Once upon a Dream (28 page)

She cut a glance over at the tables outside the famed
cafe. They were mostly filled, but she spotted the woman almost immediately. She was exquisitely dressed in the European style: elegant, polished, and absolutely stunning. Probably one of the five most beautiful women in all creation.

Claire smiled. “Knock yourself out.”

Val bowed mockingly. “Your wish is my command.”

He crossed the long piazza with his easy stride and went up to the table. While Claire watched in amazement, the woman looked up and smiled. Val leaned down and greeted the woman. She offered him her hand—and her cheek to kiss. A moment later they were sitting close together, talking like longtime friends.

As they probably were, Claire realized. He'd set her up, damn it!

What a fool she'd made of herself, accusing him of following her, when all along he'd been on his way to Florian's for a drink with the beautiful
signorina!
As she fumed, he looked up and smiled at her across the piazza.

“Arrogant bastard!”
she mouthed.

Val lifted his drink to her and smiled his dazzling smile.

Claire swore, turned on her heel, and marched off.

C
LAIRE HEADED TO
the nearest gelato shop. After paying at the counter, she salved her wounded pride with a cone of three flavors, the way the Italians enjoyed it. She chose apricot, ice-white lemon, and what she thought was pale pink strawberry.

As she left the shop, she was still steaming. Why couldn't a pigeon have made a direct hit on Val as he leaned over the beautiful signorina? But things like that never happened to Val. He was too lucky. She stepped back into the sunshine and had to laugh. Val always knew how to yank her chain, but this time she'd been the one to set herself up. He'd just let her forge a few of the links.

And she'd be damned if she'd let him get away with it. The thought of pushing him into the Grand Canal grew ever more enticing.

He knew her too well. That was apparent. He could always see through her, and yet Claire always felt as if she didn't have a handle on what made Val tick. The
magnetism between them was always potent, the affection tender, the sex passionate. She felt her body temperature rising just thinking of it.

He could be a delightful companion: charming, easygoing, and laid-back. In fact, his quirky humor was always part of his appeal to her. Or he could be intense, impassioned by his work. So much so that he could focus on it to the exclusion of everything else.

Including me.

He could change from one to the other in the twinkling of an eye. Just like the eagle her grandfather had compared him to.
Ah, Val!
Her sigh turned into a chuckle.
I'll get even, you sonofabitch.

Moving through the crowded piazza, Claire took a lick of the pink gelato. It was the most amazing flavor, delicate yet complex. At first she couldn't place it. Then it came to her as a complete surprise.

Roses
, she thought.
Roses in the sun
. She sighed with pleasure. “Only the Italians,” she murmured, “could make an ice cream that tastes like summer.”

The piazza was suddenly more crowded than ever, and she realized it was time for the feeding of the pigeons. As long as the birds stayed in Venice, so legend said, the city would remain in all her glory. A few fluttered down all around her, to the delight of the children and visitors. The local people, well-versed in the habits of pigeons, prudently ducked under the piazza's arcades.

Suddenly, from the corner of her eye, Claire saw a great swirl of movement, the flash of light from a hundred multicolored wings. For a moment she was a child again, gazing up at the pigeons swirling up past the domes of San Marco, the pale tiles of the Doge's Palace, their wings shifting color in the late-afternoon light. Could smell coffee and hot rolls on the outdoor table where she sat with her nurse, feel her fingers sticky from a striped piece of candy as she tried to wipe them, unseen, on her frilly blue dress.

Could see a woman's face smiling down at her, filled with love.

“I remember,” she exclaimed beneath her breath.

She'd been only four when her mother had died in a fall down the steps of their ancient apartment building, and her father packed her up and went back to the States. He'd always told her that she was too young to have any memory of her early years in Venice, but Claire had always known that he was wrong. She
could
remember if only she could find the key to her bank of memories. Pictures of the beautiful city might account for some of her dreams, but none of them captured the shimmering, transparent light of Venice in the way she'd always seen it in her mind's eye.

The way it really was.

“I do remember!”

Her eyes were filled with tears, her heart with emotions long buried, and her mouth with the taste of heavenly gelato. After all these years she was back in Venice, far from the Idaho ranch where she'd spent her grammar school years, farther still from the hazy San Francisco Bay Area where she'd gone to college. Half a world away from everything that was most familiar to her.

