The Vendetta (21 page)

Lisa frowned. “Nick has barely said two words to me since I told him I didn’t know where the painting was.” She shrugged, pretending a confidence she didn’t really feel. “I can handle myself with Van Alstrand.”

“Well, we will make a plan. A good one. But you still need to be careful.”

Lisa nodded—she would be as careful as she knew how to be—but she wanted the issue of these paintings resolved. Soon. Then maybe she could concentrate on making a life. With or without Nick Carnavale in it.

The waiter came back, and Rafaela ordered another round of Prosecco for them. When he left, she said, “I just thought of someone else who can help us.”

“Who?”

Rafaela grinned. “Nick’s mother.”

* * *

Lisa arrived early at Piazza Navona for her meeting with Peter Van Alstrand. Time was running out on the preparations for the gallery showing. Even though didn’t trust the man, she needed to tap his knowledge about the displays and the preparations for the art for exhibition. She had promised her grandmother. And she had a plan now, thanks to Rafaela and Miriam. Today’s actions were just the beginning.

She paused to adjust the strap of her sling-back pump, and something tickled her awareness. She turned sharply, but didn’t recognize anyone in the small crowd. Feeling eyes on her, though, Lisa trailed through the art displays set up in the square. Van Alstrand was nowhere to be seen, and he was uncharacteristically late.

Most of the art displays in the piazza held prints of the great monuments of Rome, hand painted to look like watercolor originals. The tourists didn’t seem to care, though. Lisa stopped in front of a series of oil-on-canvas paintings. The artist came over to offer his assistance.

He was crusty and grizzled, with a two-day growth of white beard and fingers the size of sausages. His hands were stained with paint, as were his clothes. He turned the canvases over in the display rack slowly and carefully. She did not stop him until he came to an oil-on-canvas painting of Saint Peter’s cathedral with the Ponte Sant’Angelo in the foreground and the river Tiber sparkling between. It was the same scene as her muddy cityscape. A good souvenir of Rome.

“How much?” asked Lisa in Italian.

“Lei parla Italiano? Ah, benissimo!”

The gentleman was delighted to find she could speak decent Italian, because then he could then explain why he couldn’t possibly give her a deep discount on the painting. It was an original work of art. Could the signorina not see that? He asked her to touch it, and she ran a light finger down the dried paint. Her heart squeezed. Nick and his “Please Touch” museum flashed in her mind. It was odd touching a piece of art. It was a thing that was forbidden almost everywhere, and yet this man was asking her to touch, to feel, to know it was real and his own work. As if just touching could confirm that for her. As if touching would make the emotion contained in the painting real to her.

Her face heated as she remembered the things she and Nick done that night. Their wedding night. And how much she had enjoyed every moment.

Nick
.

She felt an itch between her shoulder blades again, sure she was being watched. It must be Van Alstrand. But why didn’t he just come out in the open? She tried to look around discreetly but didn’t see the tall curator.

“Excuse me, signore.” Lisa interrupted the artist’s soliloquy on his travels in Paris. “I need to find a good frame maker. Do you know one? Is there one in this quarter?”

“Yes, signorina. I know a very good one. He is just down that street.” The artist gestured toward the corner of the piazza, where a few small streets led off from the central square.

This question, the purchased painting, even the artist, were all part of Rafaela’s plan to keep the Rembrandt safe while they set up their sting, but had Lisa asked the question too soon? She was supposed to meet with Van Alstrand first. Her decision to proceed had been born of a growing sense of unease.

Lisa turned to go but stopped when she felt a hand on her arm. “Do not forget your painting, signorina.” The artist handed Lisa the rolled up canvas. “Mention Simone Cecchi, and the frame maker will give you a good deal.”

Lisa took the artwork.
“Grazie, signore. Buona fortuna.”

“Good luck to you too, signorina.”

* * *

Nick watched from the shadow of the church portico as Lisa bought a painting from one of the “artists” who frequented the Piazza Navona to rip off the tourists. Nick had to admit, this guy’s stuff was better than average. What was she doing? He knew she had a meeting with Van Alstrand today.

