The House in Amalfi (26 page)

Lorenzo nodded; he knew all about Jon-Boy. He said, “Anyhow, I fished you out of the water and got you back to shore, with you protesting all the way that you were going to tell Jon-Boy and that he’d soon put me straight. You said besides, you were a darn good swimmer and could easily beat me if I cared to race across the bay.”

“Now I remember I asked you who did you think you were anyway? King of the world? Little did I know,” I added with a glance at our surroundings, “that you
truly were
.”

“Remember how I hauled you along the jetty? Your eyes were red and your hair was full of sand, and you looked like an unkempt mermaid.” He was laughing at me now. “I got the hose and turned it on you. You yelled loud enough to wake the dead.”

“That water was
icy
!”

“You looked like a little gypsy. Skinny and brown and big eyed. A waif with no clothes.” He looked at me. “You haven’t changed much; I still see a bit of the waif there.”

I brushed back my hair with an exaggerated sigh. “I was hoping for more of a retro, Audrey Hepburn look.”

He leaned closer, his face near mine. “I see a bit of that, too, now I look.”

Our linked eyes sparked little flames of reflected candlelight.

“Why did you really come here, Lamour?” he asked, suddenly serious.

I didn’t have to think twice about the answer. I told him that because of Jon-Boy and the free way he’d lived I’d become a free spirit, too. And that all those years in Chicago I’d been holding myself back. When I finally came back here, to the Amalfi house, I knew there was hope of finding “freedom” again. “Freedom,” I said. “And happiness.”

“And have you found them?”

“I’m still searching. Sometimes happiness eludes you because you’re not looking in the right place,” I said. Then I smiled. “I think I must be quoting Mifune.”

“A wise man.”

“Tell me what you know about Jon-Boy,” I said.

“I’d rather talk about you. Who you are, what you are?”

“I suspect you already know all about me.”

“But only you can tell me about the
true
you, Lamour.” He was very serious now. “And believe me, I want to know everything about you.”

No man, not even my husband, had ever been this curious about me. My relationship with Alex had always been about him. It was I who’d asked the questions, I who had found
him
fascinating. In fact, I was so unused to talking about myself, I didn’t know quite where to begin.

“So, you know about me and Jon-Boy—,” I finally said, but Lorenzo cut me short.

“I know you loved your father and that he loved you. Tell me who else you loved, Lamour?”

My mouth tightened; I didn’t want him to know about Alex and how vulnerable I really was. “It’s too personal . . . ,” I protested.

“But you are a person and I am another person and we are talking to each other as new friends, are we not?”

I stared down at my nervously clenched hands. “Okay, so I was married once,” I said. “He died a couple of years ago in a car crash.” I heard Lorenzo’s shocked indrawn breath but went quickly on. “Alex was rich, selfish, handsome. I thought he loved me, and oh, how I loved him. But all the time he was cheating on me, planning on divorcing me to marry another woman.” I shrugged away the old wound, but the scar was still fresh and I knew it showed. “So, that’s who I am. A thirty-eight-year-old woman too dumb to know her husband had fallen out of love with her and that she was no longer wanted.”

He waited for me to continue.

“I suppose I came here in part to get over it,” I added. “You see, I didn’t know about Alex until my friend told me just a few months ago.”

“And why did she tell you, after all this time?”

“Because I was still mourning Alex. I’d put my life on hold. There was just my work . . . and . . . well, nothing else really.”

He reached sympathetically across the table for my hand. “You were right to mourn. After all, you loved him. The fact that he wasn’t worthy of your love was his loss. And now, look at you, here in Amalfi, starting a new life.”

I liked the way his hand felt on mine, hard, like a workingman’s, warm and comforting. “I’m looking for happiness again,” I said quietly. “The kind of happiness I knew when I was a little kid, here with my father.”

We talked late under the moonlight on the terrace. Lorenzo was a good listener. I knew he understood about my life and my need to change. Looking at him, so strong, so handsome, so wise, I felt a pull of attraction for the older man. He was everything a woman could desire. But not for me. For me, he would just be my friend.

“Hey, hey, hey, what have we here? A romantic tryst by candlelight?” Nico’s mocking voice cut through the still night, followed by a burst of laughter as a bunch of smart young people came running up the steps. They stood on the terrace, looking at us.

I snatched my hand guiltily from Lorenzo’s.

“Papa, who are you with?” Aurora was breathtakingly lovely in a deep turquoise dress and flat Grecian sandals with thin satin straps that wrapped around her slim legs. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a high ponytail and her brown eyes blazed with jealousy.

“I’m having dinner with a friend,” Lorenzo said calmly. “Lamour, allow me to introduce my daughter, Aurora. I believe you already know my son, Nico.”

“Hello, Aurora. And yes, I do know Nico,” I said, but the girl simply turned her back and walked away.

“How are you, Lamour?” Nico dropped a kiss on my cheek as though to show his father we were more intimate than he knew.

I pushed back my chair, aware of the group of beautiful young people, still watching, still giggling. “It’s getting late,” I said.

And taking my elbow, Lorenzo escorted me back through the house and down the front steps to the garden.

“Don’t get into any trouble now, you two,” I heard Nico shout after us, followed by more gales of laughter.

I strode angrily along the sandy path down the hill to the cliff. I couldn’t wait to get home.

“I’m sorry they embarrassed you,” Lorenzo apologized. “They are just children playing.”

“They are too old to behave like children. How dare they be so rude?”

He took my arm and turned me to face him. “Nico was
wrong. Of course he shouldn’t have said what he did. Because of him, my daughter misread the situation. She was jealous.”