She was home.

She wished she could share this moment with someone. Couples strolled by, families of tourists, locals meeting friends for drinks. She seemed to be the only one alone in the crowds. She looked across the piazza to the table where Val and the Italian beauty had been talking, but the table was empty, and there was no sign of them. Had they slipped away to some lovely room overlooking the canal to make love?

Jealousy sliced through her to the bone.

It amazed and outraged her.
She'd
been the one to file for divorce. The one to say the marriage was a mistake, that it was over, and that she would pick up the pieces and go on as if he'd never existed.

Claire stood stunned while the crowd jostled around
her. “It's not love,” she told herself fiercely. “It's not even lust.”

Although, thinking of the way heat had curled through her body when Val touched her back at the hotel, she had to admit it was close.

No, it was just a simple dog-in-the-manger attitude. She didn't want him. Not really. She just didn't want anyone else to have him either.

Laughing at her foolishness, Claire turned around and headed for the arched gateway to the Mercerie. Val was an adult, unmarried, and free to follow his own desires. And so was she.

The two bronze Moors above the gate swung their bronze hammers against the great bell to mark the hour. She pushed Val and the dark beauty out of her mind and lost herself in exploring Venice.

An hour later she had a Fendi bag, a pair of sling-back leather shoes, and another hour to kill before returning to the hotel to dress for dinner. Not enough time to drop in at one of the fascinating museums or galleries but certainly enough to visit one of the intriguing shops on the streets that branched off to either side. What was the name of that place the launch pilot had told her about?

She couldn't remember, so she just wandered contentedly. She stopped when she came to a tiny place displaying
Carnivale
masks in the window. Others hung on the walls inside. Claire examined them through the glass. Some were plain silk strips made to cover the eyes, while others hid the entire face. There was the eerie mask of the “plague doctor” with its long snoutlike nose funnel, and there were silver moons and gilded suns and spiky stars. Lovely female faces painted in rainbow colors or stark white, blank as stone.

There was something fascinating yet sinister about them. With the anonymity of one of the cleverly painted papier-maˆché creations, it was possible to merge with the crowd and become anybody—or nobody.

She wondered if the girl in the drawing had done that.
Or the girl in her dream. Claire was sure they were the same. Something about that drawing had triggered the dreams that started out so enchantingly and ended with her waking in terror. It was the only logical explanation.

Was she a young lady of a noble family, savoring an adventure? Or a servant who'd taken her mistress's cloak and mask so she might slip away and meet a lover? Did she ever walk along these same streets in her dainty embroidered slippers?

I wonder what her name was, and where she was going when the artist captured her likeness.
Claire looked around.
Hell, I wonder where I'm going!

She'd taken a wrong turn while her thoughts were rambling. She found herself halfway along a steep
calle,
and there wasn't another soul in sight.

Her heart stopped, then skipped a beat, when she saw the ancient door set into the blank wall. A familiar decorative iron grill was set high in the thick wood, and there was no handle on the outside. Just like the door in her dreams.

Wisps of panic curled through her. Something from the dream. Something she couldn't quite recall…

Claire forced herself to go to the door. Her fingers touched the time-roughened wood, and the panic grew. She wanted to run away, but she held her ground. The bottom of the wrought iron was at the level of her chin. She peered inside, although the dead leaves of a vining plant obscured the view.

There was nothing to distinguish the place. Nothing to see but sections of the terra-cotta-colored walls that formed the building, a pot of purple basil, the edge of a dark blue shutter, and a child's leather sandal. It might be any private courtyard in the city.

There was a sudden blur of movement, and Claire jumped instinctively. The low yowl of an irritated cat sounded nearby. A moment later a sleek yellow feline hurtled from the wall to the courtyard pavement, like a heat-seeking missile. Claire backed away from the door.

Rather than turn back, she continued on her way.

She was still thinking of the girl who haunted her when she came out into a small square. It was utterly charming. Real estate was so precious in Venice that it startled her to find a patch of green. Whoever had lived in the grand palazzi surrounding it must have had power and influence. Now most of them were made into apartments, their first floors turned into enticing shops.

