Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) (45 page)

CAESAR SENT HIS RED ALFA ROMEO
hurtling toward Florence with all the élan of the chariot drivers whose blood ran in his veins. Joletta made certain that her seat belt was tight over her lap, then concentrated on trying not to clutch at the dashboard any more often than was absolutely necessary.

Her trepidation amused the Italian, she thought, and drove him to greater recklessness to prove to her that he was in complete control of the car. She didn’t appreciate it, though she kept her protests to herself. She was grateful for his offer to drive her. More than that, she didn’t have the energy or heart to argue just now.

She debated whether talking to him would be a dangerous distraction, or one likely to make him slow down in order to pay attention to her. She decided to chance it, mostly because she did not care for her own dismal thoughts. The place to start seemed to be with normal questions that had somehow never come up between them.

“Where do I live now?” he repeated, his smile expansive. “In Venice, most of the time, sometimes in Rome or on Capri. Paris, often. Or maybe Nice.”

“Yes, but where is your home?”

“Ah, that. A village twenty miles from Venice; my mother and father still live there.”

“You don’t have a permanent residence? An apartment, maybe?”

“No, why should I?”

She stared at him in puzzlement. “But I thought you said you were from Venice. Where were you staying there?”

“I say I am from Venice and people say, yes, of course; everyone knows Venice. It’s easier.” He shrugged. “These last days I am at the Hotel Cipriani.”

It was the same grand hotel where Natalie had been staying. Joletta felt an instant of disquiet, but pushed it away. “I don’t think I ever heard you say what you do for a living.”

“This and that, buying and selling. I was once a waiter on a cruise ship. It was long hours, hard work, but valuable. I learned to speak English, French, Spanish, German, a little Japanese, and I met many lovely ladies of wealth, widows, divorced ladies traveling alone.”

She wondered if he was trying to tell her what she thought. She studied him with wide eyes, noticing once more the sleekness of his appearance, his careful grooming; the cream silk shirt he wore this morning, the Rolex on one wrist, and his heavy gold bracelet on the other.

“Did you think,” he said with a lifted brow, “that I was a rich man because I drive this car? I am flattered, but no. At least not yet.”

“You intend to be.” Her voice was flat as she spoke.

“I work hard to make it so.” He paused, then added in softer tones and with a warm glance from under his lashes, “But it isn’t often that I get to do what I prefer with a lady who is as beautiful as you.”

It was fine to hear, but she no longer believed a word of it. “You mean,” she said slowly, “that you live by — making yourself useful to wealthy women.”

“Joletta! I am insulted. I have investments, I make deals. I am no gigolo.”

“No?”

“I am my own man. I am always myself.”

“But what you do involves a certain willingness to be nice to — people?”

He gave her an earnest look. “There is always something pleasant that can be said to a woman; they are each beautiful in their own way.”

“Are they?” she asked, her voice neutral. All that charm, all the blatant flattery and caressing attention. Just an act. She should have known.

“I would never say anything that was not so. I swear this to you, especially to you.”

She smiled a little, but the look in her eyes was pensive. He had met her in Paris, then taken the trouble to follow her movements, even trailing her in his car as she neared Venice. Had that really been for his own reasons, or was there something else behind it?

She wished she knew, wished there was some way to be sure. There was so much that might depend on knowing.

The red and gold of the Apennine hills rose up to meet them. Gentle mountains, they rolled away on either side of the highway with their coating of gray-green olive trees, wildflowers, and aromatic herbs. As they neared Florence they passed farmhouses and orchards and vineyards without number, and also nurseries, where, along with the usual trees and plants being offered for sale, there were weather-beaten columns and gigantic flower urns of stone looking for all the world like relics from some old Roman garden.

They stopped at an autogrill for coffee and pastry. A silver Fiat with dark-tinted windows turned in after them, though it swung quickly around behind the building to park out of sight. Joletta had noticed the car in her side mirror for the last several kilometers. As she sat waiting at a table while Caesar stood in line to pay for their food and drink, then took the receipt to the counter to be served, she watched for the occupants to come inside. No one entered from that direction.

She mentioned the car to Caesar, but he shrugged it off. “Perhaps they had their own coffee and only needed a place to stop,” he said, “or else there was a baby who needed a clean diaper. Shall I go see?”

“No, no,” she answered. “You’re probably right.”

He propped his elbow on the table, fingering his chin with his thumb and forefinger. “Are you then an American spy?” he suggested with humor in his dark eyes. “If you are being followed, maybe you would like me to outrun this Fiat?”

“No, thanks,” she said in haste. “That will be quite all right.”

“I was afraid it might be. But I was only joking; your cousin, you know, mentioned to me that you are in search of a formula of some kind. I am assuming this is why we go to Firenze, Florence. You could have come on the bus, so I must guess there is somewhere you want to be driven besides your hotel. I am right?”

When she made no immediate answer, he went on. “It may be that I should not ask; still, I am curious. And I must know sometime, if I am to take you.”

It was not really fair to keep him in the dark. At the same time she wasn’t sure it was wise to tell him too much. The day before she might have thought little of it. Today things were different, and so was she.

She wished she knew a little more about this garden and the place near Florence where it was located. She wondered, for instance, if it was isolated, or if the house nearby was occupied year round. She had been so excited about finding it, and discovering how to reach it, that she had not thought to ask.

After coming this far, however, it was nearly impossible to go back. Anyway, she didn’t think she could stand to bypass the opportunity in her grasp by going to the hotel and waiting for another time. Inside her was a slow-building revulsion for taking the safe way. That was, just possibly, what had been wrong with her life up to now.