He shrugged away from the wall and followed Lisa at a discreet distance. Even being this close to her caused a sweet ache to well up in his throat.

Dio, he missed her.

But he knew the best course for them both was to stay away. Rafaela had called him the other day to tell him there were some irregularities concerning the settlement of the estate. Worst of all, it was clear that Van Alstrand would be the one to profit if Lisa were out of the picture. That circumstance put Lisa in a very dangerous spot.

Nick scrubbed an impatient hand over his face. His instincts were off, and he was missing some vital piece of this puzzle. For a man who prided himself on his ability to coldly analyze every angle, being off a step was a problem. But one thing remained clear to him—Lisa would be safer if she went home. Back to America. Back to her little coffee bar and quiet customers. He regretted he’d ever set foot there, that he’d ever coaxed her to come here.

His heart squeezed, and a small hiss of air escaped him. No, that was a lie. He could not regret meeting Lisa. Or marrying her. But he had to keep her safe. And the best way to do that was to finish what he had started. The vendetta.

Ahead of him, Lisa paused to look up at the street name plaques set high into the sides of the buildings. She looked back over her shoulder, but failed to recognize him as he lingered close to the wall, pretending to light a cigarette. A left turn down a narrow pedestrian street carried her south toward the main thoroughfare of the Corso Vittorio Emanuele.

Lisa crossed the busy street without incident, heading down Via dei Cappellari. Nick picked up his pace to keep her in sight. He was no novice at surveillance, but he found himself impatient with this deception. He had just about decided to confront her when she slowed and began counting street numbers. Nick stepped neatly into the shadowing portico of the neighborhood middle school.

Lisa stopped in front of a workshop that had a number of old furniture items outside the door, waiting to be refinished or repaired. The sign above read
Canotti e figlio, Cornici
in gold and black letters. A frame shop.

Nick felt an initial stab of disappointment. Her walk through Rome seemed to be an innocent tourist adventure, after all. She’d been following the directions of the old artist in the square to see about getting her new painting framed. But even as he told himself that, he didn’t quite buy it. He crossed the street, approached the shop door, and folded his arms to wait.

* * *

“
Ciao
,
piccola
.”

Lisa’s heart plunged somewhere into her shoes. She put a hand to her throat. “Nick. What are you doing here? Wait, don’t tell me. You followed me.”

“Yes. And my question for you is the same. What are you doing here?”

Lisa turned and walked down the street, away from the frame shop. Nick fell into step beside her. “I was looking at frames. Why did you follow me?”

They turned a corner, and Nick stopped her with a hand on her arm. She wanted to shrug him off and keep walking. His warm palm burned even through her layers of clothing.

“Lisa.” He turned her fully toward him and grasped both her arms. “If you’ve found something, you have to tell me. There are things you don’t know here. Circumstances that could put you in danger.”

She studied his face. The late afternoon light was full and strong on the planes of his jaw and cheek. Her heart pounded, up in her throat.
Danger?
“If there is something I don’t know, it’s because
you
haven’t told me, Nick. You can’t just wrap me up, put me on the shelf, and expect me to stay there. I’m not that kind of person.”

“What are you up to, Lisa?” His eyes narrowed. “What were you doing at the
cornici
? And don’t tell me getting your souvenirs framed.”

She stood there, like a deer in the headlights caught by his silver gaze, and not one plausible story came to her mind, except for the truth. She’d gone there to hide the Rembrandt. A trick she’d accomplished very neatly with the help of the painter on the piazza. To give herself a moment, she turned away from the intensity of Nick’s gaze. At the very end of the lane she saw a car turn onto the street.

“Lisa.” He shook her gently to recapture her attention.

She bit her lip, unwilling to answer him, but also unwilling to lie outright. She needed more time. Time to figure this out. And she needed help too, because she didn’t know exactly what she was doing, though the plan she’d made with Rafaela was a good one. But she couldn’t ask for help from Nick, and time was in short supply.