She was about to enter the jeweler's when she saw the reflection behind her:
FRASCATTI
, a sign said in faded gilt letters on black. The place the boatman had mentioned to her. Crossing over the bridge to the opposite side, she examined the offerings arranged on burgundy velvet in the small shop window.

They were a mixed lot, with an engraving of the Rialto Bridge on an easel beside a porcelain doll, half a dozen antique Murano glass wine goblets the color of ripe plums, an ornate set of monogrammed silver hairbrushes, slightly tarnished, a cracked cherub's face of ebonized wood.

And a necklace.

An echo of her dream came shivering back. She stared at the antique bauble. It was made of clear Venetian glass, shimmering with gold and strung between granulated golden beads. There was some sort of pendant hanging from its center. Could it be the heart-shaped ruby?

No. Impossible. But her heart was ticking like a bomb inside her chest. Shading the glass, she tried to see it better. The light was wrong, bouncing off the window.

Was it really the same necklace as the one in the drawing? Claire couldn't be sure. And yet…

For just a moment she could feel it: the coolness of the dream-necklace against her skin, the light weight of the pendant at her throat.

Her heart fluttering as if it had wings, Claire reached out and tried the handle. The door opened softly.

T
HE SHOP WAS
in shadows. She heard the soft tinkle of a bell as the door closed. When her eyes adjusted, she could make out a Venetian mirror, a pair of filigree lamps, and collars of old lace in glass cases. She jumped when something brushed the back of her neck. It was just a stuffed monkey, its black glass eyes staring back at her.

“That's it,” she murmured. “I'm out of here.”

Before she could turn around, a curtain at the back of the shop parted and a plump, dark-eyed woman came out. She wore a marvelously tailored suit of black silk worsted and an armful of thin gold bracelets that jingled softly as she moved.

“Bon giorno, signorina.”

Claire answered in her fractured Italian, and the woman's face changed. “Ah, good afternoon,
signorina.
I mistook you for…for someone else. You are American?”

“Yes. I just arrived in Venice.”

“We are honored. Is there something I can show you?”

Claire hesitated, feeling foolish. The necklace couldn't be the same.

But it was. The moment she saw it laid out on the square of black velvet, she knew it. But the pendant was missing. She saw the bit of gold in the center from which it had hung.

“There used to be a pendant.”

The shop owner was startled. “Yes,
signorina.
I have it here.”

Reaching inside the glass case, she removed a small box. When she straightened up and removed the lid, however, it was just a heart-shaped piece of granulated gold.

“The ruby is missing,” Claire said, disappointed.

“It may have been another stone,” the woman told her, smiling. “Or perhaps even a piece of Murano glass.”

“No.” Claire was certain. “It was a ruby.
Quando?”

As soon as the word was out of her mouth, she realized she'd said the wrong thing. That meant “when,” not “how much?” “Er…
Quant-e`, per favore?”

The woman named a sum surprisingly low to Claire. A quick transaction, and the necklace was hers. She touched a fingertip to the pendant.

It was cool, and yet a line of heat shot up Claire's arm and burst into small golden sparks. The sensation was so sharp, so startling, that she pulled her finger back and looked at it, almost expecting to see blood.

A vision floated between her and the necklace, took on shape and depth and texture:

The vision was gone in an instant, leaving her feeling dizzy and ill.

The world had gone black, except for small, ragged spots of light. It was like looking through a black cloth full of moth holes. Then Claire realized that she was on the floor, with the shop woman leaning over her in concern.

Her patchy vision began to clear, and her hearing came back. The world was still out of kilter. She caught the tinkle of bells, overlaid by an exchange of words in rapid Italian—and she understood every word.

“She was just standing there, looking at the necklace. Then her face went white as this marble cherub, and she crumpled and fell.”

“I'll fetch a cold cloth and some water.”

“Perhaps the doctor,
nona?”

A slight pause. An elderly face swam into view above her, and a pair of dark, dark eyes looked into Claire's. She felt as if she looked through them and out the other side, into endless tomorrows. Or yesterdays.

“She will be all right. She is sensitive, this one, and has had a glimpse of the past. It can be unsettling.”

