make the most of it; it was probably the last chance I’d get to wear it. Soon—too soon—we would be returning to New York. To work and the daily grind.

You mean to the life you love,
I reminded myself.
The one where you have eliminated all romantic and emotional complications
. Yeah, right, I whispered. Back to the woman with the ice around her heart. Remember?

I didn’t have a lipstick that went with the dress, so I put on my usual paleish neutral, which was entirely unsuitable, and a dust of blusher on my pale gold face. A swish of mascara, a wet finger to smooth my eyebrows, a fluff of my hair, and a squirt of Violetta di Parma, and I was done. Oh, wait a minute: my glasses. There, now I was ready. To celebrate the end of the sabotage of the Villa Piacere and, if I were truthful, the end of Nonna’s dream of being an heiress.

Livvie knocked on the door, then bounced in. “Mom, can I borrow your new white skirt?”

This is too much,
I thought, startled.
Now my daughter’s borrowing my clothes. She’s growing up too fast. I want her to stay a little kid. I liked that, it was so much easier. Now there’s kissing and clothes and teen stuff to get through
.

“It’ll be too long for you,” I said, being used to my daughter’s micromini-length apparel.

“That’s okay.” Livvie held the skirt up against her. “I’m thinking of changing my whole look. Y’know, like more grown-up. I want to be totally unique.”

She disappeared with my new skirt, and I wandered upstairs to meet Nonna. She looked quite at home, propping up an international bar.

“The heiress looks pretty good tonight,” I said, hitching onto the stool next to her.

She gave me that Sunday up-and-down look, critiquing me mentally, I could tell. Then she said, “I hate the lipstick.”

“Jeez, Mom, what about the dress?”

“The dress is perfect. And the shoes.” She turned to the barman and ordered what seemed to be becoming our usual drink: a martini with Grey Goose Vodka, while I stared down at my feet. The shoes were already squinching. Pride was painful, I remembered, knowing that some poor woman must have coined that phrase.

Livvie glided slinkily toward us. My white skirt fit her perfectly. With it she wore a simple black round-neck T-shirt and the flat beaded Capri sandals. If not for the henna tattoos, thankfully already fading on her arms, and the cropped yellow hair, she might have looked almost normal.

The skirt reached to her knees. “I’ve never seen you without legs before,” I said, grinning, and she said, “Oh, Mom, don’t start,” and Nonna told her she looked almost ladylike and ordered her a Coke.

“A telephone call for the
signorina,
” the barman said, passing Livvie a phone.

“For me?” Astonished, she took it and said hello. “Oh, okay,” she said, sounding subdued. “Okay. Yeah, well, maybe.
Ciao
.”

She handed back the phone and took a sip from her Coke while we stared expectantly at her. “Well?” I said.

“Oh, it was just Tomaso. Maybe he can’t make it tonight, maybe he can. We’ll see.”

That silenced us. I didn’t know what to say, and of course Nonna had not been privy to our woman-to-woman conversation last night, so she did not know the full details of the Kiss, and the perils of first love, especially when you were only fourteen. So Nonna said, “Good, that means you can celebrate the end of the sabotage at the villa with us,” and Livvie gave her the kind of look that said what did she care, and I sighed, looking forward to a silent, grim “celebration.”

We had just settled ourselves at our usual table overlooking the bay, with the sky all golden-orange from the sunset, when
“Bene,”
Nonna said, sounding like the cat that got the cream. I followed her eyes. Muffie Raphael was standing in the doorway.

Livvie yelped in delight. She threw her arms around Muffie as though they were bosom buddies and said, “Great to see you.” And Muffie grinned back at her and said, “Me too.”

I looked at the pair of them: Muffie in totally inappropriate white Lycra shorts and a top with sequined straps and all that spiky pale-green hair; and my daughter, a simple blonde in the white skirt to her knees and a plain T-shirt and flats.
Omigod,
I thought, quoting Livvie, the girls have changed roles. Muffie has become Livvie—and Livvie has become Muffie.

Then I realized that if Muffie was here, so was Ben. And suddenly there he was, in rumpled shorts, looking hot and tired and sweaty. And
I
was looking positively gorgeous in my new red chiffon and smelling of Violetta di Parma. Had we reversed roles too?