She stalled. “Nick. I can’t tell you here. I…I have found something, but I don’t know what it is yet. I was—”

The gunning of an engine made her look back down the street. Nick cursed, and his grip on her arms tightened. Before she had time to register danger, he spun her around and pushed her out of the way, toward a high wall along the sidewalk. The action carried her back from the car, but she tripped on the edge of a flagstone and smacked her head against the wall.

Dazed, she looked up and just managed to catch sight of Nick diving behind one of the tables at the coffee bar. A black Mercedes drove up over the curb and cut across the pavement exactly where they had been standing. It swerved, taking out half the rear bumper of a little Smart car. The twisting metal screeched, and a man from the café came out to scream and gesture at the car. Then the driver righted the wheels and accelerated away in a squeal of tires.

Lisa slid down the wall to the sidewalk. Remembering Nick’s crash into the café tables, though, she made an effort to stand. Fortunately for her wobbly knees, he’d recovered quickly. He reached down and helped her stand up
.

“Lisa
.
Dio. Are you all right?” Nick’s arms came around her, hugging her tightly, like he would never let her go.

“I have heard of Roman drivers, but wasn’t that a bit ridiculous.” Her attempt at a joke fell flat when she caught the grave expression in Nick’s eyes. He looked disheveled and anxious and, in her fuzzy headed state, very dear. She couldn’t help herself—she reached up and pushed his heavy hair off his forehead.

“Hey. Don’t worry. I’m tougher than I look.” She grimaced and rubbed the back of her head. The incident had drawn a crowd, and she knew the police would be here soon.

Lisa met his gaze, her smile a little crooked. “But I will take you up on that offer of a Jacuzzi, if it’s still good. I think I’m going to need it.”

He studied her for some time, but he didn’t smile back. “Come on. I’ll take you home.”

Chapter Fourteen

Lisa walked to her bedroom in the palazzo, knowing Nick trailed behind her. He was going to ask her about the painting, and she didn’t know what to say. She had to talk to Miriam and Rafaela about the plan, and about what she had discovered today at the frame shop. Her bedroom door was ajar and swung open at her touch. She stopped dead on the threshold.

Her mattress lay half on and half off the bed frame, the sheets spilled onto the floor, and the pillows had been thrown into the corner of the room, like striped sacks of grain. Empty drawers hung drunkenly out of the armoire. Reeking of her perfume from a smashed bottle, the contents of her two suitcases lay in jumbled piles on her bed and on the floor. The suitcases themselves lay open, their fabric exterior slashed, the interior lining ripped out and torn to shreds.

She tasted bile in the back of her throat and swallowed. Who would do such a thing? And why? No, she knew why. The painting. And the who was probably Van Alstrand. It couldn’t have been Nick, because he’d been out following her around Rome. She wrapped her arms around her stomach. Nick would never do such a thing, in any case.

She heard Nick‘s footsteps in the corridor and turned away from the destruction in the room to launch herself at him. She buried her face in his chest and closed her arms around him.

There was no hesitation in him.
Thank God.
His arms came around her in a deep, comforting hug. She took a deep breath, soothed by his warm, spicy scent.

“Hey
,
piccola. What is it?” He stroked her back and hair and stooped down, trying to get a look at her face.

When she didn’t answer, he stepped away from her toward her bedroom door and let out a string of expletives in Italian and English. A muscle jumped on his jawline, and his hands balled into fists at his sides as he walked farther into her room.

She followed and leaned on the doorway, crossing her arms in front of her.

“Madre di Dio, Lisa. What happened here?”

“Well, it appears someone was looking for something.” Her voice was unsteady, so she cleared her throat. She stepped inside the room and walked over to the tall armoire to push the lower drawers back in with her foot. Her wool coat hung halfway off its hanger, deep slashes showing the satin lining.

“That was my favorite coat, dammit.” Lisa’s voice wobbled. Tears welled, so she squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands to her mouth to try to stem the flood. It was too much to handle. First a car had tried to run them down and now this. Rafaela had been right—there was danger here.

Nick’s arms came around her and soothed up her back. He murmured little endearments in Italian and smoothed a strand of hair behind her ear.