Both women looked up as a shadow fell across Claire, and the draft from an opened door swept past them like a wraith. She blinked. The women were still speaking in musical Italian, but suddenly she couldn't understand a word. Then Val was kneeling at her side. Beneath his tan, his face was as white as hers felt.

“Claire? Can you hear me? What happened?”

“I…I don't know.”

“A fainting spell,
signor,”
the elderly woman said. She shook her head. “It is not good to go all day without feeding the stomach. The
bella signorina
needs a bite to eat. Something more than gelato.
La minestra
for
primo. Risi i funghi
to follow. And,” she said firmly, “a glass of good
vino rosso.”

He helped Claire sit up slowly. At first she was glad for the warmth and comfort of his arm, but the moment
she felt restored, it seemed too intimate. A reminder of what they'd had—and lost.

“I'm okay. Help me up, please.”

His eyes darkened, and his jaw squared, but Val pulled her easily to her feet, then removed his arm from around her shoulders. “You look like something the tide washed in.”

She slanted a wry look at him from the corner of her eye. “I'm disappointed. Your skill at delivering graceful compliments seems to have deserted you.”

“That's better.” He grinned, but his eyes were still cool. “The
signora
's advice is sound, Claire. Let's get you out into the fresh air. There's a neighborhood restaurant around the corner in the square. I can vouch for the food.”

She knew he was right and didn't argue. “The necklace…”

“Of course,
signorina.”
The younger woman wrapped the box in gold tissue paper and put it into a little bag with a corded handle.

As Claire and Val were about to leave, the elderly woman touched Claire's wrist lightly. “It is good that you have come to Venice. It will be even better when you leave.”

“Well,” Claire said later when she and Val were settled at a small table overlooking the calm Rio San Zulian. A gondola glided past, empty except for the lone gondolier. “I've never been told to ‘get out of Dodge' before. That wasn't very friendly of her.”

He laughed at her joke, but his voice was serious. “I don't think she was warning you off. I think she was telling your fortune.” Val dipped a spoon into his thick vegetable soup. “Everyone in San Marco has heard of Signora Frascatti. They call her
nona
—grandmother. She's said to be able to see the future and cast love spells. Some say she can give the evil eye.”

She examined his face. The reflection off the canal cast his face in light and shadow. “Do you believe such things are possible, Val?”

“I don't know if they are—but I hope so.” The lines of his face grew stern, and his eyes were haunted. “Life can be pretty grim at times without a little magic.”

Without thinking, she stretched her hand across the table and covered his. She wanted to reach up and touch his face, smooth away the sudden frown, see the shadows vanish from his eyes.

“Was it very bad?”

His jaw clenched. “I was standing on a ridge with an eager young British journalist and our guide when the mortar round hit. The next moment I was alone.”

He set his spoon down. “That's enough of the soup for me. Let's order dessert. I'd recommend anything on the menu.”

She snatched her hand away. He was always like this, damn it. Shutting her out. She'd spent their entire marriage pounding on the locked door of his silence, never knowing exactly what was on the other side.

The realization struck her then that she was being shallow and selfish. Stupid, too. Val wasn't as lucky as she had always thought. In fact, given what he'd just told her, he was lucky to be alive.

It had never occurred to her that he was in danger on his assignments. The air of golden invincibility that surrounded him had blinded her to it. Val had seen and survived terrible things. He was just good at hiding it. Damned good.

Their waiter came over. Claire let him take her half-finished dish of rice with mushrooms and frowned at the chalked menu on the board outside the cafe.

The dark young woman across from them had a footed glass bowl of tiramisu, Val's favorite dessert. She dipped her spoon into the frothy concoction of coffee-soaked ladyfingers, mascarpone, and whipped cream with gusto.

Claire wavered. Tiramisu was one of her downfalls. She could almost taste the creamy confection on her own tongue right now. In a moment she'd be drooling. But she
was afraid if she ate too much now she wouldn't have room for dinner with Count Ludovici.

The couple at one of the other tables were sharing a bowl of melon and berries. “That fruit looks good.” She smiled at the hovering waiter.
“Il fritto misto, per favore.”

The waiter seemed bemused. Val choked on his wine and shook his head vigorously.
“La frutta mista.”

The waiter hid his smile, nodded, and went inside. Claire folded her arms and sighed. “I take it I ordered the wrong thing?”