My pulse jumped up a dozen notches; I didn’t know what to do. I ran my hands agitatedly through my hair and said, “Oh, goddamn, what’s he doing here anyway?” and I scrambled to my feet with somehow the idea of running away. Then I told myself I was never going to run away again because when I did I always tripped or walked into doors or something, and I sat down again quickly.

The waiters looked suspiciously at Ben and Muffie as they made their way along the terrace of elegant diners. I almost laughed.
Scruffy
and
offbeat
might have been apt words to describe their appearance, but y’know what? It did not take away from Ben’s fatal charm one bit, especially when he looked into my eyes and made me feel, all over again, that I was the only woman in the room.

“Gemma,” he said, holding out his hand. Somehow I struggled to my feet. I took that hand, and we walked together back along the terrace, followed by the interested gaze of the other diners.

A trio was playing a song I thought I knew; soft, romantic, sexy. Ben pulled me to him into a slow dance. The lights were low. We were the only couple on the floor. I could smell my own perfume and his sweat. I thought it was the sexiest smell in the world.

This is all wrong, I told myself, looking into his eyes. Did I tell you they were gray-green with little gold flecks? Did I tell you that his hands were hard, firm? Did I tell you that I knew his body as well as I knew my own, and that when you dance a slow dance with a man whose every movement you recognize, you realize that you are a woman and, possibly, a very weak one? And that even though I knew I shouldn’t be doing this, that I should have sent him packing with a cold good-bye and maybe even a Get lost—I was not about to do that.

Ben felt my sigh and lifted his cheek from mine. “I’m here to apologize, Gemma,” he said. “Luiza is just an old acquaintance. I’ve known her for years. There’s nothing between us. Never was. This was all my fault.”

“Well, maybe not
entirely
your fault,” I murmured, linked to his eyes by what I knew must be electricity, and not wanting to hear another word about the gorgeous Luiza.

His sexy eyes swept me up and down, and I didn’t care that the pointy-toed shoes were killing me. I hardly even felt the pain. “I like you in red,” he whispered, his face so close I could feel his breath.

“Gemma,” he murmured, his lips hovering over mine, “I drove here as soon as I found out where you were. I asked myself all the way on that long drive why I was doing it. And when I saw you sitting on the terrace, with your upswept glasses and your red dress and Botticelli hair, I knew why.”

I looked at his mouth, then into his eyes, and okay, this time I really was drowning in them. “Bet you didn’t recognize me,” I said stupidly, and he sighed.

“Why do you always interrupt me?”

“Sorry. What were you saying?”

“Damn it, I think I was saying I missed you, you crazy woman. Maybe I’m falling for you, Gemma Jericho.”

I was never a girl who could accept a compliment easily. “Get outta here,” I said, grinning like a fool. “You hardly know me.”

He pulled me so close I was positively crushed against him. He rested his chin against my forehead, and I heard him mutter, “Whatever am I gonna do with her?” Then he looked at me again and said, “Just think of all the good things about you I still have to find out.”

The trio swept back into that song again, and now I remembered it. It was Marc Anthony’s “You Sang to Me.” The one where he’s “crashing” into love. I was afraid he was singing about me, doing exactly what I had vowed never to do again. In that song Marc Anthony also says he’s not afraid to love, but oh,
I
am. And besides, I didn’t want to crash into love with a man who was virtually a stranger; a man I had broken a vow to make love with; a man who might just possibly wreck the carefully controlled life I had fashioned for myself.

The music had stopped, and Ben was leading me out of there, away from the curious diners. Away from Nonna and Livvie and Muffie, who I hoped were enjoying their end-of-sabotage celebration dinner, and out into the night.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“My place.” He handed me into the dusty Land Rover. “The Hotel Sirenuse, just down the road. There was no room at this inn.”

I glanced nervously at him from under my lashes. This was my last chance. I could get out of the car and walk away without even a good-bye. But I didn’t. Instead I kissed him, and he gave me that deep, knowing look, and in minutes we were at the Sirenuse.

We were in a room overlooking the sea and the village of Positano. Ben closed the curtains, shutting out reality, the way he had in Florence. He looked into my frightened eyes. “Why?” he said, after a long moment. “
Why
won’t you let me into your heart, Gemma?”

“I will,” I said. “I have.” But I was lying, and he knew it.

He ran a finger lightly across my chin and over my cheekbone. He took off my glasses and stroked back my hair with both his hands, holding it tight against my scalp until I thought I must look a bit like Fido, but he didn’t seem to think so, because what he said was “Beautiful, so beautiful.”

