Wildest Dreams (The Contemporary Collection) (35 page)

That had to be explained, naturally, and an introduction performed for Natalie. Joletta’s cousin gave the Italian a warm smile and allowed her hand to linger in his for long seconds. Caesar acknowledged the gesture with suitable charm, but looked toward Joletta immediately afterward with a frown between his thick brows. He said, “You don’t go to the islands then? But there won’t be time after today, and it’s a mistake to miss them.”

“Oh, really, there’s nothing so great to see out there,” Natalie said.

“Venice is more than the Grand Canal and the basilica of St Mark,” Caesar declared, his face set in lines of disapproval. “The character of her is in her islands, in the glass factories, and other places that were set apart to prevent fires — and where the fishermen enjoy their isolation and paint their houses in colors bright enough to be seen from the sea.”

To Joletta, it was all the incentive she needed. She meant to see as much of Italy as possible. She turned to Rone and Natalie. “You two can do what you like, but I think I prefer to go on to the islands after all.”

Natalie divided a dissatisfied look between her and Caesar. “You’re sure?”

“I am.” Joletta’s voice was firm.

“We can’t prevent you, of course.” Her cousin lifted a shoulder in a careless gesture.

Rone said, “I’ll have to go with Joletta then. I suppose we could see if there’s room on the tour for one more.”

“Or perhaps two if you are making additions to your party,” Caesar suggested with a confident smile. “It would give me great pleasure to be your guide once again.”

“Wait a minute,” Natalie said in rasping tones. “I refuse to set foot on a tour, and that’s final. You promised me the Lido, Rone.”

There was a small silence. It was Caesar who broke it. “There is no problem that I can see. I will take Rone’s place with Joletta. He can then keep his word.”

Joletta saw Rone make a quick movement that was instantly stilled. She met his gaze, her own questioning. He held that steady regard for only a second before he looked away, his gaze following a passing boat.

A hollow feeling began in Joletta’s stomach and expanded, crowding against her heart. Her face was somber and there was doubt in her eyes as she looked toward Caesar. “I’m sure you must have other things to do than follow me around.”

“If I had a thousand things, I would cancel them,
carina
Joletta,” Caesar said instantly. “It will be my great pleasure.”

His ready acceptance and his gallantry were balm for Joletta’s bruised spirits. She summoned a smile. “Well, that’s all right then.”

“It must be,” Natalie said, though she did not look happy.

Rone was silent.

Joletta expected the afternoon to drag past; it flew instead. The trip across the lagoon was made in a water bus of shining wood and brass, beautifully clean and well kept. Boats, Caesar pointed out when she mentioned it, were the pride of the men of Venice, things to be polished as other men polished their cars or their weapons.

Of the two islands, Tercello was her favorite, mainly because it seemed so small and friendly, with so much unpaved land and gardens that seemed particularly Italian with their vigorous, hairy-leaved artichokes, rampant-growing peas, and paths where cats sat sunning themselves among the greenery.

She and Caesar walked on tiles in the ancient church, which had felt the footsteps of worshipers for more than a thousand years. Afterward, they ate a quick lunch under a grapevine that might have sheltered Hemingway during his stay at the Locanda Cipriani Inn where one fogbound and lugubrious winter he wrote
Across the River and Into the Trees.

On Burano, Caesar insisted on buying Joletta a piece of lace, a small picture of a gentleman and lady in seventeenth-century costume holding a heart with an arrow thrust through it. Avoiding the square with its kiosks of tourist merchandise, they strolled among the houses washed in colors of rose and saffron, tangerine and brilliant azure and oxblood red.

Caesar took her hand, smiling down at her with admiration in his dark eyes while the sun gleamed in the blue-black waves of his hair and turned the skin of his face to gold. It meant nothing, she knew, or thought she did; still, she couldn’t help being affected by his aura of confident masculinity and his appreciation of her as a woman. It was such a potent weapon, that manifest appreciation, so typically Italian or Latin. She wondered if he realized it. And wondered, too, why more men, especially American men, didn’t use it.

In a curious way she was grateful to Caesar. His easy compliments and endearments, his ready flirtation, had helped to repair the damage done to her ego by Rone’s defection. Caesar had also given her a respite from emotions that had developed too quickly, becoming too intense for comfort. She had needed time to step back and take note of what she was doing and why, and perhaps to reconsider her rush into intimacy.

Looking at Caesar, Joletta thought, too, about Violet and also about her Allain, who had had Italian ancestry. If history did in some manner repeat itself, she supposed it would be Caesar who was most similar to Allain. Not that she really believed in such things — reincarnation, past lives, the return of old souls who had lived before. And yet, she felt closer in time to Violet here in Venice than she ever had in New Orleans.

She was beginning to understand the impulses that had driven her great-great-great-great-grandmother, to understand them far too well.

They had reached the end of the street, one that had led to the sea and a grassy verge with a handy bench. Caesar headed toward the seat, ruthlessly cutting off another couple who had been making toward it. He seated Joletta, then dropped down beside her, ignoring with his customary aplomb the fuming irritation of the other man and woman.

They sat for long moments, feeling the sun and wind on their faces, watching the hazy, blue-green sea shift and sparkle.

After a while Caesar said, “Your cousin, Natalie, she is not much like you.”

“In looks you mean?” Joletta said.

“Well, she is blond, which is always attractive, but I was speaking of her manner. She is very — determined.”