Turning to her shoulder bag, she took from it the map drawn by the elderly man in Venice. She spread it out on the table as she began to explain where it was she wanted to go, and why.

The silver Fiat was behind them when they left the autogrill. It kept well back, but maintained the same pace, passing when they passed, slowing when they slowed.

Outside Florence, they ran into a traffic jam caused by a combination of roadwork and an accident. They inched forward in the midst of four lanes of cars trying to merge into a single line. Enterprising vendors of newspapers and razors, cold drinks, chewing gum, and breath mints weaved among the stalled cars with a reckless disregard for life and limb, considering the racing engines and blasting horns all around them. Caesar was impatient, muttering and stretching his neck to look, slamming his hand on the horn himself whenever a driver threatened to invade the small area that was his minimum distance from the car in front of them.

Once, the driver of a vehicle several lengths ahead nudged the back bumper of the car in front of him. Men piled out of both automobiles. There was a great deal of shouting and fist waving and rude gestures. Then as traffic began to inch forward again everyone wheeled around as at a signal and jumped back into their cars with a great slamming of doors.

As entertaining as it was as a spectacle, however, the greatest benefit of the traffic jam was that it caught the Fiat behind them and held it back. When traffic finally cleared, and the Alfa Romeo began to pick up speed, there was no sign of the silver car.

The garden they sought might have been outside Florence in Violet’s day, but the city had since reached out to embrace it and the farming village near where it had stood. Signora Perrino, the middle-aged lady who owned the modern villa built against it, had been warned of their coming. She met them at the door, a motherly woman with soft, well-cut dark hair, dressed for casual comfort in mulberry linen. She offered them the hospitality of her home, including a luncheon of crown roast of pork with
panzanella,
or bread salad, and an earthenware pitcher of chianti classico.

Joletta had not realized it was so near the noon hour, or she would have waited until a later time. The last thing she wanted was to impose on a stranger, or to sit trying to make conversation with someone she hardly knew. It was impossible to refuse, however. All she could do was make a mental note to send flowers, as required by Italian social custom, later.

The meal was served in the walled garden, which had been made into a terrace adjoining the new villa by the addition of a flight of wide stone steps leading from a wall of glass doors. A rustic air had been maintained, however, for the table was of weathered wood placed on a floor of old mosaic tiles under an arbor shaded by an ancient grapevine with a stalk as thick as a tree trunk. It was so obviously the spot in the garden that Violet and Allain had favored, the place where they had made love long ago, that Joletta was enchanted.

From her seat at the table, she could look out over the enclosure with its rambling roses, its geometric beds, and central fountain. While Caesar kept their hostess entertained with an effortless stream of pleasantries, she could breathe the scent of the rose blossoms and sun-warmed herbs, listen to the splashing tinkle of the fountain and the mumbling undertone of bees.

Sitting there, visualizing the way it had once been, Joletta felt a bountiful peace flowing around her. It almost seemed she could hear the low voices of Violet and her Allain, nearly see them there in the shadow of the olive tree where a gate gave access to the vineyards and the stables, and where Giovanni had once gone in and out performing his tasks.

Only there was no gate now, just a gate-shaped arch of stone in the wall where one had once been.

She shook her head. Imagination. She didn’t know hers was so vivid.

But as she studied the walled space she could see what Violet had done. She had re-created this garden in New Orleans. She had built a memorial to love, and possibly to her lover, in the courtyard of her house.

“It gives me much pleasure to have you here, signorina,” their hostess said, raising her voice a little as she addressed Joletta. “I have been fascinated all my life by the tragedy which occurred; there were members of my family who worked here at that time, you see. I have often wondered what became of the American woman who was at the heart of the story, and if those descended of her line in the States knew what took place in Italy. And then there is something that I—”

Somewhere inside the villa, a bell rang. Their hostess broke off, frowning. She was expecting no other guests, she said. After a few moments a fresh-faced maid, wearing a calf-length black dress with Joy Walkers, came out to confer with her mistress. Signora Perrino excused herself and rose to enter the house.

Caesar sat drinking his wine, his gaze resting on Joletta while the grapevine overhead cast shifting leaf patterns across the bronze skin of his face. He leaned forward to set down his glass, reaching at the same time for her hand. Holding it in both of his, he said, “What were you thinking of just now, before Signora Perrino spoke to you? You looked quite different, somehow, very sweet and mysterious, as if you had a secret.”

“I was thinking of my great-grandmother,” she said. It was the truth, but not quite the whole truth. It was impossible to say more, however.

“She must have been quite a lady. She loved an Italian, did she not?”

He held her gaze with his own dark, penetrating eyes as he lifted her fingers to his mouth. At the last moment he turned her hand to expose her palm. His lips were warm and smooth, and the tip of his tongue, as it flicked lightly over the sensitive surface, sent a small jolt of sensation along her arm to her shoulder.

“My, my,” Natalie said in acid tones as she came to a halt in the doorway through which their hostess had disappeared. “Dear Caesar, I don’t think I told you to be that charming to my cousin.”

Caesar lifted his head while a flush rose under his skin. The look he gave Natalie was dark with resentment.

Joletta removed her hand from the Italian’s tight grasp. As he turned a glance of remorse and pleading upon her, she said quietly, “Someone needing to change a baby diaper?”

Natalie laughed. “Did Caesar really say that? But I was afraid you might have seen us, since Rone was so bent on staying close. I’ll never have another word to say about Italian drivers; Rone was like a maniac, especially when we reached the traffic jam outside town.”

Joletta’s cousin was not alone. Rone’s tall form filled the doorway behind her. Joletta refused to look at him, though she had known from the first that he was there.