Then he stepped quickly away and began to pull off his clothes. I gasped. I mean, this was a bit quick, wasn’t it? Whatever happened to foreplay?

“Got to take a shower,” he said. “Don’t go away.” He turned at the bathroom door and caught me ogling his delicious body.
Bug-eyed
might have described me, and he laughed. “Please,” he added, “don’t leave me.”

I didn’t. In fact, what I did was slip off the red dress and my Oz shoes and the lacy new underwear that, on second thought, maybe I should have kept on and flaunted for him. But I left it all in a little heap on the floor, and then—maybe I shouldn’t have done this either, but I did—I followed him into the bathroom, and into that shower.

Making love under running water is like having your breath taken away twice over. Water is in your eyes, in your mouth, in your hair.

“It’s the rainstorm in Florence all over again,” Ben said, kissing me gently, “only this time we don’t need an umbrella.”

I was the aggressor, shamelessly reaching for him. I don’t know where this trait comes from—or maybe I do. It’s just that I had suppressed it for so long, and now I was going for the brass ring. I soaped his long strong body, massaging him, digging my nails into him, and then I knelt in front of him and took him in my mouth. He tasted like wine and roses and sex and everything wonderful. He was groaning, pressing my head into him, and I wanted to laugh, I was so happy. I thought maybe this is really what I was put on earth for, to pleasure a man, to take pleasure from him. But then I knew that it was all part of life, part of loving, of living, of being a woman who, even though she shouldn’t, was maybe, just maybe,
crashing into love
with a man.

He picked me up, backed me against the tiled shower wall, bent to kiss my nipples until I groaned with pleasure. “I can’t wait,” he said, lifting me up and onto him. “Gemma,” he cried, as I wrapped my legs around him and he held me there, thrusting into me, looking into my eyes, and we were drowning this time in each other’s. Thrills of orgasms rushed through me, one after another, and I heard him cry out, felt him inside me, warm, wetness, wonderful.

I unfolded my legs from around his waist, and he held me until I could stand, then he leaned both hands against the shower wall, breathing hard, staring at me.

The shower still gushed water, streaking our sweat-slick bodies, and he said, “I guess that’s what missing you can do to a guy.” And I said I thought it was probably that, and he laughed.

He wrapped a big white bath towel around me, then picked me up and carried me to the bed. We lay side by side, just holding hands. Outside the window I heard a snatch of music from a sidewalk café a burst of laughter, the clatter of heels on terra-cotta tiles.

“What are you thinking?” He rolled on his elbow and looked at me.

“I’m thinking,” I said slowly, “about crashing into love.”

“Me too,” he said, and he took me in his arms again, and this time we were more gentle, more caring of each other. He took his time and I took mine. I never knew it was so easy to become a shameless hussy.

Ben

Ben lay awake listening to Gemma’s soft, even breathing. He thought it was probably one of the few times he had seen her quiet, and certainly one of the few times she hadn’t been coming back at him with some quip, or else tripping over something. He grinned in the darkness. He really liked her. Plus she was one of the sexiest women he’d ever known. She had a wonderful instinctive sexuality; certainly nothing she had learned from the pages of
Cosmo,
and certainly no faking. She enjoyed herself, enjoyed his body, and God, he surely loved hers. And though he still couldn’t fathom why, he really cared about her.

Did he mean he loved her? Was he
in love
with her? She had certainly brought something new into his life that he didn’t want to lose. He supposed, when he thought about it, it was innocence.

And that was pretty remarkable when you thought that Gemma looked death and human destruction in the face every day. But she still came out a winner. Winning over death.

He touched her warm thigh and she moved sleepily closer, wrapping herself around him. His arm was crushed under her shoulders, and it felt as though she weighed about three hundred pounds instead of being the skinny long thing she was. He needed to move, but he didn’t want to disturb her, she slept so soundly. Inspecting her face in what was by now the half-light of dawn, he saw the red bump on her nose where she had walked into the French door. Laughter rumbled in his chest.

“What’s so funny?” Gemma muttered sleepily.

“
You,
sweetheart,” he told her. “Now go back to sleep.” And she did. Even though he wanted to make love to her again, wanted to feel her clinging to him, wanted to taste her and probe her mouth with his tongue and feel the luxury of being deep inside her.

He sighed, staring up at the ceiling. Oh God, was he
really
in love this time?