“You saw that, when you were with her such a short time?” Joletta’s glance was teasing.

A small smile tugged at his mouth. “A man notices these things.”

“You like that, determination in a woman?” she asked.

“Sometimes yes, sometimes no. I object to being ordered to do this or that.”

Joletta would have thought that Rone would object, too. Strenuously. He had not. Why? The question had been with her all afternoon, nagging at her like a dull toothache. The only answer she could see was that he had been attracted to Natalie, had wanted to spend time with her.

Her voice soft, almost contemplative, she said, “Do you think my cousin is more attractive than I am?”

“What a question,
carina,
” he said, turning toward her and propping an elbow on the back of the bench. “Why would you ask it?”

She shrugged a little. It had been an impulse, one she hadn’t even tried to resist.

“Is it for my sake, or because of Rone that you compare yourself to her?”

Caesar saw a great deal, more than she had expected. “Forget it,” she said. “It isn’t important.”

“I think it is.” He paused, then went on in low tones. “You are different, that’s all. Her beauty is obvious, a bright fire that reaches out to a man. Yours is a softer glow like candlelight; one must come closer to appreciate its gentle light and its mystery. You are the kind of woman a man marries so that he may spend years tending the flame, warming himself in its constant heat. She is the kind he makes his mistress for the quick bonfire that just as quickly burns out.”

Joletta met his steady gaze for long moments while a smile rose slowly into her brown eyes. She said, “And is that the only two types of women you recognize?”

“No,” he answered with lazy, understanding humor and warmth in his dark eyes. “There are also mothers.”

Joletta and Caesar did not go back to the hotel before the visit to his aunt, but stepped straight from the water bus to a gondola, which took them the short distance through the canals to the old house.

It was not a particularly impressive building from the outside, being rather plain except for a loggia of Gothic arches. It was rather like the house where Violet and Allain had stayed, but Joletta had discovered that there were many of those.

Inside, the decor was an eclectic blend of huge old gold-leaf mirrors and sleek torch floor lamps in black and chrome, of great majolica urns filled with masses of spring flowers, and of abstract prints the size of barn doors.

Caesar’s aunt was not the bent old lady in lavender and lace Joletta had expected. She was, rather, a woman of intense charisma, wearing her hair slicked back in a firm bun to reveal yellow diamond earrings like small captured suns in her ears, and a dress in a pale gold silk with the indelible stamp of Armani.

The Italian woman was pleased to receive a friend of her nephew’s, she said; she had not known he had such exceptional taste in women. More, she was delighted to show off her house, since it had just been redecorated after many years of neglect. She had married the house, so to speak; it had been in her husband’s family for many years, but they had only moved in a year ago, when his mother had died. Many changes had been made, and they must see them all.

They were invited, even commanded, for dinner. It was a lovely meal, served on the loggia as the long twilight faded into night, but its courses were innumerable, an endless progression of food and wine and conversation.

It was late when Joletta and Caesar reached the boat landing near the hotel again. He would not leave her there, but insisted on walking with her along the side street, and even seeing her to her room.

She stopped in the hall outside her door. She thanked him once more for her lace picture, and also for the afternoon and evening. As she reached to unlock the door he prevented it by the simple means of catching her hand.

His smile rueful, he said, “I take it you are not going to invite me inside?”

“You take it right.” The refusal was quiet but firm.

“I knew it,” he said on a sigh. “I suppose I must be glad that you are not like so many, so hungry for love that you will accept the first man bold enough to offer it.”

She frowned. “So many women, you mean, or just so many American women?”

“It’s your countrywomen I speak of,
carina,
yes. You are surprised?”

She was and she wasn’t. “I suppose it’s the ones who are looking for something who come to Europe alone in the first place.”

“Ah, my Joletta,” he said, his voice low, “what is it you are looking for?”

She glanced up at him as she caught a note of tense inquiry, almost a demand, in his tone. He met her gaze, his own dark. Abruptly, he released her hand and stepped nearer, reaching out to clamp his arm about her waist. He bent his head to press his mouth to hers.

His lips were firm and muscular and tasted of wine; his movements were experienced. His hold was close without being tight. There was tentative pleasure in his touch, an inkling that it might, with care, be increased in some degree. And yet, it brought no consuming desire, no wild need to discover how much greater the enjoyment might become.

Why had she allowed the kiss? Gratitude? A disinclination to hurt him after his courtesy? A need to test her emotions where Rone was concerned? All these things had been a part of it. Was it fair to Caesar? That was unanswerable, since it depended on the solutions she found. No doubt he had been seeking his own answers, also.

She began to draw back, gently and without haste, so that it need not appear a complete rejection.

At that moment the hotel-room door opened. Rone, dressed only in a pair of jeans and holding a rolled magazine in his hand, stood scowling at them.

“Sorry,” he said in clipped tones as his gaze rested on Joletta’s pale face, “I didn’t mean to interrupt, but I thought you might be having trouble with your key.”

“No,” she said, her voice tight.

“So I see. You might speed it up. I started your bathwater running.” He stepped back inside and closed the door.

Joletta absorbed the import of his words, with their brazen advertisement of the intimate arrangement between them, in blank astonishment. There could be little doubt they had been intended as a warning for Caesar, though how Rone could dare make it after his conduct with Natalie, she did not understand.

She had noticed two other things as well. The bathwater was indeed running. And what she had taken at first for a magazine in Rone’s hand were the last few pages of Violet’s journal.