The Knotty Bride (7 page)

T
he sea around
Lipari
is indeed a marvelous color. At least in all the tourist pictures I’ve seen. My guess is those tourist pictures must have been taken between May and October because right now, in the second week of November, the Mediterranean is quite grey and angry. As I rode on the crossing from Napoli, the sea was so rough that half of the ferry riders threw up all over themselves.

Well, maybe not half the riders. I tend to exaggerate. Perhaps it was just that one little boy in the green shirt, but oh God, when he threw up, I lost it too. I cleaned up as best I could in the ferry’s tiny bathroom. And now, as I stand in the lobby of
The Lipari Luxury B and B by Debi
with my hair smelling of sick, I am still smiling because I am about to check in for my long-deserved vacation.

Only the man behind the counter is holding a newspaper up to his face and doesn’t seem to notice that I’ve walked in.

Hmm, where is Debi? The Debi from the brochure? Am I supposed to ring a bell to get this man’s attention? I look at the reception desk, which is covered with odds and ends: a calendar, pens and pencils, rubber bands and paper clips all strewn about, but there’s no bell.

And now that I look around the place, it looks a little on the shabby side. The paint is peeling like at Beatta’s place, and the empire sofa that lines the wall sags badly. Still, that’s okay; this is what I can afford.

“Ahem,” I clear my throat. The man does not look up from his paper. What is his problem?

“Ding! Ding!” I make an impromptu bell noise.

The man puts down his paper, and I almost fall over.

“You?” I say, unable to believe my eyes, because on the other side of the reception desk is Brandon Logan in the flesh.

A thousand thoughts flood my mind, but they all tend to be variations on a theme. The theme is “My God, he looks flat-out fantastic!” He really does. He’s wearing a crisp, white cotton shirt, a pair of dark slacks, and his hair is all tousled.

With a hand over my heart to calm the palpations, I stammer, “Wh-what are you doing here?”

“I’ve rented the whole place for seven days.”

“But I rented a room here for seven days.”

“I bought you out.”

“You what?”

“I bought you out,” he says, before standing up and making his way around the check-in desk. My poor heart does a complete somersault because Brandon is wearing these glasses that give him this whole Clark Kent appearance.

Rip them off! My mind screams. Rip off your glasses and throw them to the ground!

“Superman!” I scream, and I daresay this time it is Brandon who is surprised. Being the consummate actor, he quickly recovers. Tactfully he ignores my outburst, which must be a hard thing to do. It must be very strange to have someone yell “Superman” right in your face. The obvious reply would be to ask why on God’s green earth I yelled such a thing. But Brandon doesn’t ask. Instead, to my utter astonishment, he grabs my hand and drops to one knee.

Suddenly the room begins to spin.

“I am on my knees…” he murmurs.

Clearly, I can see that…

“…to ask you to forgive me.”

Unable to contain myself, I yell the name of another superhero.

Brandon pauses briefly. If he is worried that this conversation will go nowhere due to my inability to do anything other than scream things like “Superman” and “Flash,” he doesn’t show it.  To be honest, I don’t know why I screamed that second name. My head is being flooded with random thoughts.

What will I do? What will I do if he asks me to explain myself? If forced to explain why I am yelling the names of superheroes, I suppose I will have to say that the first time I yelled the name of a superhero was because Brandon looked very Clark Kentish, but, of course, he doesn’t look like Flash at all; I think I just yelled that as some sort of exclamation like “Holy Buddha!” or “Jiminy Cricket” or “Sargent Pepper!”

“My dearest, Lily,” Brandon begins, “please forgive me. I was such an ass that day I followed you in Arona. Nothing came out right. I wanted to apologize but honestly, everything I said was wrong.”

“I don’t understand…h-how did you know I would be here?” I manage, trying to block the lustful images that keep popping into my head.

Brandon tilts his head, giving me a look that says, “You know how.”

“Rupa, told you!” I exclaim.

“Exactly. You see, these days I am very busy making donations to cat rescues. Of course, that is due to the horrible things the press said about me after the homeless cat fiasco. You’ll be happy to know, I had to make a very large donation to Rupa’s rescue before she would concede to give me any information. She was extremely angry.”

“You bought her off?” I mutter.

“I allowed a wonderful person to continue running an outstanding rescue that saves many lives,” he replies.

“How crafty!”

“Yes. Yes it was.” The smile on Brandon’s face grows even wider. “Look, Lily, if you think you could ever forgive me, then I promise I’ll never allow five months to go by without calling you again.”

Forgive him?

That’s right. He was mean to me. I almost forgot, what with all this holding of my hand and dropping to his knees and all.

But wait a minute. I will never forgive him. I am far too proud.  Forget that I have not had sex in a long, long time. I may never have sex again. Forget the image of Brandon ripping off those Clark Kent glasses. I open my mouth to tell him how I will never forgive him, and how the two of us will never be together again, when Brandon does the most amazing thing. He lets go of my hand, reaches into the pocket of his slacks, and pulls out a little velvet sack. With a slow movement, he pulls several glittering objects out of the sack and gently presses them into my palm.

I stare down at them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Nine sparkling gems. Nine gems that look as if they have been cut in a hasty fashion. Nine gems of a very dark blue.

“Th-they can’t be…” I sputter.

Brandon climbs to his feet. “Oh, but I think they are.”

“Where did you get them?”