“She just doesn’t want to see her father with any other woman, no matter how innocent it is,” I snapped.

“You’re right: she doesn’t; she’s afraid of losing me. But you, of all people, should understand that.”

And of course I did. I sighed, suddenly sympathetic to Aurora, who after all was only twenty-one years old and motherless.

Lorenzo put up his hand and gently stroked my hair back from my hot face. He was so handsome in the moonlight, so strong looking. I was sure Lorenzo would never be afraid of anyone; he would never let any woman down, including his daughter.

“Poor Lamour,” he said gently. “You’ve been through so much.”

“There’s no need to feel sorry for me,” I said coldly.

We walked in silence until we came to the cliff. Below us the sea purred softly, its briny scent mingling with the perfume of the gardens. From his pocket Lorenzo took a small gold key on a black satin cord.

“It’s a key to the elevator,” he said, and taking my elbow he walked me to a pair of doors set flush into the rock face, flanked by a pair of pointed cypresses in white wooden tubs. “I couldn’t bear to think you might fall on the worn old steps,” he said, “so in future I want you to take the elevator. Please,” he added as I began to protest. “Do it as a favor to me, Lamour. Even though they are lit, the steps could be dangerous at night.”

Suddenly shy, all I could think of to say was “thank you.”

I was suddenly weary. I wanted to be back in my little house, alone with my thoughts.

As the elevator doors closed on me, Lorenzo inclined his head in a brief good-bye. I looked wistfully back at him, like the wide-eyed waif I had been all those years ago, the first time he met me. When he had been a young man, not much older than his son, Nico, was now.

Nico showed up the next morning. He glanced at the broken appliances, then at me. “Having a good day?” he said with a grin.

“Not so far,” I snapped. “And especially since you arrived.”

“Whoa, whoa.” He held up a protesting hand. “So what did I do wrong?”

“Why don’t you ask yourself that question?”

He walked toward where I was sitting on the tiled bench, but I turned away.

“Come on, Lamour; it was just a bit of teasing.” He put his hand on my arm, where I felt it burn like the hot coals of sin.

“You embarrassed me and you certainly were disrespectful to your father,” I said. I went on to tell him angrily that I thought that he was a spoiled rich kid who’d always had everything and knew nothing of the real world. “Surely your mother taught you good manners,” I finished heatedly.

Nico sighed. “She did. And I apologize. And you’re right, she would have been ashamed of me and of Aurora, though Aurora always has an excuse. But I have none.”

I caught his eye and I laughed. “You’re outrageous; you know that, don’t you?” I said, still laughing, and he admitted yes, he did, and I agreed to go with him to the Amalfitano for lunch.

We powered across the bay in his Riva, hair flying, drenched with spray, arriving at the jetty laughing. I didn’t laugh, though, when I saw the same bunch of chic young people from last night already taking up several tables. And of course I was in old shorts and a T-shirt, windblown and wet from spray.

“I think I’ve just changed my mind,” I said, but Nico gripped my arm firmly. It was too late to escape; we were there by now. “This is my good friend Lamour Harrington,” he said. “She’s a famous landscape architect and daughter of the even more famous Jon-Boy Harrington, whose novel you have, of course, all read.”

Fifteen young faces stared at me, surprised. Fifteen young voices said, “
Ciao
, Lamour,” and, “Was he really your father?,” and, “How do you become a landscape architect?” Soon I found myself sitting in the crowd, talking about myself and Jon-Boy. I also found I was enjoying myself, eating salad and pizza with the twenty-year-olds, though I knew from the respect they gave me—deferring to me, letting me lead the conversation—that I was not one of them.

Still, by the time I got home, I was feeling better about last night. Nico lingered on the terrace obviously dying to stay. I told him I was going to take a siesta.

“Why not a siesta for two?” he suggested, but I laughed and pushed him away. There was something very endearing, though, about Nico Pirata. He walked away, shoulders drooping with feigned sadness, making me smile.

Later, Lorenzo Pirata came by. Pleased, I said, “It’s my turn to welcome you. And to say thank you for last night. It was . . .” I searched for the right word. I came up with “perfect.” And I meant it.

“It was my pleasure.” He hesitated, and I thought, surprised, he looked suddenly shy. Then he said, “I came to ask if you had ever visited the gardens at the Villa Cimbrone, in Ravello.”

I thought of my barhopping dinner in Ravello with Nico but decided against telling him about that. “They’re famous,” I said, “but I’ve never seen them.”

“Then why don’t I show you? And you can impress me with your knowledge of the exotic plants and trees.”

Secretly flattered, I pretended to think it over. “What else do I have to do today?” I asked. Then I beamed at him. “Absolutely nothing more important than seeing the Cimbrone gardens. With you,” I added.

“Then let’s go,” he said, pleased.

So I grabbed a straw sun hat, a bag, my camera, and my lipstick. Ignoring the elevator, we climbed back up the cliff together. He held out his hand to help me up the last few steps and hauled me, laughing, to the top. We were as easy together as two old friends. Of course he hadn’t yet told me what he knew about Jon-Boy, but I would work on that.

He drove a BMW convertible sports car, small enough to maneuver through the narrow medieval streets, but he kept the top up because, he said, he didn’t want me to burn my beautiful skin, which somehow made me feel pampered. He handled the car well, not driving like a maniac the way Nico did, cornering smoothly with no screeching of tires. I watched Lorenzo’s hands on the wheel, strong golden-brown hands with long fingers and a sprinkling of dark hair. I wondered what those hands might feel like running through a girl’s hair, on her naked back as he held her close. I sat up straighter. What was I
thinking
! I started talking knowledgeably about the gardens we were to visit.