He grinned. “Not if you wanted mixed fried fish for dessert.”

“Ick.” She wanted to bang her head on the table.

“You're getting a mixed fruit plate instead.”

“Thank God!” She made a face. “I was born here. I spent my first years in Venice and I've always been good at languages. Why is the simplest Italian so difficult for me?”

Val sipped his
vino rosso
and shrugged. “Maybe you have a mental block about it: for some reason connected with the past, you don't really want to learn it.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

He leaned forward. “I think you could learn anything you set your mind to. But you've always been as stubborn as a two-headed mule. And when there's something you don't want to discuss, you clam up. Shut yourself away.”

Her temper fired. “Like you just did when I asked about your work. You always shut me out, Val. As if I were too stupid to understand.”

“It's not that,” he said sharply. “There are just some things that I want to forget. Maybe it's not possible, but it's the only way I can be at peace with what I've seen.”

“I'm not a child. You don't have to treat me like one.”

There was hurt in her voice, but truth, too. He looked at her steadily, as if seeing her anew. “I'm sorry, Claire. That was part of the problem between us, wasn't it?”

“You cut me out of your life.”

“I wanted to protect you from it.”

She lifted her glass and watched the light turn the wine to liquid garnet. “I'm a big girl, Val. And you know what they say: Life Happens.”

He shot her a wry look. “I think I've heard that phrase in the past expressed just a little less politely from time to time.”

The laughter they shared was light and easy. Like old times. He wanted to reach over and pull her into his arms, tangle his fingers in those riotous golden curls. Kiss that rosy, stubborn little mouth until they were both dizzy with it.

His voice was husky. “Do you miss me, Claire?”

It was the wrong thing to say. “Not any more than I missed you when you were off with your cameras and gear to the ends of the earth.”

The silence between them was cold and clear and thick as ice. Val tossed back the remnants of his wine and signaled for another. Nothing had changed.

No, he thought. That isn't exactly true.

The Claire he had been married to would never have come to Venice on her own. She had shunted back and forth from Coeur d'Alene in Idaho to San Francisco as if there was an invisible rut in the sky. Once or twice she'd gone briefly to L.A. and even Chicago. But his suggestion of a honeymoon in Australia hadn't been met with much enthusiasm. They'd spent it in San Francisco instead.

In the end, she had been too afraid to leave her comfortable nest, and he'd been too angry to stay.

She was such a curious mixture: hungry for knowledge but afraid of adventure. Happiest exploring some long-dead artist's past instead of her own future. Confident on the outside, a bundle of jangled nerve endings inside. Strong and stubborn, yet afraid to trust. That had been the real rock their marriage had foundered on.

Whatever hurt her so was buried deep. He had never been able to get to the heart of it. And, God Almighty, after all they'd been through, she still took his breath away.

Need fisted in his gut. He wanted her as fiercely as ever.

“Don't look at me like that,” she said softly.

He raised his brows and tried to look innocent. “Like what?”

“Like I'm a bowl of tiramisu, and you're going to scoop me up.”

“Does it bother you?”

“Of course.”

He braced his hands behind his neck and smiled. “Good.”

A flush of heat rose from the pit of her stomach and spread upward. She could feel the hot rush of blood stain her throat and warm her cheeks. Damn him! He still knew which buttons to push.

Raised voices drew her attention. A young couple stood on the bridge beside the canal, quarreling. Hands waved and eyes flashed as the spat grew louder. Claire felt her stomach drop.

Val was right. She'd been blocking something out. It came rushing back now: a window overlooking a church, flowered curtains dancing in the breeze. The sound of her parents' voices in Italian. They always switched to Italian when they argued, and they'd done so the day her mother died. Then footsteps, her mother racing around the corner to the landing, where someone had left a basket of laundry. Then a soft cry, something falling. After that, only a terrible, echoing silence. That's why someone—a neighbor?—had taken Claire to the Piazza San Marco to see the pigeons. And while the woman hadn't been looking, Claire had wandered off to see the birds at close hand.

She'd been lost for hours, looking for home and her mother. When they found her, she didn't have a mother anymore. Or a home. In less than three days, she was on a plane to Idaho.