“That’s a story in and of itself,” he adds with a mysterious raise of his brow.

“Well?”

“Well, you remember that day when you chewed me out in the alley?”

“More like the day you cornered me in an alley. But yes, go on.”

“When I returned home, I was miserable. For a full hour I kept picking up the phone to call you. I wanted to explain how none of this has gone as planned. And it’s true; none of this has gone as planned. It’s a sad fact that despite my success in the acting world, I’ve never been very good when it comes to personal relations. So, you see when I was in the Congo…”

“Wait…what does this have to do with these jewels?” I interrupt.

“Hold on. I’m coming to that. When I was in the Congo, I had a lot of time to reflect on things. And I reflected on the fact that when it comes to personal relations, I have always picked truly horrible women.”

“Oh?”

“Now, don’t take offense,” he says, putting out his hand. “I don’t mean you. I mean Amanda and all my previous relationships. I think that when it comes to women, I am a poor judge of character.”

A strange, low hiss fills the air.

“No, no, no. I don’t mean you. Everything about you amazes me.”

It does?

“You, Lily Bilbury, are the opposite of Hollywood. You are unpretentious, big-hearted and a full-throttle optimist. But I began to think, as I whiled away time in my tent in the Congo, that since I am a poor judge of character, perhaps I should be careful about jumping into another relationship so quickly after the train wreck that was Amanda.”

“I see,” I say, wondering where this whole conversation is going.

“Yes, well, whenever we were in coverage in the jungle, which wasn’t often, I thought a million times about picking up the phone and calling you. But there was this part of me that thought, wait a minute, what am I doing? Is this a rebound relationship? Do I want to be with this woman? After all, sometimes you act a little crazy.”

The low hiss fills the room again, but Brandon remains undaunted. In fact, there is a strange gleam in his eye. He is a man with much to say and nothing is going to stop him now.

“I went back and forth like that for a long time. Thinking about calling you but then not following through. Instead, I always called my agent, Alexandria. I would call her, and I would lay out in detail how she needed to telephone you and tell you the Christmas bonus checks would be coming. I know it’s all strange. I can’t say what I was doing or thinking. It makes no sense— not calling you myself but rather having my agent call for some other trumped-up reason.”

He’s right. It makes no sense. In fact, it’s totally insane. It’s as if he were trying to send me some kind of code.

“Anyway, the long and short of it is I wasn’t sure about us. I needed time to think. But during my last days of filming
The African Princess,
I knew. I knew I wanted to be with you. And I also knew any woman in her right mind would not be very happy about being ignored for five months. So I hired the world’s most famous tenor to serenade you. I had big plans for my return. I was going to make it all up to you. But, of course, you know the rest.”

Ah, that I do. I stare sadly at the floor.

“I have to admit, when I arrived home and saw you there, with all those cats stuffed in my gym, I thought you were certifiable. All my doubts came flooding back. I’m sorry I acted so badly. What can I say?”

All of a sudden, Brandon grabs me and pulls me in close. He smells so darn good, like lumberjack mixed with aftershave and the salty air of the sea. But for some reason, I seize with fear.

“Lily,” he murmurs, “I decided that I like certifiable. If certifiable comes with a big heart like yours, then that is what I need. I ask you one last time, please forgive me.” His face is so close to mine that I can almost feel the brush of his stubble against my cheek.

“No!” I push him away. “I mean, wait a minute. None of that explains these gems you put in my hand.”

For a second, Brandon looks completely thrown off course. After all, he was leaning in for the kiss and we were so close. We were right
there
, but I stopped it. Why did I stop it? What’s wrong with me?

“Oh right,” he says, recovering himself. “I was getting to that part.  As I was saying, that day that I followed you into the alley…”

“Cornered me in the alley,” I correct, although my voice betrays me, and I am not quite as severe as I would like to be.

“Right, right you are— cornered you. Well, that was an awful day. I was very angry with myself for everything that had gone wrong. I spent the first hour contemplating calling you. Then I decided I needed to do something, make myself busy. So I decided to fix the leaky faucet in the kitchen.”

“Don’t tell me that thing is still dripping?” I ask, wondering why I care. I am standing here quite possibly holding some of the most precious gems in the world. And I have just pushed away the most eligible bachelor in the world. I have shielded myself from his kisses, and now I find myself inquiring about the faucet in Villa Buschi’s kitchen?

I
am
certifiable.

“It is still dripping,” he says. “I’ve spent a fortune on plumbers, and nobody can get it fixed. So anyway, I decided to get my tools from the garage. But I could never seem to find the right tools. I kept going in and out through the front door, and because I was angry about everything, I kept slamming the door shut. And guess what happened? On my fifth trip to the garage to find the right tool, I slammed the stupid front door so hard that the knocker fell off.”

“Oh no, that ugly gargoyle thing?” I let out a laugh. “That thing is hideous.”

“Yes, it fell to the ground and shattered. And guess what was hidden inside?”

“I don’t believe it…”

“I couldn’t either. How could it be? But when I bent down to pick up the shards of the knocker, all I could do was smile. The gems were scattered among the ruins of that ugly gargoyle. And looking at them caused it all to come back to me; that crazy day when you and Francesca smashed up my Faberge egg looking for the remnants of the French Blue. Yet here they were, lying scattered on my front terrace— nine little diamonds that look to be the exact same color as the Hope.”